The heat and dust and bonfires of the campaign at last came to an end.
The election took place on the second of November, and while Lincoln received of the popular vote a majority of over four thousand, yet the returns from the legislative districts foreshadowed his defeat. In fact, when the Senatorial election took place in the Legislature, Douglas received fifty-four and Lincoln forty-six votes--one of the results of the lamentable apportionment law then in operation.*
* Horace Greeley was one of the most vigilant men during the debate. He wrote to Lincoln and me many letters which I still retain. In a letter to me during the campaign, October 6, he says with reference to Douglas: "In his present position I could not of course support him, but he need not have been in this position had the Republicans of Illinois been as wise and far-seeing as they are earnest and true....
but seeing things are as they are, I do not wish to be quoted as authority for making trouble and division among our friends." Soon after hearing of the result of November election he again writes: "I advise you privately that Mr.
Douglas would be the strongest candidate that the Democratic party could present for President; but they will not present him. The old leaders wouldn"t endorse it. As he is doomed to be slaughtered at Charleston it is good policy to fatten him meantime. He will cut up the better at killing time." An inquiry for his preference as to Presidential timber elicited this response, December 4th. "As to President, my present judgment is Edward Bates, with John M. Read for Vice; but I am willing to go anything that looks strong. I don"t wish to load the team heavier than it will pull through. As to Douglas, he is like the man"s boy who (he said) "didn"t weigh so much as he expected, and he always knew he wouldn"t." I never thought him very sound coin; but I didn"t think it best to beat him on the back of his anti- Lecompton fight, and I am still of that opinion."
The letters of Lincoln at this period are the best evidence of his feelings now obtainable, and of how he accepted his defeat. To Henry Asbury, a friend who had written him a cheerful letter admonishing him not to give up the battle, he responded;
"Springfield, November 19, 1858.
"Mr. Henry Asbury,
"My Dear Sir:--Yours of the 13th was received some days ago. The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another explosion will soon come.
"Yours truly,
"A. Lincoln."
To another friend* on the same day he writes:
* Dr. Henry.
"I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable questions of the age which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of liberty long after I am gone." Before pa.s.sing to later events in Mr. Lincoln"s life it is proper to include in this chapter, as a specimen of his oratory at this time, his eloquent reference to the Declaration of Independence found in a speech delivered at Beardstown, August 12, and not at Lewiston five days later, as many biographers have it. Aside from its concise reasoning, the sublime thought it suggests ent.i.tles it to rank beside that great masterpiece, his Gettysburg address. After alluding to the suppression by the Fathers of the Republic of the slave trade, he says: "These by their representatives in old Independence Hall said to the whole race 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 inalienable 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 n.o.ble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures--yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine 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, none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were ent.i.tled 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 circ.u.mscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.
"Now, my countrymen, 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 chart 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."
One of the newspaper men* who heard this majestic oration wrote me as follows:
* Horace White, MS., May 17, 1865.
"The apostrophe to the Declaration of Independence to which you refer was written by myself from a vivid recollection of Mr. Lincoln"s speech at Beardstown, August 12, 1858. On the day following the delivery of the speech, as Mr. Lincoln and I were proceeding by steamer from Beardstown to Havana, I said to him that I had been greatly impressed by his concluding remarks of the day previous, and that if he would write them out for me I felt confident their publication would be highly beneficial to our cause as well as honorable to his own fame. He replied that he had but a faint recollection of any portion of the speech; that, like all his campaign speeches, it was necessarily extemporaneous; and that its good or bad effect depended upon the inspiration of the moment.
