Lincoln's Birthday

by Unknown

Abe the Giant-Killer.

Edgar County for the Tall Sucker.

A striking feature of the crowds was the number of women they included. The intelligent and lively interest they took in the debates caused much comment. No doubt Mrs. Douglas's presence had something to do with this. They were particularly active in receiving the speakers, and at Quincy, Lincoln, on being presented with what the local press described as a "beautiful and elegant bouquet," took pains to express his gratification at the part women everywhere took in the contest.

While this helter-skelter outpouring of prairiedom had the appearance of being little more than a great jollification, a lawless country fair, in reality it was with the majority of the people a profoundly serious matter. With every discussion it became more vital. Indeed, in the first debate, which was opened and closed by Douglas, the relation of the two speakers became dramatic. It was here that Douglas hoping to fasten on Lincoln the stigma of "abolitionist," charged him with having undertaken to abolitionize the old Whig party, and having been in 1854 a subscriber to a radical platform proclaimed at Springfield. This platform Douglas read. Lincoln, when he replied, could only say he was never at the convention—knew nothing of the resolutions; but the impression prevailed that he was cornered. The next issue of the Chicago "Press and Tribune" dispelled it. That paper had employed to report the debates the first shorthand reporter of Chicago, Mr. Robert L. Hitt—now a Member of Congress and the Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Mr. Hitt, when Douglas began to read the resolutions, took an opportunity to rest, supposing he could get the original from the speaker. He took down only the first line of each resolution. He missed Douglas after the debate, but on reaching Chicago, where he wrote out his report, he sent an assistant to the files to find the platform adopted at the Springfield Convention. It was brought, but when Mr. Hitt began to transcribe it he saw at once that it was widely different from the one Douglas had read. There was great excitement in the office, and the staff, ardently Republican, went to work to discover where the resolutions had come from. It was found that they originated at a meeting of radical abolitionists with whom Lincoln had never been associated.

The "Press and Tribune" announced the "forgery," as it was called in a caustic editorial, "The Little Dodger Cornered and Caught." Within a week even the remote school-districts of Illinois were discussing Douglas's action, and many of the most important papers of the nation had made it a subject of editorial comment.

Almost without exception Douglas was condemned. No amount of explanation on his part helped him. "The particularity of Douglas's charge," said the Louisville "Journal," "precludes the idea that he was simply and innocently mistaken." Lovers of fair play were disgusted, and those of Douglas's own party who would have applauded a trick too clever to be discovered could not forgive him for one which had been found out. Greeley came out bitterly against him, and before long wrote to Lincoln and Herndon that Douglas was "like the man's boy who (he said) didn't weigh so much as he expected and he always knew he wouldn't."

Douglas's error became a sharp-edged sword in Lincoln's hand. Without directly referring to it, he called his hearers' attention to the forgery every time he quoted a document by his elaborate explanation that he believed, unless there was some mistake on the part of those with whom the matter originated and which he had been unable to detect, that this was correct. Once when Douglas brought forward a document, Lincoln blandly remarked that he could scarcely be blamed for doubting its genuineness since the introduction of the Springfield resolutions at Ottawa.

It was in the second debate, at Freeport, that Lincoln made the boldest stroke of the contest. Soon after the Ottawa debate, in discussing his plan for the next encounter, with a number of his political friends,—Washburne, Cook, Judd, and others,—he told them he proposed to ask Douglas four questions, which he read. One and all cried halt at the second question. Under no condition, they said, must he put it. If it were put, Douglas would answer it in such a way as to win the senatorship. The morning of the debate, while on the way to Freeport, Lincoln read the same questions to Mr. Joseph Medill. "I do not like this second question, Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Medill. The two men argued to their journey's end, but Lincoln was still unconvinced. Even after he reached Freeport several Republican leaders came to him pleading, "Do not ask that question." He was obdurate; and he went on the platform with a higher head, a haughtier step than his friends had noted in him before. Lincoln was going to ruin himself, the committee said despondently; one would think he did not want the senatorship.

The mooted question ran in Lincoln's notes: "Can the people of a United States territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?" Lincoln had seen the irreconcilableness of Douglas's own measure of popular sovereignty, which declared that the people of a territory should be left to regulate their domestic concerns in their own way subject only to the Constitution, and the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case that slaves, being property, could not under the Constitution be excluded from a territory. He knew that if Douglas said no to this question, his Illinois constituents would never return him to the Senate. He believed that if he said yes, the people of the South would never vote for him for President of the United States. He was willing himself to lose the senatorship in order to defeat Douglas for the Presidency in 1860. "I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this," he said confidently.

The question was put, and Douglas answered it with rare artfulness. "It matters not," he cried, "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 legislature will favor its extension."