A T)4 UBF;ABY OF CONGRESS 1 (V Hill niii ".-■•■- ^-f.r) 011932 820 2 \ pH8^ E 457 .4 .04 Copy 1 ADDRESS BY Hon. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW, LL.D. At the Celebration of the Thirty-eighth Anniversary of the Debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, .it GALESBURG. ILLINOIS, OCTOBER 7, ADDRESS AT THE Celebration of the Thirty-eighth Anniversary of the Debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, at Gales- burg, Illinois, October 7th, 1896. BY. CT-IAriNCKY M. DEPEW. Abrahani Lincoln was not an accident, but a de- velopment. He did not leap into leadership at a bound, but earned the position by laborious prepara- tion and frequent demonstrations of supreme ability. It is only thirty years since the country was shocked as never before by his assassination, and yet to the vast majority of the American people he is already a legendary character, and the human elements which endeared him to his generation are forgotten. We have made history so rapidly in the last quarter of a century that even the thrilling events of the civil war can no longer conjure votes or move audiences. Memorial day, which was once a period of passion and sorrow, is now a popular picnic and children's holiday. To understand the significance of the meeting here thirty-eight years ago between Lincoln and Douglas, we must recreate the conditions under which they fought, revive the questions which caused parties to rush from partisanship to rebellion, and reincar- nate the combatants on this famous field. The ap- parent contest was the statehood of Kansas, but both the orators and the people knew that the tremen- dous issue was between freedom and slavery, the dis- solution of the Union or its perpetuity. The founders of the Republic regarded slavery as an institution destined to ultimate extinction. Wash- ington and Jefferson and their slave-holding asso- ciates saw with grave apprehension the perils of its continuance and the incompatibility of its growth with free institutions. Under normal conditions, it would have gradually disappeared with the moral pressure of the liberty-loving sentiment and the in- dustrial superiority of free labor. It is easy to be virtuous when it costs little, and much easier when it is advantageous. Greed and conscience have been battling ever for the mastery. That conscience wins in the end is a tribute to the better elements of human nature, and that interest can blind and sophistry mislead for generations teaches humility and distrust of ourselves. The politics of the United States and the destiny of millions of human beings were suddenly changed by a piece of mechanism. Whitney invented the cotton gin, slave labor became enormously profitable, and slavery grew to be the most aggressive power in the country. It was popular at the time of the formation of the Con- stitution to pass the ordinance of 1787 by which was consecrated forever to freedom the territory comprising the states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, but thirty-three years afterwards, in 1820, Missouri had to be surrendered to slavery to save the Union. All the intelligence, the capital, the business energy, and the political power of one-half the Union had con- centrated and created the most audacious and for- midable political force ever known in representative government. It had one purpose — the protection and extension of slavery. It aimed to control the govern- ment and dominate parties. It was the power within both of the great organizations into which the people were divided. It selected its leaders with wonder- ful ability and served them with unswerving loyalty. It made or crushed careers as Northern statesmen were obedient to its commands. It had no gratitude for past favors, and as mercilessly discarded its ser- vile friends who had become unpopular at home be- cause of their servility, as it destroyed those who temporized with its interests upon either principle or policy. The conscience of the non-slaveholding popu- lation was slowly awakening, but moving tentatively and timidly under dread of trade disturbances and threats of the dissolution oi the Union. The compromise of 1820, by declaring all of the new territory north of parallel 36.30 free and all south slave, and admitting Missouri, which was north, as a slave state, was hailed by those who loved both union and liberty as the gain of a large area for free- dom. It was really the recognition by law of slavery in the territories, the gain of a state and its Sena- tors by the slave power, and leaving the Northern territory for a fresh attack when the time came for its settlement. For slavery, founded upon the greatest of wrongs, can respect neither rights nor compacts. Yet there existed a passionate devotion to peace and union, and the compromise of 1820 was gratefully accepted. The abolition sentiment, inflamed by the arrogance and aggressive action of the slave power, was constantly winniiig converts and demanding Congressional action in the territories and the District of Columbia. The crisis, as always, with the