Book: The Crisis, Complete

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"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?"

Mr. Medill listened intently.

"Abe," said he, solemnly, "Douglas will answer yes, or equivocate, and
that is all the assurance these Northern Democrats want to put Steve
Douglas in the Senate. They'll snow you under."

"All right," answered Mr. Lincoln, quietly.

"All right?" asked Mr. Medill, reflecting the sheer astonishment of the
others; "then why the devil are you wearing yourself out? And why are we
spending our time and money on you?"

Mr. Lincoln laid his hand on Medill's sleeve.

"Joe," said he, "a rat in the larder is easier to catch than a rat that
has the run of the cellar. You know, where to set your trap in the
larder. I'll tell you why I'm in this campaign: to catch Douglas now, and
keep him out of the White House in 1860. To save this country of ours,
Joe. She's sick."

There was a silence, broken by two exclamations.

"But see here, Abe," said Mr. Medill, as soon as ever he got his breath,
"what have we got to show for it? Where do you come in?"

Mr. Lincoln smiled wearily.

"Nowhere, I reckon," he answered simply.

"Good Lord!" said Mr. Judd.

Mr. Medill gulped.

"You mean to say, as the candidate of the Republican party, you don't
care whether you get to the Senate?"

"Not if I can send Steve Douglas there with his wings broken," was the
calm reply.

"Suppose he does answer yes, that slavery can be excluded?" said Mr.
Judd.

"Then," said Mr. Lincoln, "then Douglas loses the vote of the great
slave-holders, the vote of the solid South, that he has been fostering
ever since he has had the itch to be President. Without the solid South
the Little Giant will never live in the White House. And unless I'm
mightily mistaken, Steve Douglas has had his aye as far ahead as 1860 for
some time."

Another silence followed these words. There was a stout man standing in
the aisle, and he spat deftly out of the open window.

"You may wing Steve Douglas, Abe," said he, gloomily, "but the gun will
kick you over the bluff."

"Don't worry about me, Ed," said Mr. Lincoln. "I'm not worth it."

In a wave of comprehension the significance of all this was revealed to
Stephen Brice, The grim humor, the sagacious statesmanship, and (best of
all)--the superb self sacrifice of it, struck him suddenly. I think it
was in that hour that he realized the full extent of the wisdom he was
near, which was like unto Solomon's.

Shame surged in Stephen's face that he should have misjudged him. He had
come to patronize. He had remained to worship. And in after years, when
he thought of this new vital force which became part of him that day, it
was in the terms of Emerson: "Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates,
and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every
pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be
misunderstood."

How many have conversed with Lincoln before and since, and knew him not!

If an outward and visible sign of Mr. Lincoln's greatness were needed,
--he had chosen to speak to them in homely parables. The story of Farmer
Bell was plain as day. Jim Rickets, who had life all his own way, was
none other than Stephen A. Douglas, the easily successful. The ugly
galoot, who dared to raise his eyes only to the pear, was Mr. Lincoln
himself. And the pear was the Senatorship, which the galoot had denied
himself to save Susan from being Mr. Rickets' bride.

Stephen could understand likewise the vehemence of the Republican leaders
who crowded around their candidate and tried to get him to retract that
Question. He listened quietly, he answered with a patient smile. Now and
then he threw a story into the midst of this discussion which made them
laugh in spite of themselves. The hopelessness of the case was quite
plain to Mr. Hill, who smiled, and whispered in Stephen's ear: "He has
made up his mind. They will not budge him an inch, and they know it."

Finally Mr. Lincoln took the scrap of paper, which was even more dirty
and finger-marked by this time, and handed it to Mr. Hill. The train was
slowing down for Freeport. In the distance, bands could be heard playing,
and along the track, line upon line of men and women were cheering and
waving. It was ten o'clock, raw and cold for that time of the year, and
the sun was trying to come out.

"Bob," said Mr. Lincoln, "be sure you get that right in your notes. And,
Steve, you stick close to me, and you'll see the show. Why, boys," he
added, smiling, "there's the great man's private car, cannon and all."

All that Stephen saw was a regular day-car on a sidetrack. A brass cannon
was on the tender hitched behind it.




CHAPTER V

THE CRISIS

Stephen A. Douglas, called the Little Giant on account of his intellect,
was a type of man of which our race has had some notable examples,
although they are not characteristic. Capable of sacrifice to their
country, personal ambition is, nevertheless, the mainspring of their
actions. They must either be before the public, or else unhappy. This
trait gives them a large theatrical strain, and sometimes brands them as
adventurers. Their ability saves them from being demagogues.

