97% 7L63 
 
 Hertz, Emanuel 
 
 How Abraham Lincoln immor- 
 talized the Freeport Debate 
 
LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
IMMORTALIZED THE 
 
 FREEPORT DEBATE 
 
 By 
 EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/howabrahamlincolOOhert 
 
This statue, the gift of W. T. Rawleigh, teas designed by 
 
 Leonard Crunelle, sculptor; unveiled August 21, 1929, at 
 
 Freeport, III. 
 
C4 f-K^JL 
 
 HOW ABRAHAM LINCOLN IMMORTALIZED 
 THE FREEPORT DEBATE 
 
 By EMANUEL HERTZ 
 
 In the great mass of Lincoln literature which is daily 
 coming from the presses, either in book form 01 magazine 
 articles, we note a tendency of author and speaker to state with 
 a great deal of certainty what Lincoln would have done were 
 he here today. Especially is this the case in our national and 
 state legislative bodies, where present day statesmen do not 
 hesitate in the least to annex Lincoln to their chariot and 
 announce the fact that they are not only his spokesmen, but 
 are carrying on his unfinished work, and that if Lincoln were 
 alive he would do and say just what they are doing and 
 advocating. In this way Lincoln is made to sponsor plans 
 and theories, ideas and platforms of government such as he 
 never dreamed of. He is held up by these, his self-con- 
 stituted followers, who use him to protect their theories and 
 legislative programs as the silent sponsor of their ideas; so 
 that criticism of them and their schemes is made to be criti- 
 cism of Lincoln and his ideas of government. 
 
 The moment they are satisfied that a reform ought to be 
 inaugurated, if it is complied with, a pious announcement 
 follows that Lincoln, were he here, would do just that. They 
 have taken good care to procure the scantiest information 
 about his life and his struggles, for an intimate knowledge of 
 
his words and deeds might silence their pretensions. They 
 have as little knowledge of him as they have consideration 
 for those who differ with them and who dislike their favorite 
 schemes. 
 
 It has become the fashion, particularly at the anniversaries 
 of Lincoln's great decisions and performances, for these spuri- 
 ous Lincolns to appear and impose their nostrums and propa- 
 ganda upon the people who come to hear something about 
 Lincoln — an opportunity which they would never have if they, 
 themselves, were the announced features and attractions of 
 these particular occasions. And so these functions, instead 
 of affording the opportunity of spreading the simple gospel, 
 the lucid philosophy of life of the great American, are be- 
 clouded with the passing heresies of these ephemeral mes- 
 siahs and the simple minded are thus led to believe, some at 
 least, that these men speak by the authority of Lincoln's creed 
 and Lincoln's beliefs, or that they have something in com- 
 mon with Lincoln. Fortunately, it is but the uninitiated and 
 unthinking who are thus imposed upon, but their number is 
 great and the result is unfortunate. 
 
 To those who know Lincoln, these outpourings of these 
 self-satisfied egotists mean absolutely nothing. Lincoln did 
 not speak that way. They know him not. Do you ever hear 
 any of them say: "I have not sufficiently considered the ques- 
 tion to be able to answer at this time" as Lincoln did here 
 seventy-one years ago? So unlike Douglas is Lincoln during 
 the great debate, and this horde of spurious Lincofns are ever 
 ready to answer all questions promptly the moment they have 
 the opportunity afforded them. 
 
 But even at this late day Douglas must be segregated from 
 
these modern pseudo Lincolns; for when Douglas at Freeport 
 replied to Abraham Lincoln's second question he seemed to 
 have become sobered for the moment. He saw an honest man 
 before him who had a mission for which no sacrifice was too 
 great. He was confronted with the embodiment of truth — 
 truth, the seal of God. And this man spoke like the mes- 
 senger of God. 
 
 Did Douglas see the 'mene mene tekel upharsun' on the 
 wall? Did he inwardly reproach his friend (for they were 
 friends) and neighbor, Abraham Lincoln, for extorting the 
 reply and with it the great sacrifice as the price of the 
 Senatorship, the most outstanding Pyrrhic victory of the first 
 seventy- five years in American politics? 
 
 Did he, then, see that the Presidential nomination of a united 
 democracy was lost to him forever? Did anyone at Freeport 
 on the 27th day of August, 1858, see what was happening, 
 as Douglas was answering the second question as a result of 
 which a nation was then and there saved from impending 
 disruption and destruction? 
 
