Abraham Lincoln

by William Eleroy Curtis

Lincoln did not underrate the ability or the advantages of his opponent. He realized fully the serious character and importance of the contest in which he was engaged. He was aware that the entire country was watching him with anxious eyes, and that he was addressing not only the multitudes that gathered around the platforms, but the entire population of the United States. He knew also that whatever he might say would have a permanent effect upon the fortunes of the Republican party, then only two years old, not to speak of his own personal destiny.

He knew Douglas as well and perhaps better than Douglas knew himself. They had been acquainted from boyhood, and their lives had run in parallels in a most remarkable manner. They had met at the threshold of their political careers. They had served together in the Legislature twenty-three years before. They were admitted to practice at the bar of the Supreme Court together. They had been rivals for the hand of the same lady, as related in a previous chapter. They served together in Congress. They had met repeatedly, and had measured strength in the Legislature, in the courts, and on the platform. They had always been upon outwardly friendly terms, but each knew that the other disliked him intensely. It is probable that his inquisitive nature and analytical habits gave Lincoln a better knowledge of the strong and weak points of his antagonist. He was very thorough in whatever he undertook, while Douglas was more confident and careless in his preparation. Lincoln knew that in the whole field of American politics there was no man so adroit or aggressive or gifted in the tricks and strategy of debate, and in this contest Douglas showed his fullest power. Lincoln's talents and habits were entirely different. He indulged in no tricks and made no effort to dazzle audiences. His fairness of statement and generosity were well known and understood by Mr. Douglas, who took advantage of them. His high standard of political morals and his devotion to constitutional principles were equally well understood, and Douglas took advantage of those also.

Douglas electrified the crowds with his eloquence and charmed them by his grace and dexterity. He was forcible in statement, aggressive in assertion, and treated Lincoln in a patronizing and contemptuous manner; but Lincoln's simplicity of statement, his homely illustrations, quaint originality, and convincing logic were often more forcible than the lofty flights of eloquence in which his opponent indulged. He was more careful and accurate in his statement of facts, and his knowledge of the details of history and the legislation of Congress was a great advantage, for he convicted Douglas of misrepresentation again and again, although it seemed to have had no effect whatever upon the confidence of the latter's supporters. As usual, Mr. Lincoln kept close to the subject and spoke to convince and not to amuse or entertain. When one of his friends suggested that his reputation for story-telling was being destroyed by the seriousness of his speeches, Lincoln replied that this was no time for jokes.

One of the gentlemen who accompanied Mr. Lincoln has given us the following description of his appearance and manner of speaking: "When standing erect he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure: thin through the chest, and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. When he arose to address courts, juries, or crowds of people his body inclined forward to a slight degree. At first he was very awkward, and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself to the surroundings. He struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensitiveness, and these only added to his awkwardness. When he began speaking, his voice was shrill, piping, and unpleasant. His manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face wrinkled and dry, his oddity of pose, his diffident movements,—everything seemed to be against him, but only for a short time. After having arisen, he generally placed his hands behind him, the back of his left hand in the palm of his right, the thumb and fingers of his right hand clasped around the left arm at the wrist. For a few moments he played the combination of awkwardness, sensitiveness, and diffidence. As he proceeded he became somewhat animated, and to keep in harmony with his growing warmth his hands relaxed their grasp and fell to his side. Presently he clasped them in front of him, interlocking his fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing the other. His speech now requiring more emphatic utterance, his fingers unlocked and his hands fell apart. His left arm was thrown behind, the back of his hand resting against his body, his right hand seeking his side. By this time he had gained sufficient composure, and his real speech began. He did not gesticulate as much with his hands as he did with his head. He used the latter frequently, throwing it with vim this way and that. This movement was a significant one when he sought to enforce his statement. It sometimes came with a quick jerk, as if throwing off electric sparks into combustible material. He never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags, as some orators do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective—in time self-possessed and self-reliant. His style was clear, terse, and compact. In argument he was logical, demonstrative, and fair. He was careless of his dress, and his clothes, instead of fitting, as did the garments of Douglas on the latter's well-rounded form, hung loosely on his giant frame.

