Lincoln in nowise underrated the severity of the political contest in which he was about to engage. He knew his opponent's strong points as well as his weak ones—his energy, his adroitness, the blind devotion of his followers, his greater political fame. "Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said. "All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargé-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. These are disadvantages all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and principle alone."
1858.
Douglas and his friends had indeed entered upon the canvass with an unusual flourish of trumpets. Music, banners, salutes, fireworks, addresses, ovation, and jubilation with enthusiasm genuine and simulated, came and went in almost uninterrupted sequence; so much of the noise and pomp of electioneering had not been seen since the famous hard-cider campaign of Harrison. The "Little Giant," as he was proudly nicknamed by his adherents, arrived in Illinois near midsummer, after elaborate preparation and heralding, and made speeches successively at Chicago, Bloomington, and Springfield on the 9th, 16th, and 17th of July. The Republicans and their candidate were equally alert to contest every inch of ground. Mr. Lincoln made speeches in reply at Chicago on the 10th and at Springfield on the evening of Douglas's day address; and in both instances with such force and success as portended a fluctuating and long-continued struggle.
For the moment the presence of Douglas not only gave spirit and fresh industry to his followers, but the novelty impressed the indifferent and the wavering. The rush of the campaign was substituting excitement for inquiry, blare of brass bands and smoke of gunpowder for intelligent criticism. The fame and prestige of the "Little Giant" was beginning to incline the vibrating scale. Lincoln and his intimate political advisers were not slow to note the signs of danger; and the remedy devised threw upon him the burden of a new responsibility. It was decided in the councils of the Republican leaders that Lincoln should challenge Douglas to joint public debate.
The challenge was sent by Lincoln on July 24; Douglas proposed that they should meet at the towns of Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton, each speaker alternately to open and close the discussion; Douglas to speak one hour at Ottawa, Lincoln to reply for an hour and a half, and Douglas to make a half hour's rejoinder. In like manner Lincoln should open and close at Freeport, and so on alternately. Lincoln's note of July 31 accepted the proposal as made. "Although by the terms," he wrote, "as you propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede and thus close the arrangement." Meanwhile each of the speakers made independent appointments for other days and places than these seven; and in the heat and dust of midsummer traveled and addressed the people for a period of about one hundred days, frequently making the necessary journeys by night, and often speaking two and sometimes even three times in a single day. Thus to the combat of intellectual skill was added a severe ordeal of physical endurance.[2] ]
Lincoln entered upon the task which his party friends had devised with neither bravado nor misgiving. He had not sought these public discussions; neither did he shrink from them. Throughout his whole life he appears to have been singularly correct in his estimate of difficulties to be encountered and of his own powers for overcoming them. Each of these seven meetings, comprising both the Republican and Democratic voters of the neighboring counties, formed a vast, eager, and attentive assemblage. It needed only the first day's experience to show the wisdom of the Republican leaders in forcing a joint discussion upon Douglas. Face to face with his competitor, he could no longer successfully assume airs of superiority, or wrap himself in his Senatorial dignity and prestige. They were equal spokesmen, of equal parties, on an equal platform, while applause and encouragement on one side balanced applause and encouragement on the other.
In a merely forensic sense, it was indeed a battle of giants. In the whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the expedients and strategy of debate. Lacking originality and constructive logic, he had great facility in appropriating by ingenious restatement the thoughts and formulas of others. He was tireless, ubiquitous, unseizable. It would have been as easy to hold a globule of mercury under the finger's tip as to fasten him to a point he desired to evade. He could almost invert a proposition by a plausible paraphrase. He delighted in enlarging an opponent's assertion to a forced inference ridiculous in form and monstrous in dimensions. In spirit he was alert, combative, aggressive; in manner, patronizing and arrogant by turns.
Lincoln's mental equipment was of an entirely different order. His principal weapon was direct, unswerving logic. His fairness of statement and generosity of admission had long been proverbial. For these intellectual duels with Douglas, he possessed a power of analysis that easily outran and circumvented the "Little Giant's" most extraordinary gymnastics of argument. But, disdaining mere quibbles, he pursued lines of concise reasoning to maxims of constitutional law and political morals. Douglas was always forcible in statement and bold in assertion; but Lincoln was his superior in quaint originality, aptness of phrase, and subtlety of definition; and oftentimes Lincoln's philosophic vision and poetical fervor raised him to flights of eloquence which were not possible to the fiber and temper of his opponent.