Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [108]
Lincoln delivered his first great antislavery speech in Springfield at the annual State Fair before a crowd of thousands on October 4, 1854. Farmers and their families had journeyed to the capital from all over the state, filling every hotel room, tavern, and boardinghouse. Billed as the largest agricultural fair in the history of the state, the exhibition featured the most advanced farm implements and heavy machinery, including a “world-renowned” plow. Residents took pride in what was considered the finest display of livestock ever assembled in one place. Games and amusements, music and refreshments were provided from morning until night, ensuring, as one reporter wrote, that “a jolly good time ensued.”
The previous day, Lincoln had heard Stephen Douglas hold forth for three hours before the same audience. Douglas, stunned by the widespread hostility in northern Illinois to his seminal role in passing the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act, had chosen the State Fair as the best forum for a vigorous defense of the bill. Rain forced the event into the house of representatives chamber, but the change of venue didn’t diminish the impact of Douglas’s speech. Sharpening arguments he had made in the Senate, Douglas emphasized that his bill rested on the unassailable principle of self-government, allowing the people themselves to decide whether or not to allow slavery into their own territorial lands.
The expressive face of “the Little Giant,” as the short, stocky Douglas was called, was matched by his stentorian voice. “He had a large head, surmounted by an abundant mane,” one reporter observed, “which gave him the appearance of a lion prepared to roar or crush his prey.” In the midst of speaking, he would “cast away his cravat” and undo the buttons on his coat, captivating his audience with “the air and aspect of a half-naked pugilist.” “He was frequently interrupted by cheers and hearty demonstrations of applause,” the Peoria Daily Press reported, “thus showing that a large majority of the meeting was with him.” When he finished, Lincoln jumped up and announced to the crowd that a rebuttal would be delivered the following day.
The next afternoon, with Douglas seated in the front row, Lincoln faced most likely the largest audience of his life. He appeared “awkward” at first, in his shirtsleeves with no collar. “He began in a slow and hesitating manner,” the reporter Horace White noted. Yet, minutes into his speech, “it was evident that he had mastered his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew he was right.” White was only twenty at the time but was aware even then, he said, that he was hearing “one of the world’s masterpieces of argumentative power and moral grandeur.” Sixty years later, that conviction remained. The initial impression was “overwhelming,” White told an audience in 1914, “and it has lost nothing by the lapse of time.”
Although Lincoln’s voice was “thin, high-pitched,” White observed, it had “much carrying power” and “could be heard a long distance in spite of the bustle and tumult of the crowd.” As Lincoln hit his stride, “his words began to come faster.” Gesturing with his “body and head rather than with his arms,” he grew “very impassioned” and “seemed transfigured” by the strength of his words. “Then the inspiration that possessed him took possession of his hearers also. His speaking went to the heart because it came from the heart. I have heard celebrated orators who could start thunders of applause without changing any man’s opinion. Mr. Lincoln’s eloquence was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of the conviction of the speaker himself.”
While Douglas simply asserted his points as self-evident, Lincoln embedded his argument in a narrative history, transporting his listeners back to their roots as a people, to the founding of the nation—a story that still retained its power to arouse strong emotion and