threat of secession behind it, became acute, and was once more tided over by the compromises of 1850. By these measures slavery se- cured national recognition of the institution at the capital and the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law, but the Union saved was regarded by the vast majority as well worth this sacrifice of honor, morality, and liberty. Upon this altar was burned the proudest reputa- tion and mightiest treasure of intellect and character the country possessed. There are many paths to the Presidency, but the Southern leaders could confidently say to every ambitious statesman : No matter what your views on other questions, no man has reached the White House in a generation except by the Southern road. The anti-slavery people turned to Daniel Web- ster for leadership. They expected from him a mighty effort. His historical reply to Hayne had estab- lished the right and power of the Nation to protect its life and liberties. No speech in the records of rep- resentative government ever had such immediate and permanent influence in shaping the institutions and destinies of a country. The glowing periods and patriotic interpretation of the Constitution, declaimed from the platforms of schools and academies by suc- ceeding generations, educated and inspired the passion for nationality, the Union, and the flag, which put two millions of citizens in arms, and placed the Republic upon enduring foundations at Appomattox. Webster's seventh of March speech aroused and embittered the 5 anti-slavery feeling as nothing before had done. This supreme intelligence had made Massachusetts first and most'honorcd among American commonwealths by his immortal apostrophe to her, when, with infinite majesty and pathos, he called the attention of the Senators and the people to her proud position. Now, tempted by the^prize of the Presidency, he said to her: "Massa- chusetts must conquer her prejudices." " They have been created by the din and roar and rub-a-dub of abolition press and abolition lecturers beaten every month and every day and every hour." More in sorrow than in anger — but with impressive dignity and power — Massachusetts answered: "What you con- temptuously term prejudices are the eternal principles of righteousness and justice, taught and enforced by none so eloquently and ably as yourself. Massachusetts reveres your past and mourns your present." The Convention of 1852 met to nominate a President. Webster's speech had been of incalculable service to the South in carrying its measures through Congress, but it had destroyed his availability with the North. He was defeated, and the greatest statesman of the century died of disappointment and mortification. Webster's recusancy aroused the colleges and the pul- pits and gave tremendous impetus to the anti-slavery party. His example, illustrating so conspicuously that the Northern man who lost popularity at home by service to slavery would be rejected by the slave power for more available recruits, opened the eyes of the most morally dense ambitious to the merciless and heartless purposes of the oligarchy. The war with Mexico had added an enormous area of territory to the national domain. From it new states were to be soon created by constantly increasing immi- gration and settlement. The North, absorbed in diversi- fied industries and material development, paid little heed to the future, but the South, recognizing the growing hostility to its institutions, formed the plan of a per- manent balance of power. This was to be accom- plished by admitting no free state, unless one which recognized slavery came in at the same time. Then, with the Senate equally divided between free and slave states, slavery would be forever safe from hostile legislation. To accomplish this the Missouri compro- mise must be repealed. It is difficult for us at this distance to realize the reverence with which this com- pact was regarded. It was in the popular mind and imagination the sacred guarantee of the Union, and the dedication of the new territory to free institu- tions, free labor, and free states. It had been placed, with the Declaration of Independence and the Con- stitution of the United States, among the inviolable charters and agreements upon which rested the peace and perpetuity of the Republic. Every great and honored name of a generation of the most distin- guished statesmen of both parties was committed to its maintenance. No politician could hope to retain Northern support who favored its repeal, or hold Southern favor, unless he labored for its abrogation. The Northern leader who carried through the repeal, and it could only be carried by a Northern leader, had the fate of Webster and scores of lesser men before him. He would be repudiated by one side and aban- doned as no longer useful by the other. The South grew daily more threatening, and the North more sensitive. To the man who could bridge this chasm, and fool the North as it had been so often successfully hoodwinked before, and satisfy the alert and clear- purposed South, the presidency was certain. Stephen