He added that I had probably overestimated the value of the remarks referred to. In reply to my question whether he had any objection to my writing them out from memory and putting them in the form of a verbatim report, he said, "None at all." I accordingly did so. I felt confident then and I feel equally a.s.sured now that I transcribed the peroration with absolute fidelity as to ideas and commendable fidelity as to language. I certainly aimed to reproduce his exact words, and my recollection of the pa.s.sage as spoken was very clear. After I had finished writing I read it to Mr. Lincoln. When I had finished the reading he said, "Well, those are my views, and if I said anything on the subject I must have said substantially that, but not nearly so well as that is said." I remember this remark quite distinctly, and if the old steamer _Editor_ is still in existence I could show the place where we were sitting. Having secured his a.s.sent to the publication I forwarded it to our paper, but inasmuch as my report of the Beardstown meeting had been already mailed I incorporated the remarks on the Declaration of Independence in my letter from Lewiston two or three days subsequently.... I do not remember ever having related these facts before, although they have often recurred to me as I have seen the peroration resuscitated again and again, and published (with good effect, I trust) in the newspapers of this country and England."
CHAPTER IV.
The importance of a more accurate and elaborate history of the debate between Lincoln and Douglas has induced Mr. Weik and me to secure, for publication in these pages, the account by Horace White, of this world-renowned forensic contest. Mr. White"s means of knowledge, as fully set forth in the article, are exceptional, and his treatment of the subject is not less entertaining than truthful. It is certainly a great contribution to history and we insert it without further comment:
"It was my good fortune to accompany Mr. Lincoln during his political campaign against Senator Douglas in 1858, not only at the joint debates but also at most of the smaller meetings where his compet.i.tor was not present. We traveled together many thousands of miles. I was in the employ of the _Chicago Tribune_, then called the _Press and Tribune_.
Senator Douglas had entered upon his campaign with two short-hand reporters, James B. Sheridan and Henry Binmore, whose duty it was to "write it up" in the columns of the Chicago Times. The necessity of counteracting or matching that force became apparent very soon, and I was chosen to write up Mr. Lincoln"s campaign.
"I was not a short-hand reporter. The verbatim reporting for the Chicago Tribune in the joint debates was done by Mr. Robert R. Hitt, late a.s.sistant Secretary of State, and the present Representative in Congress from the 6th District of Illinois. Verbatim reporting was a new feature in journalism in Chicago, and Mr. Hitt was the pioneer thereof. The publication of Senator Douglas"s opening speech in that campaign, delivered on the evening of July 9th, by the Tribune the next morning, was a feat hitherto unexampled in the West, and most mortifying to the Democratic newspaper, the _Times_, and to Sheridan and Binmore, who, after taking down the speech as carefully as Mr. Hitt had done, had gone to bed intending to write it out next day, as was then customary.
"All of the seven joint debates were reported by Mr. Hitt for the _Tribune_, the ma.n.u.script pa.s.sing through my hands before going to the printers, but no changes were made by me except in a few cases where confusion on the platform; or the blowing of the wind, had caused some slight hiatus or evident mistake in catching the speaker"s words. I could not resist the temptation to _italicise_ a few pa.s.sages in Mr.
Lincoln"s speeches, where his manner of delivery had been especially emphatic.
"The volume containing the debates, published in 1860 by Follett, Foster & Co., of Columbus, Ohio, presents Mr. Lincoln"s speeches as they appeared in the Chicago _Tribune_, and Mr. Douglas"s as they appeared in the Chicago _Times_. Of course, the speeches of both were published simultaneously in both papers. The Chicago _Times_" reports of Mr.
Lincoln"s speeches were not at all satisfactory to Mr. Lincoln"s friends, and this led to a charge that they were purposely mutilated in order to give his compet.i.tor a more scholarly appearance before the public--a charge indignantly denied by Sheridan and Binmore. There was really no foundation for this charge. Of course, Sheridan and Binmore took more pains with Mr. Douglas"s speeches than with those of his opponent. That was their business. It was what they were paid for, and what they were expected to do. The debates were all held in the open air, on rude platforms hastily put together, shaky, and overcrowded with people. The reporters" tables were liable to be jostled and their ma.n.u.script agitated by the wind. Some gaps were certain to occur in the reporters" notes and these, when occurring in Mr. Douglas"s speeches, would certainly be straightened out by his own reporters, who would feel no such responsibility for the rough places in Mr. Lincoln"s. Then it must be added that there were fewer involved sentences in Mr. Douglas"s _extempore_ speeches than in Mr. Lincoln"s. Douglas was the more practiced and more polished speaker of the two, and it was easier for a reporter to follow him. All his sentences were round and perfect in his mind before he opened his lips. This was not always the case with Mr.
