Neither Trumbull nor Douglas was gifted with the sense of humor, but Trumbull turned the laugh on his antagonist by his comments on the coolness of the proposal that both Senators should resign their seats, which Governor Matteson would have the right to fill immediately, and which the people could in no event fill by a majority vote, since the people did not elect Senators under our system of government. The reason why he did not answer the challenge at Salem was that his colleague did not stay to hear the answer. After he had finished his speech it was very convenient for him to be absent. "He cut immediately for his tavern without waiting to hear me." Trumbull denominated the challenge "a bald clap-trap declamation and nothing else."
Douglas's charges about Know-Nothings and Abolitionists were well calculated to make an impression in southern Illinois; hence Trumbull did not choose to let them go unanswered. His reply was pitched upon a higher plane, however, than his antagonist's tirade. He said:
In my part of the state there are no Know-Nothing organizations of whose members I have any knowledge. If they exist, they exist secretly. There are no open avowed ones among us. These general charges, as to matters of opinion, amount to but very little. It is altogether probable that the gentleman and myself will differ in opinion not only upon this slavery question, but also as to the sentiments of the people of Illinois. The views which I entertain are honest ones; they are the sincere sentiments of my heart. I will not say that the views which he entertains in reference to those matters are not equally honest. I impute no such thing as insincerity to any Senator. Claiming for myself to be honest and sincere, I am willing to award to others the same sincerity that I claim for myself. As to what views other men in Illinois may entertain we may honestly differ. The views of the members of the legislature may be ascertained from their votes on resolutions before them. I do not know how to ascertain them in any other way. As for Abolitionists I do not know one in our state—one who wishes to interfere with slavery in the states. I have not the acquaintance of any of that class. There are thousands who oppose the breaking-down of a compromise set up by our fathers to prevent the extension of slavery, and I know that the gentleman himself once uttered on this floor the sentiment that he did not know a man who wished to extend slavery to a free territory.
Douglas replied at length to Trumbull on the 20th of March, in his most slippery and misleading style. If it were possible to admire the kind of argument which makes the worse appear the better reason, this speech would take high rank. It may be worth while to give a single sample. Trumbull had said that in his opinion the words of the Missouri Compromise, prohibiting slavery in certain territories "forever," meant until the territory should be admitted into the Union as a state on terms of equality with the other states. Douglas seized upon this as a fatal admission, and asked why, if "forever" meant only a few years, Trumbull and all his allies had been abusing him for repealing the sacred compact.
If so [he continued], what is meant by all the leaders of that great party, of which he (Trumbull) has become so prominent a member, when they charge me with violating a solemn compact—a compact which they say consecrated that territory to freedom forever? They say it was a compact binding forever. He says that it was an unfounded assumption, for it was only a law which would become void without even being repealed; it was a mere legislative enactment like any other territorial law, and the word "forever" meant no more than the word "hereafter"—that it would expire by its own limitation. If this assumption be true, it necessarily follows that what he calls the Missouri Compromise was no compact—was not a contract—not even a compromise, the repeal of which would involve a breach of faith.25
And he continued, ringing the changes on this alleged inconsistency through two entire columns of the Globe, as though a compact could not be made respecting a territory as well as for a state, and ignoring the fact that if slaves were prevented from coming into the territory, the material for forming a slave state would not exist when the people should apply for admission to the Union. If the word "forever" had, as Trumbull believed, applied only to the territory, it nevertheless answered all practical purposes forever, by moulding the future state, as the potter moulds the clay.26
The remainder of Douglas's speech was founded upon the doings of Governor Reeder, whom he first used to buttress and sustain the bogus legislature in its acts, and then turned upon and rent in pitiable fragments, calling him "your Governor," as though the Republicans and not their opponents had appointed him.
June 9, 1856, the two Senators drifted into debate on the Kansas question again, and Trumbull put to Douglas the question which Lincoln put to him with such momentous consequences in the Freeport debate two years later: whether the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery prior to the formation of a state constitution. Trumbull said that the Democratic party was not harmonious on this point. He had heard Brown, of Mississippi, argue on the floor of the Senate that slavery could not be excluded from the territories, while in the formative condition, by the territorial legislature, and he had heard Cass, of Michigan, maintain exactly the opposite doctrine. He would like to know what his colleague's views were upon that point:
My colleague [he said] has no sort of difficulty in deciding the constitutional question as to the right of the people of a territory, when they form their constitution, to establish or prohibit slavery. Now will he tell me whether they have the right before they form a state constitution?27
Douglas did not answer this interrogatory. He insisted that it was purely a judicial question, and that he and all good Democrats were in harmony and would sustain the decision of the highest tribunal when it should be rendered. The Dred Scott case was pending in the Supreme Court, but that fact was not mentioned in the debate. The right of the people of a territory to exclude slavery before arriving at statehood was already the crux of the political situation, but its significance was not generally perceived at that time. That Trumbull had grasped the fact was shown by his concluding remarks in this debate, to wit:
My colleague says that the persons with whom he is acting are perfectly agreed on the questions at issue. Why, sir, all of them in the South say that they have a right to take their slaves into a territory and to hold them there as such, while all in the North deny it. If that is an agreement, then I do not know what Bedlam would be.
Bedlam came at Charleston four years later. It is worthy of remark that in this debate Douglas held that a negro could bring an action for personal freedom in a territory and have it presented to the Supreme Court of the United States for decision. In the Dred Scott case, subsequently decided, the court held that a negro could not bring an action in a court of the United States.
The Senate debate on Kansas affairs in the first session of the Thirty-fourth Congress was participated in by nearly all the members of the body. The best speech on the Republican side was made by Seward. This was a carefully prepared, farseeing philosophical oration, in which the South was warned that the stars in their courses were fighting against slavery and that the institution took a step toward perdition when it appealed to lawless violence. Sumner's speech, which in its consequences became more celebrated, was sophomorical and vituperative and was not calculated to help the cause that its author espoused; but the assault made upon him by Preston S. Brooks maddened the North and drew attention away from its defects of taste and judgment. Collamer, of Vermont, made a notable speech in addition to his notable minority report from the Committee on Territories. Wilson, of Massachusetts, and Hale, of New Hampshire, received well-earned plaudits for the thoroughness with which they exposed the frauds and violence of the Border Ruffians, and commented on the vacillation and stammering of President Pierce. That Trumbull had the advantage of his wily antagonist must be the conclusion of impartial readers at the present day.
If a newcomer in the Senate to-day should plunge in medias res and deliver a three-hours' speech as soon as he could get the floor, he would probably be made aware of the opinion of his elders that he had been over-hasty. It was not so in the exciting times of the decade before the Civil War. All help was eagerly welcomed. Moreover, Trumbull's constituents would not have tolerated any delay on his part in getting into the thickest of the fight.