New Records of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate at the 1854 Illinois State Fair: The Missouri Republican and the Missouri Democrat Report from Springfield

The political events of 1854 are justifiably legendary in Illinois. The year began with Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas sponsoring legislation that, once passed, repealed the antislavery provisions of the Missouri Compromise; it concluded with the emergence of his great rival, Abraham Lincoln, who battled Douglas that fall throughout central Illinois in service of the antislavery cause. Thus began Lincoln's memorable antislavery career, and with it the reorientation of Illinois and national politics that resulted in Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860.

Despite their significance, Lincoln and Douglas's forensic battles in 1854 are not easy to reconstruct. Because stenographers were not on hand to produce copy for contemporary newspapers, as they were for the 1858 debates, much of the record is irretrievably lost. Fortunately, Lincoln published his magnificent Peoria address in the Illinois Journal to promote his ideas, thus preserving his eloquence for posterity. But the Peoria address was not the only major address he made. He spoke all across the state's midsection and once in Chicago: at the conclusion of the Scott County Whig Convention on August 26; at Carrollton on August 28 in reply to Democratic congressional candidate Thomas L. Harris; at Jacksonville on September 2; at Springfield on September 9 in reply to Democrat John Calhoun; at Bloomington on September 12 to a German anti-Nebraska meeting; at Bloomington again on September 26 in reply to Douglas; in Springfield on October 4 in reply to Douglas; in Peoria on October 16 in reply to Douglas; in Urbana on October 24; in Chicago on October 27; and in Quincy on November 1. [1] The relatively short newspaper accounts of the early addresses, when conjoined with the Peoria address, demonstrate that Lincoln was developing and rehearsing arguments to justify repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But the relation of his speeches to each other and the manner in which they were received by audiences are more difficult to discern.

Douglas's speeches have fared even worse. Although he spoke throughout the state, Douglas did not publish any of his addresses during the campaign. He did, however, deliver a lengthy post-election speech on November 9, 1854, in front of "some two hundred of his personal and political friends" at a dinner in his honor in Chicago. This address was initially published by the Chicago Times on November 14, and subsequently by the Illinois State Register on November 21 and 22 and the Weekly National Intelligencer on December 2. [2] John Corry has made it widely accessible by transcribing most of it in his recent study of the 1854 debates. [3] Douglas described the speech as an "an outline of the argument I have presented every where in this State," and in it he argued that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was entirely consistent with the compromise measures of 1850, which the Whig and Democratic parties had endorsed in 1852, and which he maintained had established a rule of action for all future territorial expansion. Moreover, he denied that giving territorial settlers the right to legalize slavery would necessarily result in slavery's extension. Although the speech sheds invaluable light on what Douglas likely said on the campaign trail, it cannot be described as a precise equivalent to Lincoln's Peoria address, which was a campaign document. In contrast, Douglas's speech was likely influenced by the brutal losses northern Democrats suffered at the polls, and possibly he published the speech as a defense of his position. Hence the document underscores the challenges of trying to recover what Douglas said to the crowds while campaigning that fall. [4]

Fortuitously, recently resurfaced documents shed some new light on these questions. The spectacle of Douglas's October 3 appearance at the Illinois State Fair in Springfield lured two reporters from rival St. Louis newspapers. The proslavery Whig Missouri Republican sent an anonymous writer, while the free-soil Democratic Missouri Democrat dispatched a writer who subscribed himself "T.G.F." Both reporters wrote accounts of various speeches and events at the fair. However, while the Republican's correspondent recorded Douglas's October 3 speech, Lincoln's response on October 4, and Douglas's rebuttal that same day, the Missouri Democrat's reporter arrived midway through Douglas's opening speech and only managed to produce a short synopsis of Lincoln's speech the next day. Together, these sources complement accounts by Springfield newspapers that historians have long used, and additional accounts in the Chicago Journal that Michael Burlingame has recently utilized.[5] In Springfield, the Illinois State Register devoted about two columns to the three speeches over two days, while the Illinois Journal published a substantial but abridged account of Lincoln's speech on October 5. Meanwhile, the Chicago Journal published Horace White's correspondence from Springfield.