In the case of Douglas, he had deliberately renewed some years before the
agitation on the spread of slavery, by setting forth a doctrine of
extreme cleverness. This doctrine, like many others of its kind, seemed
at first sight to be the balm it pretended, instead of an irritant, as it
really was. It was calculated to deceive all except thinking men, and to
silence all save a merciless logician. And this merciless logician, who
was heaven-sent in time of need, was Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Douglas was a juggler, a political prestidigitateur. He did things
before the eyes of the Senate and the nation. His balm for the healing of
the nation's wounds was a patent medicine so cleverly concocted that
experts alone could show what was in it. So abstruse and twisted were
some of Mr. Douglas's doctrines that a genius alone might put them into
simple words, for the common people.

The great panacea for the slavery trouble put forth by Mr. Douglas at
that time was briefly this: that the people of the new territories should
decide for themselves, subject to the Constitution, whether they should
have slavery or not, and also decide for themselves all other questions
under the Constitution. Unhappily for Mr. Douglas, there was the famous
Dred Scott decision, which had set the South wild with joy the year
before, and had cast a gloom over the North. The Chief Justice of the
United States had declared that under the Constitution slaves were
property,--and as such every American citizen owning slaves could carry
them about with him wherever he went. Therefore the territorial
legislatures might pass laws until they were dumb, and yet their settlers
might bring with them all the slaves they pleased.

And yet we must love the Judge. He was a gentleman, a strong man, and a
patriot. He was magnanimous, and to his immortal honor be it said that
he, in the end, won the greatest of all struggles. He conquered himself.
He put down that mightiest thing that was in him,--his ambition for
himself. And he set up, instead, his ambition for his country. He bore no
ill-will toward the man whose fate was so strangely linked to his, and
who finally came to that high seat of honor and of martyrdom which he
coveted. We shall love the Judge, and speak of him with reverence, for
that sublime act of kindness before the Capitol in 1861.

Abraham Lincoln might have prayed on that day of the Freeport debate:

"Forgive him, Lord. He knows not what he does." Lincoln descried the
danger afar, and threw his body into the breach.

That which passed before Stephen's eyes, and to which his ears listened
at Freeport, was the Great Republic pressing westward to the Pacific. He
wondered whether some of his Eastern friends who pursed their lips when
the Wrest was mentioned would have sneered or prayed. A young English
nobleman who was there that day did not sneer. He was filled instead with
something like awe at the vigor of this nation which was sprung from the
loins of his own. Crudeness he saw, vulgarity he heard, but Force he
felt, and marvelled.

America was in Freeport that day, the rush of her people and the surprise
of her climate. The rain had ceased, and quickly was come out of the
northwest a boisterous wind, chilled by the lakes and scented by the
hemlocks of the Minnesota forests. The sun smiled and frowned Clouds
hurried in the sky, mocking the human hubbub below. Cheering thousands
pressed about the station as Mr. Lincoln's train arrived. They hemmed him
in his triumphal passage under the great arching trees to the new
Brewster House. The Chief Marshal and his aides, great men before, were
suddenly immortal. The county delegations fell into their proper
precedence like ministers at a state dinner. "We have faith in Abraham,
Yet another County for the Rail-sputter, Abe the Giant-killer,"--so the
banners read. Here, much bedecked, was the Galena Lincoln Club, part of
Joe Davies's shipment. Fifes skirled, and drums throbbed, and the stars
and stripes snapped in the breeze. And here was a delegation headed by
fifty sturdy ladies on horseback, at whom Stephen gaped like a
countryman. Then came carryalls of all ages and degrees, wagons from this
county and that county, giddily draped, drawn by horses from one to six,
or by mules, their inscriptions addressing their senatorial candidate in
all degrees of familiarity, but not contempt. What they seemed proudest
of was that he had been a rail-splitter, for nearly all bore a
fence-rail.

But stay, what is this wagon with the high sapling flagstaff in the
middle, and the leaves still on it?

"Westward the Star of Empire takes its way.
The girls link on to Lincoln; their mothers were for Clay."

