1858 (24 page)

The residents of Illinois knew that in the Lincoln and Douglas debates they were getting three hours of discussion from two of the most fiery speakers in the country. Everyone in America was familiar with Douglas’s well-known oratorical bombast; only those in Illinois were familiar with Lincoln’s skills.

Lincoln always began his speeches and arguments slowly, a little uncertain, his timing off a bit, his voice shrill and unpleasant. Physically, there was always visible awkwardness in Lincoln as he pulled his lanky body up from a chair, unbending his long, thin legs and standing erect. His unkempt hair was never combed properly; his suits never fit right. After eight or nine minutes, though, he usually found his rhythm and then completely engaged his audience for an hour or more.

Law partner Billy Herndon wrote that as Lincoln continued to speak, his voice lost its shrillness and “mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound.”
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A New Yorker found his style “weird, rough, and uncultivated,” but ten minutes into his speech, that changed. “The voice gained a natural and impressive modulation, the gestures were dignified and appropriate, and the hearers came under the influence of the earnest look from the deeply set eyes.”
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He rose with his hands clenched together behind his back, walking forward with a bit of an odd gait caused by the combination of his size and his long legs. One writer compared his odd walk to a cross between a derrick and a windmill. He grasped his jacket lapel with his left hand and gestured with his right. He shook his head back and forth to make many points, used his hands and arms for emphasis, and punctuated the air with the forefinger of his right hand. “There was a world of emphasis in the long, bony finger as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers,” wrote Herndon.

And there was an emotional appeal to his speeches. He was, a New York writer said, “a thoroughly earnest and truthful man, inspired by sound convictions in consonance with the true spirit of American institutions… Lincoln always touched sympathetic chords.”
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One of the best speakers in the country had not started out that way. In his first years in the state legislature, his speaking ability was without polish and raw. His Kentucky accent caused him to mispronounce words, intoning “Mr. Cheerman” for
chairman
and “sich” for
such
. An observer wrote of him in 1832 that he “was a very gawky and rough looking fellow.” In 1839, reporters criticized his speaking as clumsy and warned that he had to change his style. “His entire game of buffoonery convinces the mind of no man and is utterly lost on the majority of his audience,” wrote a reporter for the
Illinois State Register
. “We seriously advise Mr. Lincoln to correct this clown-ish fault before it grows upon him.”
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He did.

Douglas was different. He was a master of historical facts, public policy initiatives, and could remember just about any position an adversary had taken on an issue. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that “he has two requisite qualities of a debater—a melodious voice and a clear, sharply defined enunciation.” Others noted his resonant voice. “There was a certain quality of broad, deep, vibrant energy in the tone that was strangely enthralling alike to one or two, or to a throng of many thousands. His voice rose and fell, round, deep, sonorous with the effortless volume of a great organ tone,” wrote one man.

Many newspapers predicted that Douglas would humiliate Lincoln in their seven joint encounters. “Douglas is matchless in debate,” wrote one editor emphatically.
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Douglas had his detractors, though, who claimed that he often muted his successful speeches with physical tantrums. John Quincy Adams said of Douglas, “His face was convulsed, his gesticulations frantic, and he lashed himself into such a heat that if his body had been made of combustible matter it would have burnt out.” Labor leader Carl Schurz added, “He was from the start angry, dictatorial, and insolent in the extreme…and he went on in that style with a wrathful frown upon his brow, defiantly shaking his head, clenching his fists, and stamping his feet.”
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Douglas had convinced himself that President Buchanan’s henchmen would insist that a third candidate—a Danite—share the platform with the pair. If so, Douglas told Lincoln, he would not participate. No third candidate ever asked to join them, though.
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The state press reporting of the campaign and the debates, beginning in Ottawa, was highly biased. The Republican-controlled newspapers applauded Lincoln and the Democratic journals hailed Douglas. Lincoln’s key papers were the
Illinois State Journal
and the
Chicago Press and Tribune
; Douglas’s primary journals were the
Illinois State Register
and the
Chicago Times
. Each candidate was supported by dozens of other newspapers throughout the state.

The election generated surprisingly comprehensive coverage throughout the Midwest and the nation. Several key newspapers in neighboring Missouri and Indiana covered the race extensively, as did some papers in Ohio. The race and debates captured the attention of newspapers in the east too, and they sent reporters from eastern cities such as New York and Boston. Newspapers in many other cities did not send reporters but reprinted stories about the debates published in other newspapers, a common practice at the time.

The debates, and the race, were seen as special by everyone and the press often presented the candidates’ appearances as boxing matches or brawls. One Indiana reporter wrote, “Perhaps of many the pitched battle between Douglas and Lincoln of Illinois is on the whole as interesting, as severe, and reviewed by as many anxious spectators… Douglas is a perfect specimen of the adroit politician, whom the American system seems calculated to engender…” He added, however, that “Lincoln gives him blow for blow.”
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The crowds at all of the debates responded warmly to both men. There was prolonged cheering for each when they were introduced, when they sat down, or when either spoke with some great passion or skewered the other. People took it upon themselves to shout out their feelings. “Stick it to him!” a man would shout to Douglas or Lincoln when a rejoinder seemed necessary. Others called out, “That’s right! You told him!” “Give him an answer!” “Bravo!” “Three cheers for (Lincoln or Douglas)!” “You’ve got him now!” “I’ll never vote for him!”
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The crowd would roar with laughter when either man told a humorous story or poked fun at his adversary.

