Robert Lincoln rarely spoke at public functions about his father or his father’s legacy, but one major exception he made was the October 7, 1896 celebration of the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate held on the Knox College campus.
Robert had decided in the immediate years after his father’s death not to speak at public functions in his honor. As he told one correspondent in July 1896, “I have had to make up my mind to refrain from attending these celebrations of the birthday of my father …. It has always seemed to me that I should be out of place and so I have with absolute uniformity sent my regrets to a large number of invitations I receive every year …. I really feel I should let such meetings be free from any element which would be caused by my presence.”
The fall of 1896 was different, however. Robert was only a few years returned from serving four years as the United States Minister to Great Britain, and he had decided to participate in the 1896 presidential election by making speeches across the Midwest for the Republican ticket of William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. Before he started his speaking tour on October 15, Robert Lincoln traveled to Galesburg, Illinois, to participate in two massive celebrations.
The first was the dedication of a Civil War soldiers’ monument in Hope Cemetery. Lincoln gave an extensive speech concerning the reasons and the beginnings of the civil war—“The gloom of those threatening days can never be forgotten by those who had passed the age of childhood,” he said—and the meaning of the conflict and the sacrifice of those who fought for liberty. “For this we come today to the graves of these dead soldiers, who were of the men willing to give their lives that their country might live,” Lincoln said in a statement evocative of his father’s hallowed Gettysburg Address. “We should never cease our thanks to God that their offered gift was not in vain. . . . One great lesson to be learned from the lives of these men and their comrades is that there is no danger to the Republic so great that it may not be overcome by the union of patriots. . . . No one lives under its flag who does not at heart rejoice that the rock of Disunion was exploded form its path and the canker of human slavery torn from its framework.”
The second event the day was at Knox College for the celebration of the thirty-eighth anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas Debate held on that campus in 1858. The Galesburg debate was the fifth of the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the senatorial contest of 1858. It is seen as the turning point in the campaign in which Abraham Lincoln began to stress the moral issue of slavery as one of right versus wrong, rather than mere politics.
The day of the 1896 commemorative event celebration, October 7, broke crisp, warm, and cloudless in Galesburg. More than 20,000 people thronged the town and the college campus. The main speaker of the day was Chauncey M. Depew—a renowned orator, New York State politician, and railroad executive—who paid an eloquent tribute to Abraham Lincoln. U.S. Sen. John M. Palmer, who knew both Lincoln and Douglas, also gave a long tribute to both men; and Frank Hamlin, son of Lincoln’s first vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, also gave a brief address. But the one speaker who drew thousands of people to the crowd was ex-Minister to Great Britain, Robert T. Lincoln.
Robert’s speech that day was one of the rare times in his life in which he publicly spoke about his father. His participation is evidence of his deep reverence not only for his father, but also for the historic importance of the debates themselves and the part his father played in eradicating slavery. Standing on the platform facing 20,000 people, with a bust of his father on the platform beside him, Robert Lincoln, portly, bearded, and impeccably dressed—looking, in fact, nothing like Abraham Lincoln—said:
“On an occasion of this peculiar significance it would suit me far better to be a listener or to give you hearty assurance of the grateful emotions that overcome me on witnessing this demonstration of respect for my father. He knew that here he had many sympathizing friends, but what would have been his feelings could he have known that after nearly forty years, after his work was done over thirty years, there would come together such a multitude as this to do him honor! It is for others and not for me to say, I will give expression to but a few thoughts….
“The issues of 1858 have long been settled. My father called the struggle one between right and wrong. In spite of the great odds against him he battled on, sustained by conscience and supported by the idea that when the fogs cleared away the people would be found on the side of right….
“He was right, and today not a man could be found who would not resist the evil against which he protested. This should give us confidence in our battle against the evils of our own times. Now, as then, there can be but one supreme issue, that between right and wrong. In our country there are no ruling classes. The right to direct public affairs according to his might and influence and conscience belongs to the humblest as well as to the greatest. The elections represent the judgments of individual voters. Perhaps in times one vote can destroy or make the country’s prosperity for thirty years. The power of the people, by their judgments expressed through the ballot box, to shape their own destinies, sometimes makes one tremble. But it is times of danger, critical moments, which bring into action the high moral quality of the citizenship of America. The people are always true. They are always right, and I have an abiding faith they will remain so.”
One of the thousands of people in attendance that day was 18-year-old Carl Sandburg, who was working at the time driving a milk wagon and would later become a world-renowned poet and Lincoln scholar. In a February 1953 article in Life magazine, Sandburg remembered the day: “I got away from my milk wagon long enough to have a look at Robert Lincoln, and as I watched him I found myself wondering what kind of talks he had had with his father in the White House. He made a short speech, and he didn’t say anything that I went home thinking about.”
One week later, Robert Lincoln began campaigning for the Republican presidential ticket. His first event was to preside over the American Republican College League meeting in Chicago on Oct. 15, where Theodore Roosevelt was the featured speaker. The next week, Lincoln began a whirlwind speaking tour around the Midwest. He gave three speeches in Minnesota, four in Illinois, and two in Indiana, each time appearing before crowds of tens of thousands of people. In his speeches, Lincoln supported McKinley, the Republican Party, and the continuance of the gold standard, and he railed against the Democrats for wanting to kill American businesses and destroy the American economy. After returning home to Chicago on Nov. 1, Robert wrote to John Hay, “There is nothing I hate as much as speech making, but I started out two weeks ago and have been at it ever since.”
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