Reviewed by Patrick Fairbairn
Through the 20th century, the Lincoln-Douglas debates were more admired than read. Today they may not even be read at all. It’s probable many Americans today believe that recent presidential debates are somehow modeled after their famous debates in the Illinois senatorial race of 1858. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Modern political debates are nothing more than highly structured, rehearsed, manipulated television farces by comparison. You’ll need no further proof to persuade you to a similar view than by reading Harold Holzers’ excellent book, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates – the First Complete Unexpurgated text. But if your time is at a premium, I’ve crafted below an analysis of the debates for your enlightenment.
First, the mid 19th century was the great age of oratory. It bears no resemblance whatever to today’s media driven pap of 15 second sound bites, glib advertising slogans, spin doctors, and inarticulate politicians who are lost without their teleprompters and speech writers. Politicians today are cautioned by political advisors not to use quotes, metaphors, or literary references because they will sound too “elitist”. The “dumb down” mentality dominates. 2nd, the politicians. Stump speakers like Lincoln or Douglas could actually speak in long, complex sentences; argue serious issues in compelling, logical, articulate speech without benefit of notes; and write, without assistance, incisive, evocative, metaphorical prose. 3rd, the audiences. Back then they had an attention span beyond one minute This was a time of such public participation in, and wild enthusiasm for, politics and political discussion that it is almost fantastical to read of ordinary citizens who came by foot, barge, boat, buggy, train, or horse, from miles around to stand, mostly, for more than 3 hours, often in sweltering heat, and listen attentively as these two intellectual giants crossed their verbal sabers. This was high drama and grand entertainment compared to the daily grind of life endured by most of these rural folk, and they loved it. Politics at that time was inseparable from community life and your persuasion was easily discerned by the newspaper you read, for each was rigidly political. In Illinois, if you were a Democrat, you read the Chicago Daily Times; if Republican, the Chicago Daily Tribune.
It is hard to imagine two individuals more opposite in appearance and presentation than Lincoln and Douglas. Douglas was 5’4” tall, with a large head, stocky, barrel chested body, and an arrogant, defiant, audacious manner. Lincoln, at 6’4” tall, was lanky and gaunt, and very ungainly in gait and manner. Douglas was sartorially resplendent in a perfectly tailored, finely cut suit; Lincoln wore a dusty Prince Albert suit with sleeves too short for his long arms. Douglas’s voice was loud, self-confident, and melodious, his enunciation clear and distinct; his gestures eloquent and aristocratic. Lincoln’s voice was high pitched, some said “shrill”, and infused with a distinct Kentucky twang and accent. He often used awkward and absurd looking up and down and side to side movements of his body to add emphasis to his arguments. The effect was dramatic but comical. Douglas typically arrived at each debate in a lavishly furnished railroad car, with his wife and a retinue of followers, and with a cannon that was used to punctuate the verbal “hits” he scored on Lincoln during each debate. Lincoln arrived with just a few pals, and had left Mary Todd at home. Another oddity was the partisanship of the crowd. Laughter was frequent, and shouts of “hit him again” were often yelled when one or the other scored a point his followers deemed significant.
Lincoln seemed the very caricature of a country bumpkin, hopelessly outclassed by the aristocratic, polished Douglas, the oratorical champion of the age, and destined for a verbal thumping.. But Douglas knew otherwise. He had debated Lincoln before, in 1854, over the Kansas-Nebraska act which had overturned the Missouri Compromise and opened territories acquired in the Louisiana Purchase to the possibility of slavery. Douglas readily admitted that Lincoln’s droll ways and dry jokes made him the best stump speaker in the West. But what Lincoln lacked in majestic bearing and superior elocution, he more than made up for in dogged preparation, trenchant logic, and sparkling wit.
