Published October 20, 2019
By Reg Ankrom
There was little
either man could say that the other could not anticipate. Stephen A. Douglas
and Abraham Lincoln had been debating each other for 24 years—from the day they
met in early 1834 at the Illinois State Capitol in Vandalia. The 6’4” Lincoln did
not think much of Douglas, who at 5’4” was a full foot shorter. On his first
sighting of Douglas in the Illinois House chamber, Lincoln nudged a seatmate
and said, “That’s the least man I ever saw.”
Lincoln would not
disparage Douglas again. Twenty-two years later, Lincoln would write, “With me,
the race of ambition has been a failure—a flat failure. With him, it has been
one of splendid success. His name fills the nation and is not unknown in
foreign lands.” Douglas’s political star had risen meteor-like into the
heavens. Lincoln’s had stalled in the Illinois prairie.
Now in 1858, Lincoln
was attempting to wrestle Douglas’s senate seat from him. After the Democratic
Chicago
Times
, partially owned by Douglas, embarrassed Lincoln—the newspaper suggested
Lincoln join a circus to attract his own audiences instead of following Douglas
to take advantage of his, Douglas agreed to debate Lincoln in seven Illinois congressional
districts. Douglas made out the schedule and put the sixth debate in Quincy on October
13. Quincy was Douglas’s turf. He had moved
to the community in March 1841 after being appointed an associate Supreme Court
justice and circuit judge there. The area’s voters in 1843 elected him their
congressman. Re-elected twice, state legislators chose Douglas to become U.S
senator. He had lived in Quincy for seven years.
Debates were not
new to Lincoln and Douglas. What was new was the use they made of the press to
extend the reach of their voices across the country. Over eight nights In
Springfield in 1839, they were two of four Whigs and four Democrats to debate
President Martin Van Buren’s fiscal policy. Douglas, who arranged the speeches,
scheduled himself to speak first and scheduled Lincoln last. Lincoln’s talk was
in the evening after Christmas. As Douglas intended, Lincoln was embarrassed by
his scanty audience. He was, however, every bit as astute as Douglas. Enlisting
the help of the
Sangamo Journal
, his speech stretched across seven
columns of the newspaper’s front page. Local Whigs published the speech in
pamphlet form and distributed it across the state to tout the party’s
presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison. Lincoln was embarrassed once
again. He chaired Harrison’s campaign in Illinois. Harrison won nationally but
lost in Illinois to Van Buren, whose Illinois campaign Douglas chaired.
Like those in most
communities in the 19th century, Quincy’s newspapers lined up behind
political parties. The
Quincy Whig
kept the party’s old name despite its
demise in 1855 and supported the new Republican Party, which replaced it. The
Quincy
Herald
was the democratically oriented newspaper. In the weeks before the
debate, each summoned the faithful to the debate to support their party’s
candidate. Keokuk’s
City Gate
newspaper reported a steamboat had been
arranged to ferry people roundtrip to Quincy for $1.50, supper included. Other
boats brought spectators from Hannibal and other ports along the river
With both party’s
arrangements committees seeking to outdo the other, the
Whig
bragged
that the Republican “ladies, God bless them,” intended to turn out for Lincoln
in a welcoming parade that would include a “number of private carriages, loaded
with the fair (female) freight. . . .”
The
Whig
on
October 11 charged that Douglas had mortgaged some Chicago property for $52,000
to “Fernando Wood, the notorious Tammany Hall politician of New York.” Douglas,
the
Whig
said, was buying crowds to manufacture enthusiasm. Contrasted with that, enthusiasm for Lincoln,
said the
Whig
, “comes spontaneously from the hearts of freemen.”
The
Herald
sought to recover press momentum by pointing out that while Henry Clay was
often credited with the Compromise of 1850, which settled the issue of slavery
in the huge land mass Mexico ceded to the United States after the Mexican War,
it was actually Quincy’s Douglas who won the passage of every bill to achieve
the Compromise of 1850. Clay tried for months but had been unable to do so.
After stops in
Augusta and Camp Point, Douglas was scheduled to arrive in Quincy by train at 9
p.m. October 12, the day before the debate. The
Herald
encouraged
Democrats to meet at the courthouse on the square at 8 p.m., where a procession
would march to the railroad depot near the riverfront “to extend to our
distinguished Senator a hearty and enthusiastic welcome.” The
Whig
that
same day reported that Lincoln would arrive the next morning and detailed the
procession that Chairman Abraham Jonas arranged for him.
On debate day, Lincoln
was introduced at 2:30 p.m. and Douglas at 3:30. At each debate, the sole issue
was slavery. Some historians describe this sixth debate at Quincy as the
nastiest of the seven. Lincoln, they said, took the gloves off. He attacked
Douglas for never saying slavery was immoral or wrong. He also struck out at
his own Republican listeners who did not do so: “If there be any man who does
not believe slavery is wrong. . .that man is misplaced, and ought to leave us.”
Douglas
responded that he could not logically argue whether slavery was right or wrong.
The constitution gave “each state the right to do as it pleases on the subject
of slavery. In Illinois, we have exercised that sovereign right by prohibiting
slavery within our own limits. I approve of that line of policy.”
When
Illinois legislators met on January 5, 1859, to select a U.S. senator, they
voted 54 to 46 for Douglas. Lincoln lost that race, but his anti-slavery
messages of 1858, relayed by the press across the country after 1858, opened
the doors to the White House to him instead of Douglas in 1860.
Sources
“$52,000 for Douglas!”
Quincy Daily Whig,
October 11, 1858, 2.
Reg Ankrom,
Stephen A. Douglas: The Political Apprenticeship,
1833-1843.
Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland
Press, 2015, 4.
Joseph Barrett,
Life
of Abraham Lincoln.
Cincinnati: Moore, Wilstach, and Baldwin, 1864
54.
“The Friends of Hon. Abraham Lincoln.”
Quincy Daily Whig,
October 13, 1858, 3.
“General Stephens repudiates the Stinkfingers.”
Quincy
Daily Herald
, October 15, 1858, 2.
Harold Holzer, ed.,
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The
First Complete, Unexpurgated Text.
New York Harper
Collins, 1993, 277-280.
Holzer,
Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for
Public Opinion.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017,
143.
“Reception of Judge
Douglas in Quincy.”
Quincy Daily Herald,
October 11, 1858, 3.
Tom Reilly, “The Press and the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of
1858.” Institute of Education Sciences,
https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED159708
Saul Sigelschiffer,
The American Conscience: The Drama of
the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
New York: Horizon
Press, 1973, 329, 342, 336.
Edwin Erle Sparks,
The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858.
Springfield:
Illinois State Historical Society, 1908,
391-393.
Joshua Speed,
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln and Notes
of a Visit to California.
Louisville: John P. Morton
and Company, 1884, 24-25.
“The Two Processions.”
Quincy Daily Whig,
October 16, 1858, 2.
