gracious compliment to the distinguished Senator whose seat he aspired to fill. And the contestants, however great their posthumous fame, were as yet merely ambitious politicians, supremely interested in winning the splendid prize. To Lincoln the possibility of a seat in the Senate was stimulus enough. Douglas was in mid career, assured of the Presidency in the near future, but compelled at all hazards to hold the ground already won. His commanding eminence attracted universal attention to the contest. He must not only win, but bear himself throughout with the air of an assured conqueror.
With all their disparity of rank and fame, they were not badly matched, and all the substantial advantages of the situation lay with Lincoln. The greatness of Douglas’ fame excited sympathy for his rival. Success in the contest would give power and prestige to Lincoln, and even defeat would not be humiliating. Douglas could not expect much glory even from victory. Though he crushed his opponent in argument, he must still measure himself with the Douglas of the Senate and not fall below his own standard. In his contest for the Senate, he must remember the Presidency and shape his arguments for a larger audience than that addressed by Lincoln.
During the period of the debates both were actively engaged in the State campaign, addressing one or two audiences daily, so arranging their routes as to meet at the appointed times and places. On August 21st, in presence of a vast multitude, Douglas opened the first debate at Ottawa.
“Prior to 1854,” he said, “this country was divided into two great political parties, known as the Whig and Democratic parties. Both were national and patriotic. * * * Whig principles had no boundary sectional line, * * * but applied and were proclaimed wherever the Constitution ruled or the American flag waved over American soil. So it was, and so it is, with the great Democratic party, which from the days of Jefferson to this period has proven itself to be the historic party of this Nation. * * * The Whig party and the Democratic party jointly adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a proper and just solution of this slavery question in all its forms. Clay was the great leader, with Webster on his right and Cass on his left, and sustained by the patriots in the Whig and Democratic ranks. * * * * In 1851 the Whig party and the Democratic party united in Illinois in approving the principles of the Compromise measures of 1850. * * * In 1852 the Whig party in Convention at Baltimore declared the Compromise measures of 1850 a suitable adjustment of that question. * * * * The Democratic Convention assembled in Baltimore the same year and adopted the Compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of Democratic action. * * * They both stood on the same platform with regard to the slavery question. That platform was the right of the people of each State and Territory to decide their local and domestic institutions for themselves, subject only to the Federal Constitution.
“In 1854 I introduced into the Senate a bill to organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska on that principle which had been adopted in the Compromise measures of 1850, and indorsed by the Whig party and the Democratic party in National Convention in 1852. * * * Thus you see that up to 1854, when the Kansas-Nebraska bill was brought into Congress for the purpose of carrying out the principles which both parties up to that time had indorsed and approved, there was no division of opinion in this country in regard to that principle, except the opposition of the Abolitionists. In the House of Representatives of Illinois upon a resolution asserting that principle every Whig and every Democrat voted in the affirmative.”
In 1854 Lincoln, the leader of the Whigs, and Trumbull, one of the Democratic chiefs, entered into an arrangement to dissolve the old Whig and Democratic parties and to unite the members of both into the Abolition party under the name and guise of a Republican party. The terms were that Lincoln should have Shield’s place in the Senate, then about to become vacant, and that Trumbull should have Douglas’ seat when his term expired. Lincoln went to work to Abolitionize the old Whig party, pretending that he was as good a Whig as ever, and Trumbull began preaching Abolitionism in milder and lighter form, hoping to Abolitionize the Democratic party. The party met at Springfield in October, 1854, and proclaimed its platform. This document christened the coalition the Republican party. It pledged the party to bring the administration of the Government back to the control of first principles; to restore Kansas and Nebraska to the position of free Territories; to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law; to restrict slavery to those States in which it existed; to prohibit the admission of any more slave States into the Union; to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; to exclude it from all the Territories and resist the acquirement of more unless it should be prohibited therein. He asked Lincoln to answer whether he stood pledged to each article in that creed and would carry it out.
“I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions in order that when I trot him down to lower Egypt (Southern Illinois) I may put the same questions to him. My principles are the same everywhere. I can proclaim them alike in the North and the South, the East and the West. My principles will apply wherever the Constitution prevails and the American flag waves. I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln’s principles will bear transplanting from Ottawa to Jonesboro. I put these questions to him to-day distinctly and ask an answer. I have a right to an answer, for I quote from the platform of the Republican party, made by himself and others at the time that party was formed and bargain made by Lincoln to dissolve and kill the old Whig party and transfer its members, bound hand and foot to the Abolition party. * * * I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to Lincoln. I have known him for nearly twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery keeper in the town of Salem. * * * I made as good a school teacher as I could and, when a cabinet maker, I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. * * * Lincoln was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse race or a fist fight excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody.”
After Lincoln and Trumbull had formed their combination to Abolitionize the old parties and put themselves into the Senate, he said, Trumbull broke faith by demanding Shield’s place for himself when it fell vacant and leaving Lincoln to fight for Douglas’ seat two years later. Trumbull was stumping the State for Lincoln in order to quiet him. Lincoln was opposed to the Dred Scott decision and would not submit to it because it deprived the negro of the rights and privileges of citizenship.
“Do you desire,” he asked, “to * * * allow the free negroes to flow in and cover your prairies with black settlements? Do you desire to turn this beautiful State into a free negro colony, in order that when Missouri abolishes slavery she can send one hundred thousand emancipated slaves into Illinois to become citizens and voters on an equality with yourselves? * * * Mr. Lincoln, following the example and lead of all the little Abolition orators who go around and lecture in the basements of schools and churches, reads from the Declaration of Independence that all men were created equal, and then asks, ‘How can you deprive the negro of that equality which God and the Declaration of Independence awards him?'” * * *
“Now I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the negro to be the equal of the white man. If he did he has been a long time demonstrating the fact. For thousands of years the negro has been a race upon the earth and during all that time, in all latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to the race which he there met. He belongs to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior position. The question, what rights and privileges shall be conferred on the negro, is one which each State and Territory must decide for itself. This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln, of uniformity among the institutions of the different States, is a new doctrine, never dreamed of by Washington, Madison or the founders of this Government. Mr. Lincoln and the Republican party set themselves up as wiser than these men who made this Government which has flourished for seventy years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right of each state to do as it pleased. Under that principle we have grown from a nation of three or four millions to a nation of about thirty millions of people; we have crossed the Allegheny Mountains and filled up the whole Northwest, turning the prairie into a garden and building up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity where before there was nothing but savage barbarism.
“Under that principle we have become, from a feeble nation, the most powerful on the face of the earth; and if we only adhere to that principle, we can go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength and in glory, until the Republic of America shall be the North Star that shall guide the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world. * * * I believe that this new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln and his party will dissolve the Union if it succeeds. They are trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States, in order that the one or the other may be driven to the wall.”
When the applause subsided, Lincoln rose to reply. Addressing himself first to the personal matters contained in Douglas’ speech, he denied the charge of a secret bargain between himself and Trumbull dividing the two seats in the Senate between them. “All I have to say upon that subject is, that I think no man–not even Judge Douglas–can prove it, because it is not true.” He denied utterly that he had anything to do with the Republican platform drafted by the party leaders in 1854, having refused to meet with the committee or take any part in the organization.
“I have no means,” he said, ” of totally disproving such charges as this. I cannot prove a negative; but have a right to say that, when he makes an affirmative charge, he must offer some proof of its truth. Douglas’ argument about ‘perfect social and political equality with the negro’ is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. I will say here, while upon the subject, that I have no purpose directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgement will forever forbid their living together upon a footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I agree with Judge Douglas that the negro is not my equal in many respects–certainly not in color–perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas and the equal of every living man. * * *
“In the history of our Government this institution of slavery has always been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. I have a right to say that in regard to this question the Union is a house divided against itself. The public mind did formerly rest in the belief that slavery was in the course of ultimate extinction. But lately Douglas and those acting with him have placed it on a new basis which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization of slavery. * * * * I believe we shall not have peace upon the question until the opponents of slavery arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or, on the other hand, that its advocates will push it forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
“Now, I believe if we could arrest the spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison paced it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction and the public mind would, as for eighty years past, believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. The crisis would be passed and the institution might be let alone for a hundred years, if it should live so long, in the States where it exists; yet it would be going out of existence in the way best for both the black and the white races. * * * Popular sovereignty as now applied to the question of slavery, does allow the people of a Territory to have slavery if they want it, but does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it. * * * As I understand the Dred Scott decision, if any one man wants slaves all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from holding them. * * *
“The Nebraska bill contains this clause: ‘It being the true intent and meaning of this bill not to legislate slavery into any Territory or STATE.’ I have always been puzzled to know what business the word State had in that connection. Judge Douglas knows. He put it there. * * * What was it placed there for? After seeing the Dred Scott decision, which holds that the people cannot exclude slavery from a Territory, if another Dred Scott decision shall come holding that they cannot exclude it from a State, we shall discover that when the word was originally put there it was in view of something that was to come in due time, we shall see that it was the other half of something.