Lincoln"s.
"My acquaintance with Mr. Lincoln began four years before the campaign of which I am writing, in October, 1854. I was then in the employ of the Chicago _Evening Journal_. I had been sent to Springfield to report the political doings of State Fair week for that newspaper. Thus it came about that I occupied a front seat in the Representatives" Hall, in the old State House, when Mr. Lincoln delivered the speech already described in this volume. The impression made upon me by the orator was quite overpowering.
"I had not heard much political speaking up to that time. I have heard a great deal since. I have never heard anything since, either by Mr.
Lincoln, or by anybody, that I would put on a higher plane of oratory.
All the strings that play upon the human heart and understanding were touched with masterly skill and force, while beyond and above all skill was the overwhelming conviction pressed upon the audience that the speaker himself was charged with an irresistible and inspiring duty to his fellow men. This conscientious impulse drove his arguments through the heads of his hearers down into their bosoms, where they made everlasting lodgment. I had been nurtured in the Abolitionist faith, and was much more radical than Mr. Lincoln himself on any point where slavery was concerned, yet it seemed to me, when this speech was finished, as though I had had a very feeble conception of the wickedness of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. I was filled, as never before, with the sense of my own duty and responsibility as a citizen toward the aggressions of the slave power.
"Having, "since then, heard all the great public speakers of this country subsequent to the period of Clay and Webster, I award the palm to Mr. Lincoln as the one who, although not first in all respects, would bring more men, of doubtful or hostile leanings, around to his way of thinking by talking to them on a platform, than any other.
"Although I heard him many times afterward I shall longest remember him as I then saw the tall, angular form with the long, angular arms, at times bent nearly double with excitement, like a large flail animating two smaller ones, the mobile face wet with perspiration which he discharged in drops as he threw his head this way and that like a projectile--not a graceful figure, yet not an ungraceful one. After listening to him a few minutes, when he had got well warmed with his subject, n.o.body would mind whether he was graceful or not. All thought of grace or form would be lost in the exceeding attractiveness of what he was saying.
"Returning to the campaign of 1858--I was sent by my employers to Springfield to attend the Republican State Convention of that year.
Again I sat at a short distance from Mr. Lincoln when he delivered the "house-divided-against-itself" speech, on the 17th of June. This was delivered from ma.n.u.script, and was the only one I ever heard him deliver in that way. When it was concluded he put the ma.n.u.script in my hands and asked me to go to the _State Journal_ office and read the proof of it.
I think it had already been set in type. Before I had finished this task Mr. Lincoln himself came into the composing room of the _State Journal_ and looked over the revised proofs. He said to me that he had taken a great deal of pains with this speech, and that he wanted it to go before the people just as he had prepared it. He added that some of his friends had scolded him a good deal about the opening paragraph and "the house divided against itself," and wanted him to change it or leave it out altogether, but that he believed he had studied this subject more deeply than they had, and that he was going to stick to that text whatever happened.
"On the 9th of July, Senator Douglas returned to Chicago from Washington City. He had stopped a few days at Cleveland, Ohio, to allow his friends to arrange a grand _entree_ for him. It was arranged that he should arrive about eight o"clock in the evening by the Michigan Central Railway, whose station was at the foot of Lake street, in which street the princ.i.p.al hotel, the Tremont House, was situated, and that he should be driven in a carriage drawn by six horses to the hotel, where he should make his first speech of the campaign. To carry out this arrangement it was necessary that he should leave the Michigan Southern Railway at Laporte and go to Michigan City, at which place the Chicago committee of reception took him in charge. It was noted by the Chicago _Times_ that some malicious person at Michigan City had secretly spiked the only cannon in the town, so that the Douglas men were obliged to use an anvil on the occasion.