Unlike the other newspapers, the Missouri Republican reported the speeches of both men. Indeed, in what was probably the first use of the Republican's text, P. Orman Ray cited Douglas's speech in The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, published in 1909. But Ray's account did not indicate that the Republican had published Lincoln's speech, and Lincoln scholars evidently never examined the newspaper to check for themselves. [6] They can hardly be blamed for the oversight. After all, antebellum newspapers rarely reproduced the speeches of politicians from rival parties. Their typical practice was to ridicule the speeches of political opponents, as the Illinois State Register did in its stinging rejoinder to Lincoln's October 4 speech.[7] In contrast to this widespread practice, the Missouri Republican's correspondent recorded the debate between Lincoln and Douglas quite extensively, although unfortunately he gave short shrift to Douglas's rebuttal.

The Republican's record of the actual debate is thus unique, and in conjunction the two Missouri newspapers provide new information about Lincoln and Douglas's 1854 debates. Most fundamentally, they suggest that Lincoln and Douglas did not vary their speeches appreciably over the course of the fall campaign. Rather, the speakers recapitulated their arguments in front of different audiences as they traversed Illinois, notwithstanding some nipping and tucking in the presentations along the way. But the accounts also suggest that the audiences were transfixed. Most of the men and women in the crowds listening to Lincoln and Douglas that fall did not know exactly what they would hear because speeches were rarely published by newspapers in full. However, the audiences found themselves almost mesmerized, standing hour after hour gripped by oratory, encountering speakers of great power addressing issues of profound moral and political significance. In response, they applauded and cheered their champions.

The starting point for interpreting the Missouri Republican's account is deciphering its political coloring. On the surface the account seems surprisingly neutral. The correspondent deemed himself "a fair and truthful journalistic reporter," took "copious" notes from which he sought to create "a faithful synopsis," and lauded both speakers, even though he concluded that Douglas exerted more influence over the crowd. Such a seemingly evenhanded approach was exceedingly rare at a time when newspaper editors wrote for highly partisan subscribers, colored their political analysis accordingly, and made no claim to journalistic objectivity. Presumably it was in keeping with his declared neutrality that the correspondent recorded the entire debate rather than focusing primarily on one speaker. [8]

Yet the account may have been crafted with great care to subtly promote Douglas. This was the contention of Benjamin Gratz Brown, the free-soil editor of the Missouri Democrat and soon-to-be prominent Republican Party politician from Missouri, who sneered at the putative neutrality of the Republican's correspondent in an editorial. Brown argued that the Republican had strongly supported Douglas at the beginning of the fall campaign, promoted slavery's expansion into Kansas, and stopped denouncing Illinois' anti-Nebraska Whig candidates only when faced with "a storm of indignation." Under the circumstances, charged Brown, the Republican's correspondent cannily promulgated Douglas's superiority while the newspaper's editor professed not to "endorse everything contained therein." Brown skewered the Republican, asking who had ever "heard of a political journal sending out its reporters to run down its own professed political friends, and exalt its political antagonists ...?"[9] Brown's charge deserves serious consideration, especially given the statement of William Herndon, who referred disparagingly in an October 10 editorial in the Illinois Journal to the "paid Douglas writers for the St. Louis Republican."[10] Nevertheless, it is hard to credit Brown's arguments fully, partly because he exaggerated the correspondent's bias and partly because a comparison of the Republican's account to the speeches Lincoln and Douglas later put into print shows that the Republican's transcription was impressively accurate.