A. Douglas, a statesman of infinite resources, cour- age and ambition, undertook the task. The North might be cajoled by promises and an apparently fair prospect for freedom — the South cared nothing for phrases or pleadings, so long as its object was se- cured. This skillful necromancer sought by an artful juggle of words to satisfy both sides. He adroitly put the Abolitionists of the North and the fire-eaters of the South in the category of disunionists, and then bid for that conservative support which always con- trols in great crises. " We have outgrown the line of 36° 30''," he cried. " The e.xpansion and limitless pos- sibilities of our country have made this limit obsolete. The government of the states which will come into the Union from the new territory, and the continental career, which is our destiny, must be settled upon a broad and enduring principle. Let the people of all sections go as they list with their property, whether chattels or slaves, into the territories, and when the period of statehood arrives they can decide by bal- lot whether they will recognize or exclude slavery, or they may determine the question in the territorial legislatures. This leaves the matter with the people, and recognizes the very basis of popular govern- ment." Under the name of squatter sovereignty this remedy captivated the public mind, and Douglas be- came the central figure in American politics. Governments are mainly the result of successive compromises. But there are questions which cannot be compromised. Whenever truth has formed a com- pact with a lie, the lie has secured all the advan- tages. Honesty can be tainted and destroyed by fraud, but cannot work with it. Lord Mansfield's famous decision rendered four years before our Dec- laration of Independence, " that the state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being in- troduced on any reasoning, moral or political, but only positive law. It is so odious that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law," revealed the moral sense and enlightened judgment of the world. It rang through all the colonies of Great Britain, and found sententious expression in the words of the Declaration of Independence, that " all men are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- piness." The compromises of 1820, of 1850, and of Douglas, were recognitions by positive law of an institution so odious that it was condemned by every moral and political principle. With each compromise it gained strength and power, until it was nearly prepared for a life and death struggle with Liberty and Union. The specious scheme of Douglas started a race be- tween the free and slave state people to capture Kansas. Bold raiders from Missouri poured over the border carrying murder and pillage among the free state set- tlers. Governor after governor was appointed and dis- missed by Presidents Pierce ajjd Buchanan because he would not assist the slave-holding minority in driving out of the territory the vast majority who were opposed to slavery. Civil war with all its horrors raged on the plains of Kansas, and Henry Ward Beecher, then a religious and political force of unparalleled power, set the north aflame by hotly informing the domestic mis- 9 sions that what Kansas and liberty wanted was not Bibles, but rifles. The novel of Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and circu- lated and read beyond any book ever published in the country filled every household with tears and horror, intensifying the sentiment against slavery more than the press or the pulpit, or the mobbing and murder of Abolitionists. The slave power, intrenched in the White House and Senate, the House of Representatives and the courts, controlling the machinery of the Democratic party and largely of the Whig party, and repeatedly and recently sustained in the elections, felt confident that extreme measures for securing Kansas could be safely pushed. With the whole strength of the Administration behind the conspirators, the Lecompton Constitution fastening slavery on the new state was fraudulently adopted against the protest, clearly and emphatically expressed, of four-fifths of the voters and sent to Congress for approval. Douglas, alone, of the Democratic leaders, felt the force of the rising tide of popular indignation and awakening conscience. Against the threats and opposition of the President and the Southern Senators he opposed the endorse- ment of the Lecompton Constitution, broke from his party organization, and demanded that under every safeguard for a fair election the Constitution should be submitted to the people of Kansas. He stood boldly by his principle of squatter sovereignty and rallied the masses of the Democratic party of the North. While Douglas had satisfied the North with the doctrine that the verdict of the people upon their state government should prevail, he had appeased the South 10 with the understanding that the whole question was subject to the decision of the courts. The pro-slav-ery leaders who never took a step in the dark knew that a decision in an unnoticed