Lincoln Part 100

Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850's (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1962), is by far the best a.n.a.lysis of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. My indebtedness to this brilliant book, both for facts and interpretations, is evident throughout this chapter.

For the general background of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 18481861, completed and edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), is invaluable. For a fuller, more descriptive account, see Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 18571859 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950). Kenneth M. Stampp, America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), is a rewarding a.n.a.lysis of the events that led up to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Arthur C. Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 18481870 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), remains the authoritative account of Illinois politics during this period. My discussion of the Dred Scott case has benefited immensely from Don E. Fehrenbacher's Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), a masterful work.

On the debates themselves, Richard Allen Heckman, Lincoln vs. Douglas: The Great Debates Campaign (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1967), is the best general account. No student should neglect the concise and thoughtful articles on each of the debates in Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Abraham Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1982).

Some Lincoln biographers have taken a rather negative view of the debates. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 18091858 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1928), announced (2:635): "Solely on their merits, the debates themselves deserve little notice." J. G. Randall, in Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co, 1945), 1:127, took much the same view. But beginning with Harry V. Jaffa's important Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co, 1959), scholars have treated them as significant and revealing of basic American beliefs. David F. Ericson's chapters on the debates in The Shaping of American Liberalism: The Debates over Ratification, Nullification, and Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), is one of the most original and persuasive statements of this view. David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas, and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), is a masterful a.n.a.lysis of the arguments used by both partic.i.p.ants, on which I have leaned heavily.

My account of Douglas's role in the debates draws primarily on Robert W. Johannsen's authoritative Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), but I have also found useful George Fort Milton, The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1934). The best account of the Democratic party during these years is Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: Macmillan Co, 1948).

There is no wholly reliable text of the debates. Shortly after the debates Lincoln collected the verbatim reports of his speeches, as published in the Chicago Press and Tribune, and those of Douglas that appeared in the Chicago Times, and pasted them in a large sc.r.a.pbook. It is now in the Library of Congress, and a facsimile edition, with a careful introduction by David C. Mearns, has been published with the t.i.tle The Illinois Political Campaign of 1858: A Facsimile of the Printers Copy of His Debates with Senator Stephen Arnold Douglas as Edited and Prepared for Press by Abraham Lincoln (Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1958). In preparing this notebook, Lincoln corrected a few typographical errors in reports of his own remarks but made no alterations in those of Douglas's, believing "it would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his [speeches]" (CW, 3:510). He did delete numerous bracketed pa.s.sages in the newspaper reports indicating laughter and applause from the audience. This sc.r.a.pbook became the basis for the first publication of the debates in book form, Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois (Columbus, Ohio: Follett, Foster & Co, 1860), and that, in turn, provided the text from which most subsequent editions of the debates were drawn. Of these the most useful is Edwin Erie Sparks, ed., The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1908), which is especially valuable because it includes much journalistic description and commentary. Roy P. Basler and the other editors of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), volume 3, went back to Lincoln's sc.r.a.pbook, and this version restored references to cheering and other interruptions, which Lincoln had deleted. In Created Equal? The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), Paul M. Angle followed a similar practice, as did Don E. Fehrenbacher in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, 18321858 (New York: Library of America, 1989).

Recently Harold Holzer has produced a very different version of the texts in The Lincoln-Douglas Debates: The First Complete, Unexpurgated Text (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993). Holzer exactly reversed the procedure followed by Lincoln and presented the Democratic Chicago Times version of what Lincoln said and the Chicago Press and Tribune version of what Douglas said. I am not persuaded that this tactic necessarily gives a more authentic version of what the two speakers said, in part because the reports of the two rival reporting teams may not have been composed entirely independently, chiefly because there is little reason to believe that a hostile reporter is more objective than a friendly one. On the biases and distortions introduced in the Chicago Times reports of Lincoln's remarks, see Michael Burlingame, "Mucilating Douglas and Mutilating Lincoln: How Shorthand Reporters Covered the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858," Lincoln Herald 96 (Spring 1994): 1823. For further thoughtful questions about Holzer's edition, see Douglas L. Wilson, "The Unfinished Text of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates," Journal of the Abraham Lincoln a.s.sociation 15 (Winter 1994): 7084. Nevertheless, Holzer's book, reporting all the digressions, interruptions, and asides, gives a better feel for the debates than any of the other sources; it shows that these encounters were not just a discussion of political philosophy but a restless, roaring, brawling exchange in which the audience was vigorously involved.

In the following pages all quotations from the debates are taken from the accessible and accurate edition edited by Robert W. Johannsen, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), but I have checked every quotation against Holzer's edition, noting variations if they are of any consequence.

196 "my private affairs": CW, 2:395.

197 "in travelling east": Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 50.

197 it was redeemed: Pratt, Personal Finances, pp. 54, 7779.

197 "what she has": See the excellent account of the expansion of the Lincolns' house in Wayne C. Temple, By Square and Compa.s.ses: The Building of Lincoln's Home and Its Saga (Bloomington, Ill: Ashlar Press, 1984), chap. 5.

197 "used to live here": WHH, interview with James Gourley, undated, Lamon MSS, HEH.

198 large and comfortable: Cf. Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 116117.

198 best in Springfield: I learned many of the details of this renovation during a personally conducted tour that Mr. Norman D. h.e.l.lmers, superintendent of the Lincoln Home National Site in Springfield, gave me. Richard S. Hagen, "'What a Pleasant Home Abe Lincoln Has,'" JISHS 48 (Spring 1955): 527, is also valuable. See also the very interesting video doc.u.mentary The Lincolns of Springfield, Illinois (Springfield, Ill: Sangamon State University, 1989).

198 "type of American lady": Katherine B. Menz, "Furnis.h.i.+ngs Plan,... The Lincoln Home," unpublished report to the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1983.

198 "to be noisy": Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 61.

198 Phillips Exeter Academy: John S. Goff, Robert Todd Lincoln: A Man in His Own Right (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1969), pp. 2226.

198 "and other game": Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, & Co., 1885), p. 83. Contrary to rumors that Mary was stingy in feeding her family, recent excavations of the privy and rubbish heap behind the Lincoln home suggest that she used the best cuts of meat, with much pork and chicken-both Southern delicacies. See the fascinating discussion of the Lincolns' diet in Floyd Mansberger, "Archaeological Investigations at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois," report prepared for the National Park Service, 1987, pp. 229274.

199 "you were here": Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln, pp. 4849.

199 "political public opinion": CW, 2:385.

199 of Dred Scott: The following paragraphs closely follow Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case, the definitive account.

200 "in the country": Beveridge, 2:486491.

200 "in some way": CW, 11:13.

200 "be a citizen": CW, 3:298299.

200 the judicial process: George M. Fredrickson, "The Search for Order and Community," in Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Public and the Private Lincoln: Contemporary Perspectives (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), pp. 8698. See also Robert A. Ferguson's admirable essay, "Lincoln: An Epilogue," in his Law and Letters in American Culture (Cambridge, Ma.s.s.: Harvard University Press, 1984), pp. 305317.

200 even the Const.i.tution: In 1852, Lincoln voiced his "unqualified condemnation" of Seward's doctrine that there was a higher law than the Const.i.tution. CW, 2:156.

200 "of the matter": CW, 2:355.