To be sure, the Missouri Republican did occupy an awkward position in the political maelstrom that followed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. As a proslavery southern Whig paper on the border of a free state, the editor avidly supported the Nebraska bill from its inception and never wavered. After all, he feared Missouri's near encirclement by free states should Kansas be settled by Northerners; he supported the slaveholders' desire to cross the border to fresh land; and he maintained that the Union should protect their right to do so. Therefore, although nominally no friend of Democrats, he welcomed Douglas's doctrine that Kansans should be permitted to legalize slavery if they chose. To his mind, popular sovereignty promised to end national discord over slavery's expansion by offering justice to the slaveholder and non-slaveholder alike.[11] Unsurprisingly, he loathed abolitionism, which he denominated fanaticism. Ignoring "duty or law, or consideration of peace," he fulminated, the abolitionist "becomes a useless, raving, agitator; an Ishmaelite, warring with everyone but his own tribe, and sometimes with them." [12] Despising fusionists equally, he excoriated them for luring northern Whigs into the antislavery Republican Party, which he feared would precipitate disunion. [13] His recriminations notwithstanding, many northern Whig papers openly embraced or at least tended towards fusion after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which put the Republican into something of a pickle. Although still Whig, and expressing hope that the Whig party would somehow ride out the tempest and reunite as a national party, the Republican was slowly shedding its skin and emerging as that most curious creature, a border state Douglas Whig paper.[14] In this regard the editor shared the dilemma of conservative Illinois Whigs who feared antislavery politics and offered Douglas a pool of potential recruits.[15]

How the views of the editor played out in the report of his scribe is difficult to establish with precision. Some passages in the correspondent's report testify to strong affinities in their ideas. For instance, the correspondent admired Douglas. When reporting speeches by anti-Nebraska Democrats who were attacking Douglas on October 5, he judged that "the 'Little Giant' has the brains and the argument, and will eventually lay them all to the wall," and admitted that whether Douglas "be right or wrong, we admire his wonderful talents, and his indomitable energy and spunk."[16] The correspondent also seemed to express distaste for blacks, observing that there were "more 'niggers' dodging about all day than you could 'shake a stick at,'" and indeed "more negroes about this city than in any other Western city of its size of my acquaintance." [17] More tellingly, he expressed hostility to the Illinois anti-Nebraska fusion convention that met in Springfield on October 4 and 5. He described the first day of the convention as a "flash in the pan" and claimed that the Whigs had "regular candidates" and would "stick to them."[18] About "fifty" fusionists gathered for the second day of the convention, he mockingly reported, "and about as many more spectators," who watched as abolitionists Owen Lovejoy and Ichabod Codding "bossed the job." All in all, he described the convention as a "farce" that adopted "precious disunion resolutions" and "excited no attention here."[19] This dismissive language exactly comported with the desire of the Missouri Republican to blunt the radicalization of northern Whigs.

Yet, even if the correspondent did wish to denigrate the fusionists, he had no clear motivation to defame Lincoln. After all, Lincoln did not represent antislavery radicalism in 1854 and was making no open overtures to promote fusion. Quite deliberately, his Springfield speech promoted the restoration of the Missouri Compromise rather than urging the creation of an antislavery party. While not identical to the position of the Missouri Republican, neither was it an intolerable antislavery affront. Moreover, the correspondent surely had some Whig sympathies. He socialized in Springfield with Simeon Francis, the editor of the Illinois Journal and a friend of Lincoln's. Indeed, Francis gave the correspondent free passes to the fair and drove him there on October 5. It is quite possible that Francis's influence shaped the correspondent's description of Lincoln as "well known here and through the State as one of the first lawyers and speakers." Certainly the correspondent generously complimented Lincoln's speech, describing it as "the best historical display of facts upon that side of the question that I have ever listened to." All in all, there is not much reason to believe that the Missouri Republican's political allegiances unduly influenced the correspondent's account of the debate, even though it very likely shaped his portrayal of the fusion convention.[20]

