The American Pageant: A History of the Republic

The fanatical figure of John Brown now stalked upon the Kansas battlefield. Spare, gray-bearded, iron-willed, and narrowly ignorant, he was dedicated to the abolitionist cause. The power of his glittering gray eyes was such, so he claimed, that his stare could force a dog or cat to slink out of a room. Becoming involved in dubious dealings, including horse stealing, he moved to Kansas from Ohio with a part of his large family. Brooding the recent attack on Lawrence, Old Brown of Osawatomie led a band of his followers to Pottawatomie Creek, in May 1856. There they literally hacked to pieces five surprised men, allegedly proslaveryites. This fiendish butchery, clearly the product of a deranged mind, besmirched the free-soil cause and brought vicious retaliation from the proslavery forces. Civil war in Kansas, which thus flared forth in 1856, continued intermittently until it merged with the large-scale Civil War of 1861-1865. Altogether, the Kansas conflict destroyed millions of dollars' worth of property, paralyzed agriculture in certain areas, and cost scores of lives.

Lincoln, as Republican nominee for the Senate seat, boldly challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. This was a rash act, because the stumpy senator was probably the nation's most devastating debater.

At first glance the two contestants seemed ill matched. The well-groomed and polished Douglas, with stocky figure and bullish voice, presented a striking contrast to the lanky Lincoln, with his baggy clothes and unshined shoes. Moreover, "Old Abe," as he was called in both affection and derision, had a piercing, high-pitched voice and was often ill at ease when he began to speak.

The most famous debate came at Freeport, Illinois, where Lincoln narly impaled his opponent on the horns of a dilemma. Suppose, he queried, the people of a territory should vote slavery down? The Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision had decreed that they could not. Who would pervail, the Court or the people?...His [Douglas'] reply to Lincoln became known as the "Freeport Doctrine." No matter how the Supreme Court ruled, Douglas argued, slavery would stay down if the people voted it down.

The 'Little Giant's' [Douglas] loyalty to popular sovereignty, which still had a powerful appeal in Illinois, probably was decisive. Senators were then chosen by state legislatures; and in the general election that followed the debates, more pro-Douglas members weree elected than pro-Lincoln. Yet thanks to inequitable apportionment, the districts carried by Douglas supporters represented a smaller population than those carried by Lincoln supporters. 'Honest Abe' thus won a clear moral victory.

Lincoln possibly was playing for larger stakes than just the senatorship. Although defeated, he had shambled into the national limelight in company with the most prominent northern politicians. Newspapers in the East published detailed accounts of the debates, and Lincoln began to emerge as a potential Republican nominee for president.

So savage was this 'Man-stealing Law' [Fugitive Slave Act] that it touched off an explosive chain reaction in the North.  Many Shocked moderates, hitherto passive, were driven into the swelling ranks of the antislaveryites.  When a runaway slave from Virginia was captured in Boston in 1854, he had to be removed from the city under heavy federal guard through streets lined with sullen Yankees and shadowed by black-draped buildings festooned with flags flying upside dow.  One prominent Bostonian who witnessed this grim spectacle wrote that 'we went to bed one night old-fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs and waked up stark mad Abolitionists.'

Even more disagreeable to the South was the loss of runaway slaves many of whom were assisted north by the Underground Railroad. It consisted of an informal chain of ‘stations' (anti-slavery homes), through which scores of ‘passengers' (runaway slaves) were spirited by ‘conductors' (usually white and black abolitionists) from the slave states to the free-soil sanctuary of Canada.

The most amazing of these ‘conductors' was an illiterate runaway slave from Maryland, fearless Harriet Tubman. During nineteen forays into the South, she rescued more than three hundred slaves, including her aged parents, and deservedly earned the title ‘Moses.' Lively imaginations later exaggerated the role of the Underground Railroad and its ‘station masters,' but its existence was a fact.

“Estimates indicate that the South in 1850 was losing perhaps 1,000 runaways a year, out of its total of some 4 million slaves. In fact, more blacks probably gained their freedom by self-purchase or voluntary emancipation than ever escaped. But the principle weighed heavily with the slavemasters. They rested their argument on the Constitution, which protected slavery, and on the laws of Congress, which provided for slave-catching. ‘Although the loss of property is felt,' said a southern senator, ‘the loss of honor is felt still more.'