Report of Speech at Carlinville, Illinois, 31 August 18581
Hon. A. Lincoln’s Speech.
Agreeable to arrangement, Mr. Lincoln arrived here on the down train Tuesday morning,
and was quietly conducted to the American House, it having been previously arranged by his friends that no signs of man worship should
take place, and no gaudy display be made to captivate the crowd (a la Douglas)2—but that the people and Lincoln should be left perfectly free to regulate their own
concerns in their own way. All other speakers looked for unexpectedly disappointed
us. The meeting was quite large—many gentlemen estimate it at 1,000 legal voters,—and
we doubt if Douglas can get a larger number of men together, even with the aid of
the Circus.3
At 3 o’clock this large crowd of citizens assembled in Morton’s Grove, where Mr. Lincoln
entertained them in an honest, logical and telling speech. He said the question is
often asked, why this fuss about niggers. It is dictated that their position is a small matter, but let us enquire whether it
is or not. His speech at the June Convention had been much commented upon, and he read an extract from it, and showed wherein
it had been misrepresented as to the ultimate triumph or extinction of slavery;4 that, although the agitation of this question was commenced in ‘54, with the avowed object of putting a stop to it, yet the agitation was still increasing.
The policy then adopted professed to leave the subject to the people of the territories
and save politicians further trouble. Buchanan and Douglas have often promised us that this agitation would cease, but it is still
going on, and only last winter was the hottest of any time yet.5
The Measures of ‘50 settled it for a time only to be reopened in ‘54[1854], in a worse and more malignant form in a territoy where it had been previously at rest. Clay, Webster Calhoun and Benton have gone but we still have the slavery agitation, and will have it till a more conservative
and less aggressive party gains power. The north is not alone to blame—for churches
and families divided upon this question—is it then a little thing?
In view of its importance and aggressive nature, I think it must come to a crisis—that
it will become national by Court verdicts or local by the popular voice. We have
no idea of interfering with it in any manner. I am for standing up to our bargain
for its maintenance where it lawfully exists. Our fathers restricted its spread and stopped the importation of negroes, with the hope that it would remain
in a dormant condition till the people saw fit to emancipate the negroes. There is
no allusion to slavery in the constitution—and Madison says it was omitted that future generations might not know such a thing ever existed—and
that the Constitution might yet be a ‘national chart of freedom.’6 And Keitt of S.C., once admitted that nobody ever thought it would exist to this day.7
If placed in its former attitude we should have peace. But it is now advancing to become lawful everywhere. The
Nebraska bill introduced this era—and it was gotten up by a man who twice voted for the Wilmot Proviso and the extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific.8 This change in our national policy is decided to be constitutional—although the court would not decide the only question before them—whether Dred Scott was a slave or not—and did decide, too, that a territorial Legislature cannot exclude
slavery in behalf of the people, and if their premises be correct a State cannot exclude
it—for they tell us that the negro is property anywhere in the light that horses are
property, and if the Constitution gives the master a right of property in negroes
above the jurisdiction of the territorial laws, enacted in the sovereignty of the
people—it only requires another case and another favorable decision from the same
court to make the rights of property alike in States as well as territories, and that
by virtue of the constitution and in disregard of local laws to the contrary—Buchanan
takes this position now.9 Sustain these men and negro equality will be abundant, as every white laborer will
have occasion to regret when he is elbowed from his plow or his anvil by slave niggers.
Douglas insists that I am in favor of perfect uniformity in the institutions of all
the States.10 I believe in their right to do just as they please in this matter. But he is not
quite so vain as to say that the good man uttered a falsehood when he said, ‘A house
divided against itself cannot stand.’ Does he believe this thing will always stand
as it now is—neither expand or diminish?
In ‘32 I voted for Henry Clay, in ‘36 for the Hugh L. White ticket, in ‘40 for ‘Tip and Tyler.’ In ‘44 I made the last great effort for Old Harry of the West’ with my friend there, Dr. HEATON, But we got gloriously whipped. Taylor was elected in ‘48, and we fought nobly for Scott in ‘52. But now Douglas snatches the robes of Clay and dubs me an abolitionist!11 How do the principles of the two men agree. Clay always opposed the rightfulness
of slavery—Douglas always took the opposite, or kept mum. I can express all my views on the slavery question by quotations from Henry Clay.
Does’nt this look like we are akin?