The correspondents for both the Missouri Republican and Missouri Democrat provided vivid context for the debate by describing the fair and its Springfield environs. The excitement produced by traveling on railroads to the fair, for example, is palpable in the Republican's account. Railroads were still new to Illinoisans, and the correspondent was joined in his trip from Alton to Springfield by "merry groups" who thoroughly enjoyed their excursion. Disembarking from the crowded cars, they found a jam-packed city upon arrival.[21] One hotel had twelve women sleeping in the same small room, and hundreds of people had no rooms at all. The Republican's correspondent unexpectedly struck gold, securing a "luxurious" bed in a six-by-nine foot bedroom, which is a stark reminder of the modest size of antebellum homes. Transporting the crowds to the twenty-acre fairgrounds one mile outside Springfield required more cramming. Mud and miserable weather discouraged walkers on October 3, and so carriage drivers wedged in passengers like freight. Pitchmen capitalized on the influx, with peddlers, peep shows, musicians, candy stands, freak shows, and a circus lining the road to the fair. Even African-Americans benefited from the fair, although antebellum racial barriers appear suggestively in the Republican's statement that "every negro hereabouts" was hanging up the fiddle and the "white-wash brush" in favor of barbering the visiting hordes. Because of their circumscribed opportunities, blacks exploited the windfall created by the fair. [22]

The state's economic dynamism is also evident. Breeders from Kentucky exhibited cows, calves, and bulls, while a breeder from Vermont brought sufficient sheep to fill three pens. Other salesmen exhibited mechanical devices to increase farm productivity. According to the Missouri Democrat, the "self-raker and reapers especially attract the attention of farmers." The fair's commercial character indicates the increasing integration of regional and national economies by the 1850s, the growing capital resources of the state's market-oriented farmers, and the increasing size of farms, which made labor-saving machinery cost-effective. Meanwhile, as the Republican's correspondent observed, Springfield was growing by leaps and bounds, with a torrent of new commercial and residential construction underway and a corresponding need for additional tradesmen. [23]

But the political drama took center stage. Douglas was the main attraction, and his supporters had reserved "a pretty grove" for his speech on Tuesday, October 3, "so that all could hear." The forbidding weather forced the event into the Hall of Representatives in the state capitol, which was "crowded to the utmost" with "ten to twelve hundred persons," including many women, who listened to Douglas's long speech in the early afternoon. The "vast auditory" reconvened at 7 P.M. to hear subsequent speakers for at least an additional two and a half hours, and after those speakers had concluded, Lincoln announced he would respond to Douglas the next day.[24] The Republican's correspondent well understood the significance of Lincoln's reply, writing that "I must be there to look on." In the end, he devoted sixty percent of his correspondence on October 6 to the debate between Douglas and Lincoln, which testifies to the enormous public interest in the Kansas-Nebraska Act.[25]

Even citizens who were not enamored with the political theater illustrated its pervasive influence. The managers of the fair, doubtless concerned with their pocketbooks, circulated a handbill that invited "the people to frown down" politicians who gave speeches at fairs. Agreeably, the farmers' assembly, meeting in the Hall of Representatives after Douglas's speech, unanimously adopted a resolution decrying the politicians' grandstanding, complaining that "nothing was heard in the hotels and streets but 'Nebraska' and 'Anti-Nebraska.'" However, the Republican's correspondent recorded wryly, "a continuous uproar" from a Nebraska speech in the rotunda interrupted them, "and the doors of the Hall were ordered to be closed to prevent interruption."[26]

The farmers could hardly begrudge their neighbors' political ardor. After all, the farmers' meeting was organized in a recognizable political format, with officers, resolutions, and spirited debate, and was characterized by a highly democratic ethos, with any person present "entitled to speak on any of the subjects proposed." Moreover, the farmers participated in an extensive political discussion themselves, debating whether farmers and mechanics could "be suitably educated in sectarian and other classical schools."[27] Their debate stemmed from the ideas of Illinois College professor Jonathan Baldwin Turner, whose advocacy of publicly funded industrial colleges stimulated considerable interest throughout the state and eventually resulted in the creation of the nation's land-grant universities.

