1858 (23 page)

One of the leaders of that campaign was Buchanan’s long-time friend, Congressman J. Glancy Jones of Pennsylvania, the Democratic whip in the House and the most important leader of the Democratic Party besides the president. Letters from him had a chilling effect on their recipients.
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The theme that Douglas was an abolitionist was reflected in the columns of the Buchanan Democratic newspapers in Illinois. The
Jonesboro Gazette
said Douglas “was slowly sinking into the unfathomable depths of the filthy sea of abolitionism.”
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The National Democrats nominated candidates for each of Illinois’s congressional seats and stumped the state campaigning for their men, derisively labeled “the Danites” by the Douglas Democrats, after Leib’s Danites in Kansas. The stump speakers ripped Douglas apart wherever they went.

Several newspapers reported that, in addition to Lincoln, Douglas was running against “the entire administration…with its vast patronage of hundreds of millions of dollars, with its army of mercenaries and expectants, organized and rallied against [him].” One reporter wrote that Douglas was fighting “the whole Republican Party” by himself.
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The president also gave a warm nod of approval to Illinois National Democrats’ efforts to link up with the Republicans to undermine Douglas; rumors flew that the Lincoln campaign was subsidizing the new Danite newspapers. It was not Lincoln, though, but the White House that was doing so. It was no secret that the leading Republican newspapers were cooperating with the Buchanan supporters to undermine Douglas. By the summer, President Buchanan was determined to see Douglas go down in defeat. “Judge Douglas ought to be stripped of his pretension to be the champion of Popular Sovereignty,” the president wrote Jeremiah Black, who fronted for him in public attacks on the Illinois senator.
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The Republicans were naturally pleased with the feud. “We are glad the fight goes on so bravely and shall herald its progress with much satisfaction,” wrote one editor, certain that the split could only help Lincoln. They were pleased too, as the summer went on, that many newspapers—Republican and Democratic, in-state and across the country—reminded the public that Buchanan was at war with a man who had been responsible for his election as president. An editor for the
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin
wrote, “The State (Illinois) was carried for Mr. Buchanan more through Mr. Douglas’s efforts than through the united efforts of any other half dozen men.”
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Douglas said publicly that these orchestrated and vicious assaults did not bother him, but privately he admitted that they did—and that the heat had been turned up. He wrote one friend, “The hell hounds are on my track.”
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None of the “hell hounds” would stop him, Douglas bellowed to one crowd at the start of the campaign. He told his cheering audience that the White House and the Republicans had entered into “an unholy alliance” and that “I intend to fight that allied army wherever I meet them. I shall deal with these forces just as the Russians dealt with the allies at Sebastopol. The Russians when they fired a broadside at the common enemy did not stop to inquire whether it hit a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a Turk, nor will I stop to inquire, nor shall I hesitate, whether my blows hit the Republican leaders or their [White House] allies.”
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Douglas had the editorial support of the overwhelming majority of the Illinois Democratic newspapers (sixty-five out of seventy) and of dozens of newspapers throughout the nation, North and South. Numerous important public figures, Northern and Southern congressional leaders included, endorsed him.
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Oddly, nowhere was his national support stronger than in the Deep South. The
New Orleans Crescent
’s editor, while acknowledging “the influence of the Administration bitterly arrayed against him,” not only supported his candidacy, but noted that 75 percent of all the Southern newspapers were for him, as were “hundreds of Democratic statesmen of the South.” The reason: Lincoln. The
Crescent
editor wrote, “Lincoln is as dirty, cowardly, and malignant an abolitionist as can be found out of Massachusetts.”
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The support of one eastern newspaper, the
Philadelphia Press
, delighted him. That was John Forney’s paper. The president’s former friend had not only become one of Douglas’s chief press supporters, but an admirer who had urged him to fight the White House all year. “You must not be cast down by these difficulties; upon you the whole heart of our nation reposes; a million men look to you as their leader…”
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And there were powerful Democrats who backed him in the battle with the White House, too. One of the most prominent was Senator John McClernand, who had been cheering Douglas on since February, when, discussing Buchanan, he told him to “Agitate! Rouse the people!…Never before did any political struggle so thoroughly possess and sway the hearts of the masses.”
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Douglas knew, too, that the president was not campaigning just against him, but the entire Illinois Democratic machine. The Illinois state legislature elected its U.S. senator, regardless of the public vote. Douglas could actually lose the election to Lincoln and still be sent back to the Senate by the legislature. There, his polls showed, the Douglas Democrats maintained a slight lead in all the statewide House and Senate races (one newspaper survey put Douglas’s lead in the Illinois Senate at 14–11 and in the House at 40–35). If his fellow Democrats could hold those leads, and his newspapers were certain they could, he could be reelected regardless of what Buchanan accomplished.
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Many in Illinois could not wait until the election, so that Douglas could defeat Lincoln and show up the president at the same time. Wrote one supporter, “Carry the state and by Christmas the hoary-headed old sinner at Washington will be at your feet, a supplicant for mercy.”
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The president’s campaign to denigrate Douglas baffled many Democrats as much as it amazed the Republicans. Douglas was already the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1860. If he lost the election to Lincoln because of the Danites, he would be out of the race for president and there was no one else as popular as the Little Giant to lead the Democratic Party. In fact, if he lost the Senate election in Illinois, no one doubted that Seward, the obvious Republican nominee, would be elected president, much to the consternation of Democratic Southerners—and Buchanan. Why then was the president conducting this campaign against Douglas? The president had nothing to gain beyond personal satisfaction and was risking the unity of the party, the 1860 elections, and all of the federal patronage that came with victory. He was also spending so much time on his feud with Douglas, and similar feuds with others, that he was accomplishing very little as president. The nation was splitting apart even further in 1858 than it had in 1857 over the
Dred Scott
decision, and the president, so tied up in his personal disputes, did little to heal the wounds.