Douglas tries to make capital by charges of negro equality against me. My speeches
have been printed and before the country for some time on this question, and Douglas
knows the utter falsity of such a charge. To prove it Mr. L read from a speech of his at Peoria in ‘54, in reply to Douglas as follows:
“Shall we free them and make them politically and socially our equals? MY OWN FEELINGS
WILL NOT ADMIT OF THIS, and if they would the feelings of the great mass of white
people would not. Whether this accords with strict justice or not is not the sole
question. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, cannot safely be disregarded.
We cannot then make them our equals.. When they remind us of their constitutional rights I acknowledge them fully and
freely, and I would give them any legislation for the recovery of their fugitives,
which would not be more likely, in the stringency of its provisions, to take a man
into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent man.”12
There is no reason in favor of sending slavery to Kansas that might not be adduced in support of the African Slave trade. Each are demanded
by the profitableness of the traffic thus made in opening a new slave mart, and not
from the righfulness of it. They are upon a common basis, and should be alike condemned.
The compromises of the constitution we must all stand by, but where is the justness
of extending the institution to compete with white labor and thus to degrade it.
Is it not rather our duty to make labor more respectable by preventing all black competition,
especially in the Territories. Mr L. then read from another speech of his in ‘54, showing that Douglas there attempted to gain the public favor by pandering to the
prejudices of the masses, in disregard of the truth.13 Negroes have natural rights however, as other men have, although they cannot enjoy
them here, and even Taney once said that ‘the Declaration of Independence was broad enough for all men.’14But though it does not declare that all men are equal in their attainments or social
position, yet no sane man will attempt to deny that the African upon his own soil
has all the natural rights that instrument vouchsafes to all mankind. It has proved
a stumbling block to tyrants, and ever will, unless brought into contempt by its pretended
friends. Douglas says no man can defend it except on the hypothesis that it only
referred to British white subjects, and that no other white men are included—that
it does not speak alike to the down trodden of all nations—German, French, Spanish, &c[etc].’ but simply meant that the English were born equal and endowed by their Creator
with certain natural or equal rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, and that it meant nobody else.15 Are Jeffersonian Democrats willing to have the gem taken from the magna charta of human liberty in this shameful
way? Or will they maintain that its declaration of equality of natural rights among
all nations is correct?
Douglas pretends to be horrified at amalgamation, yet had he not opened the way for
slavery in Kansas, could there have been any amalgamation there? If you keep the two
races separate is there any danger of amalgamation? Is not slavery the great source
of it? You know that Virginia has more mulattoes than all the northern States!16 Douglas says he does not care whether they vote slavery up or down in Kansas; then
I submit it to this audience which is the most favorable to amalgamation, he who would
not raise his finger to keep it out, or I who would give my vote and use lawful means
to prevent its extension. Clay and other great men were ever ready to express their
abhorrence of slavery—but we of the north dare not use his noble language when he
said, to force its perpetuation and extension, you must muzzle the cannon that annually
proclaim liberty, and repress all tendencies in the human heart to justice and mercy.17 We can no longer express our admiration for the Declaration of Independence without
their petty sneers. And it is thus they are fast bringing that sacred instrument
into contempt. These men desire that slavery should be perpetual and that we should
not foster all lawful moves toward emancipation, and to gain their end they will endeavor
to impress upon the public mind that the negro is not human, and even upon his own
soil he has no rights which white men are bound to respect.18 Douglas demands that we shall bow to all decisions. If the courts are to decide
upon political subjects, how long will it be till Jefferson’s fears of a political despotism are realized? He denounces all opposed to the
Dred Scott opinions,19 in disregard to his former opposition to real decisions and the fact that he got
his title of Judge by breaking down a decision of our Supreme Court.20 He has an object in these denunciations, and is it not to prepare our minds for
acquiesence in the next decision declaring slavery to exist in the States? If Douglas can make
you believe that slavery is a sacred right—if we are to swallow Dred Scottism that
the right of property in negroes is not confined to those States where it is established
by local law—if by special sophisms he can make you, believe that no nation except
the English are born equal and are not entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness, upon their own soil, or when they are not constitutionally divested
of the God-given rights to enjoy the fruits of their own labor, then may we truly
despair of the universality of freedom, or the efficacy of those sacred principles
enunciated by our fathers—and give in our adhesion to the perpetuation and unlimited
extension of Slavery.21
1Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech in Carlinville, Illinois, on August 31, 1858. The
Carlinville Free Democrat published this report of his speech in its September 2, 1858 edition. During the
1858 Federal Election, Lincoln was the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. He was running against Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas. Both Lincoln and
Douglas traveled the state throughout the fall and summer of 1858, delivering public speeches in support of
candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in their respective parties. They also traveled the state in order to participate
in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Both men devoted significant time and effort to the local elections for members
of the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate because, at the time, members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s
representatives in the U.S. Senate. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
Carlinville Free Democrat (IL), 2 September 1858, 2:4-5; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses
Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394.
2This is a reference to the style in which Douglas traveled throughout the campaign of 1858. He traveled to and from speaking events with conspicuous pageantry that included
elaborately-decorated trains, wagons, and carriages, a large entourage, marching bands,
fireworks, and artillery demonstrations.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:469, 473, 488.
3Douglas delivered a speech in Carlinville on September 8. In its coverage of the speech,
the Illinois State Register boasted about the size of the audience, claiming that Douglas spoke “to the largest
assemblage ever gathered in this county” and that “no less than 8,000 persons” were present. The Illinois State Journal, on the other hand, reported that, even with the presence of a circus in Carlinville
coinciding with Douglas’s speech, the crowd gathered “was not great in numbers, but
they occupied a good deal of room—each one generally occupying both sides of the street.”
Politicians and party managers often scheduled political meetings to coincide with
circuses, fairs, and other local festivities to ensure a large audience. Circus tents
also provided a public place for large crowds to congregate. In the 1858 senatorial
campaign, Lincoln and Douglas spoke in several localities in conjunction with circus
performances or fairs.
Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 8 September 1858, 2:1; 10 September 1858, 2:2; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses
Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 406; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 10 September 1858, 2:2; Richard E. Hart, Circuses in Lincoln’s Springfield (1833-1860) (Springfield: Richard E. Hart, 2013), 7-8; Paul M. Angle, ed., The Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 189, 232.
4During the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention on June 16, 1858, Lincoln gave his
renowned “House Divided” speech. In the speech, he famously asserted that, “‘A house
divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure permanently
half slave and half free.” While on the campaign trail, Douglas deliberately misrepresented
Lincoln’s remarks by casting aside the remainder of his central argument—that he did
not “expect the Union to be dissolved,” but rather believed that either the opponents
of slavery would arrest the spread of slavery, or the advocates of slavery would use
various methods to make slavery national. Douglas (as well as members of the Democratic
press) argued that Lincoln’s speech amounted to incitement of civil war and the abolition
of slavery.
Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Fragment of A House Divided Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:461-66; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois.
5This is a reference to the controversy surrounding the Lecompton Constitution. In December 1857, Douglas spoke out against the Lecompton Constitution and criticized
President James Buchanan for supporting it. This caused a major rift in the Democratic
Party, splitting the party into pro-Douglas and pro-Buchanan camps. For more information
on the controversy, see Bleeding Kansas.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:445-48.
6In correspondence in 1819 discussing the intentions of the framers of the U.S. Constitution,
James Madison stated that, during the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, “some of the States were not only anxious for a constitutional provision against
the introduction of Slaves. They had scruples against admitting the term ‘Slaves’
into the Instrument. Hence the descriptive phrase ‘migration or importation of persons’.”
The latter is a reference to Article one, section nine of the U.S. Constitution, which
laid forth 1808 as the year that the U.S. Congress could prohibit the “migration or importation of such persons,” an indirect reference
to the international slave trade. Madison was able to recall and relay specific points
of debate regarding the deliberate exclusion of the word “slavery” from the U.S. Constitution
because he took extensive notes of the proceedings and debates at the 1787 U.S. Constitutional
Convention.
David B. Mattern, J. C. A. Stagg, Mary Parke Johnson, and Anne Mandeville Colony,
eds., The Papers of James Madison, Retirement Series, 4 March 1817-31 January 1820 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2009), 1:553–54; U.S. Const. art.
I, § 9; For Madison’s notes on the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention, see James
Madison, “Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/debcont.asp, accessed 22 December 2025.
7It is unclear when Laurence M. Keitt made this admission. He delivered lengthy addresses
in the U.S. House of Representatives on the supposed “origins of slavery” on January 15, 1857 and again on May 24, 1858.
In neither speech, however, does Keitt admit that no one thought slavery would exist
by 1858.
Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 404-9 (1858); Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 3rd Sess., Appendix, 140-45 (1857).
8Douglas served as chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Territories and oversaw
the proposal and passage of the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which effectively revoked
the Missouri Compromise.
Douglas served first in the U.S. House, then the U.S. Senate, during discussions
of and voting on the Wilmot Proviso. He never cast a vote in favor of the Proviso.