The Republican's account also suggests Douglas's considerable ability to sway crowds. According to the correspondent, Douglas's condemnation of nativism in his opening speech aroused so much passion that the audience "crowded upon the reporter's desk," preventing further note-taking. This participatory response to Douglas's appeals was not atypical. The next evening, ten minutes after he had begun his reply to Lincoln, "the applause of the roused assembly was so constant and intense" that he had to ask for their silence, yet as his speech progressed "the cheers could not be repressed." Indeed, as he spoke, "the audience accumulated rather than decreased," and when he finished there was "a succession of cheering, for some moments," and subsequently "volleys of cheers" as the audience departed the Hall of Representatives. Though admiring Lincoln, the correspondent judged by the "effect" of the speeches that Lincoln had been "overwhelmed." One testimony to Douglas's magnetism was that he spoke from 6 P.M. to 8 P.M., prime supper hours for an audience that had already heard Lincoln speak since 2 P.M.. Nevertheless, the correspondent "could not perceive that any persons retired," even though abolitionist Owen Lovejoy had announced after Lincoln's speech that a statewide anti-Nebraska convention would assemble in the Senate chamber immediately.[28]

To be sure, the Democrat's correspondent contradicted the Republican, claiming instead that it was Lincoln who swayed the crowd. Indeed, the Democrat's correspondent concluded that there was a "great want of enthusiasm" among auditors of Douglas's speech on October 3. However, he reported that "at least two thousand persons" heard Lincoln the next day and gave him "six cheers" when he finished. Douglas's vigorous rebuttal of Lincoln compelled the Democrat's correspondent to acknowledge that "he is certainly a great speaker when aroused, as he most assuredly was by Mr. Lincoln's forcible reasoning against his bantling." [29] Despite Douglas's efforts, however, the crowd had "lessened considerably" by the time he was done. [30]

The correspondents' accounts also highlight the freewheeling and interactive character of antebellum speeches. This aspect of antebellum speechmaking is difficult to recapture from speeches written out for publication, such as Lincoln's Peoria address. However, the Republican recorded Douglas interrupting Lincoln at least four times, which followed Lincoln's surprising invitation for Douglas to "correct him in any point in which he might err."[31] Politicians' skill in handling these interruptions was significant to audiences appreciative of forensic duels. Lincoln deflected one interruption with characteristic self-deprecating humor. When Douglas charged that Lincoln was likely a Know Nothing because Lincoln claimed to know nothing about the secret order, Lincoln "rejoined that he never did know much and if he should happen to come out a Know Nothing it would not be much of a descent." This exchange produced "much merriment." With equal humor, but skewering his adversary, Lincoln skillfully riposted after another Douglas thrust. Douglas interrupted to reassert his claim, advanced in his opening speech, that the principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act could be found in the Bible, where God introduced man to "good and evil, and told him to take his choice." Smoothly, but cuttingly, Lincoln "replied that it was a great honor that Mr. Douglas was the first man to find that out."[32] The Democrat's correspondent observed that this reply "created some laughter." [33] Yet the interruptions were not always so combative. When Lincoln mentioned that Douglas had introduced him to David Wilmot, the Pennsylvania Democrat who sponsored the Wilmot Proviso, which Lincoln had repeatedly supported in Congress, Douglas wittily responded that he had done so because he thought they "would be fit associates."[34] This instance of apparent good humor between Lincoln and Douglas, reinforced by Douglas's later reference to "my friend, Mr. Lincoln," is a reminder that their long history was not merely one of rivalry, despite the substantial personal, partisan, and national considerations at stake in their debates and the sharp elbows that both men exchanged in 1854 and increasingly thereafter. [35]

Comparing the Republican's text to the Peoria address confirms that the Springfield and Peoria speeches were essentially the same. Historians have long suspected this, partly because Lincoln stated at Peoria that in Springfield he had "spoken substantially as I have here." [36] The speeches are organized almost identically, excepting only a small number of deviations. [37] Lincoln began his speech at Springfield with a series of disclaimers that he also used at Peoria. However, at Springfield, Lincoln then rebutted Douglas's claims, advanced the night before, linking the Know Nothings and Whigs with the abolitionists. Lincoln did not take that detour at Peoria, even though Douglas reiterated his claims about Know Nothings at the end of his Peoria speech.[38] At both locales, Lincoln subsequently delved into an historical analysis of territorial slavery and the Northwest Ordinance, although the Republican's report suggests that Lincoln slightly changed his presentation on this subject at Peoria. Lincoln then sequentially addressed three subsequent historical developments: the admission of new states after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the Missouri Compromise of 1820; and the war with Mexico from 1846 to 1848. In Springfield, as he had in Bloomington on September 26, Lincoln then discussed Lewis Cass's 1848 Nicholson letter. However, Lincoln dropped this subject from his Peoria speech even though Douglas again spoke about the Nicholson letter in Peoria. [39]

In both speeches, Lincoln then turned to the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In his analysis of the origins of the latter act in Springfield, Lincoln observed that Douglas claimed that there was no significant difference between the initial version of his bill, which did not explicitly repeal the Missouri Compromise, and the final, amended version, which did. At Peoria, Lincoln relocated this passage to his critique of Douglas's defense of the repeal. [40] Subsequently, at Springfield, Lincoln criticized the Kansas-Nebraska Act for changing government policy towards slavery, inviting it to expand rather than precluding it from doing so. Some of these comments he also relocated in his Peoria speech, putting them at the conclusion, where he denounced Douglas's popular sovereignty principle for contradicting the founders' precept of tolerating slavery out of necessity alone. [41] Another change traceable from the Republican's account was Lincoln's statement in Springfield, after defending the South's right to a fugitive slave law, that he "differed" from "Anti-Nebraska men" in "many respects." At Peoria, Lincoln omitted making that general distinction. [42] Comparison of the two speeches thus reveals that at Peoria Lincoln dropped mention of the Know Nothings and the Nicholson letter, relocated two passages relating to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and deemphasized distinctions between himself and other opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. All in all, these were very modest changes for a speech of such length and complexity.

The possibility of one substantial reorganization probably can be ruled out by checking the Republican's text against the Chicago Journal's and Illinois Journal's accounts of the Springfield speech. According to the Republican, Lincoln sequentially addressed the following four subjects after censuring the government's newfound support for slavery: the humanity of the slaves, the problems posed by emancipation, the moral decency of Southerners, and the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. [43] At Peoria, in contrast, he changed the sequence of the subjects: first addressing the moral decency of Southerners, then the problems posed by emancipation, and then the constitutionality of the fugitive slave law. Meanwhile, he did not address the humanity of the slaves until considerably later in the speech.[44] If the Republican's report is correct, Lincoln significantly reordered the speech at Peoria. However, while the Republican's correspondent usually seems to have followed the linear order of Lincoln's presentation, in this case he probably did not; indeed, the brief two-paragraph summary he made of this portion of Lincoln's speech made it easy for him to alter its order. Notably, both the Illinois Journal's and the Chicago Journal's accounts seem to place Lincoln's passages about the humanity of slaves at the same place they are located in the Peoria address. [45]

The number of occasions in which the Republican's correspondent reported Lincoln's words almost exactly as they later appeared in the Peoria address provides further evidence of the similarity between the speeches. At the inception of the speech, the correspondent wrote that Lincoln commenced by stating that he did not wish "to assail the motives of any man or set of men," but instead intended to "confine himself to the naked merits of the case."[46] Subsequently, the correspondent recorded that Lincoln expressed his intention to investigate "the history of kindred subjects" before examining the Missouri Compromise and its repeal.[47] When Lincoln denounced the repeal of the compromise, the correspondent reported him as saying that the government's attitude toward slavery was "go, and God speed you."[48] When Lincoln moved from the Missouri Compromise to the Mexican War, the correspondent reported him as saying that the "war with Mexico broke out." [49] When Lincoln castigated slavery propagation, the correspondent recorded Lincoln as saying that it "has done much to rob our republican example of its force, and held us up as hypocrit[e]s." And when Lincoln denounced the implications of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the correspondent recorded him as saying that the bill "furnished no more excuse for the extension of Slavery, than to revive the old Slave-Trade."[50] All of these passages are virtually identical to those in the Peoria address. [51] Given that the reporter generally had to summarize rather than literally transcribe the speeches, leaving the historian few instances of direct comparison, these passages suggest that Lincoln did not substantially vary his language in other parts of the speech in the interim between the debates.

However, tracing the changes between the accounts does not explain when or why the changes were made. As Douglas L. Wilson observed, Lincoln almost certainly altered aspects of the Peoria address in order to maximize its effectiveness in print. Wilson contended that "many passages bear the marks of careful revision and the process of transforming spoken discourse into readable prose," even though "much of it was undoubtedly plotted out in advance and memorized." [52] Hence it is possible that Lincoln made many and perhaps most of the changes identified above after the Peoria speech rather than before it, which further underscores the similarity of the two speeches.

There were good reasons for Lincoln to omit spoken words from the published version of his speech. Not surprisingly, for instance, he excised references to the Know Nothings, whom he did not wish to discuss. Douglas associated nativism with the anti-Nebraska movement in order to drive "the Germans and all other foreigners and Catholics" to the Democratic ticket, and at Springfield he severely censured the Know Nothings. [53] Because Lincoln could not logically prove that northern Know Nothings had no connection to the anti-Nebraska movement, he deflected Douglas's assault at Springfield by narrating the recent victory of an unnamed Know Nothing politician in Virginia before humorously concluding that "These Know-Nothings were certainly not Abolitionists!"[54] He also subtly fished for the nativists' support while trivializing Douglas's argument by arguing that Douglas's gambit was designed to secure the five percent of the foreign voters who did not already vote for him.[55] While these were apt maneuvers before a live audience, Lincoln surely preferred to avoid discussing the issue altogether, and in his published version of the Peoria speech he ignored the Know-Nothings while urging all opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act to unite in opposition to the extension of slavery.

Lincoln likewise purged an amusing passage that he had used at Springfield to defuse Douglas's attempt to attract conservative Whigs who abhorred abolitionists. After Douglas had charged that the Whig Party, now abolitionized, was "dead," Lincoln wryly informed the crowd "that they were being addressed by a dead man," highlighting the seeming absurdity of Douglas's claim. Although this tactic enabled Lincoln to avoid addressing the substance of Douglas's charge before the crowds, in print it was wiser to ignore the subject altogether. [56]

Lastly, Lincoln removed humorous passages that, if published, would have detracted from the seriousness of the speech. For instance, the correspondent of the Missouri Democrat reported that Lincoln described Douglas as having "raised a storm, the white caps of which can be seen afar off in the distant States, mounting higher and still higher, and bursting here and there, leaving the little boats of his friends floating about bottom upward."[57] Although probably amusing to listeners, this jibe at the fate of Douglas and his friends undercut the soberness of Lincoln's contention that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would incite violence in Kansas. In the print version, consequently, Lincoln excised the turbulent storm, retaining, however, a vivid metaphor of champions fighting in a ring, placed there by an unthinking Congress, and asked rhetorically whether "the first drop of blood so shed" would "be the real knell of the Union?"[58] This metaphor, unlike the storm, focused Lincoln's readers on the likelihood that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would violently and fatefully pit the North and South against each other.

Comparison of the Republican's account of Douglas's Springfield speech to Douglas's later speeches at Peoria and Chicago suggest that the Illinois senator made even fewer changes to his speeches over the course of the campaign than did Lincoln. The Springfield speech closely matches Douglas's post-election address in Chicago on November 9, 1854. Most of the significant differences between the speeches seem to reflect omissions by the Republican's correspondent. [59] For example, the correspondent did not record Douglas's explanation of the Compromise of 1850 in detail, although he summarized Douglas's conclusion.[60] He also did not record Douglas's argument that northern congressmen had endorsed popular sovereignty in the organization of Washington Territory, which supported Douglas's contention that the Kansas-Nebraska Act carried out the principles established by the Compromise of 1850.[61] He also omitted a lengthy section of the speech in which Douglas sequentially analyzed the rights of whites to govern blacks, the likelihood of slavery entering Kansas or Nebraska, the founders' position on local self-government, the history of emancipation in Illinois and throughout the nation, the abolitionists' role in intensifying southern proslavery attitudes, and the sectional character of the Republican Party.[62] This material constituted approximately thirty percent of the speech, and Douglas almost certainly presented it at Springfield. Indeed, Lincoln rebutted Douglas's arguments on almost all of these topics at Peoria.