Here was glory to blind you,--two and thirty maids in red sashes and blue
liberty caps with white stars. Each was a state of the Union, and every
one of them was for Abraham, who called them his "Basket of Flowers."
Behind them, most touching of all, sat a thirty-third shackled in chains.
That was Kansas. Alas, the men of Kansas was far from being as sorrowful
as the part demanded,--in spite of her instructions she would smile at
the boys. But the appealing inscription she bore, "Set me free" was
greeted with storms of laughter, the boldest of the young men shouting
that she was too beautiful to be free, and some of the old men, to their
shame be it said likewise shouted. No false embarrassment troubled
Kansas. She was openly pleased. But the young men who had brought their
sweethearts to town, and were standing hand in hand with them, for
obvious reasons saw nothing: They scarcely dared to look at Kansas, and
those who did were so loudly rebuked that they turned down the side
streets.

During this part of the day these loving couples, whose devotion was so
patent to the whole world, were by far the most absorbing to Stephen. He
watched them having their fortunes told, the young women blushing and
crying, "Say!" and "Ain't he wicked?" and the young men getting their
ears boxed for certain remarks. He watched them standing open-mouthed at
the booths and side shows with hands still locked, or again they were
chewing cream candy in unison. Or he glanced sidewise at them, seated in
the open places with the world so far below them that even the insistent
sound of the fifes and drums rose but faintly to their ears.

And perhaps,--we shall not say positively,--perhaps Mr. Brice's thoughts
went something like this, "O that love were so simple a matter to all!"
But graven on his face was what is called the "Boston scorn." And no
scorn has been known like unto it since the days of Athens.

So Stephen made the best of his way to the Brewster House, the elegance
and newness of which the citizens of Freeport openly boasted. Mr. Lincoln
had preceded him, and was even then listening to a few remarks of burning
praise by an honorable gentleman. Mr. Lincoln himself made a few remarks,
which seemed so simple and rang so true, and were so free from political
rococo and decoration generally, that even the young men forgot their
sweethearts to listen. Then Mr. Lincoln went into the hotel, and the sun
slipped under a black cloud.

The lobby was full, and rather dirty, since the supply of spittoons was
so far behind the demand. Like the firmament, it was divided into little
bodies which revolved about larger bodies. But there lacked not here
supporters of the Little Giant, and discreet farmers of influence in
their own counties who waited to hear the afternoon's debate before
deciding. These and others did not hesitate to tell of the magnificence
of the Little Giant's torchlight procession the previous evening. Every
Dred-Scottite had carried a torch, and many transparencies, so that the
very glory of it had turned night into day. The Chief Lictor had
distributed these torches with an unheard-of liberality. But there lacked
not detractors who swore that John Dibble and other Lincolnites had
applied for torches for the mere pleasure of carrying them. Since dawn
the delegations had been heralded from the house-tops, and wagered on
while they were yet as worms far out or the prairie. All the morning
these continued to came in, and form in line to march past their
particular candidate. The second great event of the day was the event of
the special over the Galena roar, of sixteen cars and more than a
thousand pairs of sovereign lungs. With military precision they repaired
to the Brewster House, and ahead of then a banner was flung: "Winnebago
County for the Tall Sucker." And the Tall Sucker was on the steps to
receive them.

But Mr. Douglas, who had arrived the evening before to the booming of two
and thirty guns, had his banners end his bunting, too. The neighborhood
of Freeport was stronghold of Northern Democrats, ardent supporters of
the Little Giant if once they could believe that he did not intend to
betray them.

Stephen felt in his bones the coming of a struggle, and was thrilled.
Once he smiled at the thought that he had become an active partisan--nay,
a worshipper--of the uncouth Lincoln. Terrible suspicion for a
Bostonian,--had he been carried away? Was his hero, after all, a homespun
demagogue? Had he been wise in deciding before he had taught a glimpse of
the accomplished Douglas, whose name end fame filled the land? Stephen
did not waver in his allegiance. But in his heart there lurked a fear of
the sophisticated Judge and Senator and man of the world whom he had not
yet seen. In his notebook he had made a, copy of the Question, and young
Mr. Hill discovered him pondering in a corner of the lobby at dinnertime.
After dinner they went together to their candidate's room. They found the
doors open and the place packed, and there was Mr. Lincoln's very tall
hat towering above those of the other politicians pressed around him. Mr.
Lincoln took three strides in Stephen's direction and seized him by the
shoulder.

"Why, Steve," said he, "I thought you had got away again." Turning to a
big burly man with a good-natures face, who was standing by, he added.
"Jim, I want you to look out for this young man. Get him a seat on the
stands where he can hear."