 Did anyone in Freeport on August 27th, 1929, seventy-one 
 years after — anyone of the fifteen thousand visitors — think of 
 that? It was not even hinted at by the protagonists of the 
 celebration, or by those who spoke by their grace. Surely, 
 Freeport has not forgotten all else excepting only the day? 
 
 Let us try and visualize the great shaft of light which was 
 trained upon that spot, when Lincoln struck the rock with his 
 rod of steel and produced the sparks which electrified a 
 nation shrouded in the clouds of uncertainty and in the night 
 of despondency and despair. Let us hark back these seventy- 
 one years and see him rise, and in the presence of the largest 
 
audience assembled up to that time make his great renuncia- 
 tion for the time being, in order to gain the glory and oppor- 
 tunity of saving the nation. 
 
 It was just six days after the monster meeting at Ottawa 
 where Douglas made his almost regal entry and opened the 
 first debate. The Republicans were seriously considering as 
 to whether Lincoln was the man to have been successfully 
 pitted against Stephen A. Douglas. The debate at Ottawa con- 
 cluded, and Lincoln was still among the living in spite of 
 predictions that he could not appear at the second joint de- 
 bate. And if you read the utterances in the press you almost 
 believe it. Lincoln at Freeport was prepared to take hold of 
 the leadership and to direct the remaining six debates as he 
 had mapped them out from the moment the challenge was 
 accepted. He had heard and read every important utterance 
 by Douglas up to that moment. At Ottawa he heard Douglas' 
 whole case restated in an hour. He never added much after 
 that — stripped of the replies made necessary by Lincoln's 
 argument, by Lincoln's questions, by Lincoln's replies, by 
 Lincoln's new material, Lincoln's sustaining and defending 
 Trumbull, Lincoln's charges of forgery of a spurious plat- 
 form, Lincoln's charges of destroying the Missouri Compro- 
 mise with the passage of the Douglas Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
 Lincoln's charging the plotting of a new additional and sup- 
 plemental and enlarged Dred Scott decision, including "State" 
 as well as territory — answering these charges kept Douglas 
 busy for the remaining six debates and he never had the 
 chance of launching an additional attack on Lincoln except- 
 ing only during the last closing half hour at Alton, as he 
 undoubtedly intended to do from the beginning. For Douglas 
 
was to be the aggressor now as he was ever accustomed to be. 
 He knew no restraining tactics. 
 
 Let us see. Douglas opens in a grandiloquent oratorical 
 effort of an hour — the best of all his addresses during the 
 debates, for Lincoln sits mute and listens. He concludes with 
 an attempt to make Lincoln dance to his music, so to say. 
 Douglas thunders at Lincoln: 
 
 "I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln today stands, as he 
 did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the 
 Fugitive Slave Law. 
 
 "I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged today 
 as he did in 1854 against the admission of any more Slave 
 States into the Union, even if the people want them. 
 
 "I want to know whether he stands pledged against the 
 admission of a new State into the Union with such a consti- 
 tution as the people of that State may see fit to make. 
 
 "I want to know whether he stands today pledged to the 
 abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. 
 
 "I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the 
 prohibition of the slave trade between the different states. 
 
 "I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit 
 slavery in all the territories of the United States, North as 
 well as South of the Missouri Compromise line. 
 
 "I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the 
 acquisition of any more territory unless slavery is prohibited 
 therein. 
 
 "I ask Abraham Lincoln to answer these questions in order 
 that when I trot him down to lower Egypt, I may put the 
 same questions to him." 
 
Douglas had evidently carefully thought out his method of 
 conducting the debate. It was the same method which proved 
 successful in the United States Senate. It was his well-known 
 method which had served him so remarkably on the stump 
 for nearly a quarter of a century, so why not now with 
 Abraham Lincoln? 
 
 And thus Douglas thought he had Lincoln tied hand and 
 foot. He thought he would keep Lincoln busy during his 
 hour and a half answering the seven questions he had pro- 
 pounded, by answering and explaining or denying the charges 
 he (Douglas) had made, both against Lincoln and Trumbull 
 and the whole Republican Party, without giving Lincoln a 
 chance to have his audience hear what Lincoln had to say 
 for his candidacy. Douglas did not want Lincoln to deliver his 
 well-prepared opening address. Another man might have 
 fallen into the trap and so filled up his hour and a half at- 
 tempting quickly to answer these questions. In the replying 
 one-half hour of Douglas, the "little giant" would have con- 
 cluded his job and would have left Lincoln sufficient material 
 to occupy his opening at Freeport without making any prog- 
 ress himself, only to be again overwhelmed with Douglas' 
 charges, criticisms and questions in his one and a half hour 
 at Freeport, which Lincoln could not have coped with in his 
 half hour on that day. But that was not Lincoln's method. 
 He could not thus be swept off his moorings. Lincoln's cause 
 was just, and so thrice armed was he when he faced Douglas 
 at Ottawa. 
 