However, like Lincoln, Douglas had reason to revise his words when he published the post-election speech in the Chicago Times. As a leading northern Democratic Party politician and the primary author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he almost certainly intended the speech to be distributed nationally, and thus he wrote for a national audience. As a consequence, he omitted references to Illinois Whig politician Richard Yates, Illinois abolitionist Ichabod Codding, and Ohio Free Soilers Joshua Giddings and Salmon Chase. While invoking them had been apropos for a speech in Springfield, the references were too particularistic for a national audience. In addition, he significantly reduced his emphasis on the Know Nothings. During the campaign, he had attacked them in order to divide the anti-Nebraska forces and to recruit votes, but at core his speeches defended the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In print, he focused on that central issue. Douglas also softened his language in the published address, reducing the powerful emotional appeals that had characterized his spoken words. He did not charge his political opponents with mobocratic or insurrectionary activity, and he reduced the race-baiting that characterized his campaign speeches.[63] Douglas also excised his joke that Westerners were especially capable of self-government because only the "smart sons" and "prettiest girls" from eastern states migrated west.[64] Although amusing to Westerners, the joke was not appropriate for a national audience. He also removed several falsehoods that would have been easily disproved had he printed them. At Springfield and elsewhere, for example, he had criticized the anti-Nebraska press for failing to print the Kansas-Nebraska Act because "the very bill itself openly and clearly refutes their assertions." [65] But the opposition press had in fact printed the act, and publishing the assertion would have opened him to immediate critique.[66] He also corrected his claim, ridiculed by Lincoln at Springfield, that in 1851 the Illinois state legislature had passed resolutions supporting the principle of popular sovereignty as a "rule of action" for future territorial organization. In print, he acknowledged that only the Illinois House of Representatives had adopted the resolutions. [67] And lastly, he removed his reference to the biblical origins of popular sovereignty, which Lincoln had belittled at Springfield and then had conclusively disproved through biblical exegesis at Peoria after Douglas had persisted in making the argument. These exceptions aside, the speeches were extremely similar, confirming Douglas's assertion that his November 9 Chicago speech was "an outline of the arguments I have presented every where in this State."[68]

The Missouri Republican and Missouri Democrat accounts therefore have considerable value. Most fundamentally, they confirm scholars' speculation that the candidates did not appreciably modify their arguments over the course of the fall campaign.[69] Although historians have carefully studied the 1854 debates between the two men, and analyzed related political developments that occurred that fall, the new documents provide additional clues with which to decipher what happened and why. Moreover, the correspondents' colorful reports vividly capture the political tumult that followed in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and put the allegiances of many voters up for grabs. In response, Lincoln and Douglas developed multi-pronged appeals, skillfully wielding argument, emotion, and humor as they vied to attract enough voters to fashion a majority in the fall elections. Yet, in so doing, both men also developed arguments about the relationship of slavery and American politics that they reasserted during the rest of the decade. At root, Douglas insisted that slavery and American democracy were completely compatible; and Lincoln just as emphatically denied it. In 1855 and 1856, southerners proved Lincoln right by using intimidation and violence to legalize slavery in Kansas. When they did so, they fatally compromised Douglas's ability to hold northern antislavery sentiment in check. However, this dénouement was not yet apparent in 1854. Instead, caught up in the moment and transfixed by riveting oratory and debate, Springfield's residents and fairgoers evaluated Lincoln's and Douglas's rival visions of national ideals and the nation's future. On those chilly autumn days, they were among the first in the nation to encounter the ideas that subsequently helped to precipitate secession in 1860, civil war in 1861, and emancipation in 1863—and expanded civil rights for all Americans ever since.