As a member of the U.S. House in August 1846, Douglas steadfastly voted against a
bill to aid the end of the Mexican War that included the Proviso. In February 1847, he opposed the so-called “Three Million
Bill” when the House amended it to include the Proviso. Douglas proposed an ultimately
unsuccessful amendment to establish an extension of the Missouri Compromise line as
the basis for the Proviso’s limitations on slavery. Later, while serving in the U.S.
Senate, Douglas sided with Southern colleagues to defeat efforts to add the Proviso
to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This report of Lincoln’s speech is not a verbatim record of his words at Carlinville;
therefore, it is possible that some of his arguments related to the Wilmot Proviso
were garbled. In referencing Douglas’s efforts to extend the Missouri Compromise westward
to the Pacific Ocean, Lincoln may have been arguing that these efforts constituted,
in essence, support for the same provisions as the Wilmot Proviso, for Douglas had
earlier attempted to help establish a territorial government for Oregon, specifying that, per the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, slavery would be prohibited in the Oregon Territory. After some of the debates regarding
the Wilmot Proviso, however, Douglas’s proposal regarding the prohibition of slavery
became politically contentious. Southern legislators did not want Douglas to justify
the prohibition of slavery in the Oregon Territory based on the language of the Northwest
Ordinance, since this language was used in the Wilmot Proviso, which they also opposed.
Instead, southern Democrats wanted Douglas to anchor Oregon’s potential status as
a free territory on an extension of the Missouri Compromise westward to the Pacific,
using the argument that Oregon was located north of the 36° 30’ north latitude stipulated
by that measure as the dividing line for future slave and free states. An amendment
to this effect failed, but Douglas pledged to support an extension of the Missouri
Compromise line in place of the Wilmot Proviso’s prohibition of slavery in all land
acquired from Mexico, and his Oregon bill ultimately passed. Throughout debate on the Wilmot Proviso,
however, Douglas opposed it as originally drafted.
U.S. House Journal. 1846. 29th Cong., 1st sess., 1283-87; U.S. House Journal. 1846. 29th Cong., 2nd sess., 346-50; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996
(Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 132, 135, 959; Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 1st Sess., 1217-18 (1846); Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., 424-25 (1847); Cong. Globe, 29th Cong., 2nd Sess., Appendix, 439-40 (1847); Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 200-205, 216, 402, 405-10, 434.
9Lincoln is articulating an argument he first made in his aforementioned House Divided
speech. He asserted that Douglas and others were participants in a plot to nationalize
slavery. Lincoln argued that the plot began with Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska bill, which President Franklin Pierce supported, then was advanced by both the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Dred
Scott case—handed down by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney—and by President James Buchanan’s
call to support the court’s decision. Lincoln warned that, if Douglas were not defeated
and the slave power not overthrown, another Supreme Court ruling could build upon
the Dred Scott decision and proclaim that the U.S. Constitution prohibited states
from excluding slavery within their own borders.
For the full context of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Sanford, and its legal implications, see Scott v. Sandford.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:458-61; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 206-9.
10During the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Douglas asserted that Lincoln’s House Divided
speech was proof that Lincoln held a “doctrine of uniformity” and desired “that the
States should all be free or all be slave.” During the second Lincoln-Douglas Debate,
Douglas also claimed that “Mr. Lincoln lays down the doctrine that this Union cannot
endure divided as our Fathers made it, with free and slave States.” This was a distortion
of Lincoln’s actual arguments, as noted above.
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:468-69.
11This is a reference to Douglas invoking the name and memory of Henry Clay throughout
the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The votes of former members of the Whig Party were critical to Illinois’s local elections and, in turn, to the 1858 Federal Election, and Douglas tried to link Clay to the doctrine of popular sovereignty as a way to
convince former Whigs that he and Clay shared a common interest in keeping slavery
out of national politics.
Lincoln greatly admired Clay, whom he called “my beau ideal of a statesman,” and he
quoted Clay on slavery during the debates.
Throughout the summer and fall of 1858, Douglas claimed that Lincoln and his fellow
Republicans were abolitionists who favored political as well as social equality for
African Americans, including “amalgamation” of the races through interracial marriage.
These were charges Lincoln routinely denied. During the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate,
for instance, Lincoln asserted that although he believed the Declaration of Independence
applied to all men—rather than just white men—he did not favor full social and political
equality between the races, nor did he intend to abolish slavery. One of his most
renowned counters to Douglas’s accusations regarding amalgamation and interracial
marriage was his statement, “I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit
logic which presumes that because I did not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily
want her for a wife.”
