Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 by Michael Burlingame

Author:Michael Burlingame
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2008-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

13

“A David Greater than

the Democratic Goliath”

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

(1858)

In 1860, the radical abolitionist Parker Pillsbury dismissed Lincoln as “the Kentucky clodhopper,” scoffed at his antislavery record, and maintained there was “no essential difference” between him and Stephen A. Douglas.1 In fact, the two Illinois rivals disagreed fundamentally about slavery, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court, racial equality, and American history. Their epic battle in 1858 threw into sharp relief not only those disagreements but also the stark difference in the combatants’ fundamental character. In addition, as some sensed at the time, their debates proved to be a dress rehearsal for the presidential contest two years later. As Herndon accurately predicted, “the Race in Ills for 1858 & 9—for the Senatorial seat … will be hot—energetic—deadly; it will be broader—wider, and deeper in principle than the race in 1856.”2

As the Little Giant and his challenger girded for battle, odds-makers would probably have favored Douglas, though he suffered a few potential handicaps, including the split in his party; the reluctance of some former Whigs to back a Democrat; the increasing population of the northern part of the state, where hostility to slavery was intense; and the hard times produced by the Panic of 1857, which the public blamed on the Democrats. Outweighing those disadvantages were the Little Giant’s obvious strengths: he was much better known than Lincoln; his leadership in the struggle against the Lecompton Constitution had won respect among Illinoisans who had earlier lost faith in him because of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; his forceful personality endeared him to many; his party had long dominated the state’s politics; his appeals to race prejudice resonated in Illinois, one of the most Negrophobic of the Free States; and his skills as a debater were legendary. In addition, the Illinois General Assembly, which would choose the senator, was malapportioned; the heavily Democratic southern counties of the state had more than their fair share of legislative seats, depriving the Republicans of six to ten votes that they would have had if a reapportionment had been undertaken based on the most recent census. The twenty-five-member state senate contained Democratic holdovers from some districts that now had Republican majorities.

Lincoln acknowledged that Douglas’s eminence benefited the Democrats. “Senator Douglas is of world wide renown,” he observed. “All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as a certainty, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, landoffices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargeships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.” Hoping for such patronage rewards, these politicos “rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions.” Lincoln, on the other hand, had no such support: “nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor lean, lank, face, nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.

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