He spoke with effectiveness--and to move the judgment as well as the emotion of men.There was a world of meaning and emphasis in the long,bony finger of the right hand as he dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers....He always stood squarely on his feet....He neither touched nor leaned on anything for support.He never ranted,never walked backward and forward on the platform....As he proceeded with his speech,the exercise of his vocal organs altered somewhat the pitch of his voice.It lost in a measure its former acute and shrilling pitch and mellowed into a more harmonious and pleasant sound.His form expanded,and notwithstanding the sunken breast,he rose up a splendid and imposing figure....His little gray eyes flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound thoughts;and his uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk themselves beneath the wave of righteous indignation that came sweeping over him."[4]
A wonderful dramatic contrast were these two men,each in his way so masterful,as they appeared in the famous debates.By good fortune we have a portrait of Douglas the orator,from the pen of Mrs.Stowe,who had observed him with reluctant admiration from the gallery of the Senate."This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality.Short,broad,thick-set,every inch of him has its own alertness and motion.He has a good head,thick black hair,heavy black brows,and a keen face.
His figure would be an unfortunate one were it not for the animation that constantly pervades it.As it is it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance;he has a small handsome hand,moreover,and a graceful as well as forcible mode of using it....He has two requisites of a debater,a melodious voice and clear,sharply defined enunciation.His forte in debating is his power of mystifying the point.With the most offhand assured airs in the world,and a certain appearance of honest superiority,like one who has a regard for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters,he proceeds to set up some point which is not that in question,but only a family connection of it,and this point he attacks with the very best of logic and language;he charges upon it,horse and foot,runs it down,tramples it in the dust,and then turns upon you with 'See,there is your argument.Did I not tell you so?You see it is all stuff.'And if you have allowed yourself to be so dazzled by his quickness as to forget that the routed point is not,after all,the one in question,you suppose all is over with it.Moreover,he contrives to mingle up so many stinging allusions,so many piquant personalities,that by the time he has done his mystification,a dozen others are ready and burning to spring on their feet to repel some direct or indirect attack all equally wide of the point."The mode of travel of the two contestants heightened the contrast.George B.McClellan,a young engineer officer who had recently resigned from the army and was now general superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad,gave Douglas his private car and a special train.Lincoln traveled any way he could-in ordinary passenger trains,or even in the caboose of a freight train.A curious symbolization of Lincoln's belief that the real conflict was between the plain people and organized money!
The debates did not develop new ideas.It was a literary duel,each leader aiming to restate himself in the most telling,popular way.For once that superficial definition of art applied:"What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed."Nevertheless the debates contained an incident that helped to make history.Though Douglas was at war with the Administration,it was not certain that the quarrel might not be made up.There was no other leader who would be so formidable at the head of a reunited Democratic party.Lincoln pondered the question,how could the rift between Douglas and the Democratic machine be made irrevocable?And now a new phase of Lincoln appeared.It was the political strategist He saw that if he would disregard his own chance of election-as he had done from a simpler motive four years before--he could drive Douglas into a dilemma from which there was no real escape.He confided his purpose to his friends;they urged him not to do it.But he had made up his mind as he generally did,without consultation,in the silence of his own thoughts,and once having made it up,he was inflexible.
At Freeport,Lincoln made the move which probably lost him the Senatorship.He asked a question which if Douglas answered it one way would enable him to recover the favor of Illinois but would lose him forever the favor of the slave-holders;but which,if he answered it another way might enable him to make his peace at Washington but would certainly lose him Illinois.
The question was:"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?"[5]In other words,is the Dred Scott decision good law?Is it true that a slave-holder can take his slaves into Kansas if the people of Kansas want to keep him out?
Douglas saw the trap.With his instantaneous facility he tried to cloud the issue and extricate himself through evasion in the very manner Mrs.Stowe has described.While dodging a denial of the court's authority,he insisted that his doctrine of local autonomy was still secure because through police regulation the local legislature could foster or strangle slavery,just as they pleased,no matter "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."As Lincoln's friends had foreseen,this matchless performance of carrying water on both shoulders caught the popular fancy;Douglas was reelected to the Senate.As Lincoln had foreseen,it killed him as a Democratic leader;it prevented the reunion of the Democratic party.The result appeared in 1860when the Republicans,though still a minority party,carried the day because of the bitter divisions among the Democrats.That was what Lincoln foresaw when he said to his fearful friends while they argued in vain to prevent his asking the question at Free-port."I am killing larger game;the great battle of 1860is worth a thousand of this senatorial race."[6]
