CHAPTER XXIII

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS IN CHICAGO

In the last years before the Civil War, Illinois became a political storm centre to which the eyes of the whole nation were turned. Reaching farther south than any other lake state, and bounded on the west by the Mississippi River,--the main artery of trade and travel of the south,--she was bound geographically and commercially to the south. But on the other hand she reached north to Lake Michigan, a part of the great system of inland waterways of the North. More than any other state she presented in miniature the condition of the nation, divided thus between north and south. Moreover her settlers, moving westward along the lines of latitude, had come from both sections. With a southern sentiment in those counties that were nearest to Kentucky and Missouri, she combined in her upper counties men from New England, New York, and Pennsylvania with the strongest northern principles. Seeing within her own bounds the elements of the great national conflict, she became a state whose strongest sentiment was for union, for which in the last analysis all her best political leaders stood.

Into this state came Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Arnold Douglas when they were young men, Lincoln from Kentucky after a stay in Indiana, and Douglas from Vermont by way of New York State. In Illinois these two men fought out in the decade before the Civil War the great contest of the two national parties of the time. The campaign of 1858, with its famous series of joint debates between them, was opened in Chicago by speeches of Douglas and Lincoln from the balcony of the Tremont House. In Chicago the National Republican Convention nominated Lincoln for President on the 16th of May, 1860. To a royal welcome in Chicago Douglas returned in the spring of 1861 after his noble and disinterested support of his elected rival and his patriotic efforts for the preservation of the Union. Here within a few weeks he died. Before we pass to the story of these events in Chicago we must learn a little more of the condition of affairs in the lake states during the interval since the War of 1812. Of the growth of their cities and of their great prosperity we shall speak in detail in later chapters. It is sufficient to say that the movement of population, of wealth, and of power into the West had become so great that the Republicans in 1860 considered Chicago the fitting place for their national convention.

Of the definite problems of the great sectional contest, the lake states had a concrete as well as a theoretic knowledge. They were located on the northern frontier of the United States, and they dipped down from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and sixty miles into the south. Inevitably they became the scene of fugitive slave migration. In spite of the strict laws of the United States and the bitter protests of the South, the escaped slave found friends when he slipped over the border into the free states, and was helped by them into Canada, where his safety was assured. Since 1815 there had been a regularly organized system of passing these runaways from one place to another on the northern route, a system which so baffled and mystified the unsuccessful masters in their search that they had given it the name of the “Underground Railroad.” The route through Ohio was the shortest of these lines. Only a little more than two hundred miles lay between the slave states south of the Ohio River and freedom. Along the river were twenty-two or twenty-three stations, and every port on Lake Erie was a point of departure. The five principal outlets were Toledo, Sandusky, Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Fairport, and through these stations there was an ever increasing procession of fugitives. Within this one state it has been calculated that there were nearly three thousand miles of “underground road.” Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Illinois had their roads, converging at Erie, Detroit, Toledo, Michigan City, and Chicago. Such was the anti-slavery sentiment on which Lincoln could rely.

A hasty sketch of the lives of Lincoln and Douglas before their speeches in Chicago in 1858 will show the typical western conditions which had put them in their leading positions. Douglas was forty-five years old, Lincoln four years older. Born in Brandon, Vermont, Stephen Arnold Douglas was the son of a young physician, whose father was Benajah Douglass,[3] a New York pioneer who had moved to Vermont and there been prominent in local politics, and whose mother was Martha Arnold, a descendant of Governor William Arnold of Rhode Island. Dr. Douglass had married Sally Fisk, the daughter of a prosperous farmer. He died when Stephen was very young, and the widow and children went to live with their mother’s bachelor brother on the Fisk farm. Here Stephen lived the life of a healthy Vermont boy until the marriage of his uncle and the birth of a son changed his standing in the family. When the boy began to propose going to Brandon Academy to prepare for college, his uncle told him kindly that he could not provide for his further education. Stephen in a fit of boyish anger left the farm and apprenticed himself to a cabinet-maker in Middlebury. He stayed with him for a year, delighting in the novelty of the life and in the companionship with a group of young men with whom he could discuss politics and eulogize his favorite hero, Andrew Jackson; but, nevertheless, he grew weary of the humble position of apprentice. After two years with this man and with another cabinet-maker, he gave up the trade and returned to the home of his mother, enrolling himself at Brandon Academy.

