Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate

Douglas delivered his opening campaign speech from the balcony of the Tremont House in Chicago on July 9. Lincoln was present since he was in Chicago for the opening session of the U.S. District Court. Douglas defended his role in the Lecompton imbroglio, explained the Dred Scott decision, and expounded popular sovereignty as sacred principle. He attacked the Danites for attempting an unholy alliance with the Republicans, but his strongest fire was saved for connecting Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech with radical abolitionism. A Republican might write that Douglas’s speech was “just a piece of pettifogging as we might expect from him,” but the speech was generally well received.

The following week Douglas spoke in Springfield. There he cavalierly dismissed the charge that he was part of a conspiracy to obtain a second Dred Scott decision. Lincoln was not present at the time but spoke in Springfield the next day.

But it was not the debates themselves that eroded Douglas’s position. Many southerners regarded the dispute between Douglas and [President James] Buchanan as a personal feud rather than a question of principle, and they admired the scrappy nature of Douglas’s attacks on Lincoln. In the opinion of one of his biographers, even in 1859-60 Douglas offered more to the South than did any other leader who had a chance in his own section. Mainly, what Douglas could offer was the prospect of further southward expansion, where the climate might have been more hospitable to the spread of slavery. What eventually doomed Douglas’s national appeal was the natural outgrowth of his opposition to Lecompton, which raised the question of whether popular sovereignty truly could be a neutral principle.

The fifth debate took place in Galesburg, three weeks after the Charleston meeting. In the mid-1850s, Galesburg was a central hub of Illinois abolitionism. Settled by immigrants between 1840 and the early 1850s, it was a solid bastion of Republicanism. It also produced the highest attendance, between fifteen and twenty thousand. Douglas opened the debate, and, although he brought up Lincoln’s Charleston proclamations against racial equality as a way to embarrass his challenger, he and Lincoln both addressed issues of principle rather than personality. Perhaps they thought that the voters of Knox County expected an intelligent discussion; perhaps they thought that their earlier positions were now vulnerable; perhaps the first four debates had exhausted the foreplay. In any case, beginning in Galesburg, the debates took on a new tone, with candidates addressing matters of principle. It was in the debate that Lincoln syllogistically “deduced” a second Dred Scott decision and foreshadowed his moral argument against slavery. For his part, Douglas strongly articulated the principle of local community self-determination and crystallized his view of Lecompton, the English bill, and the relationship between Buchanan and the Republicans. The last item received special attention, perhaps because the local postmaster had been ousted in a patronage feud.

The third debate was held in Jonesboro, in the southern tip of the state, the region known as “Egypt.” It was Democratic country but also the area of [President James] Buchanan’s greatest strength. This region had the most homogeneous population, and the greatest aversion to Negroes, of the state. There were few Republican votes to be had; [John C.] Freemont had received but 3.8 percent of the country’s total vote in 1856. The debate had the smallest audience of the series, and the preparations were the crudest…Though few votes were changed in Jonesboro, both candidates gained from the debate: Lincoln demonstrated his underlying consistency and probed the logic of popular sovereignty; Douglas was able to compete successfully with Buchanan for the allegiance of the Negrophobes of southern Illinois. Moreover, the debates began to move past repetition of the same arguments and toward more thorough probing of their foundations.

At its conclusion, Lincoln rose to say that he would return to speak the following night. His speech, though forthright, was defensive. He denied any Republican alliance with Buchaneers, denied that Republicans opposed popular sovereignty as properly understood, and explained his view in the “House Divided” speech. He then forecast several arguments that he would use later, in the debates – the allegation that slavery did not seem to Douglas to be a moral issue, the observation that Douglas was inconsistent with respect to the finality of Supreme Court decisions since he had supported Andrew Jackson’s actions during the Bank War, the denial that he favored racial equality, and the proclamation that Douglas’s views were akin to the divine right of kings.

The first debate was on August 21, at Ottawa. The town was solidly Republican; its congressman was Owen Lovejoy, an abolitionist seeking reelection, and Douglas’s biographer has estimated that Republicans made up two-thirds of the audience. Addressing a hostile audience, Douglas sought common ground, and he did so by isolating Lincoln from the political mainstream. He south to implicate is challenger in the development of an extremist document alleged to be the state Republican platform of 1854. The week before the debate, Douglas had written his friend Charles H. Lanphier to secure information about this platform, and he introduced the matter early in his opening speech, charging Lincoln with conspiracy. Lincoln’s strategy for the debate was not so well formed, and to some extent he appeared to be unduly nervous or defensive. He even concluded his speech with fifteen minutes’ time remaining. The debates began with momentum favoring Douglas. Democratic papers seized on this situation and exaggerated Lincoln’s discomfort.

The debates were both a serious discussion of the issues and a form of communal entertainment. People arrived early, held picnics and parades, and greeted the arrival of their candidate with frenzied enthusiasm. The debates themselves were carefully managed, however. Timekeepers were strict, and audience demonstrations of anger or applause were discouraged lest they consume time allocated to either candidate. The audiences, in general, did remain attentive for three hours of political debate.

Six days after Galesburg, the candidates met again at Quincy, a town in west-central Illinois that at one time had been Douglas’s home district. Adams County was regarded as “Democratic, though not overwhelmingly so.” Located in the disputed central Illinois area, it was a crucial battleground for both sides, and both saw reasonable prospects of victory. There was not much evolution of arguments between Galesburg and Quincy, although Lincoln was more explicit in his delineation of the moral issue. The campaign was taking a physical toll on Douglas, and the Republican papers gloated over his fatigue.