case before the Supreme Court would be decided in their favor. Douglas was hailed by the Northern wing of the party as its savior, and rode triumphantly as the " Little Giant " upon the wave of popular approval, when the Dred Scott decision demolished his beautiful fabric of squatter sovereignty and a less resourceful or weaker man would have been buried in its ruins. Dred Scott, a slave, had been carried by his master into the free state of Illinois, and also into the territory where slavery was prohibited by the ordinance of 1787. The master was for years a resident of these places. Dred Scott married there and had two daughters. Moving subsequently into Missouri himself and family were re-enslaved. He claimed that if the master took his slave into a free state voluntarily and made that his residence the slave became free by opera- tion of law, and demanded the release of himself and family. The English courts from Mansfield's time had so decided and such had been the uniform course of American decisions, with the modification that the owner had a right of transit through a free state to another slave state. The case had been for several years in the courts without attracting any attention. With ten thousand free and two thousand slave state voters, and the demand of Douglas for a fair election on this question becoming too formidable to be resisted, Kansas seemed speedily destined to join the Union free, and the "Little Giant" to be the hero of the hour. Suddenly the country was amazed and shocked by the opinion of Chief Justice Taney, concurred in by the II four judges from the slave states. Not only were all previous decisions reversed and Dred Scott, his wife, and daughters, condemned to slavery, but the court de- cided that property in slaves was recognized by the Constitution, that neither Congress, nor the people of the territories had the power to prohibit it, that the negro was excepted from the Declaration of Independ- ence, was property as sacred as any other form of legal possession, and had no rights which a white man was bound to respect. Such were the political conditions when Douglas entered the lists for re-election to the Senate from Illinois. President Buchanan and his administration ctnd all the influence of the Southern leaders were arrayed against him. But the Democracy of Illinois loyally supported him, and John J. Crittenden, the leader of the Southern Whigs, with Horace Greeley, the leader of the anti-slavery forces in the North, and many other men of commanding influence favored his election on the ground that it would hopelessly divide the Democratic party and force Douglas to go with the anti-slavery party. The contest became a national issue of the first importance and an overwhelming vic- tory and triumphal re-entry into the Senate seemed sure for Douglas. One man blocked the way, and with such tremendous force and superb ability that his efibrt consolidated the free sentiment of the country, abolished slavery and saved the Union. That man was Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln and Douglas were rivals in youth for the hand of the lady who married the former, and contestants in after years for the United States Senate and the Presidency. Douglas had been for more than 12 a decade without a peer on the platform in Illinois, and Lincoln, after years of effort, had come to be recog- nized as the only orator who could be safely pitted against him. Douglas possessed national fame, while Lincoln had only a state reputation. I heard Horace Greeley, who knew better than any one the intellectual powers of the politicians of his time, say that though many men could excel Douglas in a single speech, he had no equal in the country in a debate prolonged for days or weeks. He could so misstate and then demolish his adversary's position that it was next to impossible to make clear to an audience wherein lay the falsehood. He had the faculty of extricating him- self from an apparently hopeless dilemma with an auda- city and adroitness which won the applause of his hearers. He intuitively saw the weak point of his opponent and rushed to the attack with resistless boldness and energy. His unscrupulousness and untruthfulness, which would have destroyed other speakers, made him the most dangerous of debaters. When he had the right on his side he marshalled the forces of truth with such surprising skill and logical power that his friends proudly named him the Little Giant. Lincoln had humor and pathos and Douglas pos- sessed neither. Lincoln's faculty of being at once at home with his audience in the easy familiarity which makes them both friendly and receptive was the genius of popular oratory. But w^ith these elements he had a singularly lucid power of statement and v/as master of logic. Unlike Douglas, he was weak unless he knew he was right. His whole nature must be stirred with the justice of his cause for him to rise above the commonplace. But once convinced that 13 he was battling for right and truth and he was irre- sistible. He became logical, epigrammatic and elo- quent. Convincing