 What actually did happen when Lincoln heard Douglas' 
 opening address at Ottawa was that he had fathomed his 
 opponent's plan, completely envisaged his purposes and his 
 
 10 
 
arguments, which he made and would continue to make if 
 he, Lincoln, would permit him. Douglas never rose above 
 his first performance, his initial speech at Ottawa, for there 
 he spoke freely, fluently, looking down upon his victim whom 
 he thought he could crush by his superior ability as a rough 
 and tumble debater, as he did all in the Senate who stood in 
 his way. And then he was still even-tempered, confident 
 that Lincoln would not be able to develop and be at his 
 best owing to a slower, though surer, method of reasoning 
 which he had adopted and for which he was well known. 
 Lincoln was never in a hurry. Douglas was accustomed to 
 rush his opponents and storm their breastworks before they 
 knew what he was after. A great many never had the oppor- 
 tunity to reply adequately to Douglas. He was through be- 
 fore they realized what was transpiring. He had accom- 
 plished by speed what others could not by solid argument. 
 His very career was a marvel of speedy climbing from one 
 to the other rung of the ladder of fame and preferment. He 
 had literally "mounted on eagle's wings with never a let 
 down, never a halt," — State Attorney, member of the Illi- 
 nois Legislature, Judge of the Illinois Supreme Court, Con- 
 gressman and United States Senator at thirty-six — no other 
 man excepting only Clay had ever achieved such success. 
 Douglas alone, almost immediately after his first arrival in 
 the Senate, rose to leadership of that body and of the Demo- 
 cratic Party in the nation, as no other man had before him — 
 prominent candidate for President in 1852, almost nominated 
 in 1856, sure of the nomination in I860 and of election if the 
 storm could be delayed long enough to have him receive the 
 nomination. 
 
 11 
 
And what a remarkable man he really was. He knew no 
 fear. He defies the President and the whole Administration 
 with the same fearlessness as he destroys the Missouri Com- 
 promise, the most hallowed bulwark of all parties up to that 
 time. The leaders of the South follow him as they did all 
 Southern leaders beginning with Jefferson and Madison and 
 Jackson down to John C. Calhoun. And here he is on the 
 final lap in a victorious march from penury to political prim- 
 acy and to the Presidency, which he is sure to attain if he 
 but wins this Senatorial election needed to insure his nomina- 
 tion for the Presidency two years later. No other name has 
 appeared upon the horizon. Douglas alone holds the center 
 of the stage. He is known throughout the land — even 
 Greeley and Crittenden are swept into his camp. They both 
 advocate his election to the Senate. It will be an easy matter, 
 he thinks, to laugh this curious, if not grotesque, candidate 
 from the boards — whether in his heart of hearts he knew bet- 
 ter, we may only surmise. But he certainly acts in Ottawa 
 as he opens as though nothing and no one would stand in 
 his way — surely not Lincoln. 
 
 But what happened at Ottawa after Douglas concluded? 
 Lincoln starts as he always does and did — calmly and quietly, 
 somewhat nervously at first (he always needs a few moments 
 for mental lubrication) before the mission of the hour takes 
 complete possession of him. He talks to the audience and 
 to the nation, as he did at Cooper Union two years later, un- 
 concerned and unaffected by what Douglas said, unconcerned 
 by the effort of being forced by Douglas into sidetracking his 
 line of thought and his program for the discussion, unaffected 
 by the attempt of Douglas to frighten him into doing as 
 
 12 
 
Douglas wanted him to do and plunge into a hand-to-hand 
 struggle with Douglas and answer his questions at once. 
 
 No, Lincoln had a plan of his own of reaching the voters 
 of Illinois and of the nation. If Douglas had a preliminary 
 statement or platform at Ottawa, so did Lincoln have one, 
 and Lincoln proceeded to state it, and he had an hour and a 
 half to Douglas' hour to do it in; and that with Lincoln's 
 directness, with his concise habit of speech and his mastery 
 of logic and total lack of circumlocution or repetition, and 
 his thorough preparedness with facts and figures, with essen- 
 tial quotation of all relevant material which was needed for 
 the occasion. 
 