“I ask the attention of the people here assembled to the course that Judge Douglas is pursuing every day as bearing upon this question of making slavery national. In the first place what is necessary to make slavery national? Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets, and, with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet, march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that Congress nor the territorial legislature can do it. When that is decided and acquiesced in the whole thing is done. * * * Let us consider what Judge Douglas is doing every day to that end. What influence is he exerting on public sentiment? With public sentiment nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who moulds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes possible or impossible to be executed. * * *
“Judge Douglas is a man of vast influence. Consider the attitude he occupies at the head of a large party. This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a Territory from excluding slavery, and he does so not because it is right in itself, but because it has been decided by the Court; and, being decided by the Court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in your political action as law. * * * You will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to this decision commits him to the next one just as firmly as to this. The next decision, as much as this, will be a ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ It is nothing that I point out to him that his great prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force of decisions. It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so believe. He claims now to stand on the Cincinnati platform which affirms that Congress cannot charter a national bank, in the teeth of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank. And I remind him of another piece of history on the question of respect for judicial decisions belonging to a time when the large party to which Judge Douglas belongs were displeased with a decision of the Supreme Court of Illinois, because they had decided that a Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. I know that he will not deny that he was then in favor of overslaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new Judges, so as to vote down the four older ones. Not only so, but it ended in the Judge’s sitting down on that very bench as one of the five new Judges to break down the four old ones.
“Now, when the Judge tells me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a Court will have to catechized beforehand upon some subject, I say, ‘You know, Judge; you have tried it.’ When he says a Court of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say, ‘You know best, Judge; you have been through the mill.’ But I cannot shake Judge Douglas’ teeth loose from the Dred Scott decision. Like some obstinate animal that will hang on, when he has once got his teeth fixed, you may cut off a leg, or you may tear away an arm, still he will not relax his hold. He hangs to the last to the Dred Scott decision. These things show there is a purpose strong as death and eternity for which he adheres to this decision and for which he will adhere to all other decisions of the same Court. * * * When he invites any people willing to have slavery to establish it, he is blowing out the moral lights around us. When he says he cares not whether slavery is voted down or voted up–that is the sacred right of self-government–he is, in my judgement, penetrating the human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty. * * *
“And now I will only say that when, by all these means and appliances, he shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact accordance with his own; when these vast assemblages shall echo back all these sentiments; when they shall come to repeat his views and to avow his principles and to say all that he says on these mighty questions, then it needs only the formality of a second Dred Scott decision, which he endorses in advance, to make slavery alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
Douglas, in his brief reply, reminded the audience that Lincoln had not frankly answered the question put in his opening speech; whether he approved of each article of the Republican resolutions adopted in Springfield in October, 1854. Lincoln’s only answer had been that he was not present and had nothing to do with drafting the resolutions. “But this denial is a miserable quibble to avoid the main issue, which is that this Republican platform declares in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. His reply to all these questions is ‘I was not on the Committee at the time; I was up in Tazewell County trying a case.’ I put to him the question whether, if the people of the Territory, when they had sufficient population to make a State, should form their Constitution recognizing slavery, he would vote for or against its admission? He is a candidate for the United States Senate and it is possible that, if he should be elected, he would have to vote directly on that question. He dodges it also under the cover that he was not on the Committee. * * * He knows I will trot him down to Egypt. I intend to make him answer there. * * * The Convention to which I have been alluding pledges itself to exclude slavery from all the Territories. * * * I want to know whether he approves that provision. * * * I want to know whether he will resist the acquirement of any more territory, unless slavery therein shall be prohibited. These are practical questions, based upon the fundamental principles of the black Republican party; and I want to know whether he is the first, last and only choice of a party with whom he does not agree in principle.
“He does not deny but that that principle was unanimously adopted by the Republican party; and now I want to know whether that party is unanimously in favor of a man who does not adopt that creed and agree with them in their principles; I want to know whether the man who does not agree with them and who is afraid to avow his differences is the first, last and only choice of the party. * * * The party stands pledged that they will never support Lincoln until he has pledged himself to that platform; but he cannot devise his answer. He has not made up his mind whether he will or not. * * * I have not brought a charge of moral turpitude against him. When he brings one against me, instead of disproving it I will say that it is a lie and let him prove it if he can. * * *
“Mr. Lincoln has not character enough for integrity and truth merely on his own ipse dixit to arraign President Buchanan, President Pierce and nine Judges of the Supreme Court, not one of whom would be complimented by being put on an equality with him. There is an unpardonable presumption in any man putting himself up before thousands of people and pretending that his ipse dixit, without proof, without fact and without truth, is enough to bring down and destroy the purest and best of living men. * * * The word ‘State’ as well as ‘Territory’ was put into the Nebraska bill to knock in the head this Abolition doctrine that there will be no more slave States even if the people want them. * * * The people of Missouri formed a Constitution as a slave State and asked admission into the Union; but the Free Soil party of the North, being in a majority, refused to admit her because she had slavery as one of her institutions. Hence, the first slavery agitation arouse upon a State and not upon a Territory. * * * The whole Abolition agitation arose on that doctrine of prohibiting a State from coming in with slavery or not as it pleased, and that same doctrine is here in this Republican platform of 1854.”
The peculiar difficult of meeting Douglas in argument before a popular audience is here exhibited in its most perfect form. The persuasive force of his last proposition lay in a most ingenious play on the words “State” and “Territory.” Although the people of Missouri had formed a State Constitution, they did not become a State until Congress approved it and formally admitted them. During the entire period of dispute they continued a Territory. Douglas’ argument assumes that they became a State on forming a Constitution.
Chapter XV. The Debates with Lincoln Continued.
The second debate was held at Freeport on August 27th. Lincoln opened his speech with a series of answers to the questions asked at Ottawa.
“I do not,” he said, * * * “stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. * * *
“I do not * * * stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union. * * * *
“I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State. * * * with such a Constitutions as the people * * * may see fit to make. * * *
“I do not stand pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. * * *
“I’m impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories. * * *
“I am not opposed to the honest acquisition of territory. * * * I would or would not oppose such acquisition accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves.”
The questions asked and answered were, whether he was PLEDGED to any of these things. He was willing, however, to state what he really thought of them.
“I do not hesitate to say that * * * under the Constitution of the United States the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. * * * The existing Fugitive Slave Law should have been so framed as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it without lessening its efficiency. * * * * In regard to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I state to you frankly that I would be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to pass upon that question. I should be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add that, if slavery be kept out of the Territories during their territorial existence, * * * * and then the people shall * * * adopt a slave Constitution, * * * I see no alternative but to admit them into the Union. * * * I should not be in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, unless upon the condition that abolition should be gradual; that it should be on the vote of a majority of the qualified voters of the District; and that compensation be made to unwilling owners. * * * What I am saying here I suppose I say to a vast audience as strongly tending to Abolitionism as any audience in the State of Illinois, and I believe I am saying that which, if it would be offensive to any persons and render them enemies to myself, would be offensive to persons in this audience.” He then asked Douglas four questions:
1st. “If the people of Kansas shall * * * adopt a State Constitution and ask admission * * * * before they have the requisite number of inhabitants under the English bill, * * * will you vote to admit them?
2nd. “Can the people of a * * * Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen, * * * exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?
3rd. “If the Supreme Court * * * * shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting and following such decision as a rule of political action?
4th. “Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how such action may affect the Nation on the slavery question?
When the Nebraska bill was introduced, he continued, it was declared the intent and meaning of the act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people perfectly free to regulate their own domestic institutions in their own way. Chase of Ohio introduced an amendment expressly declaring that the people of a Territory should have the power to exclude slavery if they saw fit. Douglas and those who agreed with him, voted it down. A little later the Supreme Court decided that a territorial legislature had no right to exclude slavery.
“For men who did intend that the people of the Territory should have the right to exclude slavery * * * * the voting down of Chase’s amendment is wholly inexplicable. It is a puzzle, a riddle. But * * * with men who did look forward to such a decision * * * * the voting down of that amendment would be perfectly rational and intelligible. It would keep Congress from coming into collision with the decision when it was made. * * * If there was an intention or expectation that such a decision was to follow, it would not be very desirable for the Democratic Supreme Court to decide one way when the party in Congress had decided the other. Hence it would be very rational for men expecting such a decision to keep the niche in that law clear for it. * * * It looks to me as though here was the reason why Chase’s amendment was voted down. * * * If it was done for a different reason, * * * he knows what that reason was and can tell us what it was. * * * It will be vastly more satisfactory to the country for him to give some other intelligible, plausible reason why it was voted down than to stand upon his dignity and call people liars.”