as was his speech to those who listened, it was more powerful when read in cold type. Douglas was born in Vermont. He had all the advantages of its splendid school system, and improved them by an academic education. His boyhood and youth were nurtured and taught by precept and ex- ample in a New England home- cherishing, church- going and liberty-loving community. He moved west to teach school, acquire his profession, and begin his career with no other hardships than those which are essential in America to train and inure ambition for success in the battle of life. By birth, associations and early influences he should have been opposed to slavery, but he became its most efficient defender, ally and friend. He lacked moral nature and perception. Lincoln was born in a slave state. His father, from repeated failures, had lost courage and sunk into the condition of the poor white in ante-bellum days. He lived in a log cabin with a single room, and his companions were the rough, coarse and ignorant chil- dren of the neighborhood. He grew to manhood wearing the skins of animals for his garments, gigan- tic in stature, good-natured, story-telling, protecting the weak against the local bully, and the pride of the settlement for his strength, size, ready wit and un- couth eloquence. The immoral, whiskey-drinking and blasphemous associations of this formative period of his life never tainted or tarnished his pure and lofty soul. His life and experience seem a startling refu- tation of the doctrine of man's total depravity in a state of nature. With his early environment, great 14 gifts and talent for leadership, he was the ideal type from which to select a supporter of slavery. But the Puritan ancestry whose strength and strain had been lost in the Kentucky wilderness of slave-owners and the Indiana forest of slave-holding sympathizers marvel- lously reproduced, in this homely descendant, the traits which carried the Pilgrims from Scroby to Holland and from Holland to Plymouth Rock to worship God according to the dictates of their consciences on the bleak shores of New England and found a government of just and equal laws. Having sailed down the Mississippi, as a flatboatman, to Nevv' Orleans, Lincoln was attracted one day to a sale in the slave market. A young girl was put up at auction, and after the usual animal examination and inspection sold. He turned from the scene with horror and registered a mighty oath that come what would he would do his best to destroy an institution under which such crimes against humanity were possible. He had made little mark in the Legislature, but was gaining reputation as a stump speaker. His service in Congress was distinguished by always voting for the Wilmot proviso to prohibit slavery in the territories acquired from Mexico, opposing the Mexican war, and introducing a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. He spoke in many states in the Presidential canvasses of 1844, 1848 and 1852 for the Whig party, but while his efforts were popular, they were ordinary and perfunctory. It required more than questions of tariff, internal improvements and national banking to touch his big heart and inspire his great mind to supreme effort. He never was at his best unless his sympathies were fully enlisted. This long training on IS the platform had given him the technical skill for wonderful work when once his soul and intellect were harmoniously aroused for justice and liberty. Immediately upon the repeal of the Missouri com- promise in 1854, Lincoln, who had retired from politics, re-entered the arena to form a party to fight slavery strictly within the lines of the Constitution. He saw from the weakness of the Abolitionists that this was the only successful way of curbing its extension and ultimately extinguishing it. He was instru- mental in calling a state convention at Bloomington, May 29, 1856, of Free Soil Whigs, Democrats opposed to the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and Abolitionists. Lincoln was the leader of the Free Soil Whigs, Owen Lovejoy of the Abolitionists, and General John M. Palmer of the Free Soil Democrats. The speech which thrilled and consolidated the con- vention was made by Lincoln. From it sprang the Republican party of Illinois. This creative effort, which was burned in the mind and memory of every delegate, has long been known as Lincoln's lost speech, because it was not reported. It has recently been reproduced after having been buried for forty years in the notes of a young lawyer who was present. It stirs the blood now like a bugle call for battle. " We have seen this day," he said, " that every shade of popular opinion is represented here, with freedom or rather free soil as the basis. We came to protest against a great wrong, and to take measures to make that wrong right, and the plain way to do this is to restore the Missouri compromise, and to demand and determine that Kansas shall be free. