Isaac N. Arnold

“ Why, gentlemen, I think you are as gallant and as brave men as live; that you can fight as bravely in a good cause, man for man, as any other people living; that you have shown yourselves capable of this upon various occasions; but man for man, you are not better than we are, and there are not so many of you as there are of us. You will never make much of a hand at whipping us. ”

“ You have divided the Union because we would not do right with you, as you think, upon that subject; when we cease to be under obligations to do anything for you, how much better off do you think you will be? Will you make war upon us and kill us all? ”

“ Horace Greeley, who, in the New York Tribune, had advised the Illinois republicans not to oppose Douglas in his canvass for the Senate, and who had thus, by implication, opposed Lincoln, now said: "No man has been welcomed by such an audience of the intellect and mental culture of our city, since the days of Clay and Webster." ”

“ No speaker ever achieved a more brilliant immediate triumph than young Curtis. It was touching to see old Mr. Giddings as he went up to Curtis, and throwing his arms around his neck, exclaimed: "God bless you, my boy. You have saved the republican party. God bless you." Curtis certainly did save the party from a great blunder, if from nothing worse.
On the first day of the convention the friends of Lincoln discovered that there was an organized body of New Yorkers and others in the "Wigwam," who cheered vociferously whenever Seward's name was mentioned, or any allusion was made to him. ”

“ The cannon was fired, and before its reverberations died away a hundred thousand voters of Illinois and the neighboring states were shouting, screaming, and rejoicing at the result. Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was nominated for Vice-President. The nomination of Lincoln was hailed with intense enthusiasm, not only by the crowds in attendance and the Northwest, but throughout the free states. Everywhere the people were full of zeal for the champion from the West. Never did a party enter upon a canvass with more earnest devotion to principle than the republican party of 1860. ”

“ It was now proclaimed that "the further spread of slavery should be arrested, and it should be placed where the public mind should rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction."
A most remarkable feature of the campaign was the personal canvass made by Douglas. This is almost the only instance in which a presidential candidate has taken the stump in his own behalf. The division in the democratic party must have destroyed any hope on his part of success; yet he made a personal canvass, displaying all the vigor, and spirit, and eloquence, for which he was so distinguished. ”

“ An Illinois republican, a short time before the Charleston convention, said to Colonel Richardson, one of Douglas's efficient friends, and one likely to lead his friends in that convention:
"Douglas will be sacrificed. As Van Buren was sacrificed because of his opposition to Texas annexation, so the South will sacrifice Douglas because he opposed Lecompton."
"No," replied Richardson, "the South will find Douglas's friends as firm and determined as they are. We have the majority, and our leader shall not be sacrificed. ”

“ He spoke in most of the free, and in many of the slave states, and his appeals were against Breckenridge on one side, and Lincoln on the other, as representing sectionalism, while he assumed that he carried the banner of the Union. If the efforts of any one man could have changed the result, his would have changed it, but they were in vain. ”

“ The storm of political excitement, North and South, was raging with intense violence. The democratic convention to nominate candidates was called to meet at Charleston, S.C., in April. Douglas was the popular candidate in the free states, with many strong personal friends in the slave states. The politicians of that party believed, as Lincoln had told them at Cincinnati, that they must take Douglas or be defeated. ”

“ The first thing done after organization was the adoption of a platform. A majority reported resolutions declaring that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had any power to abolish or prohibit slavery in the territories, "nor to impair or destroy the right of property in slaves by any legislation whatever." This was intended to be, and was, a direct repudiation of Douglas's doctrine of popular sovereignty, and his friends knew that they might as well give up the canvass as go before the people with this platform. ”

“ But the ultra slaveholders, as a class, were bitterly opposed to him, on account of his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, and his replies to Lincoln at Freeport, Illinois. Hitherto the North had generally yielded to the more determined leaders among the slaveholders, and many supposed that the friends of Douglas, as those of Benton, Van Buren, and Wright had done in days gone by, would yield, and permit the nomination of some negative man, some compromise candidate. ”

“ When told that the people were talking of making him President, he said: "They ought to select some one who knows more than I do." But while he did not think any more of himself because he had in early life split rails, he had too much real dignity to lose any self-respect on that account.
The committee appointed to select delegates to the national convention, submitted the list of names to him. ”

“ He was, however, a democrat. Cook telegraphed to him to come to Chicago by the first train. These two men, with stentorian voices, met some of the Illinois delegation at the Tremont House, and were instructed to organize, each a body of men to cheer and shout, which they speedily did out of the crowds which were in attendance from the Northwest. ”

“ The venerable old man was grieved and disappointed, and, being the representative man of the abolitionists, it was feared the result would create coolness, or drive away these earnest men from supporting the ticket. ”