Cass, it was said, on behalf of the Democrats in the Senate, proposed to Chase that he so change his amendment as to provide that the people of a Territory should have power either to introduce or exclude slavery, and they would accept it. Chase, having conscientious scruples on the question of slavery, declined to do this and his amendment was voted down. But it was quite possible for them to have accepted Chase’s amendment, forbidden by the Senate rule, but an amendment to the amended bill, which was permitted.
Douglas, in his reply, with admirable readiness, addressed himself to Lincoln’s four questions. “In reference to Kansas,” he said, “it is my opinion that, as she has population enough to constitute a slave State, she has people enough for a free State. * * * The next question is, ‘Can the people of a Territory * * * exclude slavery prior to the formation of a State Constitution?’ * * * In my opinion they can. * * * It matters not in what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If on the contrary they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory, is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill.”
This bill provided that the legislative power of the Territory should extend to all rightful subjects of legislation. It made no exception as to slavery, but gave full power to introduce or exclude it. What more could Chase’s amendment do? Chase offered it for the purpose of having it rejected. He expected it to be capital for small politicians, and he was not mistaken. He was amazed that Lincoln should ask his third question. He had denounced in the Senate an article in the Washington Union claiming that any provision in the laws or Constitutions of the free States excluding slavery was in conflict with the Constitution of the United States. Senator Toombs, on behalf of the South, had utterly repudiated the doctrine. The question cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. Such a decision was not possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to.
“As to Lincoln’s fourth question,” he said: “I answer, that whenever it becomes necessary in our growth and progress to acquire more territory, I am in favor of it without reference to the question of slavery; and when we have acquired it I would leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory as they preferred. * * * I tell you, increase, multiply and expand is the law of this Nation’s existence. * * * Just as fast as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the North, in the South or on the islands of the ocean, I am for it; and, when we acquire it, will leave the people * * * free to do as they please on the question of slavery and every other question.”
At all the Republican Congressional Conventions held in Illinois in 1854, the resolutions adopted declared that the continued aggressions of slavery were destructive of the best rights of a free people and must be resisted by the united political action of all good men; Kansas and Nebraska must be made free Territories, the Fugitive Slave Law repealed, slavery restricted to the States in which it then existed, no more slave States admitted, slavery excluded from the Territories and no more Territories acquired unless slavery therein were prohibited; and no man must be supported for office unless positively pledged to support these principles.
“Yet Lincoln denies that he stands on this platform and declares that he would not like to be placed in a position where he would have to vote for these things. * * * I do not think there is much danger of his being placed in such a position. * * * I propose, out of mere kindness, to relieve him from any such necessity.”
When the legislature elected in 1854 came to choose between Lincoln and Trumbull for Senator, before a ballot was taken, Lovejoy, the Abolitionist introduced resolutions declaring that slavery must be excluded from all the territory then owned or thereafter acquired by the United States; that no more slave States should be admitted and that the Fugitive Slave Law should be unconditionally repealed. On the following day every man who had voted for these resolutions, with two exceptions, voted for Lincoln. Members so voting were all pledged to vote for no man who was not pledged to support their platform. “Either Lincoln was committed to these propositions, or your members violated their faith. Take either horn of the dilemma you choose. There is no dodging the question; I want Lincoln’s answer. He is altogether undecided on these grave questions and does not know what to think or do. If elected Senator he will have to decide. Do not put him in a position that would embarrass him so much. He does not know whether he would vote for the admission of more slave States, yet he has declared his belief that this Union cannot endure with slave States in it. I do not think that the people of Illinois desire a man to represent them who would like to be put to the test on the performance of a high constitutional duty.
“I will retire in shame from the Senate of the United States when I am not willing to be put to the test in the performance of my duty. I have been put to severe tests. I have stood by my principles in fair weather and foul, in the sunshine and in the rain. I have defended the great principles of self-government here among you when Northern sentiment ran in a torrent against me, and I have defended that same great principle when Southern sentiment came down like an avalanche upon me. I was not afraid of any test they put me to. I knew my principles were right; I knew my principles were sound; I knew that the people would see in the end hat I had done right and I knew that the God of heaven would smile upon me if I was faithful in the performance of my duty. * * *
At the time the Nebraska bill was introduced, Lincoln says there was a conspiracy between the Judges of the Supreme Court, President Pierce, President Buchanan and myself, that bill and the decision of the court to break down the barriers and establish slavery all over the Union. * * *
“Mr. Buchanan was at that time in England and did not return for a year or more after. That fact proves the charge to be false as against him. * * * The Dred Scott case was not then before the Supreme Court at all; * * * * and the Judges in all probability knew nothing of it. * * * * As to President Pierce, his high character as a man of integrity and honor is enough to vindicate him from such a charge; and as to myself I pronounce the charge an infamous lie whenever and wherever made and by whomsoever made.”
Lincoln closed the debate. As to the discrepancy between the various Republican resolutions adopted in local conventions in 1854 and the views stated in his opening speech, he said that at the beginning of the Nebraska agitation a new era in American politics began.
“In our opposition to that measure we did not agree with one another in everything. * * * * These meetings which the Judge has alluded to and the resolutions he has read from were local. * * * We at last met together in 1856 from all parts of the State and agreed upon a common platform. * * * We agreed then upon a platform for the party throughout the entire State and now we are all bound to that platform. * * * If any one expects that I will do anything not signified by our Republican platform and my answers here to-day, I will tell you very frankly that person will be deceived. I do not ask for the vote of anyone who supposes that I have secret purposes or pledges that I dare not speak out. * * * Douglas says if I should vote for the admission of a slave State I would be voting for the dissolution of the Union, because I hold that the Union cannot permanently exist half slave and half free. * * * It does not at all follow that the admission of a single slave State will permanently fix the character and establish this as a universal slave Nation.”
In March, 1856, Douglas, speaking in the Senate upon an article published, apparently by authority, in the Washington Union, the organ of the Administration, charged a conspiracy between the President, his cabinet and the Lecompton Convention to establish the proposition that all State laws and Constitutions, which prohibited the citizens of one State from settling in another with their slave property, were violations of the Constitution of the United States. He declared that a fatal blow was being struck at the sovereignty of the States. Charges of conspiracy were not entirely unheard of when the one was made at Springfield so sharply condemned by Douglas.
“But his eye is farther South now than it was last March. His hope then rested on the idea of visiting the great black Republican party and making it the tail of his new kite. He was then expected from day to day to turn Republican and place himself at the head of our organization. He has found that these despised black Republicans estimate him, by a standard which he has taught them, none to well. Hence he is crawling back into the old camp and you will find him eventually installed in full fellowship among those whom he was then battling and with whom he still pretends to be at such fearful variance.”
There is an interesting and well authenticated tradition, perhaps too strongly established to be questioned, that Lincoln’s second interrogatory was designed as a snare for Douglas and that he was forced by it to proclaim his unfortunate doctrine of unfriendly legislation, which gave such deep offense to the South. It is related on the highest authority that on the night before the Freeport debate, “Lincoln was catching a few hours’ rest at a railroad center named Mendota, to which place the converging trains brought, after midnight, a number of excited Republican leaders on their way to attend the great meeting at the neighboring town of Freeport. * * * * Lincoln’s bedroom was invaded by an improvised caucus, and the ominous question was once more brought under consideration. The whole drift of advice ran against putting the interrogatory (number two) to Douglas, but Lincoln persisted in his determination to force him to answer it. Finally his friends in a chorus cried: ‘If you do, you can never be Senator.’
“‘Gentlemen,’ replied Lincoln, ‘I am killing larger game. If Douglas answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.'”
Whatever may be the truth as to the Mendota conference, it is unjust to Douglas to say that he was surprised by the question, or that his answer was a mere extemporized feat of ingenuity to meet an embarrassing exigency. Long before this and on many occasions he had announced his opinion that the people of a Territory could by unfriendly legislation, in defiance of the Constitution, the Supreme Court and Congress, effectually prevent slavery among themselves. It was one of his most deliberately formed, openly avowed and widely known opinions. It is incredible that Lincoln and his advisors were in doubt how he would answer the question. Whatever may be our view of the soundness of his doctrine, it is not just to the ablest debater and foremost statesman of the time to say that he was taken by surprise and driven into a corner by a question which, as he was taken by surprise and driven into a corner by a question which, as he said then, he had answered a hundred times from every stump in Illinois.
The third debate was held at Jonesboro, near the southern boundary of the State, on September 15th.
Douglas, in his opening speech, stated anew his now familiar argument that the Republican party was sectional, threatening to disrupt the Union by its slavery agitation, while the Democratic party was national, with a wholesome creed, alike applicable in all latitudes. Lincoln and Trumbull had conspired to abolitinize the old parties and secure seats in the Senate. Lincoln’s doctrine of the house divided against itself was examined and the implied threat emphasized that Southern institutions must be overthrown and a dead level of uniformity reached in order that the Government should stand. The finality of the Dred Scott decision and the exclusion of negroes from the Declaration of Independence were insisted on. Much of the speech was devoted to the local and transient questions of Illinois politics.
