of his canvass. We know that men-not men of the highest type but such men as for the most part make up the world we live in-are creatures of circumstances taking and maintaining such positions as their necessities and supposed interests dictate. If, then, it had seemed necessary to Mr. Douglas to advocate the reopening of the African Slave trade, we should not have complained if he had done so. When it had been settled that the Republicans of Illinois would determinedly oppose Mr. Douglas' reelection at all hazards, it was obvious that he would feel constrained to take a position so near the South Pole as would be necessary to prevent the formation of any considerable Buchanan Democratic party, so as to enclose him between two fires. Yet we must confess that we were not quite prepared to see him take the positions in the canvass which The South pretty accurately sums up as follows: 1. Judge Douglas affirms the original and essential inferiority of the negro. 2. He denies that the negro was intended to be embraced within the abstractions of the Declaration of Independence and asserts that the right of freedom and equality was predicated only of the dominant race of white men. 3. He denies the privileges of citizenship to the negro. 4. He affirms the compatibility of a confederation of Free and Slave States and the possibility of their harmonious coexistence under a common Constitution. 5. He affirms the absolute sovereignty of the State in respect to their dominant institution and denies the authority of the Federal Government to discriminate against the interests of Slavery. 6. He inculcates a policy of non-intervention as between the free and slave-holding state, as well as between the latter and the Federal Government. 7. He supports the decision of the Supreme Court and asserts for Slavery the right of colonization in the territory. 8. He upholds all the guaranties of the Federal Constitution in respect to the rights of the South. 9. He maintains the dignity and independence of the Senatorial function against the encroachments of executive usurpation. 10. He protests his opposition to Black Republicanism at every point and upon every principle. 11. He pledges himself to fidelity to the organic principles and nominees of the Democratic party. If South Carolina should object to a candidate for President who plants himself on that platform, she must be fastidious indeed. But it is not in this respect that Mr. Douglas' canvass has fallen most signally below our expectations. With his indefatigable energy his readiness in repartee his tenacity-if we should not rather say his audacity-in maintaining an exposed and indefensible position, his fertility of resource, we were already familiar. But his recent canvass, while it has stamped him first among county or ward politicians has evinced a striking absence of the far higher qualities of statesmanship. His speeches have lacked the breadth of view, the dignity, the courtesy to his opponent which-not to speak here of Clay, Calhoun or Websterwe should have confidently looked for in the popular addresses of Crittenden or Corwin or Wise or Quitman-proscribed by the official leaders of his party and appealing from them to his constituents. They are plainly addressed to an excited crowd at some railway station, and seem uttered in unconsciousness that the whole American People are virtually deeply interested though not intensely excited auditors. They are volcanic and scathing but lack the repose of conscious strength, the calmness of conscious right. They lack forecast and are utterly devoid of faith. They not merely assume as an axiom that "God is on the side of the strongest battalions," they make "the God," or at least fail to recognize any other. That such a struggle were better nobly lost than ignobly won is a truth of which Senator Douglas on the stump would seem not to have the faintest conception. Hence his late canvass while it has given him an exalted rank among mere politicians, and probably paved his way to the Presidency-or more strictly, to the next Democratic nomination for that post-has failed to elicit any evidence of his possessing those lofty and admirable qualities without which the Presidency can afford no heartfelt satisfaction and confer no enduring fame. i CHAPTER XV HUMOR OF THE CAMPAIGN [Evening Post, New York, August 25, 1858] LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF THE ILLINOIS CANVASS The correspondent of the Chicago Tribune gives the following extracts from "Abe Lincoln's" speech at Havana (Ill.) on the 13th inst: A QUESTION OF MUSCLE "I am informed [said he] that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little excited-nervous, perhaps [laughter]—and he said something about fighting, as though referring to a pugilistic encounter between him and myself. Did anybody in this audience hear him use such language? [Cries of yes.] I am informed, further, that somebody in his audience, rather more excited or nervous than himself, took off his coat, and offered to take the job off Judge Douglas's hands, and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here witness that warlike proceeding? [Laughter, and cries of yes.] Well, I merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his second. [Great laughter.] I shall not do this for two reasons, which I will now explain. In the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this contest. It might establish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man than myself, or it might demonstrate that I am a more muscular man than Judge Douglas. But this question is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform, nor in either of the Springfield platforms. [Great laughter.] Neither result would prove him right or me wrong. And so of the gentleman who volunteered to do his fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. [Continued laughter.] "My second reason for not having a personal encounter with the Judge is, that I don't believe he