LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS AT OTTAWA.
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
CHICAGO, August 27, 1858.
After Mr. Douglas spoke at Peoria on the 8th, he proceeded
to Lacon, where, on the next day, he made the discovery that all the
Presidents, naming them in order from Washington to Buchanan, had endorsed the
principles of the Dred Scott Decision by refusing to grant passports to negroes
to travel in foreign countries. After which, he reposed his wearied virtue for
one day, to prepare for the extreme of mendacity, which he reached on Saturday
at Ottawa. There, most aptly, he illustrated the Latin proverb— “Andas omnia perpeti, ruat per retitum nefas”1
— and there he strode so deeply into the mire of falsification that extrication
is impossible. But more of this further on.
At Lewiston, in Fulton county, on the 17th, Mr. Lincoln held
one of his largest meetings and spoke for two hours and a half. At this place
he tore from Douglas the mantle of Henry Clay, under which the senator had been
strutting and hoping to hide the wickedness of his pretenses. Mr. Lincoln read
largely from Clay’s writings and speeches, wherein he contends for the ultimate
emancipation of the slave, and said that he would claim no support from the old
line Whigs unless he could show that he stood upon the ground occupied by that
great statesman. He further said that he believed Mr. Douglas was the only man
of prominence before the country who had never declared, to friend or enemy,
whether he believed slavery to be right or wrong. His speeches, to be sure,
leave the hearer to infer that he did not desire slavery to be introduced into
Illinois, but he indicates that no moral consideration would prevail with him
against the exercise of slave-ownership, provided there was more money in
working a negro that in working a horse. It was in this speech that Mr. Lincoln
uttered an eloquent and impressive apostrophe into the Declaration of
Independence, which ranks him at once among the foremost orators of the land. I
give you a brief extract from the correspondent of the Press and Tribune:
“These communities, the thirteen colonies, by their
representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the whole world of men; ‘We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” This was their majestic
interpretation of the economy of the Universe. This was their lofty, and wise,
and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures. Applause.
Yes, gentlemen, to all His
creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief,
nothing stamped with the Devine image and likeness was sent into the world to
be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only
the whole race of man then living, but they reached forward and seized upon the
farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children and their
children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in
other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity
to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that
when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up
the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men, were entitled to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again
to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their
fathers began—so that truth, and justice, and mercy, and all the humane and
Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would
hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the
temple of liberty was being built. Loud cheers.
“Now, my countrymen (Mr. Lincoln continued with great
earnestness,) if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great
landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to
suggestions which would take away from its grandeur, and mutilate the fair
symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men
are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our
charter of liberty, let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain
whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me—take
no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever—but come back to the
truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me
you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. You may not only
defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While
pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated
in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to
drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's success. It is
nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that
immortal emblem of Humanity—the Declaration of American Independence.”
Reports from various localities indicate that the Fillmore
Americans and Old Lane Whigs are coming to the support of Mr. Lincoln, to put
down the agitator and demagogue, who, on the other hand, is appealing to them
for their votes. It is not to be disguised that Mr. Douglas has the [illegible]
faith of the masses of the democratic party; whether it be abiding is another
question. Once he had the ear of the federal administration; now he has lost
it, and it is the object of unceasing opposition from that quarter. Then he
could rally his lieges and hold them because he had rewards to bestow; now his promises
are beggarly and unproductive. Thrift no longer follows fawning upon him. The
Buchanan men do not warm towards him yet, and they are not likely to although
it is said a joint and special commission has gone to Washington to plead with
the unrelenting Executive.
