ATLAS

Podcast #10 – Abraham Lincoln’s Peoria Speech

Posted on 27. Jun, 2009 by ATLAS in Famous Men, Peoria, Slavery

In order to understand the significance of Lincoln’s speech at Peoria on October 16, 1854, one must first take a look at the political scene of the time.

Abraham Lincoln had retired from politics having served four terms in the Illinois State Legislature and one term in Congress (1846-1848). Between 1848 and 1854, Lincoln was a circuit riding lawyer whose practice was based in Springfield, Illinois. But a piece of legislation introduced by Stephen A. Douglas in May 1854 brought Lincoln out of retirement. The Kansas-Nebraska Act reversed the congressional prohibition on slavery in that section of the Louisiana Territory north of the 36°30′ parallel, a restriction on the spread of slavery agreed to in the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Lincoln was appalled by this reversal of three decades of settled policy. He felt that the principles of the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal” with the “inalienable right to liberty” were being reversed and no American should ignore this.

His research was carefully conducted in the State Capitol and Lincoln prepared a counterattack on the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Years of preparing for jury trials, litigating in the courts of Illinois, and researching American political history prepared Lincoln’s mind and speech to argue the issues. With his natural aptitude for learning and a mature intellect, Lincoln had masterful grasp of the facts and logic of the case against Kansas-Nebraska.

Thus the stage is set for Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas to debate the issues. A few eyewitness and newspaper accounts of their speeches are in existence. In Peoria, Byron C. Bryner was a five-year-old boy when Lincoln arrived to speak in response to Douglas. He published a book in 1924 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Lincoln speech with various recollections. Bryner was concerned that Lincoln’s Peoria speech wasn’t appreciated in 1854 and that it was still overlooked 70 years later.

Here are some of Bryner’s recollections from his book entitled, “Abraham Lincoln in Peoria, Illinois”: (1)

“The monument in the Peoria Court House square bears the names of 525 boys from Peoria who died between April 1861 and April 1865. The starting point for it all was at Peoria, the 16th day of October, 1854.”

“It was the starting point of the race which won for Abraham Lincoln the Presidency of the United States, brought on the War of the Rebellion, led to the death of half million men and twice that number disabled by disease and wounds, made free men and women of four million slaves, and desolated almost every home in the land.” (Page 17)

Bryner further reminisces, “Peoria, ‘beautiful view’, for such is the meaning of the word in the language of the Pottawattomies, only a village. Its bluffs covered with oak and hickory and undergrowth of hazel brush and wild blackberry and ravines where wolves still lingered. The political atmosphere of the time: music of bands—of drum and fife with drummers and fifers garbed in colonial costume, the Spirit of 76. Campaign songs, flags mounted on saplings with bunches of leaves at the top with only 34 stars. Floats with pretty girls in white representing Columbia and the states. I see them at night upon the floor of my home—sleeping upon improvised bed—my mother cooking for all. Not a completed railroad in Peoria on October 16, 1854. No telegraph, no sewing machine, no telephone, tallow candles for illumination, butter, eggs, and milk lowered into the cistern to keep fresh. And yet all of the comforts and luxury of today were born of the brain and brawn of that and the succeeding generation. Amidst such scenes Lincoln and Douglas first met in debate in Peoria, October 16, 1854.”

Four years before their series of seven formal debates, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Arnold Douglas engaged in a joint discussion of the momentous question of whether Kansas and Nebraska should be admitted as free soil states or permitted to enter the Union with slave holding privileges. The Peoria debate took place in the afternoon and evening of Monday, October 16, 1854.

Historians generally agree that Lincoln’s Peoria speech was among the most able he ever delivered. “It is a landmark in his career,” wrote Nathaniel Wright Stephenson. “It …lays the abiding foundation of everything he thought thereafter. In this great speech, the end of his novitiate, he rings the changes on the white man’s charter of liberty.”

The Peoria speech was substantially a repetition of his Bloomington speech of September 26 and his Springfield speech of October 4. However, only press reports survive of those occasions. Three days after he delivered the Peoria speech he wrote it out for publication in the Illinois Daily Journal of Springfield.

On October 16, Douglas was scheduled to speak at a Democratic meeting in Peoria. Douglas was under no obligation to let Lincoln reply to him, but he did so. Lincoln came to Peoria in response to a letter written by Attorney Jonathan K. Cooper and signed by several prominent Peoria Whigs.