Stephen stuck close to Jim. He never knew what the gentleman's last name
was, or whether he had any. It was but a few minutes' walk to the grove
where the speaking was to be. And as they made their way thither Mr.
Lincoln passed them in a Conestoga wagon drawn by six milk-white horses.
Jim informed Stephen that the Little Giant had had a six-horse coach. The
grove was black with people. Hovering about the hem of the crowd were the
sunburned young men in their Sunday best, still clinging fast to the
hands of the young women. Bands blared "Columbia, Gem of the Ocean."
Fakirs planted their stands in the way, selling pain-killers and ague
cures, watermelons and lemonade, Jugglers juggled, and beggars begged.
Jim said that there were sixteen thousand people in that grove. And he
told the truth.

Stephen now trembled for his champion. He tried to think of himself as
fifty years old, with the courage to address sixteen thousand people on
such a day, and quailed. What a man of affairs it must take to do that!
Sixteen thousand people, into each of whose breasts God had put different
emotions and convictions. He had never even imagined such a crowd as this
assembles merely to listen to a political debate. But then he remembered,
as they dodged from in front of the horses, what it was not merely a
political debate: The pulse of nation was here, a great nation stricken
with approaching fever. It was not now a case of excise, but of
existence.

This son of toil who had driven his family thirty miles across the
prairie, blanketed his tired horses and slept on the ground the night
before, who was willing to stand all through the afternoon and listen
with pathetic eagerness to this debate, must be moved by a patriotism
divine. In the breast of that farmer, in the breast of his tired wife who
held her child by the hand, had been instilled from birth that sublime
fervor which is part of their life who inherit the Declaration of
Independence. Instinctively these men who had fought and won the West had
scented the danger. With the spirit of their ancestors who had left their
farms to die on the bridge at Concord, or follow Ethan Allen into
Ticonderoga, these had come to Freeport. What were three days of bodily
discomfort! What even the loss of part of a cherished crop, if the
nation's existence were at stake and their votes might save it!

In the midst of that heaving human sea rose the bulwarks of a wooden
stand. But how to reach it? Jim was evidently a personage. The rough
farmers commonly squeezed a way for him. And when they did not, he made
it with his big body. As they drew near their haven, a great surging as
of a tidal wave swept them off their feet. There was a deafening shout,
and the stand rocked on its foundations. Before Stephen could collect his
wits, a fierce battle was raging about him. Abolitionist and Democrat,
Free Soiler and Squatter Sov, defaced one another in a rush for the
platform. The committeemen and reporters on top of it rose to its
defence. Well for Stephen that his companion was along. Jim was
recognized and hauled bodily into the fort, and Stephen after him. The
populace were driven off, and when the excitement died down again, he
found himself in the row behind the reporters. Young Mr. Hill paused
while sharpening his pencil to wave him a friendly greeting.

Stephen, craning in his seat, caught sight of Mr. Lincoln slouched into
one of his favorite attitudes, his chin resting in his hand.

But who is this, erect, compact, aggressive, searching with a confident
eye the wilderness of upturned faces? A personage, truly, to be
questioned timidly, to be approached advisedly. Here indeed was a lion,
by the very look of him, master of himself and of others. By reason of
its regularity and masculine strength, a handsome face. A man of the
world to the cut of the coat across the broad shoulders. Here was one to
lift a youngster into the realm of emulation, like a character in a play,
to arouse dreams of Washington and its senators and great men. For this
was one to be consulted by the great alone. A figure of dignity and
power, with magnetism to compel moods. Since, when he smiled, you warmed
in spite of yourself, and when he frowned the world looked grave.

The inevitable comparison was come, and Stephen's hero was shrunk once
more. He drew a deep breath, searched for the word, and gulped. There was
but the one word. How country Abraham Lincoln looked beside Stephen
Arnold Douglas!

Had the Lord ever before made and set over against each other two such
different men? Yes, for such are the ways of the Lord.

........................

The preliminary speaking was in progress, but Stephen neither heard nor
saw until he felt the heavy hand of his companion on his knee.