"As he moved along in his speech he became freer and less uneasy in his movements; to that extent he was graceful. He had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality; and to that extent he was dignified. There was a world of meaning and emphasis in the long, bony finger of his right hand as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers. Sometimes, to express joy or pleasure, he would raise both hands at an angle of about fifty degrees, the palms upward. If the sentiment was one of detestation,—denunciation of slavery, for example,—both arms, thrown upward and the fists clinched, swept through the air, and he expressed an execration that was truly sublime. This was one of his most effective gestures, and signified most vividly a fixed determination to drag down the object of his hatred and trample it in the dust. He always stood squarely on his feet, toe even with toe; that is, he never put one foot before the other. He neither touched nor leaned on anything for support. He made but few changes in his positions and attitudes. He never ranted, never walked backward and forward on the platform. To ease his arms he frequently caught hold, with his left hand, of the lapel of his coat, keeping his thumb upright and leaving his right hand free to gesticulate. The designer of the monument erected in Chicago has happily caught him in just this attitude. As he proceeded with his speech the exercise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the tone of his voice. It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch, and mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound. His form expanded, and, notwithstanding the sunken breast, he rose up a splendid and imposing figure. His little gray eyes flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound thoughts, and his uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk themselves beneath the wave of righteous indignation that came sweeping over him. Such was Lincoln the orator."

Mr. Lincoln's own impressions were expressed to a friend as follows: "Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown," he said. "All of 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 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 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."

As a rule, when both occupied the same platform their manners and language were very courteous; but occasionally, when speaking elsewhere, Mr. Douglas lost his temper and indulged in personal attacks upon his opponent. Mr. Horace White, who reported the debate for one of the Chicago papers, describes one of these occasions as follows;

"We arrived at Havana while Douglas was still speaking. I strolled up to the Douglas meeting just before its conclusion, and there met a friend who had heard the whole. He was in a state of high indignation. He said that Douglas must certainly have been drinking before he came on the platform, because he had called Lincoln 'a liar, a coward, a wretch, and a sneak.'" When Mr. Lincoln replied, on the following day, he took notice of Douglas's hard words in this way:

"I am informed that my distinguished friend yesterday became a little excited, nervous(?) perhaps, and that he said something about fighting, as though looking to a personal encounter between himself and me. Did anybody in this audience hear him use such language? ['Yes, yes.'] I am informed, further, that somebody in his audience, rather more excited or nervous than himself, took off his coat and offered to take the job off Judge Douglas's hands and fight Lincoln himself. Did anybody here witness that warlike proceeding? [Laughter and cries of 'Yes.'] Well, I merely desire to say that I shall fight neither Judge Douglas nor his second. I shall not do this for two reasons, which I will explain. In the first place, a fight would prove nothing which is in issue in this election. It might establish that Judge Douglas is a more muscular man than myself, or it might show that I am a more muscular man than Judge Douglas; but that subject is not referred to in the Cincinnati platform, nor in either of the Springfield platforms. Neither result would prove him right nor me wrong. And so of the gentleman who offered to do his fighting for him. If my fighting Judge Douglas would not prove anything, it would certainly prove nothing for me to fight his bottle-holder. My second reason for not having a personal encounter with Judge Douglas is that I don't believe he wants it himself. He and I are about the best friends in the world, and when we get together he would no more think of fighting me than of fighting his wife. Therefore when the Judge talked about fighting he was not giving vent to any ill-feeling of his own, but was merely trying to excite—well, let us say enthusiasm against me on the part of his audience. And, as I find he was tolerably successful in this, we will call it quits."

The crisis of the debate came at Freeport on August 27, 1858, when Lincoln proposed a series of questions for Douglas to answer. At the previous meeting at Ottawa, Douglas propounded a series of questions for Lincoln which were designed to commit him to strong abolition doctrines. He asked whether Lincoln was pledged to the repeal of the fugitive-slave law, to resist the admission of any more slave States, to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the States, to the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, and to oppose the acquisition of any new Territory unless slavery was prohibited therein. Lincoln replied with great candor that he was pledged to no proposition except the prohibition of slavery in all the Territories of the United States. It was then that he turned upon Douglas with four questions, the second of which was laden with the most tremendous consequences not only to the debaters personally, but to the entire nation and the cause of human freedom: