James Buchanan, Part 5

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VOICE ONE:

THE MAKING OF A NATION -- a program in Special English.

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In the summer of eighteen-fifty-eight, two men campaigned across
the state of Illinois for a seat in the United States Senate.
Stephen Douglas of the Democratic Party held the seat. He was
running for re-election. His opponent was a lawyer from the
Republican Party. His name was Abraham Lincoln.

I'm Larry West. Today, Frank Oliver and I will tell about this
local campaign, which had national importance.

VOICE TWO:

Abraham Lincoln proposed that he
and Stephen Douglas hold several debates. The rules for each debate
would be the same. One man would speak for an hour. His opponent
would speak for an hour and a half. Then the first man would speak
for half an hour to close the debate. Douglas agreed.

There were seven debates in all. They were held in towns
throughout Illinois. In some places, there was great interest in
what the two candidates had to say. Thousands of people attended.

Douglas was a short, heavy man. One reporter said he looked like
a fierce bulldog. Douglas's friends and supporters called him "the
little giant."

Lincoln was just the opposite. He was very tall and thin, with
long arms and legs. His clothes did not fit well. And he had a plain
face...one which many thought was ugly. He looked more like a simple
farmer than a candidate for the United States Senate.

VOICE ONE:

The Lincoln-Douglas debates covered party politics and the future
of the nation. But everything the two men discussed was tied to one
issue: slavery.

Douglas spoke first at the first
debate. He questioned a statement made in one of Lincoln's campaign
speeches. Lincoln had said that the United States could not continue
to permit slavery in some areas, while banning it in others. He said
the Union could not stand so divided. It must either permit slavery
everywhere...or nowhere.

Douglas did not agree. He noted that the country had been
half-slave and half-free for seventy years. Why then, he asked,
should it not continue to exist that way. The United States was a
big country. What was best for one part might not be best for
another.

VOICE TWO:

Then Douglas questioned Lincoln's statement on the Supreme
Court's Dred Scott decision. Lincoln had said he opposed the
decision, because it did not permit Negroes to enjoy the rights of
citizenship.

Douglas said he believed the decision was correct. He said it was
clear that the government had been made by white men...for white
men. He said he opposed Negro citizenship.

"I do not accept the Negro as my equal," Douglas said. "And I
deny that he is my brother. However," he said, "this does not mean I
believe that negroes should be slaves. Negroes should enjoy every
possible right that does not threaten the safety of the society in
which they live."

"Every State and territory must decide for itself what these
rights will be. Illinois decided that Negroes will not be citizens,
but that it will protect their life, property, and civil rights. It
keeps from negroes only political rights, and refuses to make
Negroes equal to white men. That policy satisfies me," Douglas said.
"And, it satisfies the Democratic Party."

VOICE ONE:

Then Lincoln spoke.

First, he denied that the Republican Party was an Abolitionist
party." I have no purpose," he said, "either directly or indirectly,
to interfere with slavery where it exists. I believe I have no legal
right to do so. Nor do I wish to do so. I do not," Lincoln said,
"wish to propose political and social equality between the white and
black races."

"But," he went on, "there is no reason in the world why Negroes
should not have all the natural rights listed in the Declaration of
Independence. The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. I agree with judge Douglas," Lincoln said, "that the
Negro is not my equal in many ways -- certainly not in color,
perhaps not mentally or morally. But in the right to eat the bread
that his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge
Douglas, and the equal of every living man."

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln then defended his statement that the United States could
not continue half slave and half free.

He said he did not mean that customs or institutions must be the
same in every state. He said it was healthy and necessary for
differences to exist in a country so large. He said different
customs and institutions helped unite the country, not divide it.

But Lincoln questioned if slavery was such an institution. He
said slavery had not tied the states of the Union together, but had
always been an issue that divided them.

How had the country existed half-slave and half-free for so many
years, Lincoln asked. Because, he said, the men who created the
government believed that slavery was only temporary. Once people
understood that slavery was not permanent, the crisis would pass.

Slavery could be left alone in the south until it slowly died.
That way, Lincoln said, would be best for both the white and black
races.

VOICE ONE:

Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln were campaigning for a Senate
seat from the state of Illinois. But their debates had national
importance, too.

Douglas expected to be the Democratic candidate for president in
eighteen-sixty. His statements could win or lose him support for
that contest. Whenever possible, he tried to show that he was a man
of the people, like Lincoln. He tried to show that his Democratic
Party was a national party, while the Republican Party was a party
only of the north. And he tried to show that Lincoln's policies
would lead to civil war.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln, for his part, may have looked like a simple farmer. But
he was a very smart lawyer and politician. He asked questions which
he knew would cause trouble for Douglas. He wanted to create a split
between Douglas and his supporters in the south.

Lincoln also wanted to keep alive the debate over slavery.
"That," he said, "is the real issue. That is the issue that will
continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas
and myself are silent. It is the eternal struggle between right and
wrong."

VOICE ONE:

In Illinois in eighteen-fifty-eight, the state legislature chose
the men who would represent the state in the national Senate. So
Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln had to depend on legislative
support to get to Washington.

On election day, the legislative candidates supporting Lincoln
won four-thousand more popular votes than the candidates supporting
Douglas. But because of the way election areas had been organized,
the Douglas Democrats won a majority of seats. The newly-elected
legislature chose him to be senator.

VOICE TWO:

Lincoln was sad that he had not won. But he said he was glad to
have tried. The campaign, he said, "...gave me a hearing on the
great question 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 civil
liberty long after I have gone."

Many people, however, did not think Abraham Lincoln would be
forgotten. His campaign speeches had been published everywhere in
the east. His name was becoming widely known. People began to speak
of him as a presidential candidate.

To win the presidential election of eighteen-sixty, the
Republican Party had decided it needed a man of the people. He must
be a good politician and leader. He must be opposed to slavery, but
not too extreme. Many people thought Lincoln could be that man.

VOICE ONE:

After the election in Illinois, Lincoln made several speaking
trips in the western states. In none of his speeches did he say he
might be a candidate for president in eighteen-sixty. If anyone said
anything about 'Lincoln for president', he would answer that he did
not have the ability. Or he would say there were better men in the
party than himself. Lincoln said: "only events can make a
president."

He would wait for those events.

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VOICE TWO:

You have been listening to the Special English program, THE
MAKING OF A NATION. Your narrators were Larry West and Frank Oliver.
Our program was written by Frank Beardsley.