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element in slavery. i6 solemnly declared, ' I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just ; ' while Judge Douglas, with an insignificant move of his hand, ' don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down.' The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle. Slavery is a violation of eternal right. We have temporized with it from the necessities of our condi- tion, but as sure as God reigns and school children read, that black, foul lie can never be consecrated into God's hallowed truth. The conclusion of all this is that we must restore the Missouri compromise. We must highly resolve that Kansas must be free. We must reaffirm the Declaration of Independence ; we must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal that the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution. We must make this a land of liberty in fact as it is in name. But in seeking to attain these results — so indispensable — if the liberty which is our pride and boast shall endure, we will be loyal to the Constitution and to the flag of the Union, and no matter what our grievance and no matter what theirs, we will say to the Southern disunionists, ' We will not go out of the Union and you shall not' " In the Fremont campaign Mr. Lincoln, at the head of the electoral ticket in Illinois, made a canvass so thorough and brilliant as to establish his leadership of the Republican party in the state, and Douglas made repeated visits home and on each occasion delivered a characteristic speech which was soon answered by Lincoln. Now the time had come when he must be returned to the Senate or retired to private life. The situation was intensely dramatic, and claimed the atten- tion of the country. Douglas was feared by all the 17 famous debaters in the Senate. His defiance of Bu- chanan and fight against the Lecompton Constitution had made him the Northern Democratic leader and won for him the admiration and support of multitudes of anti- slavery people. He had brought the compara- tively new state of Illinois to the front rank in the national legislature, and the state was very proud of him. The persecution of the Administration secured' him a hundred friends for every postmaster dismissed. He controlled the machinery of a successful party, and had the prestige and power of an aggressive and tri- umphant organization behind him. Lincoln keenly felt the limitation of local reputation, the responsibil- ity of his position in a national crisis, and the lack of party confidence in the East in his ability for the task. Douglas could both defend positions then generally conceded to be right, and attack principles which were new and alarming in practical politics. When hard pressed he could retreat behind time-honored preju- dices and revered and moss-covered traditions. Lincoln must be always in the open. He had to attack, pull down and build up. He had that most difficult task for an orator to separate wrong from right when they have been so entwined for generations that to attempt to destroy the one and save the other seems to the timid a surgical operation which may be a splendid exhibition of skill, but death to the patient. The cotton-growing South was the home market for the food products and manufactures of the North. The money power and business and social influences of the North were fearful of offending the slave owners. Portions of the press and pulpit of the North were in harmony with that unanimous advocacy of the right i8 and justice of slavery by the press and pulpit of the South, which educated a generation of Southern State men to stake their lives and fortunes for, to them, a sacred cause. There was a superstitious reverence for the Constitution and dread of the dissolution of the Union as infinitely worse than surrender to slavery. Four thousand millions of dollars invested in human beings in the South, and a large portion of the capital of the North engaged in business connected with the slave-holding states, so blinded honest, intelligent and well-meaning people that to them God and mammon were one. No more important council ever gathered than the conclave of friends summoned to Springfield by Lincoln that he might read to them his opening speech. The keynote of it was the famous declaration, " A house divided against itself cannot stand. I be- lieve this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." " I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in due course of ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it for- ward until it shall become alike lawful in all the states — old as well as new, north as well as south." The shrewd politicians about him unanimously opposed his making this statement. They said Douglas would seize upon and use it to arouse the Union sentiment in his favor, and frighten the timid from Lincoln by claiming it to threaten a dissolution of the Union. Lincoln's answer was the first revelation to his advisers and the 19 country of that basic moral element in his nature which ultimately found its full expression in the proclamation of emancipation. He said : " I would rather be de- feated with these expressions in my speech held up and discussed