1

pledged against admitting a new Slave State, but that he should be exceedingly sorry ever to be put in a position of having to pass upon that question. Yet should the people of a Territory, having a fair chance and a clear field, uninfluenced by the actual presence of the evil among them, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, he saw no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union. This was indeed a most reluctant and hesitating answer, of which the wily Douglas was not slow to make note. For the rest, the Freeport debate was decidedly a Lincoln victory, though the bombastic ranting of Douglas made it seem otherwise to those to whom sound and fury signified much. On the day following the debate Theodore Parker wrote to his Western friend, blistering Douglas and Greeley, while predicting the victory of Seward in 1860:

Hon. W. H. Herndon.

Boston, Mass., Aug. 28, 1858.

My Dear Sir:-Thanks for your kind letter and the benevolent things you say about my sermons. I look with great interest on the contest in your State, and read the speeches, the noble speeches of Mr. Lincoln with enthusiasm. One I saw in the Tribune of last week will injure Douglas very much. I never recommended the Republicans to adopt Douglas into their family. I said in a speech last January, "he is a mad dog; " just now he is barking at the wolf which has torn our sheep. But he himself is more dangerous than the wolf. I think I should not let him into the fold.

1 When Douglas "trotted Lincoln down into Egypt," he harped loudly upon this hesitating and evasive answer. "Let me tell Mr. Lincoln that his party in the northern part of the State hold to that Abolition platform, and if they do not in the south and center, they present the extraordinary spectacle of a house divided against itself.'' Lamon, apparently on the authority of Judge Logan, says that in the struggle for the Senate in 1855, Lincoln pledged himself to Lovejoy and his faction in favor of no more Slave States. Douglas did not certainly know of such a pledge, but he suspected some sort of understanding; hence his persistence on this point. Life of Lincoln, by W. H. Lamon, pp 361365 (1872). But Lincoln said he was not so pledged, and never had been, which makes the story of Lamon hardly credible.

Greeley is not fit for a leader. He is capricious, crochety, full of whims, and as wrong headed as a pig. How he talks on political economy, which he knows so little about! How he took the side of Russia in the Crimean War! How he is now unwilling to object to the admission of a new Slave State, and what a mean defense of a mean speech! He is honest, I think, but pitiably weak for a man in such a position. But he is quite humane, and surrounds himself with some of the best talent in the country. Do you see what the Richmond Whig says about Buchanan; that means that the Whig is fattening Edward Everett for the Presidency. Much good may it do him. I think the Republican party will nominate Seward for the Presidency, and elect him in 1860; then the wedge is entered and will be driven home. Yours truly, THEODORE PARKER.

No one, of all those who have written of these stormy days, has drawn such a political map of Illinois as is found in the reply of Herndon to the above letter. He describes the situation with singular fidelity, setting forth the difficulties, while watching the words of Douglas with special reference to the "land lust of the Slave-Power." The letter is as valuable as it is vivid:

Friend Parker.

Springfield, Ill., August 31, 1858.

Dear Sir: I have but a moment to spare, and I propose to devote it to you. I have been out on the stump, doing all I can for Republicanism. The politics now in our State are in the blue-hot condition; it has ceased to sparkle, but now it burns. Mr. Lincoln and Senator Douglas have had two hitches," and it is the opinion of good sensible men that so far Lincoln has the decided advantage.

In their late debate at Freeport, Douglas took the stand that at present we needed no more territory. You remember I told you what Douglas told me, at Washington, that he would oppose the acquisition of Cuba, Central America, etc. He seems as good as his word. You know I told you what he said about the passage of Lecompton; it turned out as he said, and doubtless you recollect other pledges he made me, and which I told you when in Boston. When I once told you by letter, that if I could once look Douglas in the eye" I could tell what he intended, you supposed, doubtless, that I was quite arrogant, did you not? By the

