Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

some time cease to be law, this was not an easy distinction to force through all the intricacies of debate. Douglas, on the other hand, was troubled by Lincoln's questions about the right of the people in a territory to exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution, and about the right of slaveholders in territories to have their property protected by Congress. Over the first question he wriggled furiously and created the Freeport Doctrine " of popular sovereignty, which ultimately destroyed him. When the second was put he exclaimed, "Repeat that; I want to answer that question." But he never did. It should be remembered that the combatants chose their points not solely for the crowd in front of them, but for leisurely readers of the newspapers, and in the end it was by them that the answers of Douglas were weighed and found wanting.

The last debate was at Alton, on October 15. The election followed soon, and Douglas won. In popular vote the Republicans had a small plurality, but the legislature, which elected the senator was slightly Democratic in both branches. On November 15, Lincoln wrote: Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down

་་

and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in har

[ocr errors]

mony long. Another explosion will soon come. Horace Greeley says that on the real issue fought out between Lincoln and Douglas, Illinois was about equally divided, and that in the autumn Douglas was elected after borrowing and disbursing in the canvass $80,000, a debt which weighed him down to the grave, while Lincoln, who had spent less than $1000, came out stronger politically than he went in. Herndon tells us about George B. McClellan's taking Douglas around in a special train, while Lincoln sometimes found it hard to secure a seat when he was exhausted. Whatever details counted in the result, there seems to be little doubt that the fight was carried on with such ability that each combatant gained admiration from his party and the country, although it is probably also true that the thorough airing given to the views of Douglas did much to deprive him in 1860 of Southern support on the one hand and Northern support on the other.

After this campaign Lincoln found himself hard pressed for money. His income from the law, according to his partner, was not over $3000, and there were current political expenses. He tried lecturing, one address on "Inventions" being delivered in several towns, but his failure was so evident that he soon abandoned the experiment. While he did some law work, he kept very actively in politics. He had tried to get the

Springfield publishers to print his speeches and those of Douglas in a book, but they had refused. In 1859 the Republican State Committee asked for their publication, and the next year they were printed at Columbus and used as campaign documents.

He followed Douglas to Ohio in a gubernatorial contest in September, 1859, and made some speeches. In one of these speeches he said: "Now, what is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty? It is as a principle no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object." Again, of Douglas: "I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him." The following month he received an invitation to speak during the winter in New York. Herndon had some time previously made a trip East for the purpose of conciliating the Republican leaders, but nothing did so much to strengthen Lincoln in this part of the country as a speech which he delivered at Cooper Union on February 27. Horace Greeley says that from the point of view of the canvasser, by which he means the persuader of all sorts of men, it is the very best address to which he ever listened, "and I have

heard some of Webster's grandest." The opportunity to make this great speech, like the invitations of the preceding year to speak all over the Northwest, grew directly out of the Douglas debates, which not only left him known throughout the country at once, but contained such a complete and able statement of Republican doctrine that the more they were read by the leaders the more highly was Lincoln regarded. As Blaine has said, Lincoln "did not seek to say merely the thing that was for the day's debate, but the thing which would stand the test of time and square itself with eternal justice." He was

now rapidly reaping his reward.

Of this Cooper Institute gathering the New York Tribune, Greeley's paper, said, "Since the days of Clay and Webster no man has spoken to a larger assemblage of the intellect and mental culture of our city." The speech was serious. It contained none of the raciness intended for Western stumps, but put the whole question in all its branches in the solidest form to confirm or convince the minds of educated men whose interest was keenly centred. Lincoln was always a man who understood opportunity. Stories and jests were laid aside, and he grasped the occasion to paint the situation more accurately than anybody else. In spite of its thoroughness, its treatment of all sides of the central controversy, it had

such unity that one idea dominated the whole: "All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong." To support duty was the straight road; "then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively." "Mr. Lincoln," said Greeley's paper the next day, "is one of nature's orators.' The Evening Post and most of the other leading papers were almost equally enthusiastic. He spoke elsewhere in the East, holding fast to the main issue, and to the principles on which he believed it should be decided, and when he returned to the West he was in the best of form to try for the great prize to be awarded the succeeding year.

« PreviousContinue »