FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>  
he two senatorships from Illinois, and that Trumbull had broken faith with Lincoln. Lincoln in turn made a charge that Douglas had conspired with Presidents Pierce and Buchanan and Chief Justice Taney to spread slavery and make it universal. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was their first step, the Dred Scott decision the second; but one more step, and slavery could be fastened upon States as they had already fastened it upon Territories. Douglas protesting that to bring such a charge, incapable of proof or disproof, was indecent, Lincoln pointed out that Douglas had similarly charged the administration with conspiring to force a slave constitution upon Kansas; and afterwards took up a charge of Trumbull's that Douglas himself had at first conspired with Toombs and other senators to prevent any reference to the people of whatsoever constitution the Kansas convention might adopt. When they moved southward, Douglas charged Lincoln with inconsistency in that he changed his stand to suit the leanings of different communities. Of all these charges and counter-charges, however, none was absolutely proved, and no one now believes those which Douglas brought. But he made them serve, and Lincoln's, though he sustained them with far better evidence, and pressed them home with a wonderful clearness of reasoning,--once, he actually threw his argument into a syllogism,--did no great harm to Douglas. It was Douglas, too, who began the sparring for a political advantage. He knew that Lincoln's following was heterogeneous. "Their principles," he jeered, "in the north are jet black, in the centre they are in color a decent mulatto, and in lower Egypt they are almost white." His aim, therefore, was to fix upon Lincoln such extreme views as would alarm the more moderate of his followers, since the extremists must take him perforce, as a choice of two evils, even though he fell far short of their radical standard. To this end, Douglas produced certain resolutions which purported to have been adopted by an Anti-Nebraska convention at Springfield in 1854, and would have held Lincoln responsible for them. In a series of questions, he asked whether Lincoln were still opposed to a fugitive slave law, to the admission of any more slave States, and to acquiring any more territory unless the Wilmot Proviso were applied to it, and if he were still for prohibiting slavery outright in all the Territories and in the District of Columbia, and for prohibiting
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   >>  



Top keywords:

Douglas

 

Lincoln

 

charge

 
Kansas
 
slavery
 

fastened

 

Territories

 

charges

 
charged
 

constitution


States
 

Trumbull

 

conspired

 

prohibiting

 

convention

 

Nebraska

 

followers

 

moderate

 
extreme
 

advantage


political

 

sparring

 

heterogeneous

 

decent

 

mulatto

 

centre

 

principles

 

jeered

 

extremists

 

resolutions


opposed

 

fugitive

 
questions
 

series

 

responsible

 

admission

 

outright

 
District
 
Columbia
 

applied


Proviso

 
acquiring
 

territory

 

Wilmot

 
Springfield
 
radical
 

standard

 

perforce

 

choice

 

adopted