Lincoln, replying to the charge that the slavery agitation was the result of the aggressive attitude of Northern Abolitionists, again insisted that the propagandists of slavery were the aggressors, having attempted to change it from a local and declining institution and spread it through all the Territories, removing it “from the basis on which the fathers left it to the basis of its perpetuation and nationalization.” The agitation began with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
“Who,” he asked, “did that? Why, when we had peace under the Missouri Compromise, could you not have left it alone?”
He quoted Douglas’ speech in the Senate on June 9th, 1856, in which he had declared that “whether the people could exclude slavery prior to the formation of a Constitution or not, was a question to be decided by the Supreme Court. * * * * When he says, after the Supreme Court has decided the question, that the people may yet exclude slavery by any means whatever, he does virtually say that it is not a question for the Supreme Court. * * * the proposition that slavery cannot enter a new country without police regulations is historically false. * * * Slavery was originally planted upon this continent without these police regulations. * * * How came the Dred Scott decision to be made? It was made upon the case of a negro being taken and actually held in slavery in Minnesota Territory, claiming his freedom because the act of Congress prohibited his being so held there. Will the Judge pretend that Dred Scott was not held there without police regulations? * * * * This shows that there is vigor enough in slavery to plant itself in a new country, even against unfriendly legislation. It takes not only law, but the enforcement of the law, to keep it out. This is the history of this country upon the subject. * * * The first thing a Senator does is swear to support the Constitution of the United States. Suppose a Senator believes, as Douglas does, that the Constitution guarantees the right to hold slaves in a Territory. How can he clear his oath unless he supports such legislation as is necessary to enable the people to enjoy their property? Can you, if you swear to support the Constitution, and believe that the Constitution establishes a right, clear your oath without giving it support? * * * * There can be nothing in the words, ‘support the Constitution,’ if you may run counter to it by refusing to support it. * * * * And what I say here will hod with still more force against the Judge’s doctrine of unfriendly legislation. * * * Is not Congress itself bound to give legislative support to any right that is established in the United States Constitution? A Member of Congress swears to support the Constitution * * * and if he sees a right established by that Constitution which needs specific legislative protection, can he clear his oath without giving that protection. * * * If I acknowledge * * * that this (Dred Scott) decision properly construes the Constitution, I cannot conceive that I would be less than a perjured man if I should refuse in Congress to give such protection to that property as in its nature is needed.”
He then stated his fifth interrogatory: If slave-holding citizens of the United States Territory should need and demand congressional legislation for the protection of their slave property in such Territory, would you as a Member of Congress, vote for or against such legislation?
Douglas in his reply took up Lincoln’s rather evasive answer to his second interrogatory submitted at Ottawa. “Lincoln,” he said, “would be exceedingly sorry to be put in a position where he would have to vote on the question of the admission of slave States. Why is he a candidate for the Senate if he would be sorry to be put in that position? * * * * If Congress keeps out slavery by law while it is a Territory and then the people should have a fair chance and should adopt slavery, he supposes he would have to admit the State. Suppose Congress should not keep slavery out during their territorial existence, then how would he vote when the people applied for admission with a slave Constitution? That he does not answer; and that is the condition of every Territory we have now got. His answer only applies to a given case which he knows does not exist in any Territory. But Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held responsible for the black Republican doctrine of no more slave States. Why are men running for Congress in the northern Distracts and taking that Abolition platform for their guide when Mr. Lincoln does not want to be held to it down here in Egypt? His party in the northern part of the State hold to that Abolition platform, and if they do not in the south, they present the extra-ordinary spectacle of ‘a house divided against itself’ and hence ‘cannot stand.'”
In answer to Lincoln’s last question, he said: “It is a fundamental article of the Democratic creed that there should be non-interference or non-intervention of Congress with slavery in the States or Territories. The Democratic party have always stood by that great principle and I stand on that platform now. * * * * Lincoln himself will not answer this question. * * * It is true * * * (he admits) that under the decision of the Supreme Court, it is the duty of a man to vote for a slave code in the Territories. If he believed in that decision he would be a perjured man if he did not give the vote. I want to know whether he is not bound to a decision which is contrary to his opinions just as much as to one in accordance with his opinions? * * * Is every man in this land allowed to resist decisions he does not like and only support those which meet his approval? * * * * It is the fundamental principle of the judiciary that its decisions are final. * * * * My doctrine is that, even taking Mr. Lincoln’s view that the decision recognizes the right of a man to carry his slaves into the Territories, yet after he gets them there he needs affirmative law to make that right of any value. The same doctrine applies to all other kinds of property.
“Suppose one of your merchants should move to Kansas and open a liquor store; he has a right to take groceries or liquor there; but the circumstances under which they shall be sold and all the remedies must be prescribed by local legislation; and if that is unfriendly it will drive him out just as effectually as if there was a constitutional provision against the sale of liquor. Hence, I assert, that under the Dred Scott decision you cannot maintain slavery a day in a Territory where there is an unwilling people and unfriendly legislation. If the people want slavery they will have it, and if they do not want it you cannot force it upon them.”
Neither Lincoln nor Douglas could as yet fairly and fearlessly grapple with the great problem. Lincoln’s virtual rejection and defiance of the decision of the Supreme Court suggests not reform but revolution. These dark hints that the decisions of the highest tribunal should not be accepted or obeyed, that they were binding only on those who believed in them, portended nothing less than war. Slavery being an established institution, recognized by the Constitution and regulated by law, had the right to exist. Lincoln and his party abhorred it and resented the injustice of the law. Obeying the dominant instinct of the race, the scrupulously observed the form of the law while waging war upon it. On the other hand it is impossible to find either legal or philosophical foundation for Douglas’ arguments. Slavery had been adjudged lawful in all the Territories. The proposition gravely argued by him, that the people could lawfully exclude a thing from a place where it had a lawful right to be, was monstrous. He sternly rebuked Lincoln for his irreverence in refusing to cordially accept the Dred Scott decision and in the next breath, with shocking inconsistency, dissolved its entire force in the menstruum of unfriendly legislation. The decision was utterly repugnant to the people of the State. The both viewed it as a political rather than a philosophic problem. Both rejected it and the consequences flowing from it. Lincoln quibbled when asked to accept it as a rule governing his political conduct. Douglas, by a cunning device, sought to destroy its force as a rule of private right. Lincoln insisted on the essential dishonesty of the juggling trick by which Douglas got rid of the adjudicated law. Douglas insisted on the anarchic spirit with which Lincoln bade defiance to it.
It would be tedious to follow the debates through in detail. Necessarily the later arguments were mainly a repetition of those made in the earlier speeches. Thee was a marked falling off in the good temper and mutual courtesy of the combatants in the later stages of the contest. The abiding question to which the argument constantly recurred was that of negro slavery, as to which Lincoln was darkly oracular and Douglas was resolutely evasive. Lincoln again and again pressed Douglas to say whether he regarded slavery as wrong. Douglas persistently declined the question on the pleat that it was one wholly foreign to national politics. Each State had a right to decide for itself; and that right had been delegated to the Territories by the Compromise act of 1850 and again by the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854.
“I look forward,” he said, “to a time when each State shall be allowed to do as it pleases. If it chooses to keep slavery forever, it is not my business, but its own; if it chooses to abolish slavery, it is its own business, not mine. I care more for the great principle of self-government, the right of the people to rule, then I do for all the negroes in Christendom. I would not endanger the perpetuity of this Union, I would not blot out the great inalienable rights of the white man, for all the negroes that ever existed.”
Lincoln persistently pressed his argument: “When Douglas says he don’t care whether slaver is voted up or voted down, he can thus argue logically if he don’t see anything wrong in it; but he cannot say so logically if he admits that slavery is wrong. He cannot say that the would as soon see a wrong voted up as voted down. When he says that slave property and horse and hog property are alike to be allowed to go into the Territories upon the principle of equality, he is reasoning truly if there is no difference between them and property; but if the one is property held rightfully and the other is wrong, then there is no equality between the right and the wrong. * * * That is the real issue. That is the issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops. It is the same spirit that says, ‘you work and toil and earn bread, and I’ll eat it.’ No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.”
In the Quincy debate, and again in the last debate at Alton, Douglas, with great skill, took up the attack made upon him by the Buchanan Administration because of his alleged heresies on the Kansas question. The Washington Union in an editorial had condemned his Freeport declaration that the people could by their unfriendly attitude exclude slavery from a Territory. It argued that his plan was to exclude it by means of his device of popular sovereignty and declared that he was not a sound Democrat and had not been since 1850. He quoted from Buchanan’s letter accepting the nomination, in which he warmly applauded those “principles as ancient as free government itself * * * in accordance with which * * * * the people of a Territory, like those of a State, shall decide for themselves whether slavery shall or shall not exist within their limits.”