 Douglas listened to an argument, to a platform, to a theory 
 of government, to an analysis of the problem which agitated 
 the whole nation such as he never listened to before. In the 
 Senate he could heckle and confuse and cross-question and 
 browbeat an opponent, most of them old men. Not so here. 
 Lincoln here, like Douglas, had the exclusive right to talk, 
 without interruption, and Douglas never experienced up to 
 that moment, a similar hour and a half of mental shell and 
 shot, of deadly reasoning and argument of an array of fact 
 and a condensed arraignment of himself and of his legislative 
 career, incidentally of the whole Democratic Party, and par- 
 ticularly of the Dred Scott decision, in a withering and mar- 
 velous allegorical arraignment of the Chief Justice of the 
 Supreme Court, two Presidents and Douglas, and of all his 
 finely spun purposes for the future, as he did now. Douglas 
 was in a rage which became more uncontrollable as the 
 speaker concluded without answering the seven questions put 
 to him by Douglas; Lincoln has actually ignored Douglas, 
 
 13 
 
and his questions and his threats. No such thing had ever 
 happened to Douglas before. 
 
 Douglas had a half hour during which he stressed the 
 point ad nauseam, that Lincoln dared not answer, did not 
 answer, would not answer, could not answer the questions, 
 but which he would force him to answer in order to show 
 him up in order to prove that he would not answer in 
 Ottawa o'r Freeport, as he would in Jonesboro and in other 
 parts of the State. It was clearly a half hour wasted on the 
 part of Douglas, during which he could have developed his 
 attack in his opening speech or supplement it by additional 
 argument, which he could not force into an hour, whereas 
 Lincoln had an hour and a half; but no such thing happened. 
 He fumed and he threatened, he grew furious at the charges 
 of conspiracy contained in Lincoln's argument, and instead of 
 getting answers to his questions he found himself repelling 
 and explaining charges contained in Lincoln's argument at 
 the very outset. Lincoln was careful of what he said. Hitt, 
 the reporter, was there, and the debate would be reprinted 
 verbatim and would be read by millions, North as well as 
 South, and so his quotations were there, his clippings were 
 ready, his crucial statements were printed or written out and 
 handed to the reporters. He, Lincoln, would take no chance 
 at being misquoted in newspapers, most of them hostile, 
 which went out of their way to misquote and misrepresent, 
 and which were read with almost religious zeal by friend and 
 foe alike. And so while Douglas' performances may have 
 been both more successful as oratorical or theatrical achieve- 
 ments before this comparatively small audience as compared 
 
 14 
 
with a whole nation of readers, as compared with the unseen 
 hearers throughout the land — and Douglas had a glorious 
 voice and a splendid personality on the platform, far better 
 in every respect than Lincoln as a rule, for Lincoln had his 
 great moments — witness his lost speech delivered some years 
 before — the report in cold type the next morning in 'The 
 Chicago Tribune' was a revelation. Lincoln had scored from 
 every standpoint. His hour and a half statement of the case, 
 of the subject matter, could not be improved upon. It left 
 Douglas in the air. His questions ignored, his statement 
 shown to be impossible, his manner inferior and in sharp 
 contrast with the dignity of Lincoln's apology for the life of 
 the Union, his irate half hour's reply — the most perfect 
 demonstration that he had met not only his equal but his 
 Waterloo; if this was to be an index of Lincoln in joint de- 
 bate — Douglas found at last an opponent who did not fear 
 him, an opponent who was thoroughly acquainted with every 
 word he said, who knew his record from a thorough study of 
 his published speeches, and who could demolish a false argu- 
 ment, an inaccurate statement, detect an incomplete or in- 
 accurate quotation, better than any other man living. 
 
 All these things Douglas probably suspected, but now he 
 saw, as he had feared, that Lincoln was more dangerous than 
 the entire Senate and all the Republican leaders combined. 
 And finally, he saw that Lincoln would take no chance of 
 either answering questions or asking them without mature 
 consideration and without reducing such mental dynamite to 
 writing. 
 
 Lincoln must read his answers to questions which had been 
 printed in the press, in order to avoid inaccuracy or with- 
 
 15 
 
drawal or modification of statements or charges that he was 
 unfair or incorrect in his statement, and Lincoln would cer- 
 tainly not ask any question, or rather the great question with- 
 out writing it down and reading it to his antagonist, so that 
 his antagonist would and could not equivocate or straddle the 
 clear-cut inquiry — the answer to which would forever put an 
 end to his Presidential aspirations. 
 
 So Lincoln used part of the intervening six days between 
 the meetings of Ottawa and Freeport, to prepare the answers 
 to Douglas' seven questions and to frame his four questions; 
 of course he, like Douglas, spent a good deal of time address- 
 ing audiences in towns along the road from Ottawa to Free- 
 port. No battle was ever harder fought than this fight 
 for the Senate in Illinois in 1858. 
 