They engaged in 7 debates spread over a period of 7 weeks, from August 21, 1858 to October 15, 1858 in these Illinois cities: Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, and Alton. Attendance estimates ranged from a low of 1,500 in Jonesboro to a high of 20,000 in Galesburg. The average was about 15,000 very vocal folks at each town. The format never varied. The first speaker spoke for one hour; his opponent for the next 1 ½ hrs; and then the starter finishing up with a half hour. The speaking order was reversed at the next site. They went at each other with biting humor, bitter sarcasms, and hellish fury, and the topic, for the most part, was Slavery. They never discussed any of the other issues of the day, tariffs, land grants, internal improvements, foreign policy, or the growing needs of farm and factory communities. The focal point was always slavery and the union. Neither really offered anything new. They had been arguing their respective positions for years. Their differences were clearly drawn and they argued them redundantly at each site on the debate trail.
Douglas advocated Popular Sovereignty, a doctrine that held that citizens of every new territory had the inherent right to vote up or down whether slavery should be allowed. He called it a right of self-government consistent with the founding fathers philosophy. Lincoln disagreed, derisively calling this “squatter sovereignty”, saying it enabled a small band of early settlers to swarm the territory and institutionalize Slavery long before large numbers of settlers arrived.
Lincoln thought slavery was wrong and repeatedly said so in every debate. “Because we think it is wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it as a wrong. We propose to treat it as any other wrong, insofar as we can prevent it growing any larger, and so that in the run of time there may be some promise of an end of it.” Douglas seized upon this and every similar Lincoln statement to portray Lincoln as a confirmed Abolitionist. This was a calculated tactic since much of the Illinois electorate was not in favor of outright abolition.
Most memorably, they clashed over the wording of the Declaration Of Independence. Lincoln insisted that the inalienable rights phrase applied to every person, black or white. Douglas labeled Lincolns interpretation as a “monstrous heresy”, and said that the founding fathers only meant “white men of European birth and European descent”. Repeatedly, Douglas chided Lincoln as speaking like an Abolitionist in the North and as a preservationist in the South. That his views did not “travel well“.
“My friend Lincoln here finds it extremely difficult to manage a debate in the central part of the state , where there is a mixture of men from the North and the South. In the extreme North he can advocate as bold a radical abolitionism as Garrison has enunciated. But get him down South and he then he claims to be an old line Whig. You find that his creed can’t travel even half the counties of the state. It has to change its colors and its hues, getting lighter and lighter from the extreme North to the extreme South.”
A charge that Lincoln was tailoring his views to make them more palatable to the anti abolitionist residents in Southern Illinois. Lincoln, of course, denied it, emphasizing he wished to restrict the spread of Slavery, not abolish it in the states where it already existed. Lincoln also insisted that the founders wanted to put slavery “in the course of ultimate extinction”, pointing to the provision that the African slave trade be stopped after 20 years and another inhibiting it in the territories held at that time. It was in the final debate that Lincoln delivered his memorable “poor tongues” speech of the wrongness of slavery and his core disagreement with Douglas, and it is worth repeating here. “That is the real issue. An issue that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Douglas and myself shall be silent. These are the two principles that are the eternal struggle between right and wrong. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle, one of them asserting the divine right of kings that says you work, you toil, you earn bread, and I will eat it. It is the same old serpent, whether it come from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his nation, and to live upon the fat of his neighbor, or whether it comes from one race of men as an apology for the enslaving of another race of men”.
The debates are laced with humor, sarcasm, and metaphor by both candidates. Lincoln at one point likened Douglas to a “Cuttle fish” that “has no means of defense but throws out a little black fluid so that its enemies cannot see it”. In another, Lincoln says of a Douglas argument that it is “as thin as the homeopathic soup made from the shadow of a pigeon that has starved to death”. Douglas often refers to Abe as “spotty Lincoln”, a sarcastic attempt to depict Lincoln, when he was a congressman, as having been unpatriotic by not endorsing the declaration of war against Mexico until he could be shown the exact spot where American blood had been shed.