[3] The elder Douglass spelled his name with a double _s_.

The marriage of his sister and later of his mother started the boy at the age of seventeen on his westward journeying. It put him into Canandaigua, New York, where he pursued his studies at its excellent academy for three years, and prepared for his later career by studying law out of school in the offices of local attorneys. The western fever was upon him, and life on one of the great channels of westward migration induced him in the spring of 1833, against the wishes of his relatives and friends, to start for Buffalo and the tempting world beyond.

Douglas’s first six months in the new country were marked by hardship and by a serious illness. Lack of funds drove him to teaching in a little Illinois village in place of practising law as he had hoped. Within a year, however, the penniless boy had been admitted to the Illinois bar, by what must have been a very simple examination, and was happily established in a law office in the court-house at Jacksonville, Illinois. From this time on law was subordinated to his chosen pursuit, politics, for which his ready comradeship, his acute intelligence, and his keen ambition fitted him admirably. He filled at astonishingly early ages several minor positions, working his way into the hearts of the people and into the councils of the Democratic party. He was secretary of state for Illinois at the age of twenty-seven, and in that year was also made a district judge. At thirty he was sent as a member of Congress to Washington. Reëlected twice he was promoted in 1847 to the honor of senatorship, and became immediately prominent as chairman of a leading committee. During these years he married a southern lady and removed to Chicago, with whose commercial interests he allied himself closely by investing in real estate, the promise of which he was quick to see.

To Chicago and northern Illinois Douglas rendered a great service by contending for the building of the Illinois Central Railroad through the upper counties of the state to Chicago as a terminal. In this measure, whose passage he secured by making a combination plan with a southern railroad so that the proposed bill contemplated in the future a trunk line from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico and thus became a national instead of a local measure, Senator Douglas showed himself more than a state and party politician. There was statesmanlike genius in a plan thus to unite the North and South industrially and socially at a time when the tendency was to separate interests and separate policies. His speech in Congress was one of the first to set forth the power of the Great Lakes and the place of the Mississippi Valley in the national well-being.

Reëlected senator for several successive periods, he became through the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he himself drafted, the advocate of “popular sovereignty,” a phrase which he coined to take the place of the less dignified term “squatter sovereignty,” that had previously designated the principle that each state had a right to decide such questions as slavery for itself. He returned to Chicago in 1854, to be met by a mob who denounced his policy, and immediately threw himself into an active campaign in the hostile counties of northern Illinois. When he came back to secure his seat in the Senate for another term, Douglas had been placed by the course of national events in an entirely new position. Bitterly resenting the trickery which had made “popular sovereignty” a mere name and had given the state of Kansas at the Lecompton convention into the hands of the pro-slavery men, Douglas stood out on the floor of the Senate against his party and declared his opposition to the Lecompton constitution. Revolting against his own party, he was nevertheless representing the sentiment of Illinois and the Northwest, and he returned to Chicago in 1858 to an unequalled popularity.

It was four years since Douglas had been in Chicago,--since the day when he had been met by a storm of abuse and his address had been heralded by the lowering of flags to half-mast and the tolling of bells as for some public calamity. Now an enthusiastic delegation met him at Michigan City and escorted him by special train to his home. As his train entered Chicago it was greeted by the booming of cannon, and every sign of public enthusiasm. Crowds filled the streets and banners waved from the balconies and windows. The whole city was brilliantly decorated; bands of music marched the streets; and in a carriage drawn by six horses and surrounded by a military escort Senator Douglas, “The Defender of Popular Sovereignty,” as the banners proclaimed him, drove to the Tremont House, receiving everywhere a welcome that proclaimed him the idol of his fellow-citizens.

The Tremont House was the finest hotel in the city. The first house of that name had been built in 1832. It had been burned, as had its immediate successor, and the proprietor had erected on the land a fine brick building five stories and a half high, containing two hundred rooms, whose extravagant cost of seventy thousand dollars and whose magnificence the business men of Chicago had been inclined to ridicule as entirely beyond the possible needs of the city at its erection, but which they were now beginning to regard as an evidence of great foresight on the part of its builder. From its balcony Douglas delivered on the night of his arrival the first address of the campaign for the senatorship in which, by the nomination of the Republicans, Abraham Lincoln was to be his opponent.

While Douglas had been carrying off the honors of the Democratic party of Illinois, Lincoln had been rising more slowly to prominence in the ranks of the Whig and later of the newly organized Republican party. With the events of his early life his subsequent career has made every one familiar. He had been a practising lawyer as well as politician, had been several times to the state legislature, and in 1846 had been sent to Congress. Opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he had done much to organize the new Republican party in Illinois, and was recognized as its strongest man. He was now unanimously named as “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate.” Yet, although known to the Republicans of the Northwest as a lawyer of ability and a political leader, he seemed no match for the popular and well-known senator from Washington.

With Lincoln standing behind him within the hotel, Douglas made on the evening of the 9th of July a long address to the thousands of people who surged in the street below the balcony. This speech was a defence of his Lecompton attitude, and a review of his differences with Lincoln’s propositions, as expressed in his speech accepting the nomination, the famous “house-divided-against-itself” declaration. Douglas was a short, broad-shouldered, thick-set man, with great alertness and animation of manner. A traveller from the East who was staying at the hotel recorded her impressions of the two speakers. Of Douglas, she said that in manner he combined force and unusual grace. His head was noble, almost Websterian, his voice pleasant, and altogether he was “a most effective popular speaker.” The next night Lincoln spoke to a large and enthusiastic audience from the same balcony. Because he was not so well-known the writer described him more fully. In person tall and awkward, and in manner ungainly, his face still had such good humor, generosity, and intellect beaming from it that it made the eye love to linger there until one almost fancied him good-looking. As a political speaker she found him ready, humorous, and argumentative, with a gift at telling anecdotes with inconceivable quaintness and effect.

The two candidates had met many times before, and had debated together as early as 1834. Lincoln was not underrated by Douglas as a weak opponent in the campaign. When Douglas heard of his nomination he had said, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party--full of wit, facts, dates--and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”

Immediately after the Chicago speeches the two candidates set out on the tour of Illinois which soon became a three months’ continuation of joint debates. As a result Douglas went back to the Senate, but he went back a weakened man to a divided party. Two years later, while he was being nominated for the presidency by one wing of his party, Lincoln was being nominated for the same office by the Republicans at Chicago.

When it was decided to hold the National Republican Convention in that city, the people set about providing a building for the occasion. At Pittsburg in 1856 a hall for two thousand was large enough. At the corner of Lake and Market streets the Republicans erected a huge oblong wooden building which would hold ten thousand men, and as the event proved it was not large enough by a third, and twenty thousand more clamored in the streets for admittance. This structure was absolutely bare, its walls being broken by two rows of windows, and its two front corners surmounted by small square towers with flagstaffs. Over the door was an arched front bearing the words “Republican Wigwam”. It cost seven thousand dollars and its great virtue was the excellence of its acoustic properties.

Thousands of men came to the city for the convention and the excitement was tremendous. During the first two days of the gathering the time was given up to framing the platform and to other business, and it was not till the third day that the four hundred and sixty-five delegates proceeded to balloting. The New Yorkers were jubilant in their assurance of the success of their nominee, Mr. Seward, and had created the same impression in many circles. As a last demonstration the Seward men held a great parade on the morning of the third day, the 18th of May; but by this act they lost more than they gained, for while they were marching about with bands the Lincoln men filled up the Wigwam, and when the Seward men arrived they had to take back seats.

When the convention was called to order, there was not an unoccupied space a foot square in the building. The three broad doorways were crowded, and outside tens of thousands of men thronged the streets. The excitement was tremendous, and thunders of applause burst forth at the names of Seward and Lincoln. When the delegates settled down to voting, the result of the first ballot was 173-1/2 for Seward and 102 for Lincoln, the rest of the votes going to the six minor candidates. On the next ballot the states abandoned their “favorite sons,” turning to one or the other of the two leaders, with the result that Seward had 184-1/2 and Lincoln 181. Two hundred and thirty-three votes were necessary for a choice. As the delegates were preparing for the third ballot, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Committee entered the hall with a large crayon likeness of “Honest Old Abe,” while Judge Davis followed, carrying on his shoulders a long, moss-covered old rail bearing the legend, “Split by Lincoln.” The dense crowd went wild with enthusiasm.

On the third ballot Lincoln had 231-1/2, Seward 180. One vote and a half more were needed, and there was a moment of breathless silence until the chairman of the Ohio delegation rose and announced the change of four votes from Chase to Lincoln. For a moment the hall was still, and then as every one drew a long breath of relief the sound in the Wigwam was like the rush of a mighty wind. Then the thunders of applause and the shouting broke loose. The man on the roof who had been reporting the balloting to the crowds without leaned over the skylight to find out who had been the man named. One of the tellers shouted above the din, “Fire the salute! Abe Lincoln is nominated!” and outside the waiting thousands took up the cry. So loud was the uproar that men in the Wigwam could hardly hear the sound of the cannon discharged on the roof of the building, or the answering salute of one hundred guns fired from the roof of the Tremont House. Votes were promptly changed over until the number for Lincoln was three hundred and fifty-four, and then the convention adjourned. It had been one of the memorable conventions of the nation, and had been made up of a large number of leading men. Sixty of the delegates were later sent by their respective states to Congress, and many of the members were made governors. A great man had been called to lead the nation through a great crisis.

One more memorable scene in the lives of these two men took place at the Wigwam, which had been rechristened National Hall. To Chicago Douglas returned after war had been declared. With rare nobility and greatness he had supported President Lincoln and the administration in Washington, upholding Lincoln in every way that the leader of a great party, who had polled at the last election over a million votes, could. No leader has ever shown less personal feeling and more true greatness than Mr. Douglas in that crisis. He sank the partisan in the patriot and turned all his energies towards the saving of the Union. With Lincoln’s approval and gratitude he left Washington to arouse the sentiment of loyalty and Unionism in the critical Northwest, and made in April, 1861, a series of addresses along his homeward route, closing with a great plea in the Capitol at Springfield. One who had never admired him, listening now to this speech for the support of the government and the defence of the Union, said that he did not think it was possible for a human being to produce a more prodigious effect with spoken words. Southern as well as northern Illinois was ready after this for the conflict.

As he entered Chicago Douglas was met with a remarkable demonstration. He had come home many times, sometimes for honor and sometimes for abuse, but never to meet the united regard and support of men of all parties and all beliefs. In the Wigwam he made a final address, setting forth to his hearers the situation, and announcing that the critical time was come. “The conspiracy is now known.... There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it.” For the first time he drew the sharp distinction setting the two sides in striking contrast, and calling the people of Illinois to loyalty. The gentle side of his personality made him foresee with dread the horrors of war, and he besought the people to remember that they were a Christian nation and as such they must prosecute the war, saving as far as possible the innocent, the women and children, from suffering.

The Chicago speech was published all over the country, and Douglas supporters recognized that their leader had become the first of the great company of “War Democrats,” of which General Logan and other distinguished men were to be loyal members. In a few days he was taken ill and died at the Tremont House. His last words were a message to his sons to “obey the laws and support the Constitution of the United States.” Chicago, Illinois, and the nation mourned him as a true patriot.