 Between Ottawa and Freeport, Lincoln was most concerned 
 with the correct report of the first debate. Hitt did his duty 
 nobly. The debate was properly reported and Lincoln had a 
 printed copy of the two addresses of Douglas' and of his own 
 when they reached Freeport. It evidently never occurred to 
 Douglas how this Ottawa speech would compare in print with 
 that of Lincoln's first address. 
 
 At Freeport Lincoln had the opening address and spoke for 
 an hour. Oh, what an important hour, what a fateful hour, 
 both for himself and, especially, for Douglas. If Douglas 
 dreamed that Lincoln was afraid to answer his questions, he 
 was soon to be disillusioned. But it is hardly possible that 
 Douglas expected Lincoln to go through the six joint debates 
 remaining without answering the questions propounded by 
 Douglas. If he did, he had not long to wait until Lincoln, 
 with lawyer-like precision, drew from his papers the seven 
 
 16 
 
questions asked by Douglas and as printed in the 'Chicago 
 Tribune' — questions which had now been read by the entire 
 country. He proceeded to answer them, at first categorically, 
 briefly and as completely, as precisely as only Lincoln could. 
 But he was not going to rest on a short categorical answer. 
 He now proceeded to answer them fully and clearly so that 
 all — not only logician and controversialist could understand, 
 but what was of far more importance — that all the voters in 
 the land could read and understand. It was an amazingly 
 thorough job, a splendid demonstration of what Lincoln, at 
 his best, was capable of performing. The questions Douglas 
 asked were not only completely answered, honestly answered, 
 generously amplified after the brief answers, but the ques- 
 tioner, Douglas, was permanently placed in second place by 
 his neighbor and hitherto politically unsuccessful friend and 
 antagonist. 
 
 And as though this feat alone were not sufficient, this hold- 
 ing at bay the man who never knew defeat, this leader — the 
 foremost man of his time in political life — he, Lincoln, the 
 obscure, the humble, the shy, proceeded to propound four 
 questions. He would 'bring forward a new installment when 
 he would get them ready' — the honest answer to one of them 
 alone would for all time make an end of Douglas in politics, 
 both State and National. 
 
 How little Lincoln feared Douglas can be seen from the 
 new method which he adopted when he said that there was 
 only one way he could account for Douglas' conduct about 
 using spurious resolutions — never passed at Springfield or at 
 any convention or at any public meeting at which Lincoln was 
 present; but let Lincoln speak for himself: 
 
 17 
 
"I can only account for his having done so upon the sup- 
 position that that evil genius, which has attended him 
 through life, giving to him apparent astonishing prosperity, 
 such as to lead many good men to doubt there being any 
 advantage in virtue over vice, I can say I can only account for 
 it on the supposition that the evil genius has at last made up 
 his mind to forsake him." 
 
 This certainly does not indicate that Lincoln had the 
 remotest fear or trepidation about the result of the debate — 
 and its effect upon the nationwide audience. He reads the 
 questions and answers as though he was an old hand at it, 
 as though he had been debating all his life, as though he had 
 been trained by twenty years of service in the Cabinet, in the 
 House, or in the Senate. As though Lincoln had not done 
 enough damage to Douglas and his cause, he points out 
 Douglas' recklessness of utterances, his inaccuracy in stating 
 facts, both as to the Kane County resolutions and as to the 
 treatment of Senator Chase attempting to amend the Kansas- 
 Nebraska Bill when it was under discussion in the Senate. 
 Here, for the second time, we see that by Lincoln's splendid 
 strategy Douglas is forced to fill up his hour and a half first 
 with Lincoln's four questions, and then commenting upon and 
 criticising Lincoln's method of replying and Lincoln's replies 
 to the seven Ottawa questions. Here he did not follow 
 Lincoln's method of studying the questions and carefully pre- 
 paring replies, for this is not the method or manner of the 
 brilliant Douglas. He evidently feared the comment of the 
 papers or of the hearers in the audience — that he was not 
 prepared to answer Lincoln's questions promptly, and he 
 made a great point of Lincoln's failure to answer promptly 
 
 18 
 
or that he feared to answer them now and wait till the next 
 debate, especially as the debate at Jonesboro was almost three 
 weeks off. The stars in their very courses seemed to be fight- 
 ing for Lincoln. 
 
