One Man Great Enough by John C. Waugh

Author:John C. Waugh
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2013-02-24T18:56:56+00:00

22. A House Divided

THE SIREN CALL that was shaking Republican unity was not all that was working against Lincoln.

He was also playing against a stacked apportionment deck. The Democrats, controlling both houses of the legislature, had reshuffled the districts based on a census in 1855 that tilted the balance heavily in their favor. Of this Lincoln said, "We know what a fair apportionment of representation upon that census would give us. We know that it could not if fairly made, fail to give the Republican party from six to ten more members of the Legislature than they can probably get as the law now stands." That meant that "we shall be very hard run to carry the Legislature." And that meant that Lincoln would have a very hard run to win the U.S. Senate seat, no matter how well he fought Douglas in the canvass. "Still, so it is," he sighed; "we have this to contend with."1

Herndon agreed. He wrote his friend Theodore Parker, the noted New England theologian and social reformer: "Had we a fair apportionment in this State we Republicans could beat [Douglas]." But "there are some complications....Our State ticket will be elected without much trouble; but as to Lincoln there may be some doubts." The canvass, he wrote Parker, "opens deep and rich; but we Republicans have a clever villain to combat."2

Lincoln knew, as the canvass approached, that there was yet another disadvantage under which he labored. Lincoln was a full foot taller than the clever villain, but Douglas's political stature was stratospheric. "Senator Douglas is of world wide renown," Lincoln admitted. "All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainty, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States....They rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions." On the contrary, Lincoln said, "nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank, face nobody has ever seen any cabbages were spouting out."3

Douglas was an acknowledged brutal debater. His arsenal bristled with weapons, and few could stand up to them. Lincoln had virtually no national reputation as a debater. He was reputed for his powerful logic, but it was little known outside Illinois and a few neighboring states. But many overlooked the fact that he and Douglas had pounded one another for a quarter century. Each had measured the other's mettle.4

Nevertheless, it was hardly a level playing field. The disadvantages that "Republicans labor under," Lincoln believed, "all, taken together," meant "We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone....we have to fight this battle without many—perhaps without any—of the external aids which are brought to bear against us." 5

Disadvantages or not, the battle between the Little Giant and the lean giant was about to be joined. The path for Lincoln was rocky, and the odds long, but he would bring to it his whole lank body and redoubtable soul.

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