Douglas was to speak first, Lincoln to follow, each speaking as long as they wished. Then Douglas was to have one hour to close. The speeches took place on the portico of the Old Peoria Courthouse. Thousands of people assembled there.

Senator Douglas, who was then the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, spoke from 2:30 to 5:30 pm and defended his sponsorship of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It was seen as a repeal of the 1820 Missouri Compromise which had outlawed slavery above the 36°30′ parallel. Douglas asserted that the slavery controversy might have been avoided by extension of the line to the Pacific Ocean. This bill passed the Senate by a majority of ten votes. “It went to the House and my friend, Lincoln, voted against it and it was beaten,” declared Douglas.

According to the Democratic Press: “Here Mr. Lincoln pleasantly remarked that Douglas was a “doughface.” Douglas replied that a “doughface” meant something soft—but Lincoln’s face was hard enough.” (The term “doughface” referred to those northern members of Congress who voted to establish the line of the Missouri Compromise.)

Douglas further accused the Whigs of changing their views on the slavery question in hope of gaining power.
When Douglas finished speaking, Lincoln faced the crowd. He suggested that it was late and they should go home, get their suppers and return to hear him. He added that Douglas would give the closing remarks and if they wanted to see him “skinned” they had better come back. The crowd returned and Lincoln began speaking at 7 pm.

According to the Weekly Republican, Lincoln replied to the “Little Giant” most triumphantly. Lincoln asserted, “I wish to make and keep the distinction between the existing institution (slavery) and the extension of it so broad and so clear that no honest man can misunderstand me and no dishonest man can successfully misrepresent me.”

Lincoln’s speech lasted three hours and ten minutes and contained 17,300 words.

“Comparing it with his later speeches,” wrote an 1879 biographer, “we find it to contain not only the argument of the hour, but the premonition of the broader issues into which the new struggle was destined soon to expand.”

Lincoln hated the spread of slavery “because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.” He puzzled the challenge of freeing all slaves but appealed to a sense of justice and sympathy regarding their natural rights. He characterized slave dealers as snaky and despicable.

“There can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another,” Lincoln told the Peoria crowd. “No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”

Lincoln decried the fugitive slave act that carried the legal obligation for northerners to return runaways–”a dirty, disagreeable job.” “Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man’s nature–opposition to it in his love of justice,” Lincoln said.

“Could there be a more apt invention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question than this Nebraska project is?” he asked.

And Lincoln was very open about his own stand. He explored the moral question of slavery and tracked it to its basic flaw.

“If the Negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government — that is despotism.

“What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.”
Lincoln lamented that “our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the Revolution.”

“Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, its practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south – let all Americans – let all lovers of liberty everywhere – join in the great and good work.”

Given the opportunity to reply to Lincoln’s remarks, Douglas replied only briefly. “He had very little to say,” commented the Weekly Republican. “He had talked himself hoarse in the afternoon and with his voice had gone his arguments.”

Douglas did not meet Lincoln face to face again until the debates of the 1858 campaign, and by then he knew what to expect.

Douglas told a Philadelphia editor of the day, “I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party – full of wit, facts, dates and the best stump-speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd, and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won.”

Douglas went on to win the Senate campaign of 1858, but two years later he was present for Lincoln’s inauguration as president, and according to one story, held the president’s stovepipe hat while Lincoln took the oath of office.

(Read the full text of Lincoln’s Peoria speech.)

“Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.” Engraved over the entrance to the building protecting Lincoln’s birthplace in Hardin County, Kentucky, from his “Peoria Speech.”

Peorians can enjoy several monuments in the city that commemorate his speech here.

Text of the plaque with the Lincoln bust at Tower Park in Peoria Heights:

“I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people never to intrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own liberties and institutions.”

(Portions of the speech of Abraham Lincoln at Peoria, Illinois on October 16, 1854.)

Dedicated September 20, 1970 by the Attorney General of the State of Illinois, William J. Scott

(1) Abraham Lincoln In Peoria, Illinois by B.C. Bryner, 1924. Lincoln Historical Publishing Company
100 copies printed in 1924 and two years later another 1,000 copies were printed. In 2001, a third, enlarged edition was published.