Saturday, the 21st, was the day of the first discussion
between Lincoln and Douglas. It was held at Ottawa, a city of about 9,000
inhabitants, on the line of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad and the
Illinois canal, and the junction of the Fox and Illinois rivers. I arrived late
the night before at Ottawa, and was accommodated with a sofa at the hotel. The
city was already even full. Saturday was a pleasant, but warm day, and Ottawa
was deluged in dust. By wagon, by rail, by canal, the people poured in, till
Ottawa was one mass of active life. Men, women and children, old and young, the
dwellers on the broad prairies, had turned their backs upon the plough, and had
come to listen to these champions of the two parties. Military companies were
out; martial music sounded, and salutes of artillery thundered in the air.
[Eager] marshals in partisan sashes rode furiously about the streets. Peddlers
were crying their wares at the corners, and excited groups of politicians were
canvassing and quarrelling everywhere. And still they came, the crowd swelling
constantly in its proportions and growing more eager and more hungry, perhaps
more thirsty. Though every precaution was taken against this latter evil. About
noon the rival processions were formed, and paraded the streets amid the cheers
of the people. Mr. Lincoln was met at the depot by an immense crowd, who
escorted him to the residence of the mayor, with banners flying and mottoes
waving their unfaltering attachment to him and to his cause. The Douglas
turnout, though plentifully interspersed with the Hibernian element, was less
noisy, and thus matters were arranged for the after-dinner demonstration in the
Court House square, where the stand was erected, and where, under the blazing
sun unprotected by shade trees, and
unprovided with seats, the audience was expected to congregate and listen to
the champions.
Two men presenting wider contrasts could hardly be found as
the representatives of the two great parties. Everybody knows Douglas, a short,
thickset, burly man, with large round head, heavy hair, dark complexion, and
fierce bull-dog bark. Strong in his own real power, and skilled by a thousand
conflicts in all the strategy of a hand-to-hand or a general fight. Of towering
ambition, restless in his determined desire for notoriety, proud, defiant,
arrogant, audacious, unscrupulous, “Little Dug” ascended the platform and
looked out imprudently and carelessly on the immense throng which surged and
struggled before him. A native of Vermont, reared on a soil where no slave ever
stood, trained to hard manual labor and schooled in early hardships, he came to
Illinois a teacher, and from one post to another had risen to his present
eminence. Forgetful of the ancestral hatred of slavery to which he was the
heir, he had come to be a holder of slaves and to owe much of his fame to his
continued subservience to southern influence.
The other—Lincoln—is a native of Kentucky, and of poor white
parentage; and from his cradle has felt the blighting influence of the dark and
cruel shadow which rendered labor dishonorable, and kept the poor in poverty,
while it advanced the rich in their possessions. Reared in poverty and the
humblest aspirations, he left his native state, crossed the line into Illinois,
and began his career of honorable toil. At first a laborer, splitting rails for
a living—deficient in education, and applying himself even to the rudiments of
knowledge—he, too, felt the expanding power of his American manhood, and began
to achieve the greatness to which he has
succeeded, With great difficulty struggling through the tedious formularies of
legal lore, he was admitted to the bar and rapidly made his way to the front
ranks of his profession. Honored by the people with office, he is still the
same honest and reliable man. He volunteers in the Black Hawk war, and does the
state good service in its sorest need. In every relation of his life, socially
and to the state, Mr. Lincoln has been always the pure and honest man. In
physique he is the opposite to Douglas. Built on the Kentucky type, he is very
tall, slender and angular, awkward even, in gate and attitude. His face is
sharp, large-featured and unprepossessing. His eyes are deep set, under heavy
brows; his forehead is high and retreating, and his hair is dark and heavy. In
repose, I must confess that “Long Abe’s” appearance is not comely. But stir him
up, and the fire of his genius plays on every feature. His eye glows and
sparkles, every lineament, now so ill-formed, grows brilliant and expressive,
and you have before you a man of rare power and of strong magnetic influence.