He also quoted in vindication of the soundness of his Democracy a speech of Jefferson Davis declaring that, if the inhabitants of a Territory should refuse to enact laws to protect and encourage slavery, the insecurity would be so great that the owner could not hold his slaves.
“Therefore,” said Davis, “though the right would remain, the remedy being withheld, it would follow that the owner would be practically debarred from taking slave property into a Territory when the sense of its inhabitants was opposed to its introduction.”
These latter arguments were addressed to the Administration Democrats, who, however, proved a quite unimportant factor in the campaign. They were an utter negation politically. Were it an academic problem, much could be said in their defense. In a time of stormy passion, they were passionless. In a time of fanatical convictions and intolerant opinions, they were coldly neutral, appealing with impotent pride to the traditions and precedents of the past.
The election was held on the 2nd of November. The Republicans elected their State ticket by a popularity of nearly 4,000, but lost the legislature. When that body met Douglas was again chose Senator.
Chapter XVI. The South Rejects Popular Sovereignty.
Although victorious in the greatest battle of his life the position of Douglas was not easy. The people of Illinois were evidently no longer in sympathy with him. The Buchanan Administration and the Southern extremists had openly declared war on him for his cool indifference to the special interests of the South, his carelessness whether slavery was voted up or voted down in the Territories, and his hostility to their plans for planting it in Kansas. He was preparing for his last struggle for the Presidency. Having won this doubtful victory at home, he decided to make a tour of the South in the hope of stimulating its waning enthusiasm. In order to hold the Senatorship it had been necessary to please Illinois, even though the South were alienated. In order to win the Presidency he now resolved to satisfy the South, even though he offended Illinois. Moreover, being at war with the Administration, he hoped to return to Washington with the prestige of a re-election and a great Southern ovation. He intended to force Buchanan and his Cabinet to sue for peace. He was political strategist enough to understand the importance of a bold front and an imposing display of power at the outset of his next campaign.
He took boat at St. Louis for New Orleans and enjoyed the leisurely autumn trip down the River. He spoke at Memphis on November 29th, and at New Orleans on December 6th. He sailed to Havana and thence to New York, where he received a royal welcome. On reaching Philadelphia he was formally welcomed at Independence Hall. He then went to Baltimore and spoke in Monument Square on the evening of January 5th, returning to Washington next day. On the 10th he resumed his seat in the Senate.
He had told the people of Illinois that, in spite of the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the President and Congress, it was within the power of the inhabitants of a Territory to prohibit slavery by their unfriendly attitude. This doctrine was utterly abhorrent to the South, which now rested its entire case on the judicial interpretation of the Constitution and regarded all attempts to evade the full force of the Dred Scott decision as little less than treason. The net result of the struggles of a decade had been the establishment of a principle that the Constitution carried slavery with it wherever it went. To lightly treat the Constitution as a thing that could be quietly defied and annulled by the squatters, was to strip their great victory of all value and snatch from them the fruit of their labors. Had this doctrine of local nullification been sound, it was not to be expected that it would be received with enthusiasm or even with patience by men whose dearest hopes it must obviously defeat and whose subtle art and long protracted labors it utterly thwarted. But that daring sophism which attacked the very foundation of all legal authority, did violence to every sound principle of philosophy, and was utterly subversive of the peculiar and cherished doctrines of the South, should have been resorted to by Douglas to avoid defeat in Illinois, was viewed as a shameless outrage. It was believed that he had sacrificed their sacred cause in order to avoid a local reverse; that his seat in the Senate was dearer to him than their most valued interests.
It was probable that in his eagerness to win the Illinois campaign he had not considered seriously the irreconcilable repugnance of his distinctive dogma to the compact body of Southern political philosophy. It was now necessary to present it to the South in such dress that it might, if possible, gain acceptance, at least that it might not shock the deepest prejudices of that section.
In addressing his Southern audiences he attempted to take the sting out of his obnoxious doctrine by showing that it was entirely harmless. The people of the Territories, he said, doubtless had the practical power, in spite of the Constitution, statutes and decisions, to exclude slavery by their unfriendly attitude toward it. But what would determine their attitude? Clearly their selfish interests. If slavery would be profitable, their attitude would be friendly and it would take root and flourish under the protection of the law. If by reason of soil or climate it would be unprofitable, their attitude would be unfriendly and neither laws nor Constitutions could successfully foster it. But it could not injure the South to exclude slavery from regions where it could only be maintained at a loss. It was not a question of ethics, but purely of physical geography. Where soil and climate rendered it profitable, it would spring up in precisely the same way as pine trees or maize.
But it was clear to his keen eye that these feats of ingenuity were taken at their real worth. While the people treated him with gracious courtesy, they prudently reserved their judgement. They paid generous honor to the great leader whom they would gladly use but dared not trust. He had chosen to hold Illinois and had lost the South.
While he was vainly trying to woo back the alienated South, a significant event occurred in Washington. When the Senate was organized during his absence, he was removed from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, which he had held since his first election. This was done by the Democratic caucus and indicated a deeper resentment than he had suspected. The Puritans of Illinois had once risen in insurrection against him. The Cavaliers of the South were now sternly protesting against his easy political morals.
For six weeks he preserved almost complete silence. His situation was anomalous. The quarrel with the Administration was implacable. A few months before, the Republicans were inclined to court him; but the desperate battle with Lincoln had made it clear that his quarrel with them was on perennial questions of principle. Solitary and out of touch with all parties, he was yet recognized as the chief of the Northern Democrats and a formidable candidate for the Presidency.
While diplomatically awaiting developments, he was suddenly drawn into an important debate. On February 23rd Senator Brown of Mississippi discussed with great plainness his attitude on the slavery question. With ill concealed contempt for men whose opinions shaped themselves to suit the demands of political strategy he said:
“I at least am no spoilsman. I would rather settle one sound principle in a presidential contest than secure all the patronage of all the Presidents who have ever been elected to or retired from the office. * * * The Constitution never gave us rights and denied us the means of protecting and defending those rights. The Supreme Court has decided that we have a right to carry our slaves into the Territories and, necessarily, to have them protected after we get there. * * * I neither want to cheat nor to be cheated in the great contest that is to come off in 1860. * * * I think I understand the position of the Senator from Illinois and I dissent from it. * * * He thinks that a territorial legislature may, by non-action or unfriendly action, rightfully exclude slavery. I do not think so. * * * * The Senator from Illinois thinks the territorial legislature has the right, by non-action or by unfriendly action to exclude us with our slaves. * * * We have a right of protection for our slave property in the Territories. The Constitution as expounded by the Supreme Court awards it. We demand it, and we mean to have it.”
Douglas at once answered. He said that his obnoxious doctrine only meant that the territorial legislature by the exercise of the taxing power and other functions within the limits of the Constitution could adopt unfriendly legislation which would practically drive slavery out. The real demand of the South was for a congressional slave code for the Territories. But no Northern man, whether Democrat or Republican, would ever vote for such a code. The inhabitants would protect slavery if they wanted it, if the climate were such that they could not cultivate the soil without it. It was a question of climate, of production, of self-interest, and not of constitutional law. The slave owner had no higher rights than the owner of liquor or inferior cattle, which the territorial legislature could exclude. Under the doctrine of the Kansas-Nebraska act the Territories had the right to pass such laws as they pleased, subject only to the Constitution.
If their laws conflicted with that it was the business, not of Congress, but of the Courts to decide their nullity. When Buchanan accepted the nomination in 1856, he declared that the people of a Territory, like those of a State, should decide for themselves whether slavery should exist within its limits. He could not have carried half the Democratic vote in any free State if the people had not so understood him. “I intend to use language,” he continued, “which can be repeated in Chicago as well as in New Orleans, in Charleston as well as in Boston. * * * No political creed is sound or safe which cannot be proclaimed in the same sense wherever the American Flag waves over American soil. If the North and the South cannot come to a common ground on the slavery question the sooner we know it the better. * * * I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry one Democratic State of the North on the platform that it is the duty of the Federal Government to force the people of a Territory to have slavery when they do not want it.”
Davis, the leader of the Southern Democracy, answered him. He reminded the Senate that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from a Territory and the legislature had no power except that given it by Congress. Hence it could not possibly have the power to exclude it. Douglas could not claim more than this unless he could illustrate the philosophical problem of getting more out of a tub than it contained. Congress, having no power to prohibit slavery, was bound to see that it was fully enjoyed.
“I agree with my colleague,” he continued, “that we are not, with our eyes open, to be cheated, and that we have no more respect for that man who seeks to evade the performance of a constitutional duty than for one who openly wars upon constitutional rights.”
Mason, of Virginia, insisted that the Constitution construed by the Supreme Court denied Congress the power to exclude slavery form a Territory. Douglas admitted that the legislature derived all its power from Congress. Hence, he must admit that it had no power to interfere with slavery.
