Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (43 page)

This extract from their joint debate at Freeport, Illinois, on June 17, 1858, gives a flavor of Douglas’s style, which includes the use of homely metaphor within a forensic structure. His criticism of Frederick Douglass as a Lincoln supporter was a racist effort to appeal to southern Democrats who thought Douglas was not proslavery enough.

***

…CAN THE PEOPLE
of the territory in any lawful way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska Bill on that principle all over the state in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not 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; the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point….

The third question which Mr. Lincoln presented is “If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that a state of this Union cannot exclude slavery from its own limits, will I submit to it?” I am amazed that Lincoln should ask such a question. “A schoolboy knows better.” Yes, a schoolboy does know better. Mr. Lincoln’s object is to cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court. He knows that there never was but one man in America, claiming any degree of intelligence or decency, who ever for a moment pretended such a thing. It is true that the
Washington Union
, in an article published on the seventeenth of last December, did put forth that doctrine, and I denounced the article on the floor of the Senate in a speech which Mr. Lincoln now pretends was against the president. The
Union
had claimed that slavery had a right to go into the free states, and that any provisions in the Constitution or laws of the free states to the contrary were null and void. I denounced it in the Senate, as I said before, and I was the first man who did. Lincoln’s friends Trumbull and Seward and Hale and Wilson and the whole black Republican side of the Senate were silent. They left it to me to denounce it. And what was the reply
made to me on that occasion? Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, got up and undertook to lecture me on the ground that I ought not to have deemed the article worthy of notice and ought not to have replied to it; that there was not one man, woman, or child south of the Potomac, in any slave state, who did not repudiate any such pretension. Mr. Lincoln knows that that reply was made on the spot, and yet now he asks this question. He might as well ask me, “Suppose Mr. Lincoln should steal a horse, would you sanction it?” and it would be as genteel in me to ask him, in the event he stole a horse, what ought to be done with him. He casts an imputation upon the Supreme Court of the United States by supposing that they would violate the Constitution of the United States. I tell him that such a thing is not possible. It would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. Mr. Lincoln himself would never in his partisan feelings so far forget what was right as to be guilty of such an act.

The fourth question of Mr. Lincoln is “Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard as to how such acquisition may affect the Union on the slavery question?” This question is very ingeniously and cunningly put.

The black Republican creed lays it down expressly, that under no circumstances shall we acquire any more territory unless slavery is first prohibited in the country. I ask Mr. Lincoln whether he is in favor of that proposition. Are you [addressing Mr. Lincoln] opposed to the acquisition of any more territory, under any circumstances, unless slavery is prohibited in it? That he does not like to answer. When I ask him whether he stands up to that article in the platform of his party he turns, Yankee fashion, and, without answering it, asks me whether I am in favor of acquiring territory without regard to how it may affect the Union on the slavery question. I answer that whenever it becomes necessary, in our growth and progress, to acquire more territory, that I am in favor of it, without reference to the question of slavery; and when we have acquired it, I will leave the people free to do as they please, either to make it slave or free territory, as they prefer….

I tell you, increase and multiply and expand is the law of this nation’s existence. You cannot limit this great Republic by mere boundary lines, saying, “Thus far shalt thou go, and no further.” Any one of you gentlemen might as well say to a son twelve years old that he is big enough, and must not grow any larger, and in order to prevent his growth put a hoop around him to keep him to his present size. What would be the result? Either the hoop must burst and be rent asunder, or the child must die. So it would be with this great nation. With our natural increase, growing with a rapidity unknown in any other part of the globe, with the tide of
emigration that is fleeing from despotism in the Old World to seek refuge in our own, there is a constant torrent pouring into this country that requires more land, more territory upon which to settle; and just as fast as our interests and our destiny require additional territory in the North, in the South, or on the islands of the ocean, I am for it, and when we acquire it, will leave the people, according to the Nebraska Bill, free to do as they please on the subject of slavery and every other question.

I trust now that Mr. Lincoln will deem himself answered on his four points. He racked his brain so much in devising these four questions that he exhausted himself, and had not strength enough to invent the others. As soon as he is able to hold a council with his advisers Lovejoy, Farnsworth, and Fred Douglass, he will frame and propound others. You black Republicans who say good, I have no doubt, think that they are all good men. I have reason to recollect that some people in this country think that Fred Douglass is a very good man. The last time I came here to make a speech, while talking from the stand to you, people of Freeport, as I am doing today, I saw a carriage, and a magnificent one it was, drive up and take a position on the outside of the crowd; a beautiful young lady was sitting on the box seat, whilst Fred Douglass and her mother reclined inside and the owner of the carriage acted as driver. I saw this in your own town. All I have to say of it is this, that if you black Republicans think that the Negro ought to be on a social equality with your wives and daughters, and ride in a carriage with your wife, whilst you drive the team, you have a perfect right to do so. I am told that one of Fred Douglass’s kinsmen, another rich black Negro, is now traveling in this part of the state making speeches for his friend Lincoln as the champion of black men. All I have to say on that subject is that those of you who believe that the Negro is your equal and ought to be on an equality with you socially, politically, and legally have a right to entertain these opinions and, of course, will vote for Mr. Lincoln.

