crashing to the ground. No sooner had they
regained their footing than another bench,
this one reserved for the ladies in atten-
dance, also gave way, leaving the fairer vic-
tims to reel dazedly into the arms of their
rescuers, bonnets and petticoats askew.
Once again Lincoln denounced slavery
as a spreading evil and repeated his claim
that Douglas and the Democrats were con-
spiring to make the practice both national
and permanent. After Douglas retaliated by
criticizing Lincoln for ignoring the Supreme
Court’s Dred Scott decision, Lincoln, per-
haps rattled by the collapsible stage, got
into a shouting match with a Chicago
Times reporter in the crowd. “I don’t care
if your hireling does say I did,” Lincoln
roared, “I tell you myself that I never said
the Democratic owners of Dred Scott got
up the case.” On that less than elevated
note, the sixth debate came to an end.
The seventh and final debate took place
on October 15 in Alton 115 miles down-
river from Quincy. Despite beautiful fall
weather and a special $1 round-trip river-
boat ticket from nearby St. Louis, only
5,000 people—the second smallest turnout
of the series—showed up at Alton’s new city
hall for the event. Perhaps, as a Cincinnati
newspaper reporter conjectured, “the nov-
elty had worn off” the debates. Douglas’s
voice had been reduced by now to a hoarse
whisper, and he could scarcely be heard
over the crowd. Quoting Lincoln’s earlier
statement that he would be “exceedingly
sorry ever to be put in the position” of hav-
ing to vote on the admission of new slave
states to the Union, Douglas made one of
his rare jokes: “Permit me to remark that I
don’t think the people will ever force him
into a position where he will have to vote
upon it.” Lincoln joined good naturedly in
the laughter.
Buoyed by the presence of his wife and
eldest son, Robert, at the debate, Lincoln
gave one of his strongest performances. He
confessed that he was “not less selfish than
other men” in seeking high political office,“but I do claim that I am not more selfish
than is Judge Douglas.” (“Roars of laugh-
ter,” the Chicago Tribunereported paren-
thetically.) The chief difference between the
two sides, said Lincoln, was that one con-
sidered slavery to be wrong, while the other
did not. “That is the real issue,” Lincoln
concluded, “an issue that will continue in
this country when these poor tongues of
Douglas and myself shall be silent.”
Lincoln was both right and wrong in that
assessment. The explosive issue of slavery
would continue to rage after the debates
were over, but both he and Douglas would
also continue to have a real say in future
events. That November the Democratic-
controlled Illinois Legislature returned Dou-
glas to the Senate over Lincoln, although
Republicans won the only statewide elec-
tion, that of state treasurer, by 3,800 votes.
But as Douglas had presciently argued dur-
ing the campaign, the Republicans were set-
ting the stage for a presidential campaign in
two years, during which they would “con-
nect the northern states into one great sec-
tional party, and inasmuch as the northern
section is the stronger, the stronger section
will out-vote and control and govern the
weaker section.” In his worst nightmare, he
couldn’t have foreseen that Abraham Lin-
coln would be the one doing the controlling
and governing.
As for Lincoln, his first reaction to los-
ing the senatorial election was amused cha-
grin. “I feel like the boy who stumped his
toe,” he told visitors to his law office in
Springfield. “I am too big to cry and too
badly hurt to laugh.” He tried to take the
longer view, recalling that on election night
he had nearly lost his footing on a rain-
slick path. Lincoln remembered telling
himself then, “It’s a slip and not a fall.” He
viewed the just concluded campaign in a
similar light. “I am glad I made the late
race,” he said. “It gave me a hearing on
the great and durable question of the age,
which I could have had in no other way;
and though I now sink out of view, and
shall be forgotten, I believe I have made
some marks which will tell for the cause of
civil liberty long after I am gone.” He was
not gone yet.DOUGLAS and LINCOLN
Continued from page 31even then aiming their rifles at them.
Finally convinced that he had erred, Mans-
field said, “Yes, yes, you are right,” and
almost immediately was struck in the chest
by a bullet. His head drooped and his body
sagged against the saddle, but he was able
to guide the stricken horse along the Hager-
stown Pike toward the rear. At first no one
knew that the general had been wounded.
Then the wind blew open his coat, reveal-
ing his blood-soaked shirt. At this point
some soldiers helped Mansfield dismount
and took him to the rear. The lines of bat-
tle rolled forward and the attack of XII
Corps proved to be just one more futile
effort to force the Confederate line.
Mansfield was taken in an ambulance to
the makeshift hospital at Line’s house less
than a mile away. There he was attended
throughout the next 24 hours by a team of
three surgeons, as well as Captain Clarence
H. Dyer, his faithful aide-de-camp, who
stayed at his side throughout the ordeal.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, alter-
nately asking after the well-being of his
comrades and uttering words of prayer,
Mansfield gradually weakened and died
just a few minutes after 8 on the morning
of September 18.
Mansfield’s moment of glory had lasted
less than a half-hour. All around the spot
where he fell were the mortal remains of
his shattered corps. At least 275 men lay
dead and another 1,470 wounded were
crowded into the small area around the
East Woods, a casualty rate of nearly 20
percent of those engaged. Posthumously
confirmed as a major general of volunteers,
Mansfield was the longest serving soldier
on the field that day and the highest rank-
ing casualty of the Battle of Antietam. He
was also the oldest graduate of West Point,
as well as the oldest general, to be killed in
battle during the Civil War. He died at his
post, with his face turned toward the
enemy—a fitting epitaph for any soldier, no
matter how long the service or brief the
glory.SOLDIERS
Continued from page 13CWQ-Sum16 Lincoln Douglas_Layout 1 4/20/16 4:04 PM Page 98