 Douglas, it was clear, must answer now or never; and 
 he proceeds to answer, particularly the fateful second ques- 
 tion — "Can the people of a United States Territory, in any 
 lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United 
 States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation 
 of a State constitution?" — a question loaded with sufficient 
 explosives to blow to eternity not only all of Douglas' hopes 
 and ambitions of a lifetime, but of the whole Democratic 
 Party and slave power alike. 
 
 Douglas proceeds to answer, and does answer, with a sneer 
 and a bravado such as no other man under similar circum- 
 stances could assume, as follows: 
 
 "I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer 
 a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my 
 opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, ex- 
 clude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a 
 State constitution. * * * It matters not what way the Supreme 
 Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question 
 whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under 
 the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to intro- 
 duce or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery 
 cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported 
 by local police regulations * * * established by the local 
 legislature. * * * Hence no matter what the decision of the 
 Supreme Court may be on the abstract question, still the right 
 
 19 
 
of the people to make a Slave Territory or a Free Territory is 
 perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill." 
 
 Here he ignores the Dred Scott decision — the sheet anchor 
 of the South and of the slave power — attempting to please 
 Illinois and the North, but stabbing the entire South in its 
 most vital parts. He must win the Senatorship, at least, or he 
 is hopelessly eliminated for the next two yeras. He still 
 had hope of pacifying the South by his marvelous personality, 
 by his wonderful presence on the platform. He would re- 
 establish himself as he had so often done before. Douglas 
 could have adopted no other course, could have made no 
 other answer and survive, and Lincoln knew all that. Douglas 
 concludes by saying, "I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer 
 satisfactory on that point." Ah, what pathos in that com- 
 ment, what a strange fatality has begun to pursue him, the 
 hitherto invincible "little giant." 
 
 Nothing that happened in Lincoln's uneventful life up to 
 this moment, was more satisfactory to him than this answer. 
 Lincoln was indeed satisfied. Here was the undisputed leader 
 of, up to that time, an undivided and invincible party — com- 
 mitting political suicide in answering Lincoln's question — a 
 question which Lincoln had been entreated by every leader of 
 the Republican Party not to ask, even as they asked him to 
 omit his "house divided" paragraph on a former occasion. 
 The board of strategy beginning with Judd down to Medill 
 were unanimous as to both propostions — they were looking 
 for the Senatorship which the split of Douglas and his friends 
 with the Buchanan administration made possible. Why throw 
 it away for the sake of a phrase or a question? Lincoln, 
 
 20 
 
however, did ask the now famous second question, and did 
 use the "house divided" paragraph. 
 
 The first, answered by Douglas, destroyed Douglas. The 
 second, when uttered, destroyed the slave power as it brought 
 before the nation the spokesman, the leader, the guide, who 
 understood more clearly than any other living American what 
 was ailing the Union — and spoke in a tone and in a style 
 and in a voice which clearly showed up this hateful institu- 
 tion which had been hiding its ugly head behind compromise 
 and chicanery and political subterfuge from the day of the 
 great Declaration to this very moment. This same problem 
 almost literally killed and destroyed the great leaders of three 
 generations and now it laid low the "little giant," one of the 
 ablest and keenest minds in the arena of our national politics. 
 
 Yes, Lincoln had good reason to be satisfied with the 
 answer thus wrung from the unwilling and proud Douglas. 
 With the answers thus uttered to Lincoln's famous four ques- 
 tions, he launched into an onslaught upon Lincoln's answers. 
 They were inadequate, they were insincere, they were avoid- 
 ing the issue. He (Lincoln) actually says that he could not 
 state what he would do about slave trade between the States, 
 as he had had no opportunity* to study the question, and 
 hence could make no honest reply. Was ever a similar state- 
 ment made by another candidate? Was not he, Douglas, 
 ready to answer all questions? And on the spot? here ring- 
 ing in his sarcasms about Lincoln's "spot resolutions." Why 
 was Lincoln dodging? 
 
 And then, further infuriated with Lincoln's charges about 
 the Kane County resolutions and Chase's proposed amend- 
 ment to the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in the Senate — he prac- 
 
 21 
 
tically used himself up during his hour and a half and did 
 not add anything new to what he had said before. He found 
 himself actually enmeshed in Lincoln's scheme of things. He, 
 Douglas, actually closed the door to the Presidency, and there 
 was Lincoln ready in his half hour to give him enough ma- 
 terial to keep him busy at Jonesboro three weeks hence, as he 
 was to open with an hour's talk after he had succeeded in 
 trotting Lincoln down to Egypt, where he proposed to im- 
 pale him upon the inconsistency of his statements in the 
 North and in the South of Illinois. And all this happened in 
 and during Douglas' address in Freeport. 
 
