Douglass was, beyond all cotemporaries, a man of the people. Lincoln, too, was distinctively of the masses; but he represented their sober, second thought, their higher aspirations, their better possibilities. Douglass embodied their average impulses, both good and bad. Upon the stump, his fluency, his hard common sense, and his wonderful voice, which could thunder like the cataract, or whisper with the breeze, enabled him to sway them at his will.
Hitherto invincible at home, he now found a foeman worthy of his steel. All over the country people began to ask about this "Honest Abe Lincoln," whose inexhaustible anecdotes were so droll, yet so exactly to the point; whose logic was so irresistible; whose modesty, fairness, and personal integrity, won golden opinions from his political enemies; who, without "trimming," enjoyed the support of the many-headed Opposition in Illinois, from the Abolition Owen Lovejoys of the northern counties, down to the "conservative" old Whigs of the Egyptian districts, who still believed in the divinity of Slavery.
Those who did not witness it will never comprehend the universal and intense horror at every thing looking toward "negro equality" which then prevailed in southern Illinois. Republican politicians succumbed to it. In their journals and platforms they sometimes said distinctly: "We care nothing for the negro. We advocate his exclusion from our State. We oppose Slavery in the Territories only because it is a curse to the white man." Mr. Lincoln never descended to this level. In his plain, moderate, conciliatory way, he would urge upon his simple auditors that this matter had a Right and a Wrong—that the great Declaration of their fathers meant something. And—always his strong point—he would put this so clearly to the common apprehension, and so touch the people's moral sense, that his opponents found their old cries of "Abolitionist" and "Negro-worshiper" hollow and powerless.
His defeat, by a very slight majority, proved victory in disguise. The debates gave him a National reputation. Republican executive committees in other States issued verbatim reports of the speeches of both Douglass and Lincoln, bound up together in the order of their delivery. They printed them just as they stood, without one word of comment, as the most convincing plea for their cause. Rarely, if ever, has any man received so high a compliment as was thus paid to Mr. Lincoln.
His Visit to Kansas.
In Kansas his stories began to stick like chestnut-burrs in the popular ear—to pass from mouth to mouth, and from cabin to cabin. The young lawyers, physicians, and other politicians who swarm in the new country, began to quote from his arguments in their public speeches, and to regard him as the special champion of their political faith.
Late in the Autumn of 1859 he visited the Territory for the first and last time. With Marcus J. Parrott, Delegate in Congress, A. Carter Wilder, afterward Representative, and Henry Villard, a Journalist, I went to Troy, in Doniphan County, to hear him. In the imaginative language of the frontier, Troy was a "town"—possibly a city. But, save a shabby frame court-house, a tavern, and a few shanties, its urban glories were visible only to the eye of faith. It was intensely cold. The sweeping prairie wind rocked the crazy buildings, and cut the faces of travelers like a knife. Mr. Wilder froze his hand during our ride, and Mr. Lincoln's party arrived wrapped in buffalo-robes.
His Manner of Public Speaking.
Not more than forty people assembled in that little, bare-walled court-house. There was none of the magnetism of a multitude to inspire the long, angular, ungainly orator, who rose up behind a rough table. With little gesticulation, and that little ungraceful, he began, not to declaim, but to talk. In a conversational tone, he argued the question of Slavery in the Territories, in the language of an average Ohio or New York farmer. I thought, "If the Illinoisans consider this a great man, their ideas must be very peculiar."
But in ten or fifteen minutes I was unconsciously and irresistibly drawn by the clearness and closeness of his argument. Link after link it was forged and welded like a blacksmith's chain. He made few assertions, but merely asked questions: "Is not this true? If you admit that fact, is not this induction correct?" Give him his premises, and his conclusions were inevitable as death.