The Lincoln Story Book Part 17

In another place, after Douglas had been galloped to the platform in his carriage and pair, his antagonist was hauled up in a hayrack-wagon drawn by lumbering farm-horses.

THE TRAP TO CATCH A DOUGLAS.

In the course of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the former, among his friends, announced that at the next meeting he would put a "settler"

to his contestant, and "I don't care a continental which way he answers it."

As he did not explain, all awaited the evening's speeches for enlightenment. In the midst of Douglas' "piece," Lincoln begged to be allowed a _leetle_ question. The Lincolnian "leetle questions"

were beginning to be rankling darts.

Formally, the question was: "Can the people of a United States territory, in a lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the foundation of a State const.i.tution?"

In the homely way Lincoln put it, it ran:

"Suppose, _jedge_ (for Judge Douglas) there was a new town or colony, just started in some Western territory; and suppose there was precisely one hundred householders--voters, there--and suppose, jedge, that ninety-nine did not want slavery and the one did. What would be done about it?"

This was the argument about "Free Soil" and "squatter sovereignty"

in a nutsh.e.l.l.

The wily politician strove to avoid the loop, but finally admitted that on American principles the majority must rule. This caused the Charleston Convention of 1860 to split on this point, and Douglas lost all hope of the Presidency.

PRACTISE BEFORE AND BEHIND "THE BAR."

The debate between Douglas and Lincoln, while marked by speeches severe and stately, was interspersed with repartees and innuendoes as might be awaited from former friends and become, by double rivalry, fierce enemies.

The senator did not disdain to stoop to casting back at Lincoln's humble beginning, and taunted him with having kept store and waited _behind the bar_ before waiting before the bar judicial for his turn to practise law. His adversary rose amid the laughter, and rejoined:

"What the jedge (Judge Douglas) has said, gentlemen, is true enough.

I did keep a grocery, and sometimes I did sell whisky; but I remember that in those days Mr. Douglas was one of my best customers for the same. But the difference between us now is that I do not practise behind the bar at present, while Mr. Douglas keeps right on _before_ it."

CONNUBIAL AMITY.

"Mr. Douglas has no more thought of fighting me than fighting his wife."--(Said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, at a rumor that the senator would challenge him for some personality.)

THE MODEL WHISKY-BARREL.

During the Douglas-Lincoln series of debates, the former made a jest counting upon his being President some day. He said that his father was a cooper, yet, with prescience, had not taught him the paternal craft, but made him a _cabinet_-maker. His adherents who counted on office if he won loudly applauded. Douglas was a thick-set, rotund man, whose florid gills revealed that he was a host for boon companions. Lincoln was his ant.i.thesis, as tall, long-drawn, and somber as the cold-water man he was rated. He rose, and at once shot his shaft:

"I was not aware that Mr. Douglas' father was a cooper, but I doubt it not, or that he was a good one. In fact, I am certain that he has made one of the best whisky-casks I have ever seen!"

FIGHTING OUT OF ONE COAT INTO THE OTHER.

"I remember being once much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engaged in a fight, with their greatcoats on, which fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the other! If the two leading parties of to-day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men."--(Letter declining a Jefferson banquet invitation, Springfield, Illinois, April 6, 1859.)

THE PROMISING FACE!

"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face post-offices, land offices, marshals.h.i.+ps and cabinet appointments, charge-s.h.i.+ps and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands.... On the contrary, n.o.body has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face n.o.body has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out."--(Speech by A. Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois, July 17, 1858.)

"A HOUSE DIVIDED CANNOT STAND."

This often-quoted pa.s.sage was uttered in June, 1857, at Springfield, Illinois, during Lincoln's congressional campaign:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this government cannot endure permanently, half-slave and half-free. I do not expect this house to fall: I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. But I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become one thing or the other."

THE CONCERT ON "DRED SCOTT."

The Supreme Court of the United States decided in a fugitive-slave case, one Dred Scott, that no negro slave could be any State citizen; that neither Congress nor a territorial organization can exclude slavery; that the United States courts would not decide whether a slave in a free State becomes free, but left that to the slave-holding State courts. Lincoln, in debate with Senator Douglas, a.s.serted that the latter, Chief Justice Taney, and others, were in a league to perpetuate slavery and extend it.

"We cannot absolutely know, but when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen--as Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James (Douglas, President Pierce, Taney, Buchanan), and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or mill ... in such a case we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck."

--(The "Divided House" Speech, June 17, 1858, Springfield, Illinois.)

PLAYING CUTTLEFISH.

"Judge Douglas is playing cuttlefis.h.!.+--a small species of fish that has no mode of defending itself when pursued except by throwing out a black fluid which makes the water so dark the enemy cannot see it, and thus it escapes."--(Lincoln in Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Illinois, 1858.)