"SET THE TRAP AGAIN!"
To fix extreme abolition upon Abraham Lincoln, Senator Douglas lent himself to assuring that his rival had taken part in a convention and helped pass a certain resolution. This was a fraud, as there was no such resolution passed, and Lincoln was not present.
"The main object of that forgery was to beat Yates and elect Harris for Congress, object known to be exceedingly dear to Judge Douglas at the time.... The fraud having been apparently successful, both Harris and Douglas have more than once since then been attempting to put it to new uses. As the fisherman's wife, whose drowned husband was brought home with his body full of eels, said, when asked what was to be done with him: 'Take out the eels and set him again!' [Footnote: See Colman's "Broad Grins.">[ So Harris and Douglas have shown a disposition to take the eels out of that stale fraud by which they gained Harris' election, and set the fraud again, more than once."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Jonesboro, Illinois, September 15, 1858.)
"NO ROYALTY IN OUR CARRIAGE."
From August to mid-October, 1858, Lincoln and Douglas warred on the platform throughout Illinois, in a celebrated series of debates. As the senator was in a high position, and expected to reap yet more important honors, the Central Railroad corporation extended to him all graces. A special car, the Pullman in embryo in reality, was at his beck, and a train for his numerous friends if he spoke. On the other hand, his rival, becoming more and more democratic in his leaning to the grotesque, gloried in traveling even in the caboose of a freight-train. He had no brass bands and no canteen for all comers; on one occasion his humble "freighter" was side-tracked to let the palace-cars sweep majestically by, a calliope playing "Hail to the Chief!" and laughter mingling with toasts shouted tauntingly through the open windows. The oppositionist laughed to his friends, and said:
"The gentleman in that decorated car evidently smelled no royalty in our scow!"
He scoffed at these "fizzlegigs and fireworks," to employ his phrase.
But his keen sense of the ludicrous was not shared with his admirers. On the contrary, the women saw nothing absurd in drowning him with flowers and the men in "chairing him." Henry Villard relates that he saw him battling with his supporters literally, and beseeching them who bore him shoulder-high, with his long limbs gesticulating like a spider's, for them to "Let me down!"
In another place, after Douglas had been galloped to the platform in his carriage and pair, his antagonist was hauled up in a hayrack-wagon drawn by lumbering farm-horses.