"When Mr. Douglas and his train arrived at the Lake street station, the crowd along the street to the hotel, four or five blocks distant, was dense, and, for the Chicago of that day, tremendous. It was with great difficulty that the six-horse team got through it at all. Banners, bands of music, cannon and fireworks added their various inspiration to the scene. About nine o"clock Mr. Douglas made his appearance on a balcony on the Lake street side of the hotel and made his speech. Mr. Lincoln sat in a chair just inside the house, very near the speaker, and was an attentive listener.
"Mr. Douglas"s manner on this occasion was courtly and conciliatory. His argument was plausible but worthless--being, for the most part, a rehash of his "popular sovereignty" dogma; nevertheless, he made a good impression. He could make more out of a bad case, I think, than any other man this country has ever produced, and I hope the country will never produce his like again in this particular. If his fate had been cast in the French Revolution, he would have out-demagogued the whole lot of them. I consider the use he made of this chip called popular sovereignty, riding upon it safely through some of the stormiest years in our history, and having nothing else to ride upon, a feat of dexterity akin to genius. But mere dexterity would not alone have borne him along his pathway in life. He had dauntless courage, unwearied energy, engaging manners, boundless ambition, unsurpa.s.sed powers of debate, and strong personal magnetism. Among the Democrats of the North his ascendency was unquestioned and his power almost absolute. He was exactly fitted to hew his way to the Presidency, and he would have done so infallibly if he had not made the mistake of coquetting with slavery.
This was a mistake due to the absence of moral principle. If he had been as true to freedom as Lincoln was he would have distanced Lincoln in the race. It was, in fact, no easy task to prevent the Republicans from flocking after him in 1858, when he had, for once only, sided with them, in reference to the Lecompton Const.i.tution. There are some reasons for believing that Douglas would have separated himself from the slave-holders entirely after the Lecompton fight, if he had thought that the Republicans would join in re-electing him to the Senate. Yet the position taken by the party in Illinois was perfectly sound. Douglas was too slippery to make a bargain with. He afterward redeemed himself in the eyes of his opponents by an immense service to the Union, which no other man could have rendered; but, up to this time, there was nothing for anti slavery men to do but to beat him if they could.
"I will add here that I had no personal acquaintance with Mr. Douglas, although my opportunities for meeting him were frequent. I regarded him as the most dangerous enemy of liberty, and, therefore, as my enemy.
I did not want to know him. Accordingly, one day when Mr. Sheridan courteously offered to present me to his chief, I declined without giving any reason. Of course, this was a mistake; but, at the age of twenty-four, I took my politics very seriously. I thought that all the work of saving the country had to be done then and there. I have since learned to leave something to time and Providence.
"Mr. Lincoln"s individual campaign began at Beardstown, Ca.s.s county, August 12th. Douglas had been there the previous day, and I had heard him. His speech had consisted mainly of tedious repet.i.tions of "popular sovereignty," but he had taken occasion to notice Lincoln"s conspiracy charge, and had called it "an infamous lie." He had also alluded to Senator Trumbull"s charge that he (Douglas) had, two years earlier, been engaged in a plot to force a bogus const.i.tution on the people of Kansas without giving them an opportunity to vote upon it. "The miserable, craven-hearted wretch," said Douglas, "he would rather have both ears cut off than to use that language in my presence, where I could call him to account." Before entering upon this subject, Douglas turned to his reporters and said "Take this down." They did so and it was published a few days later in the St. Louis Republican. This incident furnished the text of the Charleston joint debate on the 18th of September.