“Perhaps the most dramatic scene that ever took place in the Senate Chamber—old or new—,” wrote John Forney in his 1873
Anecdotes of Public Men
, “was that between [John Cabell] Breckinridge and Colonel E. D. Baker of Oregon on the 1st of August 1861.”

Breckinridge, vice-president of the United States under James Buchanan, had run for president in 1860 and lost to Lincoln, but the popular young Kentuckian was returned to the Senate. He sought a compromise between North and South, remaining in the Senate after the southern states seceded, a lonely voice earning the enmity of Union defenders. So long as he dissented “in his place”—as representative of a loyal border state, in the Senate Chamber—his criticism of Lincoln’s repression of civil liberties in the name of preserving the nation could not be prosecuted as a crime.

Edwin Baker had served in the Black Hawk War and the Illinois state legislature with Lincoln; he was one of the president’s closest friends and the namesake of Lincoln’s firstborn. Baker served with distinction in the Mexican war, at one point with both U. S. Grant and R. E. Lee as his subordinates; he donned his uniform again as the Civil War began, and—in boots and riding crop—entered the Senate that day to clash with Breckinridge, whom he knew and liked. James Blaine of Maine later wrote, “In the history of the Senate, no more thrilling speech was ever delivered” than Ned Baker’s.

Baker, whose slashing oratory was heightened by a series of accusing questions, was to fall at Ball’s Bluff; Breckinridge was to serve as a Confederate general in charge of Kentucky’s “Orphan Brigade”—troops of rebels from a state loyal to the Union—and in the war’s final stages as Confederate secretary of war.

Their words, spoken without notes, were transcribed and published in
the
Congressional Globe
of August 2; to lend clarity and dramatic impact, I have broken up the mostly uninterrupted speeches into refutations of each other’s main points. The “Tarpeian Rock” interrupting voice was incorrectly presumed by Breckinridge to be Charles Sumner of Massachusetts; the senator who recalled the execution ground for Roman traitors was William Pitt Fessenden of Maine. The debate was occasioned by proposals to establish martial law and to punish sedition, actions that Baker thought necessary to silence agitation capable of weakening the Union war effort and that Breckinridge thought undermined the principle of liberty they sought to defend.

***

[
BRECKINRIDGE
:] I am quite aware that all I say is received with a sneer of incredulity in this body. But let the future determine who was right and who was wrong. We are making our record here; I, my humble one, amid the aversion of nearly all who surround me. I have forgotten what an approving voice sounds like, and am surrounded by scowls….

What is this bill but vesting first in the discretion of the president, to be by him detailed to a subaltern military commander, the authority to enter the commonwealth of Kentucky, to abolish the state, to abolish the judiciary, and to substitute just such rules as that military commander may choose. This bill contains provisions conferring authority which never was exercised in the worst days of Rome, by the worst of her dictators.

I have wondered why this bill was introduced. Possibly to prevent the expression of that reaction which is now evidently going on in the public mind against these procedures so fatal to constitutional liberty. The army may be used, perhaps, to collect the enormous direct taxes to come to finance the war.

Mr. President, gentlemen here talk about the Union as if it was an end instead of a means. Take care that in pursuing one idea you do not destroy not only the Constitution of your country, but sever what remains of the federal Union.

[
BAKER
:] A question.

[
BRECKINRIDGE
:] I prefer no interruptions. The senator from California will have the floor later.

[
BAKER
:] Oregon.

[
BRECKINRIDGE
:] The senator seems to have charge of the whole Pacific coast…. Oregon, then. I desire the country to know this fact: that it is openly avowed upon this floor that the Constitution is put aside in a struggle like this. You are acting just as if there were two nations upon
this continent. one arrayed against the other; some twenty million on one side, and some twelve million on the other as to whom the Constitution is naught, and the rules of war alone apply.

The “war power,” whatever that means, applies to external enemies only. I do not believe it applies to any of our political communities bound by the Constitution in this association. Nor do I believe that the founders ever contemplated the preservation of the Union of these states by one half the states warring on the other half.

Mr. President, we are on the wrong tack; we have been from the beginning. The people begin to see it. Here we have been hurling gallant fellows on to death, and the blood of Americans has been shed—for what? To carry out principles that three-fourths of them abhor; for the principles of despotism contained in this bill before us.

Nothing but ruin, utter ruin, to the North and South, to the East and West, will follow the prosecution of this contest. You may look forward to innumerable armies. You may look forward to raising and borrowing vast treasures for the purpose of ravaging and desolating this continent. At the end, we will be just where we are now. Or if you are gloriously victorious, and succeed in ravaging the South, what will you do with it? Can you not see what is so plain to the world, that what you insist on seeing as a mere faction is a whole people, wanting to go its own way?

To accomplish your purpose, it will be necessary to subjugate, to conquer, aye, to
exterminate
—nearly ten million people! Does anybody here not know that? Does anyone here hope vainly for conquest without carnage?

Let us pause while there is still time for men of good will to draw back from hatred and bloodshed. Let the Congress of the United States respond here and now to the feeling, rising all over this land, in favor of peace.