Green, of Missouri, the new chairman of the Committee on Territories, next attacked him. Slaves, he declared, were property, as decided by the Supreme Court. The Territories of Kansas and Nebraska could not, by either direct or indirect legislation, prohibit or abolish slavery; and if they should undertake to do either it would be the duty of Congress to interpose. The legislature had no more power, by direct or indirect means to prohibit the introduction of slaves than the introduction of horses or mules, and it was a dishonest subterfuge to say that it could be done.
“What is meant by unfriendly legislation? I had thought that rights of person and property were beyond the power of legislation. * * * There never was a legislative body in existence on the face of the globe that could justly take any right of person or property from a citizen without rendering a just compensation.” He reminded the Senators that in 1857 Douglas had urged the interposition of Congress in Utah affairs, even to the extent of repealing the organic act, thus recognizing that Territories were mere dependencies of the Federal Government. Why this tenderness about Kansas? A Territory had no power except what was conferred by Congress. Douglas said that all legislative power not inconsistent with the Constitution, was conferred. But if the power to destroy any kind of property was conferred, it would be consistent with the Constitution and the grant would be void. If all power not inconsistent with the Constitution was conferred by the organic act, then the power to call the Lecompton Convention and draft a Constitution was conferred. “All the power the Territory has is derived from Congress and can be resumed at pleasure. The creature can never be equal to its creator.”
Douglas said, that if the people of a Territory wanted slavery they would protect it. But suppose the majority did not want it? The Constitution still declared slaves to be property and forbade the majority to take away the property in a slave from a single individual. If they had no right to take it away, what right had they by unfriendly legislation to render it valueless? If a Territory persistently attempted to destroy a species of property protected by the Constitution, ought not Congress to intervene for the protection of the citizens?
Douglas replied to these deadly attacks. He reminded them that when they repealed the Missouri Compromise they had agreed to leave all these questions to the people of the Territories and the decision of the Supreme Court. This was the true Democratic doctrine. Davis and Mason had both said that no man holding his views could receive the support of the South for the Presidency. Yet this was the doctrine of Cass when candidate for President, but the whole South gave him their votes. When did this change of creed occur?
Davis answered briefly, regretting that Douglas had not denied or explained any of his Illinois speeches, and said he was now satisfied that he was as full of heresy as he once was of the true theory of popular sovereignty. He declared that this doctrine was “offensive to every idea of conservatism and sound government; a thing offensive to every idea of the supremacy of the laws of the United States,” and announced plainly that the South would not support him for President. He persistently pressed him to say whether he meant to abide by the Dred Scott decision.
The Court, answered Douglas, had decided that neither Congress nor the territorial legislature could prohibit the settler from bringing his slaves to a Territory. “In other words, the right of transit is clear, the right of entry is clear. * * * You have the same right to hold them as other property, subject to such local laws as the legislature may constitutionally enact. If those laws render it impracticable to HOLD your property, whether it be your horse or your slave, why, it is your misfortune.”
He had reached the brink of the abyss. The South was preparing for treason and rebellion. Its mood was altogether too tragic to be even amused by his philosophic refinements. It rejected them now, not with contempt, but with horror. The North, too, was in stern mood. Its abhorrence of slavery had intensified with constant agitation. It was grimly earnest in its resolve to resist all further extension of it and resented the indifference of the statesman who did not care whether the burning crime of the ages was voted up or voted down.
Douglas, who regarded the ethics of this question with indifference and who supremely desired to conciliate the South without alienating the North, blundered in plunging into this debate. The Southern Senators were unanswerably right. Since the Dred Scott decision his position was so clearly untenable that to insist upon it amid conditions so threatening seemed to them the most intolerable trifling. The Republicans looked on as pleased spectators while the battle raged between Northern and Southern Democrats and the party was hopelessly torn asunder. It was clear the part of prudence to restrain his impulsive pugnacity for the remaining weeks of the session. But when challenged to defend himself his impatient eagerness to speak was uncontrollable.
Chapter XVII. Seeking Reconciliation.
After the adjournment he devoted himself to a new and unfamiliar task. He prepared an article for Harper’s Magazine on the slavery question and its relation to party politics, in which he defended his position, explained his philosophy and sought to throw light on this confused subject. The article made some stir at the time. It contained nothing, however, which he had not already said much better in his speeches. He was not a man of literary culture or habits. His thought was brightest and his eloquence highest when the battle was raging.
The article had the good fortune to provoke a rather elaborate anonymous reply from Jeremiah S. Black, Buchanan’s Attorney-general. Black was a profound lawyer and better writer than Douglas. While he would have been no match for him in senatorial debate or on the stump, he completely eclipsed him as a literary controversialist. Moreover, Black was standing on firm ground, simply insisting that his party accept the decision of the Supreme Court as law and conform its conduct to it without evasion or pettifoggery; while Douglas was striving to stand in mid-air, nullifying the decision by clever tricks and condemning as anarchists the Republicans, who frankly confessed their hostility to it. He gravely argued that Congress could grant to a territorial legislature power which the Constitution denied to itself. Black’s answer was crushing and showed conclusively that there was no basis in either law or logic for those peculiar doctrines in which Douglas differed from his party. Black judiciously avoided all discussion of the ethics of the question, confining himself to an examination of the legal basis of Douglas’ special creed, proving clearly that it had been utterly swept away.
On the night of October 16th occurred John Brown’s mad exploit at Harper’s Ferry. Congress opened on December 5th. On the 12th of January Douglas’ heretical opinions on the right of the people to exclude slavery from the Territories were called in question. The Southern Senators pressed upon him the fact that he had agreed to abide by the decision of the Supreme Court on the disputed question, and, now that the South had been sustained by the decision, he had virtually repudiated it by his Illinois speeches. No man holding such opinions, they declared, was a sound Democrat or could possibly receive the vote of a Southern State at the Charleston Convention. They justified their action in removing him from his chairmanship of the Committee on Territories by a rehearsal of his heretical opinions and announced their purpose to oppose his presidential aspirations. He defended himself against this irregular attack with great ability and courage, maintaining the soundness of his Democracy and imputing heresy to his accusers, who were seeking to debauch the ancient Democratic faith by infusing into it their late-invented doctrines. At last, wearied by the irregular debate, he sarcastically proposed that, as his health was poor, they all make their attacks upon him and present their charges; when they were through he would “fire at the lump” and vindicate every word he had said.
A few days later he offered a resolution to instruct the Judiciary Committee to prepare a bill to suppress and punish conspiracies in one State to invade or otherwise molest the people or property of another, and addressed the Senate upon it. He expressed his firm and deliberate conviction that the John Brown raid at Harper’s Ferry was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party as explained and the enforced in speeches of its leaders in and out of Congress. He said that when he returned home in 1858 for the purpose of canvassing Illinois with a view to reelection, he had to meet this issue of the irrepressible conflict. Lincoln had already proclaimed the existence of inexpiable hostility between free States and slave States. Later, Seward had announced it in his Rochester speech. It was evidently the creed of his party. The Harper’s Ferry outrage was a natural and logical consequence of these pernicious doctrines. John Brown was simply practicing their philosophy at Harper’s Ferry. The causes that produced this invasion were still in active operation. These teachers of rebellion were disseminating their deadly principles. Let Congress pass appropriate laws and make such example of the leaders of these conspiracies as to strike terror into the hearts of the others and there would be an end of this crusade.
With all his courage in meeting recent attacks, it was plain that his only hope of the Presidency lay in the prospect of his reconciliation with the Southern leaders. They needed his help to prevent the Radicals, Seward, Chase and Lincoln, from carrying the next election. He needed their help to compass the nomination. He decided without lowering his standard to win them back by the mere efficiency of his service. But the Southern leaders were not in search of a Northern master. They wanted servants in the high places of Government not less humble than the blacks who tilled their plantations. They instinctively knew that he was not and could not be such a servant. Rather than support him they would see Seward elected. He at least frankly avowed his hostility. If they elected Douglas and he declined to obey, their position would be awkward. If a sectional Republican were elected, they could secede and set up an independent Government.
On the 7th of May Davis spoke in support of a series of radical resolutions introduced by him on February 2nd, declaring that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power to impair the Constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common Territories and there hold it; that it was the duty of Congress to protect this right; and that the inhabitants had no power either by direct legislation or by their unfriendly attitude to exclude slavery until they formed a State Constitution. He spoke with great force in support of them. He ascribe the authorship of the pernicious heresy of squatter sovereignty to Cass, and threw doubt on the soundness of Douglas’ Democracy by a long recital of what he regarded as unsound and heretical opinions and votes. He showed the complete failure of his distinctive policy in Kansas and the authoritative rejection of his principles by the Supreme Court. While the speech was courteous and dignified in manner, apparently delivered to elucidate the subject rather than to injure Douglas, it portrayed the wreck of his statesmanship and exposed the unsoundness of his Democracy with dangerous clearness while his candidacy was in the hands of the National Convention.