He takes the people every time, and there is no getting away from his sturdy
good sense, his unaffected sincerity, and the unceasing play of his good humor,
which accompanies his close logic and smoothes the way to conviction. Listening
to him on Saturday, calmly and unprejudiced, I was convinced that he has no
superior as a stump speaker. He is clear, concise and logical; his language is
eloquent and at perfect command. He is altogether a more fluent speaker than
Douglas, and in all the arts of debate fully his equal. The Republicans of
Illinois have chosen a champion worthy of their heartiest support and fully equipped
for the conflict with the great “squatter Sovereign.”
By previous arrangement, Mr. Douglas was to open in a speech
of one hour, Mr. Lincoln was to respond in a speech of an hour and a half, and
Mr. Douglas was to conclude in another half hour. The square was filled with
people, and when the cannon and the music had been quieted, Mr. Douglas
commenced. He began by referring to the attitude of the Whig and Democratic
parties prior to the spring of 1854, claiming that up to that time they stood
on the same platform with regard to the Slavery question. He said that in the
session of 1853-4 he introduced the Kansas bill, in accordance with the
principles of the compromise of 1850, and endorsed by the Wig and Democratic
National Conventions of 1852. In 1854, after the passage of this bill, he said
that Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Trumbull entered into a league to deliver up, bound hand
and foot to the Abolitionists, the old Whigs and the old Democrats—in consideration
whereof, Mr. Lincoln was to have Shield’s place, and Mr. Trumbull was to have
his own. (A screw subsequently became loose, and the programme of substitution
was changed.) In pursuance of this plan, the parties met at Springfield in
1854, to perfect arrangements. There they, Mr. Lincoln included, passed a
certain series of abominable resolutions, one of which he would read, and to
which Mr. Lincoln, and his party were [committed]. He then proceeded to discuss
Mr. Lincoln’s position in regard to negro equality, to the evident satisfaction
of the Hibernian body guard, who were made to believe that Mr. Lincoln was
aching to place the African in high places of the land, and to fold him to his
arms in a fraternal embrace. Recurring them to his doctrine of popular
sovereignty, he lauded it as the great element of our growth and prosperity,
and closed with a spread-eagle eulogium upon the democratic party. Mr. Douglas
was often interrupted with light applause, but, on the hole, it was not a very
enthusiastic demonstration.
Then the tall form of “Long Abe” loomed above the heads on
the stage, the signal for a fanatic expression of applause. Mr. Lincoln replied
seriatim to Mr. Douglas’s charges, denying the conspiracy with Trumbull entirely,
stating that at that time he was opposed to the formation of a new party, and
that he had no hand in the preparation of the Springfield resolutions. On the
subject of negro equality, he read from a speech of his in 1854, and which he
said Mr. Douglas heard, and on that record he was prepared to stand.
Mr. Lincoln closed, and Douglas came forward, evidently
under much excitement. He took advantage of his last half hour, and rose to
such a pitch of arrogance and audacity as is seldom witnessed. With brazen
front and lungs of iron, with a recklessness peculiarly his own, he launched
forth a bold and defiant speech, which his retainers applauded to the echo. The
charges of his first speech he re-affirmed with an unblushing effrontery, denounced
Trumbull and Lincoln in unstinted terms, passed the lie around the circle,
shook his long locks, grew red in the face, stentorian in voice, declared that
Buchanan was a most excellent man, and scouted at the idea of Mr. Lincoln’s
having any reputation for veracity. When he concluded, he was followed to his
quarters by part of the crowd. The rest gathered about the stand, cheering
Lincoln, and when he descended, he was seized by his enthusiastic friends, and
in spite of his struggles, borne in triumph to the hotel, on the shoulders of
half a dozen men, at once a novel exhibition of the freedom of western politics
and the exuberance of western feeling.
I said, near the commencement of this letter, that Mr.