They clashed over the Dred Scott decision, in which slaves were held to be chattel property that could be taken into any territory. Douglas maintained it was a fair and just decision by the highest court in the land and Lincoln should respect it. Lincoln attacked the decision as flawed in fact and faulty in logic, and that the President, the Court, and the Democratic party leadership had conspired in an attempt to nationalize Slavery. He urged that it be overturned.
Douglas blatantly resorted to surly race baiting, insisting that Lincoln believed the Negro to be equal to the white, socially, politically, and intellectually. Lincoln protested, replying with his famous chestnut horse story. “Anything that argues me into this idea of a perfect social and political equality with the Negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse”. Repeatedly, Douglas tries to fit an Abolitionist suit on Lincoln but Lincoln persistently rejects it.
Douglas railed against Lincolns “House Divided” theory as utterly false, saying the government was established by its founders as a mixture of slave and free states and it could continue to exist as such forever if the abolitionists and agitators and black republicans like Lincoln would just let it alone.
Lincoln pointed out that it is the “only issue that still agitates the country. That we will never have any peace upon it. That we have been fussing over it for 40 years in the Missouri Compromise; in the annexation of Texas; in the War with Mexico; in the compromise of 1850 when it was settled forever, or both parties said it was, but forever turned out to be 2 years. I know that at this age of the world we can no more see the end of the slavery agitation than we can see the end of the world itself”. That “we have had peace whenever the institution of slavery remained quiet where it was, and we have had turmoil and difficulty whenever it has made a struggle to spread out where it was not. That is why I say we will have no end to the slavery agitation until it takes one turn or another.” Lincoln went on to ridicule Douglas’s view that slavery is an exceedingly small thing and we ought to quit talking about it by saying “Why , if you will get everybody else to quit talking about it I will quit before you are half done”. And then skewering Douglas with this rejoinder “Now, I ask if it is not a false philosophy and false statesmanship that undertakes to build up a system of caring nothing about a thing that everybody else does care a great deal about!”
Time and again, Lincoln deflects Douglas’s bombast and race baiting with humor, logic, and reason. One observer made the comparison that “on the one hand you had Douglas, a skillful dialectician arguing a wrong and morally weak case, confronting Lincoln, a thoroughly earnest and truthful man, inspired by sound convictions in concert with the true spirit of American institutions.”
The debates make fascinating reading. However, some misguided historians have pointed to some of Lincoln’s remarks in the debates as proof he was a racist. That is nonsense. The debates must be viewed in the context of their times and not the political correctness of today. Only a small percentage of the white population, notably staunch abolitionists, were what we would today call unprejudiced. Lincoln was very moderate for the time and could not have gotten elected President at all if he had been an uncompromising abolitionist.
So who won?
Based on performance and not content, Douglas was the winner. He was more fluent, polished and persuasive. And he played more skillfully to the pro-slavery audience of the day.
Yet his case rests solely on successful argument. An argument that was morally flawed. Clearly, Lincoln emerges the victor on the moral issues. It was he that stood on the moral high ground, and his logical appeals and amusing stories were a good match to Douglas’s impassioned bombast. Further, it is Lincoln’s unforgettable phrases, splendid metaphors, and prophetic appeals that linger in the mind.
And Lincoln was the winner in another sense. The event catapulted him to national attention, especially helped by the book of the published debates that cleaned up his syntax, silenced his twang, and removed his awkward gestures and gawky appearance from public view. The edited transcripts made it appear he more than matched Douglas’ verbal grandiloquence. If that was not factually so, it didn’t matter. It was the perception of him that did. He had engaged the best political orator of the time and came away with the reputation of having given as good as he got. The Republicans had a candidate, a national voice and figure, and they saw in him a hint of greatness to come. In the election for the Senatorial seat for which they were running, Douglas did win that November. But that didn’t really matter either. Lincoln was a man with a future.