A week later he replied. Already the Charleston Convention, and with it his candidacy, had virtually gone to pieces because of Southern hostility to him and his principles. Davis was the head o the Southern junta, and the debate in the Senate was known to express in cold phrase, the passions that had rent the Convention and threatened to disrupt the party.
As Douglas, anxious but unfaltering, rose to speak, there was a hush in the crowded Chamber. After a sneering allusion to his controversy with Black, he announced his purpose to defend himself against the attack made by Davis. The speech occupied two days in its delivery and was a unique and artistic piece of senatorial politics. It was addressed less to the Senate than to the adjourned Charleston Convention. He exhaustively proved the soundness of Democracy and repelled the charge of heresy by rehearsing the history of Democratic Conventions and platforms since 1848, quoting the declarations of the party and its leaders in Convention, on the platform and through the press.
Cass, he said, the author of the now deadly doctrine of popular sovereignty, was nominated in 1848. The Compromise of 1850 embodied that principle. The Kansas-Nebraska struggle was settled by expressly adopting it. The Cincinnati platform, on which all Democrats had stood for four years, distinctly affirmed it. The Charleston Convention, within a few days, had reaffirmed it. His own speeches showed that he had adhered to it constantly from the beginning of his career. The change was not in him but in the Southern wing of the party. He protested that he did not desire the nomination and only permitted his name to be used that he might be vindicated against the presumptuous efforts of a little coterie to cast doubt upon his Democracy and their attempt to proscribe him as a heretic might be rebuked.
The most hostile critic must feel some sympathy for him in his new and indefensible position. His now heretical opinions had but recently borne the authentic stamp of Democracy. His party, following its real sentiments and the judicial interpretation of the Constitution, had silently abandoned its old creed to which he still clung with tenacity and ardor.
Davis, answering, asked him the blunt question, whether, if elected President, he would sign a bill to protect slave property in States, Territories, or the District of Columbia. He declined to answer suggesting the impropriety of declaring in advance what he would do if elected.
Congress adjourned on June 25th.
Chapter XVIII. A Noontide Eclipse.
While events in Washington in the spring of 1860 were full of historic interest, greater and more memorable events were occurring in Charleston. The Democratic Convention met in that city on April 23rd, which brought to the surface a state of feeling at the South that had long been suspected but not certainly known.
There was but one prominent candidate in the field. Douglas was incomparably the most eminent Democratic statesman of the time. According to the settled custom of the party, the South, which did not ask the Presidency itself, should have supported him. But the Southern delegates had resolved that in no event should he be nominated on any platform.
He had a clear majority of the Convention. But the Democrats, though still wearing a common badge, now constituted two distinct and antagonistic parties, held together not so much by common beliefs as by habits, traditions and sentimental attachment to an old and venerable name. The Northern Democrats were wholly estranged from those of the South. The two sections of the party quarreled about the platform; yet the Southerners cared little about that matter if they could name the candidate. They did not demand a Southern man, for he could not be elected. They wanted a “Northern man with Southern principles,” like Pierce or Buchanan. Of all living men the dexterous and domineering Douglas least suited their demands. He was probably the only man who could have carried a large enough Northern vote to be elected. But they could not forget that his popularity at the North was, in part, the result of his great battle against the South which had caused their disastrous defeat.
The Northern delegates insisted on merely approving the Cincinnati platform, while the Southern delegates, who hoped to render Douglas’ candidacy impossible, insisted on radical pro-slavery declarations and a denial of all right of the people of a Territory to prevent the holding of slaves. After a fierce struggle the Northern platform was adopted by a small majority. Immediately the delegates from Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Arkansas and three-fourths of that from Georgia refused to abide by it and withdrew.
The seceders organized another Convention, adopted the radical platform which had been rejected and adjourned to meet at Richmond on the 11th of June.
The regular Convention, meanwhile, found itself unable to do anything. The settled rule required a vote of two-thirds of all the delegates to select a candidate. The chairman ruled that in order to be nominated Douglas must have two-thirds of all the delegates elected, notwithstanding the secession. This required 202 votes. He had but 152 and the other 50 were not to be had. On May 3rd, after 57 ballots, the Convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore on June 18th. Davis, Toombs and the other leaders of the Southern junta in Congress issued an address approving the course of the seceders at Charleston, advising them to take no action at Richmond, but to await the result of the Baltimore Convention and expressing the conviction that, if fair concessions were not made to the South, other delegations would join them.
They accordingly came to Baltimore and demanded their seats in that Convention. But some of the States had elected new delegations which claimed them. For days confusion prevailed. Douglas sent two messages suggesting that his candidacy be dropped. But there were suppressed by his friends, who inexorably demanded his nomination. Five more States withdrew and the chairman resigned and joined the seceders. The Convention reorganized itself and proceeded to ballot. Douglas received all but thirteen votes; less, however, than the required two-thirds of all the delegates elected. But a resolution was passed declaring him nominated on the ground that he had received the votes of two-thirds of all delegates present. Senator Fitzpatrick of Alabama was nominated for Vice-President and the Convention adjourned. He declined and the Committee placed Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in his place.
The seceders, joined by the recent recruits, held their Convention in Baltimore on the 28th of June and nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky for President and Joseph Lane of Oregon for Vice-President.
This did not bring about a new condition, but revealed one which had existed for many years. The South was technically right in it demand that the Convention declare itself explicitly in favor of the honest and faithful maintenance of its constitutional rights in the Territories. These rights had been vehemently denied by the Republicans, but triumphantly established on a solid basis by the decision of the Supreme Court. Douglas had quibbled over the decision and explained it away until it seemed doubtful whether it in fact settled anything. The platform adopted by his supporters in the Convention recited the differences of opinion among Democrats as to the exact limits of the powers of the territorial legislature and those of Congress and referred the question again to the Court with a pledge to abide by its decision. They seemed to forget that the whole question had already been decided in the most sweeping terms in favor of the extreme Southern demands. It is not impossible that, had the South consented tot his vague and disingenuous platform and vigorously supported Douglas, he might have been elected. But “the South was implacable towards him and deliberately resolved to accept defeat rather than secure a victory under his lead.”
The Republicans, meanwhile, had held their memorable Convention at Chicago, where, on May 18th, Lincoln had been nominated. When the news arrived in Washington, it made a great stir. The Republican Senators and Members gathered around Douglas to hear his judgement of the new statesman who had risen in the West.
“Gentlemen,” he said, ” you have nominated a very able and a very honest man.”
On the adjournment of Congress, disregarding the decorous custom of seventy years, he entered the campaign, making speeches in his own behalf. He knew from the outset that with only a fraction of his party at his back, his chances of election were slight. But he fought on fiercely, partly from temperament and partly from conviction that he ought, if possible, to prevent Lincoln’s election. Besides, there was a shadowy possibility of an election by the House of Representatives. At times his old Democratic enthusiasm returned. He told one audience that had his party given him undivided support he would have carried every State in the Union against Lincoln, except two.
He was sincerely alarmed for the safety of the Union in case of Lincoln’s election, which he believed probable. He urged upon the South the duty of submitting to the result whatever it might be. At Norfolk, Virginia, he was asked whether, if Lincoln was elected, the Southern States would be justified in seceding from the Union?
To this he said, “I answer emphatically, No! The election of a man to the Presidency * * * in conformity with the Constitution * * * would not justify any attempt at dissolving this glorious Confederacy.”
He further told them that if Lincoln were elected he would aid him to the extent of his power in maintaining the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them from whatever quarter, and that it would be the President’s duty to treat all attempts to break up the Union as Jackson treated the nullifiers in 1832. His candidacy was obviously hopeless. He exerted himself to avert the coming storm. Lincoln received one million eight hundred and sixty-seven thousand votes, Douglas one million two hundred and ninety-one thousand, and Brekenridge eight hundred and fifty thousand. Of the three hundred and three electoral votes Douglas received but twelve. Lincoln had an electoral majority over all opposing candidates.
On the 13th of November, South Carolina called a Convention to consider the dangers incident to her position in the Federal Union which, on December 20th, unanimously adopted an ordinance of secession. Three weeks later Mississippi declared herself out of the Union and was promptly followed by Florida, Alabama and Georgia. By the 20th of May eleven States had seceded. The President looked on it as a lawsuit between the States and exhausted his very respectable legal learning and ingenuity in proving that he had no power to raise his hand in defense of the country. It may be that the lawyer, with his quiddits and quillets, had survived the man. It may be that he had so long breathed the atmosphere of treason in the Cabinet counsels that he was tinctured with the widely prevalent pestilence. It is much more likely that the timorous old man, finding his term of office ending amid universal ruin, his friends and masters rushing into mad rebellion against his Government, weakly adopted that famous sentiment of the French King: “It will outlast my time.”