"Mr. Douglas"s meeting at Beardstown was large and enthusiastic, but was composed of a lower social stratum than the Republican meeting of the following day. Mr. Lincoln came up the Illinois River from the town of Naples in the steamer _Sam Gaty_. Ca.s.s county and the surrounding region was by no means hopeful Republican ground. Yet Mr. Lincoln"s friends mustered forty hors.e.m.e.n and two bands of music, beside a long procession on foot to meet him at the landing. Schuyler county sent a delegation of three hundred, and Morgan county was well represented. These were mostly Old Line Whigs who had followed Lincoln in earlier days. Mr. Lincoln"s speech at Beardstown was one of the best he ever made in my hearing, and was not a repet.i.tion of any other. In fact, he never repeated himself except when some remark or question from the audience led him back upon a subject that he had already discussed. Many times did I marvel to see him get on a platform at some out-of-the-way place and begin an entirely new speech, equal, in all respects, to any of the joint debates, and continue for two hours in a high strain of argumentative power and eloquence, without saying anything that I had heard before. After the Edwardsville meeting I said to him that it was wonderful to me that he could find new things to say everywhere, while Douglas was parroting his popular sovereignty speech at every place. He replied that Douglas was not lacking in versatility, but that he had a theory that the popular sovereignty speech was the one to win on, and that the audiences whom he addressed would hear it only once and would never know whether he made the same speech elsewhere or not, and would never care. Most likely, if their attention were called to the subject, they would think that was the proper thing to do. As for himself, he said that he could not repeat to-day what he had said yesterday. The subject kept enlarging and widening in his mind as he went on, and it was much easier to make a new speech than to repeat an old one.
"It was at Beardstown that Mr. Lincoln uttered the glowing words that have come to be known as the apostrophe to the Declaration of Independence, the circ.u.mstances attending which are narrated in another part of this book. Probably the apostrophe, as printed, is a trifle more florid than as delivered, and, therefore, less forcible.
"The following pa.s.sage, from the Beardstown speech, was taken down by me on the platform by long-hand notes and written out immediately afterward:
THE CONSPIRACY CHARGE.
""I made a speech in June last in which I pointed out, briefly and consecutively, a series of public measures leading directly to the nationalization of slavery--the spreading of that inst.i.tution over all the Territories and all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. I enumerated the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which, every candid man must acknowledge, conferred upon emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska the right to carry slaves there and hold them in bondage, whereas formerly they had no such right; I alluded to the events which followed that repeal, events in which Judge Douglas"s name figures quite prominently; I referred to the Dred Scott decision and the extraordinary means taken to prepare the public mind for that decision; the efforts put forth by President Pierce to make the people believe that, in the election of James Buchanan, they had endorsed the doctrine that slavery may exist in the free Territories of the Union--the earnest exhortation put forth by President Buchanan to the people to stick to that decision whatever it might be--the close-fitting niche in the Nebraska bill, wherein the right of the people to govern themselves is made "subject to the const.i.tution of the United States"--the extraordinary haste made by Judge Douglas to give this decision an endors.e.m.e.nt at the capitol of Illinois. I alluded to other concurring circ.u.mstances, which I need not repeat now, and I said that, though I could not open the bosoms of men and find out their secret motives, yet, when I found the framework of a barn, or a bridge, or any other structure, built by a number of carpenters--Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James--and so built that each tenon had its proper mortice, and the whole forming a symmetrical piece of workmanship, I should say that those carpenters all worked on an intelligible plan, and understood each other from the beginning.
This embraced the main argument in my speech before the Republican State Convention in June. Judge Douglas received a copy of my speech some two weeks before his return to Illinois. He had ample time to examine and reply to it if he chose to do so. He did examine and he did reply to it, but he wholly overlooked the body of my argument, and said nothing about the "conspiracy charge," as he terms it. He made his speech up of complaints against our tendencies to negro equality and amalgamation.
Well, seeing that Douglas had had the process served on him, that he had taken notice of the process, that he had come into court and pleaded to a part of the complaint, but had ignored the main issue, I took a default on him. I held that he had no plea to make to the general charge. So when I was called on to reply to him, twenty-four hours afterward, I renewed the charge as explicitly as I could. My speech was reported and published on the following morning, and, of course, Judge Douglas saw it. He went from Chicago to Bloomington and there made another and longer speech, and yet took no notice of the "conspiracy charge." He then went to Springfield and made another elaborate argument, but was not prevailed upon to know anything about the outstanding indictment. I made another speech at Springfield, this time taking it for granted that Judge Douglas was satisfied to take his chances in the campaign with the imputation of the conspiracy hanging over him. It was not until he went into a small town, Clinton, in De Witt county, where he delivered his fourth or fifth regular speech, that he found it convenient to notice this matter at all. At that place (I was standing in the crowd when he made his speech ), he bethought himself that he was charged with something, and his reply was that his "self-respect alone prevented him from calling it a falsehood." Well, my friends, perhaps he so far lost his self-respect in Beardstown as to actually call it a falsehood.