Stephen Hansen and Paul Nygard, “Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-Nothings, and the Democratic
Party in Illinois, 1854-1858,” Illinois Historical Journal 87 (Summer 1994), 123; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:440-41, 493, 506; Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 19 July 1858, 2:4-3:5; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois.
12This quotation is from a speech Lincoln delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, during the 1854 Federal Election. This quotation differs slightly from contemporary reports of the speech.
Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 23 October 1854, 2:3-5; Report of Speech at Peoria, Illinois.
13This is likely a reference to a speech Lincoln gave in Bloomington, Illinois, on September 26, 1854, also as part of the campaign of 1854. In this speech, of which only a report is known to be extant, Lincoln asserted that
Douglas was pandering to prejudice by calling the newly-formed Republican Party “Black
Republicans” and lumping its adherents in with abolitionists. Lincoln argued that
Douglas did this in order to avoid scrutiny about his claim that members of the Whig
Party were “swallowed up” by the “Black Republicans” and abolitionists. In reality,
Lincoln stated, members of the Whig Party fused with the new Republican Party and
most were not abolitionists.
The Weekly Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 4 October 1854, 1:2; Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 29 September 1854, 2:1; Report of Speech at Bloomington, Illinois.
14In his written opinion in the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Taney admitted that the second paragraph in the U.S. Declaration of Independence “would
seem to embrace the whole human family.” He went on to argue, however, that “the people
who framed and adopted this declaration” did not intend “the enslaved African race”
to be included.
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 410 (1857).
15During speeches preceding the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as well as in both the first
and second debates which were held prior to the date of this speech, Douglas derided
the notion that the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence applied
to either enslaved or free African Americans. “I believe this government was made
on the white basis,” he argued, “and I am in favor of confining citizenship to white
men, men of European birth and descent, instead of conferring it upon negroes, Indians
and other inferior races.” Douglas made the same arguments throughout the rest of
the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:470-71; 473-74; 528.
16Lincoln made this same argument in greater detail during a speech he gave in Springfield, Illinois, on June 26, 1857.
Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois.
17In 1827, in a speech before the American Colonization Society, Clay argued that all that was needed to perpetuate slavery was for proponents of
slavery to “go back to the era of our Liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon
which thunders its annual joyous return” and “repress all sympathies, and all humane
and benevolent efforts among freemen” on behalf of those held in bondage.
Speech of the Hon. Henry Clay, Before the American Colonization Society (Washington, DC: Columbian, 1827), 13.
18The latter is a reference to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Scott v. Sandford. Chief Justice Taney, in the majority opinion for the case, wrote that African Americans
were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 407 (1857).
19Throughout the campaign of 1858, Douglas attacked Lincoln and other Republicans’ criticism
of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford, arguing that any criticism of the court’s decision was tantamount to resistance
of the U.S. government as a whole. Lincoln replied by pointing to Douglas’s previous
praise of President Andrew Jackson for defying the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1819 case McCulloch v. Maryland, when the court declared that the U.S. Congress had the power to create a national
bank. The Dred Scott case remained an issue throughout the 1858 campaign.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:439-41, 464-70, 501, 503, 510.
20Lincoln is referencing Douglas’s election to the Illinois Supreme Court. Following
their victories at the state level in 1840—and harboring resentment about the Illinois
Supreme Court Whig majority’s decision on a case related to alien voting rights—Illinois
Democrats proposed reorganizing the Illinois Supreme Court and increasing the number
of supreme court judges as a way to solidify their position in state politics. After
bitter debate, and enthusiastic lobbying by Douglas, the bill eventually passed. Illinois
Democrats rewarded Douglas for his effort by electing him to one of the five new seats
on the Illinois Supreme Court. See Illinois Judiciary Act of 1841.
For additional information on the alien voting rights case that spurred the Illinois
Democrats’s resentment and reorganization of the Illinois Supreme Court, see Thomas Spragins v. Horace H. Houghton, 2 IL 377-417 (1840).
Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 82-84, 92-96; An Act Reorganizing the Judiciary of the State of Illinois
21In Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Republicans ultimately won a majority of all
votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois
General Assembly and Douglas won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Through the campaign,
however, and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,
Lincoln gained recognition within the national Republican Party as a leading voice
for Republican values.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political
Landscape of 1858,” 414.
Copy of Printed Document, 1 page(s), Carlinville Free Democrat , (Carlinville, IL) , 2 September 1858, 2:4-5. .