Congress met on the third of December. In his message the President charged the entire trouble to the aggressive anti-slavery activity of the North, which had at last driven the South to open rebellion. He protested that he was powerless to act and referred the whole matter to Congress. Three of the Cabinet were serving the enemy and many seats in the House and Senate were held by unblushing traitors. The forts in Charleston harbor were besieged by South Carolina. The Government at first dared not and later could not relieve them.
Congress, if not as completely palsied as the President, was without remedy for the fearful evils of the time. Besides its quota of positive traitors, many of its members were infected with the mild, moonshiny political philosophy which had been currently in Washington for a quarter of a century. Many were about to retire to private life, and, like Buchanan, thought the Government would outlast their time. A famous Senate Committee of Thirteen, and a corresponding House Committee of Thirty-three, were appointed to consider the state of the Nation; both of which toiled much and accomplished nothing.
The Committee of Thirteen reported late in December that it was unable to agree, and on January 3rd Douglas addressed the Senate upon this report. He reviewed at great length the history of slavery legislation and drew from it all the conclusion that the trouble had arisen from unwarrantable interference in the local affairs of the Territories, and that, had popular sovereignty been given a chance it would have solved the problem long since and would do it yet if fairly tried. He ascribed the trouble to the pernicious agitation of the Republicans, and recalled Lincoln’s most radical anti-slavery utterances in the famous campaign of 1858. He assured the people of the South that Lincoln would be powerless to hurt them if they remained in the Union, for there would be a majority against him in both the Houses of Congress. He denied utterly the right of South Carolina to secede and repudiate its constitutional duties, and insisted on the right of the Federal Government to enforce the law in all of the States. Yet, while there was a ray of hope, war must not be resorted to.
“In my opinion,” he continued, “war is disunion, certain, inevitable, and irrevocable. * * * We have reached a point where disunion is inevitable unless some compromise, founded upon mutual concession, can be made. I prefer compromise to war. I prefer concession to a dissolution of the Union.”
He asked the Republicans to consent to the reestablishment of the Missouri Compromise line, which he had swept away six years before amid their earnest protestations. He also proposed to establish popular sovereignty by constitutional amendment, such sovereignty to begin when a Territory had 50,000 inhabitants, and, by another amendment, to prohibit future acquisition of territory without a concurrent vote of two-thirds of each House of Congress. His purpose, he said, was not to settle the slavery question, but to expel slavery agitation from the arena of Federal politics forever.
This was his last important speech in the Senate. It was delivered under circumstances of awful solemnity. He seemed not deeply impressed with the gravity of the situation and was still interested in it chiefly as a party problem. He did not expect the baptism of blood that followed, but cheerfully looked forward to compromise and reconciliation. The Northern Democrats might yet rescue the country by mediating a truce between radical Republicans and radical Southern Democrats. In the present state of affairs who, but himself, the chief of these neutrals, could lead this great movement? His mental habits were those of the politician. He saw all event primarily in their relation to party tactics. Now that the earth began to rock beneath his feet, he suspected that it was only a theatrical earthquake and prepared to seize upon every advantage that might be gathered out of the confusion. He could not comprehend the deep and unappeasable passions that rent the Nation. The grim earnestness of his fellow-countrymen was as inconceivable to him as the demoniac enthusiasm of the great Apostle was to the scoffing Athenians who heard him on the Hill of Mars. But, as the great tragedy deepened and darkened, he quit his political speculations and began to think, not of the success of his party, but of the possibility of saving the Union from imminent wreck.
He returned to Illinois and addressed the legislature, urging energetic support of the war, and on May 1st was welcomed back to Chicago by an immense assembly of all parties. He was escorted to the great hall in which Lincoln had been nominated and there addressed the people. He spoke not as a politician but as a generous patriot. He denounced in unmeasured terms the Southern conspiracy which had resulted in secession and now had ripened into open and bloody rebellion. He saw the treason of the South no longer as a mere element in an interesting political game, but as the blackest of human crimes and an awful menace to the life of the Republic.
“There are only two sides to the question,” he said. “Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots or traitors. * * * It is a sad task to discuss questions so fearful as civil war; but sad as it is, bloody and disastrous as I expect it will be, I express it as my conviction before God that it is the duty of every American citizen to rally around the flag of his country.”
Not long after his return home he was stricken with serious sickness. The disease was not of such a character that it was expected to prove fatal, but the highest medical skill and most tender nursing were unavailing. The truth was, although unsuspected, that his vital energies were completely exhausted by the enormous labors and deep agitations of the past ten years. He had just passed his 48th birthday but was already gray and prematurely old. He had dwelt amid the tempest for twenty years and had felt more of severe strain than most men who had seen the Psalmist’s three score years and ten. When told that his end was near, and asked what message he would send to his boys:
“Tell them,” he said, “to obey the laws and support the Constitution of the United States.”
On the morning of June 3rd he died. His remains lie buried in Chicago on the shore of Lake Michigan, a spot fitly chosen as the last resting place of this most ceaselessly active and inexhaustibly resourceful of American statesmen.
History has not been kind to Douglas. The farther we recede from events the more trivial seem the temporary circumstances which influence them and the clearer appear the changeless principles which ought to mold men’s conduct. But to the eager, impetuous man of action, the temporary circumstances are apt to be of overmastering force. He was a practical man of action, whose course was generally guided by the accidental circumstances of the hour, rather than by fixed principles. His education was defective. He entered the great arena with little of either mental or moral culture. Yet, severely as we now judge him, he did not fall below the prevailing standard of political morals. His real sin was that he did not rise above the ethics of the times; that he remained deaf as an adder to the voices of the great reformers who sought to regenerate the age, and who were compelled to grapple with him in deadly struggle before they could gain footing on the stage. The time was out of joint and he felt no vocation to set it right. While his ethics has fared hard, his mental gifts have been over-estimated. The availability of all his resources, his overwhelming energy and marvelous efficiency among men of intellect, gave rise to the impression which still survives that he was a man of original genius. But of all his numerous speeches, heard or read by millions, not a sentence had enough vitality to survive even one generation. Though for ten years of stormy agitation he was the most commanding figure in our public life and wielded power of which Presidents and Cabinets stood in awe, the things for which he is chiefly remembered are his unfortunate doctrine of popular sovereignty and the resistless power with which he defended his most dubious relation to the question of slavery.
His powerful influence upon the overshadowing question of the times, his restless activity in shaping the course of great political events, fast drifting into darkest tragedy, have obscured his work in less conspicuous fields. While it does not come within the scope of this work to do more than portray his relation to the great national tragedy which was slowly evolving during the entire period of his political life, it should not be forgotten that his activity covered the whole field of legislation and that no man responded more generously or efficiently to the countless demands upon time and energy which so greatly burden the American statesman.
It is pleasant to find a Lieutenant General of the United States army in his old age and retirement recalling a visit in his boyhood to Washington, to seek redress of some West Point grievance, and how the only man he could find who had the leisure enough to effectively interview the Secretary of War on his behalf was Douglas.
It is sufficient for our purposes to say that for thirteen years he had practical control of all legislation affecting the Western Territories, that he drafted the bills establishing territorial governments for Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, New Mexico and Washington and prepared the acts for the admission of Wisconsin, California, Minnesota and Oregon. He secured for his State an enormous grant of public land, which resulted in the building of the Illinois Central Railroad. He warmly advocated the building of a railway to the Pacific. He consistently favored the most liberal appropriations for internal improvements, and, with that provincial patriotism and jealousy of Old World interference which was fashionable fifty years ago, vigorously opposed the Clayton-Bulwer treaty as a practical annulment of the Monroe doctrine.
It is not to be set down in his list of sins that he failed to bridge over the widening chasm between the North and the South; but it must be charged to him as a mental defect that he hopelessly failed to comprehend the significance of the great movements which he seemed to lead, that in the keenness of his interest in the evolutions of political strategy he failed to discern the symptoms of coming revolution.
When the storm that had been brewing before his eyes for ten years broke upon the country it took him by surprise. The ardor of his temperament, the eagerness of his ambition, make his conduct at times painfully resemble that of the selfish demagogue. But the range of his vision was small. He erred less from corruption of the heart than from deficiency of the mind. But what statesman of note during those strange and portentous years preceding the war could safely expose his speech and conduct to the searchlight of criticism? The wisest walked in darkness and stumbled often. It was not the fate of Douglas to see the mists amid which he had groped swept away by the hurricane of war.
What he would have done had his life been protracted ten year longer, is subject of interesting speculation. By temperament and habit he belonged to the preceding generation and it is difficult to conceive him working in harmony with the fiery and unyielding Puritans who succeeded. He loved the Union heartily and hated secession. He would have supported Lincoln in the great crisis. In the regenerated America, which rose from the fiery baptisms of the war, with its new ideal, its new hopes, its new convictions and deeper earnestness, he would probably have found himself sadly out of place. The epoch of history to which he belonged was closed. Young as he was, he had outlived his historic era and there is a dramatic fitness in the ending of his career at this time.