wants it himself. [Laughter.] He and I are about the best friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore, ladies and gentlemen, when the Judge talked about fighting, he was not giving vent to any ill-feeling of his own, but merely trying to excite-well, enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And as I find he was tolerably successful, we will call it quits." [Cheers and laughter.] "TWO UPON ONE" "One other matter of trifling consequence," continued Mr. Lincoln, "and I I will proceed. I undersatnd that Judge Douglas yesterday referred to the fact that both Judge Trumbull and myself are making speeches throughout the state to beat him for the Senate, and that he tried to create a sympathy by the suggestion that this was playing two upon one against him. It is true that Judge Trumbull has made a speech in Chicago, and I believe he intends to co-operate with the Republican Central Committee in their arrangements for the campaign to the extent of making other speeches in different parts of the state. Judge Trumbull is a Republican, like myself, and he naturally feels a lively interest in the success of his party. Is there anything wrong about that? But I will show you how little Judge Douglas's appeal to your sympathies amounts to. At the next general election, two years from now, a Legislature will be elected which will have to choose a successor to Judge Trumbull. Of course there will be an effort to fill his place with a democrat. This person, whoever he may be, is probably out making stump speeches against me, just as Judge Douglas is. It may be one of the present Democratic members of the lower house of Congress-but whoever he is, I can tell you he has got to make some stump speeches now, or his party will not nominate him for the seat occupied by Judge Trumbull. Well, are not Judge Douglas and this man playing two upon one against me just as much as Judge Trumbull and I are playing two upon one against Judge Douglas? [Laughter.] And if it happens that there are two democratic aspirants for Judge Trumbull's place, are they not playing three upon one against me, just as we are playing two upon one against Judge Douglas ?" [Renewed laughter.] [The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa, August 28, 1858] OLLAPOD SEES DOUGLAS ON THE CARS Mr. Ollapod lives in Michigan-in one of the "rural districts." In traveling on the cars in that State, he fell in with Mr. Douglas recently, and had some remarkable conversation with him. We give a portion of it in Ollapod's own language: Wal, sez I, du let me intu yure perlitikul vues. Wal, do yu beleave in the Dred Skot dessishun ? Yes, sez he. Wal, sez I, du yu beleave in squattur suvrinta? Yes, sez he, I du; I am the daddy of it. Wal, sez I, the Dred Skot dessisshun, sez that slavery already exists in the terretory, and the pepil kant touch it thar, how duse that rekunsile with yure squattur sovrinta? Sez he, shet yure mouth. Sez I, Mistur Bukannon sez that the Konstitution karries slaivry intu the terretorys, and that the pepil of these niggur pastures have no power tu say it shall not exist, bekase it is carried thar by the Konstitution. Sez I, is this yer borsted dimmerkratic popilar Sovrinta? Sez he, shet yure mouth. Sez I, du yu beleave that thar ort to be a properta represantashun in Kongris? No, sez he, that aint dimmerkratik doktrin. Wel thin, sez I, why ar thre fifths of the niggurs at the south represented? Sez he, shet yure mouth-and he kind ur choaked up, and sez he tha are represented as pussons. Is that so, sez I—, pussons of what kedentry? of the yunited staits sez he; what, sez I, ar tha sittursins then? Sez he shet yure mouth. Sez I, want Washington, Jefferson, and our four daddys who put thru the ordenance of '87 opposed tu slavery? Sez he, shet yure mouth, tha war old fules. Sez I, doant yu beleave that slavery acts like katturpillurs blitin free soil and eatin out its gudeness. Sez he, shet yure mouth. Sez I, ort thare not tu be a preponderinse of slave staits; yes, sez he, thats so. Wal, sez I, my individual private opinion of you is that yu ar an Amerikan aristekrat, and if yu ware President, yu would act wus than Frank Purse and Old Buck. The kars had now got most tu white pigin, so I gist passed the hat round to get the voat for yunited staits senatur. Duglis got eleving and Abe Linkon twenty-siving voats. In telling Duglis gud by, I axed him if he didn't own a plantashun and sum niggurs deoun tu Louisianny and if he wan't a northern mud sil with a southern firebrand in his mouth. Sez he, shet yure mouth. Yures Seth ontil death, PELEG OLLAPOD. [Burlington (Iowa) Gazette, July 16, 1858] MODEST Judge Douglas used the personal pronoun "I" seventy three times during his speech at Chicago on Friday evening.-Peoria Transcript. It is said that one story is good until another has been told. Knowing the excessive egotism which attaches to the character of Mr. Lincoln, the black republican nominee for United States Senator in Illinois, the above illusion of the Peoria Transcript to Judge Douglas's speech naturally suggested to us the idea of looking into Mr. Lincoln's reply on the following night and in a speech of precisely the same length. We find that Lincoln made use of the personal pronoun "I" no less than 225 times! Beating Douglas about 150 times in twenty minutes.. He is a good man for the Republicans to offer up for slaughter-a little notoriety, no odds how brief, will sweeten death for him, while a little soft soap, dexterously applied, will not only reconcile him to his fate but actually make him greedy to "kick the bucket." And further, that he is known all over Suckerdom by the name of the "Perpendicular Pronoun." [The Hawk Eye, Burlington, Iowa, August 31, 1858] Douglas says that twenty-five years ago he entered Winchester, Ill., a poor boy, with his coat on his arm and not a dollar in his pocket. He is, at the end of a quarter of a century then, a poor fellow still, accused of having turned his coat ww |