66

by, do you remember what I told you about Friend Greeley, that is, that the Republican platform was too "hifalutin," too abstract, in his opinion, and that it ought to be lowered -"slid down?" What is now unfortunately taking place! I fear the Republican platform will get deeper in the "hell" direction than the old Whig platform for measures. I hope you will continue to remember my conversation with you, not because I said it, but because what was said was uttered by greater men. I always tell you the truth dodge.

never

If you remember, our State is a peculiar one politically: first, we have a north which is all intelligence, all for freedom. Secondly, we have a South, people from the sand hills of the South, poor white folks. These are pro-slavery and ignorant "up to the hub." And thirdly, we have a belt of land, seventy-five miles in width, running from the east bank of the Mississippi to the Wabash to Indiana; and running north and south, from Bloomington to Alton. In or upon this strip or belt of land this " great battle" between Lincoln and Douglas is to be fought and victory won. On this belt are three classes of individuals: first, Yankees; secondly, intelligent Southerners; and thirdly, poor whites. I now speak sectionally. Again: on this belt are four political shades of party politics: first, Republicans; second, Americans (old Whigs); third, Douglas Democrats; and fourth, National Democrats, Buchanan men. "Quite a

muss.

Two of these parties are acting as one; they are the Republicans and Fillmore men. They have a majority over both factions of the Democracy. The materials we have to struggle against are roving, Buffalo, Catholic Irish, backed and guided by the Democracy in the North. They will be run down here on pretense of getting a job, and so in the closely contested fight they will carry, we fear, the uncertain counties. These hell-doomed Irish are all for Douglas, and opposed, here, to the National Administration.

I hope you can understand this complication. I give to you as my opinion, and the opinion of good, honest Republicans, that we will crush Douglas and pro-slaveryism. I give it now as my opinion that Lincoln will be our next United States Senator for Illinois. Your friend,

W. H. HERNDON.

If the State was "in a blue-hot condition following the Freeport encounter, it became hotter still, if possible, as by

slow stages, speaking incessantly at all sorts of meetings, Lincoln and Douglas made their way down through the debatable belt to Egypt. Had the election been held in early July, Douglas would have carried the State by an overwhelming majority, but the tide was beginning to turn. As we shall see in the letters of Herndon, Republican hopes went skyward with great glee, and the Democrats became correspondingly bitter and glum. Greeley afterwards said truly that Lincoln was a great convincer of men, and in a difficult situation could do his cause more good and less harm than any man of his day. We have now to follow him through the wild and stormy scenes of the closing debates, in which, if he sometimes lost his temper, he never lost his wits.

1

CHAPTER VII

The Closing Debates

With his powerful voice and facile energy, Douglas had entered the campaign under full steam, confident of success, and determined to win at any cost. His vanity was colossal, and he lost no opportunity to emphasize his superiority over his adversary, if not indeed over every other man in the nation. At Ottawa his strut was impressive, and to his followers overwhelming, as though Lincoln in his grasp was as a mouse being shaken by a lion. All that he had to do, so he seems to have felt, was to fasten upon his opponent the stigma of Abolitionism, and to belittle his personal history and political pretensions. But Lincoln, though vexed at first, was in nowise overawed by so much greatness, and soon let his opponent know that there was serious business on hand.

As Douglas began to realize that the tide had turned toward Lincoln, he lost some of his confidence and all of his manners. Nothing could surpass the imperious and truculent offensiveness of his behavior at Freeport. Deterred by no feeling of humility, no sense of fairness, no regard for the amenities of debate, he resorted to all the devices of a back-alley demagogue, denying facts, dodging arguments, playing upon prejudice, and hurling epithets with a fluency that scarcely another man of his day could equal. A Republican was always a "black Republican," despite the protest of more than one audience that he change the color and "make it a little brown." Negroes, he said, were stumping for "their brother Abe," who, with Trumbull, was leading a "white, black and mixed drove of disappointed politicians " armed with slander. While pretending to greatness, he did not hesitate to stoop to every cheap and trivial trick of gutter-rabble debate.