Douglas waded very deeply into the mire of mendacity at Ottawa. The full
vindication of this charge, and the proof of his singular madness, is furnished
in the Chicago Press and Tribune of
this morning, to whose excellent phonographic report of the Ottawa meeting. I
have been indebted for the completion of the brief notes which I took at the
time. I can do no better than give you the proof, in the words of the journal
to which I refer. “At the meeting in Ottawa, on Saturday, the senator read a
series of radical resolutions, which he assured his hearers were passed by a
Republican State Convention in 1854, at Springfield; that the constituted the
platform of the party at that day, and that they represented the views of his
distinguished competitor, who, he said, took part in the proceedings of which
the resolutions were a share. The resolutions were frauds and forgeries from
first to last. No such series was ever presented to, hence never adopted by,
any State Republican Convention in Illinois! And in making the assertion Mr.
Douglas knee that he basely, maliciously and willfully LIED. He not only lied
circumstantially and wickedly; but be spent the first part of his speech
in elaborating the lie with which he set out, and the entire latter part, in
giving the lie application and effect. The resolutions which he read were
adopted by one house meeting at Aurora, in Kane county, with which Mr. Lincoln
had nothing to do, which he was not near, which he possibly never heard of
except though the public prints.”
There the senator stands, branded and convicted of a deliberate
fraud, gibbeted before the public. I confess I was prepared for this
exhibition. I knew that Douglas’s life as a politician was one great
[illegible] vocation, that he had experienced incessant “changes of heart,” and
that his position in [illegible] campaign was only a trap and a lure to another
and falser position in the next. But I could hardly expect that he would coolly
stand up and read a printed resolution as genuine, where he must have known
that he was deliberately submitting a false and fraudulent record. Yet, he it
is that goes over the states saying “you lie,” and infamous liar,” to Trumbull
and Lincoln. This exposure of the Press
and Tribune takes the very heart and core out of Douglas’s Ottawa speech.
It to the very bone, and leaves only a hollow and baseless frame behind, “were
words, “mouthfuls of spoken wind,” a figure with swollen features, and windmill
arms beating the air, with violent but [imbecile] gesticulation. The very
audacity of this charge gave Douglas this seeming advantage; that it put
Lincoln on the explanatory and defensive, in regard to a series of resolutions
which, whether passed at a one horse meeting in Kane county” or at Springfield,
he could know nothing about it, as he had no hand in making them, and it is
asking too much, to require a politician to have at his tongue’s end all the
resolutions of four year old conventions. Lincoln will overhaul Douglas for
this cheat, at Freeport, on Friday, when they meet again. The senator’s friends
came home in jubilant spirits on Saturday, but they are crest fallen to-day,
and doubtful of the implicit faith they have heretofore reposed in him. Douglas
is unchanged. Perhaps the wise men of the East, that counseled the Republicans
of Illinois to sustain him, are still regretful that their arrangements were
not carried out.
After the Ottawa meeting was concluded on Saturday, Hon.
Owen Lovejoy addressed the Republicans in the evening. Thrusting aside the
assaults in his own party, he dashed headlong at the enemy and carried the war
into the democratic party. “from grave to gay, from lively to severe,” he
proceeded boldly and eloquently to arraign that party at the popular bar, and
to convict it of its errors, crimes and inconsistencies. It was a great speech,
and finished up admirably the performances of the day. There was then a
torchlight procession. By the moonlight thousands wended their way home, and
quiet began to reign in Ottawa.
Senator Trumbull is on the stump in the central and southern
part of the state. He speaks at Alton on Wednesday, and at Springfield on
Saturday. Douglas speaks at Galena on Wednesday and meets Lincoln at Freeport
of Friday.
Douglas is in a quandary in regard to popular sovereignty
and Dred Scott. At some places he tells his audiences that the decision is not
binding where it conflicts with his specific. His reporter for he carries one about with him—omits this part
of the performance from the bills.
Yours, &c.,
BAYOU.
_______________
1 This was in italicized and hard to make out,
but I believe I got it right as when I put in into Google Translate I got the translation
as: “You go through everything, rush
through the net of evil”
SOURCE, The New York Eveing Post, New York, New
York, Friday August 27, 1858, p. 1