before the people than be victorious without them." Regardless of personal consequences or the danger signals of the hour, he lost the Senatorship and gained the Presidency by illustrating in both speech and action his abiding faith that God reigns. He in- tensely believed that false teachings, inherited preju- dices, party loyalty, and material interests might encrust the national conscience, but that this could be broken by the sledge hammer of truth. He knew that to temporize with error is to strengthen its hold. His prophetic wisdom, far-sighted statesmanship and unquestioning trust in the final judgment of those whom he delighted to call the plain people were con- spicuously confirmed when two millions of citizens an- swered his call and left homes and family and business to give their lives for the Union and the flag. It is always the device of party managers who are corruptly using their power to charge that the reformers who would purify the organization will destroy it. This simply means that they will either rule or ruin ; but the threat deceives multitudes, who cannot see that attacking false leaders is not assailing the party. Tens of thousands of well-meaning men believed that to assail slavery was to endanger the Union. They could not understand that, while the slaveholders were shout- ing patriotically to the anti-slavery forces, " If you do not stop this agitation you will dissolve the Union," they meant " if you do not leave slavery where it is and permit its extension where it is not, we will break up 20 the Republic." It was Lincoln's task to make this clear, and place the responsibility for secession upon those who seceded and for rebellion upon those who rebelled, and he did it with unequaled eloquence and power. Douglas knew the taste and temper of the pre- vailing opinion, and played upon it with consummate skill. He declared the doctrine of a " house divided against itself was a declaration of relentless sectional war," He presented with tremendous force the Union dissolved by this crusade, the people and their insti- tutions buried in common ruin, and peace, prosperity and perpetuity with the Union saved by his prin- ciple of popular sovereignty, enabling the people of the territories to settle the slavery question for them- selves. He inflamed popular prejudice by declaring that the phrase " all men are created equal " in the Declaration of Independence did not refer to negroes, and if Lincoln's contention that it did prevailed, then there would be universal negro equality. One of the most effective devices of the campaign was the wagons loaded with the lovely girls from prairie homes plaintively proclaiming by their banners that they would not marry niggers. Lincoln's answer was memorable and philosophic. Its calm assertion of a principle rose far above the catch-penny artifice of sophistical jugglery. He said : "I do not understand the Declaration of Independence to mean that all men are created equal in all respects. They are not equal in color. But I believe that it does mean to declare that all men are equal in some respects — they are equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pur- suit of happiness." As the great debate proceeded the whole country 21 became the audience. The discussion was rapidly moulding public opinion, promoting patriotism and dis- solving parties. The people were eager students in a national university, with the two most eminent teachers of their time preparing them for the impending crisis. Douglas concentrated his attack upon three positions of Lincoln, " the house divided against itself," which he claimed meant the dissolution of the Union ; the application of the words " all men are created equal" of the Declaration of Independence to blacks as well as whites, which he asserted would result in social equality with the negroes, and Lincoln's protest against the Dred Scott decision, which he construed to be an at- tempt to overthrow or defy the Supreme Court. The Union and the Supreme Court were regarded with patriotic reverence and ardent devotion by practically all the people of the north. Mr. Lincoln's reply on the Supreme Court was as judicious and effective as his defense of the " house divided against itself" idea, and his justification of " all men are created equal " includ ing black men. He held the Constitution to be inviol- able, except as it might be amended by the processes prescribed in that instrument. He admitted that the fugitive slave law was constitutional. He proclaimed his profound respect for tliat great tribunal which had represented so long and with such dignity and wisdom the judicial branch of our federal system. He would resist any attempt to weaken its powers or impair its authority. But believing the Dred Scott decision wrong in law, as well as in morals, and strengthened in that belief because it was rendered by a divided court, he would strive for a rehearing and labor incessantly to so educate the conscience of the people as to secure an 22 amendment to the constitution prohibiting slavery in the territories. Lincoln's