 In his half-hour reply in Freeport, Lincoln could well afford 
 to be humorous and condescendingly good-natured. There 
 was not much he had to fear from Douglas henceforth, and 
 besides he calls to his aid the published speeches of the first 
 debate and declines to waste time on repetition of answers 
 which, in his opinion, he had adequately made. He rather 
 gently reminds the judge that he has not answered his 
 (Lincoln's) charges. He tells the judge: 
 
 "I have answered my questions fully and honestly. I can- 
 not see how they can be answered more fully." But "will not 
 the judge be a little more explicit about his speech in the 
 Senate about the editor of the Washington Union?" For here 
 Lincoln quotes the Judge's speech in the Senate of March 22, 
 1858, which he happens to have handy, and offers some of 
 these pamphlets and clippings to Douglas, so that the reports 
 of the second debate will re-enforce those of the first, with 
 Lincoln clearly the victor and in such a position from which 
 no human power can dislodge him. There is nothing Douglas 
 can add to embarrass Lincoln in the remaining five debates. 
 
 22 
 
He had already referred to Lincoln's record on the Mexican 
 War and on the "Spot Resolutions." Douglas had shot his 
 bolt and gained nothing. Lincoln had propounded his ques- 
 tions. The answers made by Douglas ruined his chances of 
 ever receiving the support of the South, up to that time in- 
 dispensible to Democratic success in all Presidential elections, 
 especially the coming election of I860. 
 
 It little matters what was said in the remaining debates. 
 Douglas became more incensed with every succeeding session, 
 using up his voice until in Alton it was worn to tatters, while 
 Lincoln proceeded in the same manner as he began — unmoved 
 by the excitement and the irritation of his angry opponent. 
 Lincoln added something to his stature on each occasion. He 
 began at Jonesboro to change the whole trend of the debate 
 by taking Douglas at his word and readily coming to the de- 
 fense of Lyman Trumbull, thus using up Douglas for another 
 session. (Judah P. Benjamin charged Douglas with incon- 
 sistency and evasion in his debates with Lincoln — referred to 
 his Jonestoro address as "nonsense" and Douglas expected so 
 much from his performance at Jonesboro.) 
 
 Lincoln rose to his greatest moral flight at Galesburg and 
 concluded at Quincy and at Alton. By that time the whole 
 country knew that a leader had arisen who knew more about 
 the ailment of the Union than any other man, and he of all 
 men was best qualified to bring about a solution and a cure. 
 If you read and arrange every question and charge made by 
 Douglas in all his addresses during the debates, you will find 
 a complete reply or explanation by Lincoln of every important 
 phase of the debate. Nothing remained to which Douglas 
 could point as avoided or unanswered by Lincoln. You but 
 
 23 
 
need examine Lincoln's notebook of the debates, as arranged 
 by himself, pasting in the newspaper clippings and correcting 
 them, and now in the possession of Oliver R. Barrett, and you 
 can easily follow his method of juxtaposition of all material 
 charges and replies, and of seeing that nothing of importance 
 is neglected by him, and that every phase of the discussion is 
 adequately set forth and explained. 
 
 And all this had its beginnings years before the joint de- 
 bates. Lincoln had wrestled with this problem in the watches 
 of the nights for twenty years. But the campaign for its final 
 decision began and became possible at Freeport, Illinois, on 
 August 27, 1858, the moment Douglas made answer to 
 Lincoln's second question, and concluded with the hope that 
 "Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory." Lincoln did 
 deem it satisfactory. Lincoln's friends did not, and plainly 
 said so. Anyone could have foreseen, said they, the reply 
 Douglas was forced to make to attain the re-election to the 
 Senate. And Lincoln would have no one to blame but him- 
 self if he was beaten. If Lincoln made any reply at all to 
 these warnings and criticisms, he must have made the answer 
 attributed to him, that his eyes were upon the campaign of 
 I860: "I am after bigger game. The battle of I860 is 
 worth a hundred of this." 
 
