Lincoln: A Photobiography (7 page)

Harriet Beecher Stowe, author
of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

He had been studying the history of the nation, pondering the words and ideals of the Founding Fathers. He believed that the cornerstone of the American experiment in democracy was the Declaration of Independence, which states that "all men are created equal," and that all are entitled to "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Lincoln took this declaration personally. It meant that every poor man's son deserved the opportunities for advancement he had enjoyed. He felt that the Declaration of Independence expressed the highest political truths in history, and that blacks and whites alike were entitled to the rights it spelled out.

Although Lincoln was determined to oppose the spread of slavery, he admitted that he didn't know what to do about those states where slavery was already established, where it was protected by a complex web of state and national laws. "I have no prejudice against the Southern people," he said. "They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up....I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution."

By 1856, open warfare had broken out in Kansas. Antislavery Northerners and proslavery Southerners had both recruited settlers to move into the territory. "Bleeding Kansas" became a battleground of rigged elections, burnings, lynchings, and assassinations as the rival forces fought for control of the territory.

Violence reached even to the floor of Congress. After delivering an impassioned anti-Southern speech on "The Crime Against Kansas/' Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was beaten with a cane and almost killed by Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision that shocked antislavery forces everywhere. In 1857, the court ruled in the
Died Scott
case that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in any of the nation's territories, because that would violate property rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Scott was a slave who sued for his freedom on grounds that his master had twice taken him onto free soil in the North. The court declared that as a black man, Scott was not and never had been a citizen. He was not entitled to the rights spelled out by the Declaration of Independence. Slaves were private property, the court said, and Congress could not pass laws depriving white citizens of "the right of property in a slave."

The
Died Scott
decision was a stunning setback for the opponents of slavery But it also helped mobilize antislavery opinion. Lincoln spent two weeks studying the decision so he could prepare an argument against it. Speaking in Springfield, he pointed to the "plain unmistakable language" of the Declaration of Independence. When its authors declared that all men have equal rights, "This they said, and this they meant," Lincoln argued. He urged respect for the courts, but he added: "We think the
Died Scott
decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this."

By now, Lincoln had become a leading antislavery spokesman in Illinois. And he had switched his political allegiance. Since entering politics he had been a Whig, but the Whigs had not been able to unite in opposition to slavery, and now the party was splin
tered and dying. Thousands of Whigs had gone over to the Republicans, a new party founded in 1854 to oppose the spread of slavery. Lincoln remained loyal to the Whigs until 1856, when he made up his mind to leave his "mummy of a party" and join the Republicans himself.

Charles Sumner, the ardent antislavery senator from Massachusetts.

A newspaper drawing shows Representative Preston Brooks attacking Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor.

He wanted to be in office again so he could influence public policy and this time he was after Stephen Douglas's Senate seat. The two men had been rivals for twenty years now. Douglas had risen to national prominence. He had been a judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, a congressman and a senator, an outstanding leader of the Democratic party. Lincoln's political career had floundered after his solitary term in Congress. "With
me,
the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure," he remarked. "With
him
[Douglas] it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation and is not unknown, even, in foreign lands."

Lincoln had made an unsuccessful bid for the Senate as a Whig, in 1855. As a Republican he tried again, and in 1858 he won his new party's nomination. He launched his campaign on a sweltering lune evening with a rousing speech before twelve hundred shirt-sleeved delegates at the state Republican convention in Springfield.

Where was the nation headed? Lincoln asked them. More than four years had passed since the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, yet agitation over slavery had not ceased. "In my opinion," he sang out, "it
will
not cease, until a
crisis
shall have been reached, and passed.

"A house divided against itself cannot stand.

"I believe 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."

Lincoln warned that the opponents of slavery must stop its westward expansion. They must put slavery back on the "course of ultimate extinction." Otherwise slavery would spread its grip across the entire nation, "till it shall become lawful in
all
the States,
old
as well as
new—North
as well as
South.
"

There could be no fair fight between slavery and freedom, because one was morally wrong and the other morally right. Senator Douglas and the Democrats did not care about the advance of slavery, said Lincoln. The Republicans did care. The issue facing the country was the spread of slavery across the nation and into the future.

Some Republicans felt that the speech was too extreme, too much "ahead of its time." But most of the delegates in Lincoln's audience cheered him on. It was the strongest statement he had ever made about slavery. And it set the stage for his dramatic confrontation with Stephen Douglas.

The campaign between them during the summer of 1858 was to capture the attention of the entire nation. In July, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of public debates. Douglas accepted the challenge, agreeing to seven three-hour debates in small Illinois towns.

At least twelve thousand people were on hand for the first debate at Ottawa on August 21. More than fifteen thousand showed up at Freeport a week later, even though it rained. At every stop, people came from miles around in wagons and buggies, on horseback and on foot, to see and hear the candidates and decide who was the better man. Town squares were festooned with banners and flags. Peddlers hawked Lincoln and Douglas badges, bands played, cannons roared, and marshals on horseback tried to maintain order among huge crowds as the candidates arrived in town.

Douglas traveled in high style, riding from town to town in a private railroad car, sipping brandy and smoking cigars, surrounded by friends and advisors and accompanied by his beautiful wife. Lincoln traveled more modestly as an ordinary passenger on the regular trains. Mary stayed home with Willie and Tad. She heard her husband speak only once, at the final debate in Alton.

With his opponent, Douglas, seated to his right, Lincoln addresses the crowd at Charleston, Illinois, on September 18, 1858. Lincoln and Douglas held seven debates, each lasting three hours. Painting by Robert Marshall Root.

Newspaper reporters trailed the candidates, taking down their speeches in shorthand and telegraphing stories to their newspapers back east. What the debators said in remote Illinois towns could be read the next day in Boston or Atlanta.

The striking contrast between Douglas and Lincoln—The Little Giant and Long Abe, as reporters called them—added color and excitement to the contests. Douglas was Lincoln's opposite in every way. Barely five feet four inches tall, he had a huge round head planted on massive shoulders, a booming voice, and an ag
gressive, self-confident manner. He appeared on the speakers' platform dressed "plantation style"—a navy coat and light trousers, a ruffled shirt, a wide-brimmed felt hat. Lincoln, tall and gangly, seemed plain in his rumpled suit, carrying his notes and speeches in an old carpetbag, sitting on the platform with his bony knees jutting into the air.

Left:
Five feet four—Senator Stephen A. Douglas, nicknamed The Little Giant. His booming voice and confident manner made up for his small stature.
Right:
Six feet four—A. Lincoln, also known as Long Abe or The Tall Sucker. His eventual victory over Douglas earned him another nickname—The Giant Killer.