Well, he went right on speakin’ after that, must ’a’ made forty or fifty speeches all over the State, for Fremont, and he got no end of invitations from Indiana and Iowa and Kansas and all around to come over and speak. Old Billy Herndon used to come in here and brag about it. You’d thought ’twas him was gittin’ ’em. Always seemed to think he owned Lincoln anyway.
By the time the Republicans wanted a man for United States Senate Lincoln was first choice, easy enough, and the first thing anybody knew if he didn’t up and challenge Douglas, who the Democrats was runnin’, to seven debates—seven joint debates, they called ’em. You could ’a’ knocked me over with a feather when I heard that. I couldn’t think of anybody I knew challengin’ Mr. Douglas. It seemed impertinent, him bein’ what I thought him. But I was glad they was goin’ to thresh it out. You see I was feelin’ mighty uncertain in my mind by this time. Somehow I couldn’t seem to git around the p’ints I’d been hearin’ Mr. Lincoln make so much. However, I didn’t have no idee but what Mr. Douglas would show clear enough where he was wrong. So when I heard about the debates, I says to Ma, “Johnnie can take care of the store, I’m goin’ to hear ’em.”
You ain’t no idee how people was stirred up by the news. Seemed as if everybody in the State felt about as I did. Most everybody was pretty sober about it, too. There ain’t no denyin’ that there was a lot of Democrats just like me. What Mr. Lincoln had been sayin’ for four years back had struck in and they was worried. Still I reckon the most of the Republicans was a blamed sight more uneasy than we was. They’d got so used to seein’ Douglas git everything he went after, that they thought he’d be sure to lick Lincoln now. I heard ’em talkin’ about it among themselves every now and then and sayin’, “I wisht Lincoln hadn’t done it. He ain’t had experience like Douglas. Why, Douglas’s been debatin’ fer twelve years in the United States Senate with the biggest men in the country, and he’s always come out ahead. Lincoln ain’t got a show.”
You needn’t think Mr. Lincoln didn’t know how they was talkin’. He never made no mistake about himself, Mr. Lincoln didn’t. He knew he wa’n’t a big gun like Douglas. I could see he was blue as a whetstone sometimes, thinkin’ of the difference between ’em. “What’s ag’in us in this campaign, boys,” I heard him say one day, “is me. There ain’t no use denyin’ that Douglas has always been a big success and I’ve always been a flat failure. Everybody expects him to be President and always has and is actin’ accordin’. Nobody’s ever expected anything from me. I tell you we’ve got to run this campaign on principle. There ain’t nuthin’ in your candidate.” And he looked so cast down I felt plum sorry for him.
But you needn’t think by that that he was shirkin’ it—no, sir, not a mite. Spite of all his blues, he’d set his teeth for a fight. One day over to the Chenery House I recollect standin’ with two or three Republicans when Mr. Lincoln come along and stopped to shake hands with a chap from up to Danville. “How’s things lookin’ up your way, Judge?” he says.
“Well, Mr. Lincoln,” the Judge says, “we’re feelin’ mighty anxious about this debate of yourn with Douglas,” and the way he said it I could ’a’ kicked him.
Mr. Lincoln looked at him mighty sober for a minute. “Judge,” he says, “didn’t you ever see two men gittin’ ready for a fight? Ain’t you seen one of ’em swell up his muscle and pat it and brag how he’s goin’ to knock the stuffin’ out of the other, and that other man clinchin’ his fist and settin’ his teeth and savin’ his wind. Well, sir, the other is goin’ to win the fight or die tryin’,” and with that he turns and goes off.
Didn’t I know that’s the way he felt. I hadn’t been watchin’ him sweatin’ his brains on that darned question for four years without knowin’. I tell you nobody that didn’t see him often them days, and didn’t care enough about him to feel bad when he felt bad, can ever understand what Abraham Lincoln went through before his debates with Douglas. He worked his head day and night tryin’ to git that slavery question figured out so nobody could stump him. Greatest man to think things out so nobody could git around him I ever see. Hadn’t any patience with what wa’n’t clear. What worried him most, I can see now, was makin’ the rest of us understand it like he did.
Well, as I was sayin’, it seemed as if all Illinois turned out to hear ’em speak. A country fair wa’n’t nuthin’ to the crowds. There wa’n’t any too many railroads in Illinois in ’58, and they didn’t select the places fur the debates accordin’ to connections. I reckon I traveled about all the ways there be gettin’ to the places: foot, horseback, canal-boat, stage, side-wheeler, just got around any way that come handy; et and slept the same. Up to Quincy I recollect I put up on the bluff, and over to Charlestown me and seven of the boys had two beds. Nobody seemed to mind. We was all too took up with the speeches, seemed as if the more you heard the more you wanted to hear. I tell you they don’t have no such speeches nowadays. There ain’t two men in the United States today could git the crowds them two men had or hold ’em if they got ’em.
I sort of expected some new line of argument from Douglas when they started out, but ’twa’n’t long before we all saw he wa’n’t goin’ to talk about anything but popular sovereignty—that is, if he could help himself. As it turned out he didn’t git his way. Mr. Lincoln had made up his mind that the Judge had got to say whether he thought slavery was right or wrong. Accordin’ to him, that was the issue of the campaign. He argued that Douglas’ notion of popular sovereignty was all right if slavery was as good as freedom, but that if it wa’n’t, his arguments wa’n’t worth a rush. He said the difference between him and the Judge was that one thought slavery was wrong and ought to be kept where it was till it died out of itself, and the other thought it was right and ought to be spread all over the country.