Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Men of Our Times; Or, Leading Patriots of the Day: Being narratives of the lives and deeds of statesmen, generals, and orators. Including biographical sketches and anecdotes of Lincoln, Grant, Garrison, Sumner, Chase, Wilson, Greeley, Farragut, Andrew, Colfax, Stanton, Douglass, Buckingham, Sherman, Sheridan, Howard, Phillips and Beecher.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
United States -- Biography; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Biography
There was as striking a contrast between the externals of the two
champions, as between their political doctrines. Douglas went pompously
up and down the land, with special trains of railroad cars, bands of
music, long processions, banners, cannon firing, and all the flourish
and gaudy show of a triumphing conqueror; and he is said to have paid
away half his fortune in securing this fatal victory. But Mr. Lincoln
went about almost as frugally, as plainly, as quietly, as if he had
been on one of his accustomed legal circuits, and reflected with a
queer astonishment upon the trifling sum that he did actually expend.
He said to a friend after the campaign was over, "I don't believe I
have expended in this canvass one cent less than Five Hundred Dollars
in cash!" He sometimes good humoredly alluded to these demonstrations.
"Auxiliary to these main points," he says, "to be sure, are their
thunderings of cannon, their marching and music, their fizzle-gigs
and fire works; but I will not waste time with them, they are but
the little trappings of the campaign." Mr. Townsend, a picturesque
writer, thus contrasts the bearing of the two men: "Douglas was
uneasily arrogant in Lincoln's presence; the latter, never sensitive
nor flurried, so grew by his imperturbability that when he reached
the White House, Mr. Douglas was less surprised than anybody else.
The great senatorial campaign, in which they figured together, is
remembered by every Springfielder. Douglas, with his powerful voice and
facile energy, went into it under full steam. Lincoln began lucidly
and cautiously. When they came out of it, Douglas was worn down with
rage and hoarseness, and Lincoln was fresher than ever. He prepared
all the speeches of this campaign by silent meditation, sitting or
lying alone, studying the flies on the ceiling. "The best evidence
of his superiority in this debate is the fact that the Republicans
circulated both sets of speeches as a campaign document in 1860, but
Mr. Douglas's friends refused to do so.
And Mr. Arnold, a personal friend of Mr. Lincoln's, attributes to Mr.
Lincoln just that sort of superiority that comes from a consciousness
of being on the right side and of having an antagonist in whose
attitude there is reason for contempt. "He had one advantage," says Mr.
Arnold, "over Douglas, he was always good humored; he had always an
apt and happy story for illustration, and while Douglas was sometimes
irritable, Lincoln never lost his temper." And Mr. Arnold says that
when Lincoln and Douglas came to Chicago together just after the close
of the seven debates, "Lincoln was in perfect health, his face bronzed
by the prairie suns, but looking and moving like a trained athlete. His
voice was clearer, stronger and better than when he began the canvass.
Douglas was physically much broken. He was so hoarse that he could
hardly articulate, and was entirely unintelligible in an ordinary tone."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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