""But now I have this reply to make: that while the Nebraska bill was pending, Judge Douglas helped to vote down a clause giving the people of the Territories the right to exclude slavery if they chose; that neither while the bill was pending, nor at any other time, would he give his opinion whether the people had the right to exclude slavery, though respectfully asked; that he made a report, which I hold in my hand, from the Committee on Territories, in which he said the rights of the people of the Territories, in this regard, are "held in abeyance," and cannot be immediately exercised; that the Dred Scott decision expressly denies any such right, but declares that neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can keep slavery out of Kansas and that Judge Douglas endorses that decision. All these charges are new; that is, I did not make them in my original speech. They are additional and c.u.mulative testimony. I bring them forward now and dare Judge Douglas to deny one of them. Let him do so and I will prove them by such testimony as shall confound him forever. I say to you, that it would be more to the purpose for Judge Douglas to say that he did not repeal the Missouri Compromise; that he did not make slavery possible where it was impossible before; that he did not leave a niche in the Nebraska bill for the Dred Scott decision to rest in; that he did not vote down a clause giving the people the right to exclude slavery if they wanted to; that he did not refuse to give his individual opinion whether a Territorial Legislature could exclude slavery; that he did not make a report to the Senate, in which he said that the rights of the people, in this regard, were held in abeyance and could not be immediately exercised; that he did not make a hasty endors.e.m.e.nt of the Dred Scott decision over at Springfield;*
that he does not now endorse that decision; that that decision does not take away from the Territorial Legislature the right to exclude slavery; and that he did not, in the original Nebraska bill, so couple the words State and Territory together that what the Supreme Court has done in forcing open all the Territories to slavery it may yet do in forcing open all the States. I say it would be vastly more to the point for Judge Douglas to say that he did not do some of these things; that he did not forge some of these links of testimony, than to go vociferating about the country that possibly he may hint that somebody is a liar."
* This refers to Douglas"s speech of June 12, 1857.
"The next morning, August 13th, we boarded the steamer _Editor_ and went to Havana, Mason county. Mr. Lincoln was in excellent spirits. Several of his old Whig friends were on board, and the journey was filled up with politics and story-telling. In the latter branch of human affairs, Mr. Lincoln was most highly gifted. From the beginning to the end of our travels the fund of anecdotes never failed, and, wherever we happened to be, all the people within ear-shot would begin to work their way up to this inimitable storyteller. His stories were always _apropos_ of something going on, and oftenest related to things that had happened in his own neighborhood. He was constantly being reminded of one, and, when he told it, his facial expression was so irresistibly comic that the bystanders generally exploded in laughter before he reached what he called the "nub" of it. Although the intervals between the meetings were filled up brimful with mirth in this way, Mr. Lincoln indulged very sparingly in humor in his speeches. I asked him one day why he did not oftener turn the laugh on Douglas. He replied that he was too much in earnest, and that it was doubtful whether turning the laugh on anybody really gained any votes.
"We arrived at Havana while Douglas was still speaking. The deputation that met Mr. Lincoln at the landing suggested that he should go up to the grove where the Democratic meeting was going on and hear what Douglas was saying. But he declined to do so, saying: "The Judge was so put out by my listening to him at Bloomington and Clinton that I promised to leave him alone at his own meetings for the rest of the campaign. I understand that he is calling Trumbull and myself liars, and if he should see me in the crowd he might be so ashamed of himself as to omit the most telling part of his argument." I strolled up to the Douglas meeting just before its conclusion, and there met a friend who had heard the whole. He was in a state of high indignation. He said that Douglas must certainly have been drinking before he came on the platform, because he had called Lincoln "a liar, a coward, a wretch and a sneak."