"There's something mighty strange, like fate, between them two," he was
saying. "I recklect twenty-five years ago when they was first in the
Legislatur' together. A man told me that they was both admitted to
practice in the S'preme Court in '39, on the same day, sir. Then you know
they was nip an' tuck after the same young lady. Abe got her. They've
been in Congress together, the Little Giant in the Senate, and now, here
they be in the greatest set of debates the people of this state ever
heard; Young man, the hand of fate is in this here, mark my words--"

There was a hush, and the waves of that vast human sea were stilled. A
man, lean, angular, with coat-tail: flapping-unfolded like a grotesque
figure at a side-show.

No confidence was there. Stooping forward, Abraham Lincoln began to
speak, and Stephen Brice hung his head and shuddered. Could this shrill
falsetto be the same voice to which he had listened only that morning?
Could this awkward, yellow man with his hands behind his back be he whom
he had worshipped? Ripples of derisive laughter rose here and there, on
the stand and from the crowd. Thrice distilled was the agony of those
moments!

But what was this feeling that gradually crept over him? Surprise?
Cautiously he raised his eyes. The hands were coming around to the front.
Suddenly one of them was thrown sharply back, with a determined gesture,
the head was raised,--and.--and his shame was for gotten. In its stead
wonder was come. But soon he lost even that, for his mind was gone on a
journey. And when again he came to himself and looked upon Abraham
Lincoln, this was a man transformed. The voice was no longer shrill. Nay,
it was now a powerful instrument which played strangely on those who
heard. Now it rose, and again it fell into tones so low as to start a
stir which spread and spread, like a ripple in a pond, until it broke on
the very edge of that vast audience.

"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?"

It was out, at last, irrevocably writ in the recording book of History,
for better, for worse. Beyond the reach of politician, committee, or
caucus. But what man amongst those who heard and stirred might say that
these minutes even now basting into eternity held the Crisis of a nation
that is the hope of the world? Not you, Judge Douglas who sit there
smiling. Consternation is a stranger in your heart,--but answer the
question if you can. Yes, your nimble wit has helped you out of many a
tight corner. You do not feel the noose--as yet. You do not guess that
your reply will make or mar the fortunes of your country. It is not you
who can look ahead two short years and see the ship of Democracy
splitting on the rocks at Charleston and at Baltimore, when the power of
your name might have steered her safely.

But see! what is this man about whom you despise? One by one he is taking
the screws out of the engine which you have invented to run your ship.
Look, he holds them in his hands without mixing them, and shows the false
construction of its secret parts.

For Abraham Lincoln dealt with abstruse questions in language so limpid
that many a farmer, dulled by toil, heard and understood and marvelled.
The simplicity of the Bible dwells in those speeches, and they are now
classics in our literature. And the wonder in Stephen's mind was that
this man who could be a buffoon, whose speech was coarse and whose person
unkempt, could prove himself a tower of morality and truth. That has
troubled many another, before and since the debate at Freeport.

That short hour came all too quickly to an end. And as the Moderator gave
the signal for Mr. Lincoln, it was Stephen's big companion who snapped
the strain, and voiced the sentiment of those about him.

"By Gosh!" he cried, "he baffles Steve. I didn't think Abe had it in
him."

The Honorable Stephen A. Douglas, however, seemed anything but baffled as
he rose to reply. As he waited for the cheers which greeted him to die
out, his attitude was easy and indifferent, as a public man's should be.
The question seemed not to trouble him in the least. But for Stephen
Brice the Judge stood there stripped of the glamour that made him, even
as Abraham Lincoln had stripped his doctrine of its paint and colors, and
left it punily naked.

Standing up, the very person of the Little Giant was contradictory, as
was the man himself. His height was insignificant. But he had the head
and shoulders of a lion, and even the lion's roar. What at contrast the
ring of his deep bass to the tentative falsetto of Mr. Lincoln's opening
words. If Stephen expected the Judge to tremble, he was greatly
disappointed. Mr. Douglas was far from dismay. As if to show the people
how lightly he held his opponent's warnings, he made them gape by putting
things down Mr. Lincoln's shirt-front and taking them out of his mouth:
But it appeared to Stephen, listening with all his might, that the Judge
was a trifle more on the defensive than his attitude might lead one to
expect. Was he not among his own Northern Democrats at Freeport? And yet
it seemed to give him a keen pleasure to call his hearers "Black
Republicans." "Not black," came from the crowd again and again, and once
a man: shouted, "Couldn't you modify it and call it brown?" "Not a whit!"
cried the Judge, and dubbed them "Yankees," although himself a Vermonter
by birth. He implied that most of these Black Republicans desired negro
wives.

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