The debates were not similar to contemporary debates in which the candidates actually discuss the previous statements of the other. In the Lincoln-Douglas encounters, the first speaker (they alternated) spoke for an hour, the second for ninety minutes, and then the first had thirty minutes for rebuttal. It was standard procedure for the era.

That first debate set the tone for all seven. Lincoln attacked Douglas over his different positions on the Kansas sovereignty question, accused him of being part of a national slavery conspiracy, and harangued him for refuting the Missouri Compromise (1820) with his Compromise of 1850. Douglas defended himself. He accused Lincoln of wanting to repeal the Fugitive Slave Act and other antislavery measures that had been passed by Congress, of belittling the white race in his constant defense of blacks, and of being the blackest of the “Black Republicans.”

The Little Giant surprised Lincoln in that first match with his aggressiveness. In that debate and in later encounters he derided Lincoln’s constant references to slavery’s “ultimate extinction” while at the same time insisting that he did not mind its existence as it was. He hit Lincoln with a long list of accusations, shrewdly connecting them to show, he said, that Lincoln was opposed to the people making any decisions at all unless they supported his Black Republican “abolition party.” He insisted that at the Republican state convention in Illinois in 1854 Lincoln had approved of the party platform that called for the overturning of the Fugitive Slave Act, opposed the admission of any more slave states even if the people wanted them, favored abolition of slavery in Washington, DC, was against slave trade between states, and would be opposed to any territory’s admission to the Union if its residents had approved slavery there. The charges refuted Lincoln’s moderate stand on slavery. To back up his claims, Douglas even described the hall where Lincoln had spoken in 1854. He named the other Republicans around him at the time. It was a bombshell from which the Democrats did not think Lincoln could recover.

Lincoln was flustered. He could not remember what he said about his 1854 party convention plank and tried to remember his stand on issues by reading a copy of a published speech he made in Peoria, Illinois, that year. He had trouble seeing it and had to fumble for his glasses. He then spent long moments trying to find passages in the news clipping to read as Douglas looked at him smugly.

He had not abandoned the white race for the black, Lincoln assured the crowd. “There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality… I…am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position.” He said he believed in obeying the Fugitive Slave Act because the Supreme Court had upheld it. He did not want Southern states to do away with slavery. He then lamely tried to frame what he called the “national conspiracy”—engineered by Douglas—to legalize slavery everywhere and insisted that it be kept out of the territories. He ripped the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Lecompton Constitution.
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Each side in the partisan press proclaimed their man the winner at Ottawa. The reporter from the Democratic
Freeport Weekly Bulletin
wrote that “the triumph of Senator Douglas was complete” and that Lincoln was “exceedingly lame throughout.” One man wrote, “The Illinois Giant at the first onset pushed his adversary to the wall, and never ceased for a moment his blows, until Abraham was taken by his friends, dispirited and overcome.”

A reporter for the Republican
Chicago Press and Tribune
, however, wrote that Lincoln “chewed him up.” He then blithely wrote that “Douglas is doomed,” the Democrats would not be able to recover, and that the “contest is already practically ended.” A reporter from the Republican
Daily Pantagraph
agreed, telling his readers that “the speech was one of the most powerful and eloquent ever made by Lincoln.”
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Many of the eastern reporters who covered the debates expected oratorical acrobatics from Douglas, but all saw something special in Lincoln, despite his faltering. A reporter for the
New York Evening Post
wrote about Lincoln, “Stir him up and the fire of his genius plays on every feature. His eye glows and sparkles, every lineament, now so ill-formed, grows brilliant and expressive and you have before you a man of rare power and of strong magnetic influence. He is clear, concise, and logical; his language is eloquent and perfect.” And a reporter for the
New York Tribune
, at another debate, echoed those feelings, reporting that Lincoln stated his principles “with more propriety and with an infinitely better temper.”
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The Ottawa crowd loved both candidates. The audience of twelve thousand erupted in sustained cheers for both men when the first debate ended. Men grabbed the astonished lanky Lincoln, put him on their shoulders, and carried him through the multitude of people as a band played “Hail Columbia!” over the din.
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Lincoln had not fared well in the first encounter and he knew it. Party leaders were disappointed. “I thought Douglas had the best of it,” said Theodore Parker. “He questioned Mr. Lincoln on the great matters of slavery and put the most radical questions, which go to the heart of the question, before the people. Mr. Lincoln did not meet the issue. He made a technical evasion. They were the vital questions, pertinent to the issue, and Lincoln dodged them. That is not the way to fight the battle of freedom.”
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