battles were always fought strictly within the limits of the constitution and laws as they existed. Law and order never had a more vigorous defender. If the court interpreted the constitution against his judgment and conscience, he would bow to its opinion, but agitate to so amend the charter as to clearly estab- lish liberty in that instrument. The amendments pro- hibiting slavery and guaranteeing civil right to all citizens without regard to creed, color or previous con- dition in life, which were adopted after the civil war, were on the lines and by the methods of Lincoln's con- servative and patriotic way of remedying wrongs and asserting the right. Lincoln's view grew broader and higher. He again summoned his friends and admirers. He submitted to them whether he should ask and compel Douglas to answer the question whether, notwithstanding the Dred Scott decision had declared that slavery was lawful in the territories under the Constitution, " the people of a territory could in any lawful way exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution ?'" This nakedly presented the deadly antagonism between the Dred Scott decision and the " popular sovereignty " of Douglas. Lincoln's friends unanimously advised against it. They knew his answer would be that the decision of the Supreme Court could not enforce itself, and therefore, regardless of it, the people of the terri- tories, by unfriendly legislation and police regulations, could exclude slavery. They said this would satisfy Illinois and re-elect Douglas Senator. Lincoln's answer was again lofty and memorable : " I am after loftier 2.1 game. If Douglas so answers he can never be Presi- dent, and the battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this." Douglas answered as anticipated. The an- swer defeated Lincoln and made Douglas Senator, but it split the Democratic party two years later and drove it from power. It defeated Douglas for the Presidency and carried Lincoln into the White House. Upon this platform, and on this very spot, thirty- eight years ago to-day, stood these intellectual athletes. Neither they, nor the vast audience which enjoyed their thrusts and parries, cheered their effective blows, and were entranced by their eloquence, knew how rapidly they were making history ; how ably they were preparing the most important chapter in the story of the nineteenth century. It was the battle eternally going on, " Often lost, but ever won," between principle and expediency. Lincoln was tall, gaunt, awkward and homely, with a high, penetrating voice, which reached easily the utmost limits of the crowd. Douglas was short, corpulent and dignified, with the grace and courtesy of Senatorial custom and association, and spoke with deep tones and slow enunciation, as if every Avord was weighted with an important argument. Doug- las was the more adroit debater, Lincoln the more cogent reasoner. Douglas could capture the crowd by those courtesies to his opponent behind which he misrepre- sented his position, while Lincoln, untrained to com- pliment, grew resentful and harsh at these successful falsifications. Lincoln could lift his audience by a passionate appeal to their better nature for the slave, for justice and for liberty. Douglas was always the fighter and debater. Lincoln consciously and Douglas 24 unconsciously were preparing the people of the free states for the sacrifices of civil war and the preservation of the national life. It is to the eternal honor and glory of Douglas that when the war broke out the partisan became a patriot and gave to his life-long antagonist, President Lincoln, his unqualified support. For the questions they debated here hundreds of thousands of our countrymen died upon the field of battle. The South fought as Americans can fight for what they believed to be right, and the North fought as Americans can fight for what time has demonstrated was the right. The vow registered by Lincoln, the rough flatboatman of nineteen, at the slave mart in New Orleans, was fulfilled by Lincoln, President of the United States, in the pro- clamation which freed the slaves and m.ade the sentence for freedom in the Declaration of Independ- ence both a sentiment and a fact. Two millions of volunteer soldiers helped him enforce his message to the disunionists in his first speech at the commence- ment of this debate, " We will not go out of the Union and you shall not." The famous controversy over the " House divided against itself," nowhere discussed more bitterly than here on this platform, ended at Appomattox. The house did not fall, but it did become " all free." The new South, the peopled West, the enriched East, and the prosperous North can calmly review the issues which so radically divided them in the past and rever- ently thank God that in the final conflict and its settle- ment the leader of the forces of union and liberty was the great-hearted, broad-souled, wise- brained man of love and charity, Abraham Lincoln. LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS mil nil II 011 932 820 2^ L,BBABV Of CONGRESS peRmalifie«