 This, as all other momentous decisions in his life, was 
 made by Lincoln alone, uninfluenced by other minds or other 
 men. He, and he alone, assumed the responsibility. Had he 
 not asked the question and had he not thus disqualified 
 Douglas for I860 — Lincoln might have been elected United 
 States Senator — a not altogether foregone conclusion. But 
 had he been so elected, in I860, during the convention which 
 
 24 
 
sought a nominee for the Presidency, he would have been in 
 the Senate during those momentous two years preceding, 
 1859 and I860, when the Senate destroyed more reputations, 
 ended more careers, than any previous session of that body, 
 and the Senate has been known as the graveyard of many an 
 ambitious statesman throughout its entire history. Senators 
 do talk and will talk, with nothing to stop them, very fre- 
 quently talking too much. Lincoln's honesty and outspoken- 
 ness alone would have supplied insuperable handicaps to his 
 candidacy, for Lincoln would not have been a silent Senator. 
 He certainly was not a silent Congressman during his one 
 term in the House. So Douglas returned to the Senate, a 
 discredited man, immediately supplanted on that most im- 
 portant Senate Committee on Territories by Jefferson Davis, 
 up to that time his staunch follower, and he was to hear more 
 and more about his apostacy to the platform of the slave 
 power during the two years which followed. 
 
 Senator Benjamin of Louisiana, one of the great lawyers 
 and statesmen of the day, often called "the brains of the 
 Confederacy," pronounced the final judgment upon him in 
 the following manner, referring more especially to Lincoln's 
 declarations at Freeport in reply to the questions asked by 
 Douglas, regarding his position on the slavery question: 
 
 "In that contest, the candidates for the Senate * * * went 
 before the people. They agreed to discuss the issues, they 
 put questions to each other, for answer, and I must say here, 
 for I must be just to all, that I have been surprised in the 
 examination that I have made of this discussion between Mr. 
 Lincoln and Mr. Douglas * * * to find that Mr. Lincoln is a 
 far more conservative man * * * than I had supposed him 
 
 25 
 
to be. There was no dodging on his part. It is impossible 
 not to admire the perfect candor and frankness with which 
 his answers are given — no equivocation, no evasion." 
 
 How far he had lost his hold with the Southern leaders is 
 evidenced by this excoriation by Benjamin: 
 
 "I have been obliged to pluck down my idol from his place 
 on high, and to refuse him any more support or confidence as 
 a member of the Democratic Party. His adversary stood 
 upon principle and was beaten, and lo! he is a candidate of a 
 mighty party for the Presidency of the United States. One 
 stood on principle — was defeated. Today, where stands he? 
 The other faltered — received the prize, but today where 
 stands he? He is a fallen star; we have separated from him." 
 
 The Freeport debate therefore remains the high water mark 
 of the struggle between slavery and freedom, between right 
 and wrong, with the remaining debates as a commentary of 
 and upon the doctrines of Abraham Lincoln which led him, 
 after a dull and dreary life of preparation, into the place of 
 power when he could re-cement and preserve what the found- 
 ers had called into being. 
 
 How unfair, therefore, for anyone to transform an anni- 
 versary of this kind, at the very point and on the very spot 
 where the miracle of the ages was enacted which preserved 
 our great heritage, and tolerate that any other minor and 
 comparatively unimportant issue should be raised in order to 
 confuse or befog or obscure, even for the moment, the great 
 work which Lincoln wrought here. How unfair for anyone 
 to dissipate even for a moment, the great traditions which 
 belong here, to interrupt the recital of the deeds of Lincoln 
 
 26 
 
on this sacred spot, by something that is as fleeting as the 
 wind and as unimportant in this day as were the unimportant 
 causes which kept the leaders of his day at odds, while the 
 national home and the Constitution itself were ablaze. 
 
 Freeport owes too much to Lincoln to honor another man 
 or celebrate another event on this momentous day — hear such 
 men during the remaining days of the year. Lincoln made its 
 name immortal even as did the Magna Charta-Runymede ; 
 and Luther, the portals of the Church at Augsburg; and the 
 Declaration of Independence, Independence Hall in Philadel- 
 phia. Let, therefore, on each succeeding anniversary, the 
 people of Freeport gather and repeat the story of the great 
 debate within its borders, on whose wings you ascended to 
 glory. Let Lincoln lovers and students and authors gather 
 from every corner of this land and speak and write the epic 
 which had its rise on this hallowed spot, and let no spurious 
 Lincoln be permitted to distract the thoughts of your fellow- 
 countrymen from the great event which transpired here, and 
 from that great form, which first became visible here, to the 
 gaze of an expectant nation watching and praying for a 
 leader in the hour of her great adversity. Your children must 
 hear that unvarnished tale from the patriarchs who heard 
 him here, "who were here in 1858" — call the roll, let each 
 one answer, to the end that they may carry the torch un- 
 extinguished to the goal, and transmit the torch still burning 
 to those who follow, in order to insure for all time that 
 "under God" Lincoln's government of the people shall not 
 fail and shall endure forever. 
 
 27 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOIS-URBANA 
 
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