What was wrong with President James Buchanan?

Chapter Eight

No one in Illinois politics could recall a scene like the one that greeted Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas as they arrived in Ottawa for the first of their seven debates in the late morning of August 25, 1858. At eight in the morning, four hours prior to the debate, the streets of the town were congested with men, women, and children in wagons, elegant carriages, two-person buggies, and riders on horseback. Trains arrived regularly, the smoke from their engine stacks visible for miles, and their passengers formed lengthy processions as they emerged from the cars, many unfurling Douglas and Lincoln banners as they left the train depot. Amateur militia regiments marched alongside civilian bands playing festive tunes that had been brought in for the occasion. Cannon salutes were fired throughout the morning, their boom reverberating throughout the town. Peddlers jammed the streets trying to sell their wares. “Vanity Fair never boiled with madder enthusiasm,” wrote one reporter there. “Excited groups of politicians were canvassing and quarreling everywhere…” wrote another.
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Throughout the morning, thousands of people arrived in Ottawa (population 7,000) by train, canal boat, wagon, carriage, buggy, and on horseback. Many had come a day or two earlier. All of the town’s hotels were full and several reporters from eastern newspapers had to sleep on hotel lobby floors, their coats rolled up and used as pillows. The press had never seen anything like it. “The prairies are on fire,” wrote one journalist.
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Douglas disembarked from his private train car in Peru, Illinois, sixteen miles from Ottawa, in early morning on August 25 and stepped into an elegant carriage drawn by four horses. Several miles outside of town he was met by a throng of hundreds of supporters carrying large banners and signs. Douglas appeared as he did for each of the August debate sites, looking as much a theatrical figure as a political candidate. He wore a handsomely cut blue broadcloth suit and, to shade his eyes from the sun, a white, wide-brimmed hat. The Douglas supporters, with their bands, led the Little Giant into the town, where more than ten thousand people jammed the streets and alleyways. The carriage slowed to a crawl as the multitude of people surrounded Douglas, shouting his name.

Lincoln arrived just before noon on a train from Rock Island carrying seventeen cars full of people bound for the historic debate; the railroads had sold debate-excursion tickets at half the normal fare and would for all of the debates. Lincoln was escorted in his own large carriage decked out in freshly cut flowers. In front of him hundreds of well wishers, led by several loud bands, formed a parade that transported him the half mile to the home of the mayor, where he had lunch.
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The public square was so crowded with people that they pushed up against the hastily constructed platform where the debate would take place and reporters covering the event had to shove through the mob to reach it. Thousands filled the streets and many people sat on the roofs of nearby buildings.

The fierce opponents had been personal friends throughout their adult lives; they had dined together often, visited each others’ homes, traveled alongside each other, spoke at rallies together. Prior to her marriage to Lincoln, Mary Todd had been courted by Douglas. Lincoln told one rally, “He and I are about the best friends in the world.” Years later, after Douglas died, Lincoln placed a photo of him in his family album. Douglas added that he had known Lincoln as a friend for twenty-five years and that “I regard him as kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman.”
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