New Mexico Political Journal

On the Trail of Lincoln and Douglas: Galesburg, Illinois, October 7. Douglas: "...this Government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come."

10/09/2017

As the 1858 Illinois US Senate race entered October, Democrat incumbent Stephen A. Douglas and Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln had completed four of their seven scheduled debates. Newspapers throughout the state — and, increasingly, throughout the nation — were covering their exchanges in detail.

On October 7, debate number five took place on the campus of Knox College at Galesburg in west-central Illinois, a town a St. Louis reporter had called "the chief seat of the abolitionists of this State." Settled by Yankees from Upstate New York and New England, both the town and the college had a reputation for supporting anti-slavery causes and the Underground Railroad.

The population of Galesburg at the time was just under 5,000. Today it is 32,000. The crowd for the debate was estimated at an astonishing 20,000 — the largest crowd of any of the seven debates. Considering that in every debate each candidate was allotted an hour and a half — a total of three hours — and that together they spoke some 22,000 words on each occasion, it is impossible to do justice to any of the debates in 700 or 800 words. What follows is only a small excerpt from the multiple issues discussed and argued back and forth.

Stephen A. Douglas States the Declaration of Independence did not include Negroes

"I tell you that this Chicago doctrine of Lincoln's — declaring that the negro and the white man are made equal by the Declaration of Independence and by Divine Providence — is a monstrous heresy. The signers of the Declaration of Independence never dreamed of the negro when they were writing that document. They referred to white men, to men of European birth and European descent, when they declared the equality of all men.

"I see a gentleman there in the crowd shaking his head. Let me remind him that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that document, he was the owner, and so continued until his death, of a large number of slaves. Did he intend to say in that Declaration, that his negro slaves, which he held and treated as property, were created his equals by Divine law, and that he was violating the law of God every day of his life by holding them as slaves?

"It must be borne in mind that when that Declaration was put forth, every one of the thirteen Colonies were slaveholding Colonies, and every man who signed that instrument represented a slave-holding constituency. Recollect, also, that no one of them emancipated his slaves, much less put them on an equality with himself, after he signed the Declaration. On the contrary, they all continued to hold their negroes as slaves during the revolutionary war.

"Now, do you believe — are you willing to have it said — that every man who signed the Declaration of Independence declared the negro his equal, and then was hypocrite enough to continue to hold him as a slave, in violation of what he believed to be the Divine law? And yet when you say that the Declaration of Independence includes the negro, you charge the signers of it with hypocrisy.

"I say to you, frankly, that in my opinion, this Government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come."

Lincoln's Reply

"The Judge has alluded to the Declaration of Independence, and insisted that negroes are not included in that Declaration; and that it is a slander upon the framers of that instrument, to suppose that negroes were meant therein; and he asks you: Is it possible to believe that Mr. Jefferson, who penned the immortal paper, could have supposed himself applying the language of that instrument to the negro race, and yet held a portion of that race in slavery? Would he not at once have freed them?

"I only have to remark upon this part of the Judge's speech (and that, too, very briefly, for I shall not detain myself, or you, upon that point for any great length of time), that I believe the entire records of the world, from the date of the Declaration of Independence up to within three years ago, may be searched in vain for one single affirmation, from one single man, that the negro was not included in the Declaration of Independence; I think I may defy Judge Douglas to show that he ever said so, that Washington ever said so, that any President ever said so, that any member of Congress ever said so, or that any living man upon the whole earth ever said so, until the necessities of the present policy of the Democratic party, in regard to slavery, had to invent that affirmation.

"And I will remind Judge Douglas and this audience, that while Mr. Jefferson was the owner of slaves, as undoubtedly he was, in speaking upon this very subject, he used the strong language that "he trembled for his country when he remembered that God was just;" and I will offer the highest premium in my power to Judge Douglas if he will show that he, in all his life, ever uttered a sentiment at all akin to that of Jefferson."

Lincoln's Education

Knox College's exhibits on the 1858 debate contain commentary regarding Lincoln's education, emphasizing he had little formal education and was an autodidact who read and memorized much of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. In preparing to become a lawyer he thoroughly absorbed the leading authority on the common law, Blackstone's Commentaries, and recommended that every lawyer read them —? twice.

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Intelligent Political Discourse—for the Thoughtful New Mexican

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Jeb Bush gets religion.

"They said he got religion at the end, and I'm glad that he did." — Tom T. Hall. The Year Clayton Delaney died.

Well, it's official. Jeb Bush has changed quite of few of his positions on illegal immigration. The single most significant is that he no longer endorses the "path to citizenship" for those who came here illegally.

This is, after all, the key portion of any proposal aimed at "reforming" our existing illegal immigration situation.

No sensible citizen can see any point in trying to deport between 12 and 16 million people currently living in America illegally. And no candidate for any office that we know of supports that. What the average American wants is for the country to "get a handle on it." They want it stopped, our borders secured and future illegal immigration prevented. It is a national security issue.

The Path to Legal Status

The only way to accomplish the above goals, is to identify current illegal immigrants, get them accounted for, have them documented, and placed on a path to legal status. Neither they nor their children or spouses should live in a state of fear or anxiety.

But a path to "citizenship" is not the right course. It is not morally or legally correct. A merciful and compassionate nation can provide the safeguards of legal status without sending the message to the rest of the world that all you have to do is cross our border and you will eventually get to become a citizen, thus circumventing the legal framework scores of millions of Americans have followed, honored and respected.

If someone who is granted legal status eventually wants to become a citizen, that person should have to return to his or her country of origin and wait in line like 20 million people around the world are doing at any given time. Failing that, America will forever send the signal that anyone in the world can "jump the line," and that there is no reason at all to obey our immigration and naturalization laws.

We Like Jeb Bush

We are glad Jeb Bush has learned this lesson. He is a fine speaker, and can eloquently explain his positions on complex issue. If he were not named "Bush" he would be an actual top tier candidate—in all that that title would entail, including likelihood of acceptance and support of and from the American people in the primaries, and in any theoretical general election.

We also recognize that he already is a de facto top-tier candidate because of his fame and his fundraising.

If he were to be the nominee of the Republican Party we would heartily support him and endorse him. We hope, however, that he is not, as he does not give the center-right coalition the best chance of winning.

The Major League Baseball Playoffs are not realistic, and destroy the actual meaning of the sport.

Major League Baseball is unique in this respect—its postseason is markedly different from the way the game is played normally. No other major league sport suffers from this flaw.

Not that much is wrong with baseball. In some respects it's the most well thought-out sport there is. The "perfect game" many aficionados say.

But the Major League Baseball postseason experience is unique in the world of professional sports, and not in a good way.

In fact the playoffs are flawed in such a way as to detract from the sport itself and diminish the game and what it means to be the world champion of the sport.

Among the Big Four team sports of North America: football, hockey, basketball and baseball—and all the 122 professional major league teams competing in the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB respectively—it is in baseball alone that the postseason turns the sport itself on its head and makes it reflect something that it is not. This article will explain why that happens and why it is wrong-headed.

Background on the The Frequency of Play

The 30 teams in both the National Hockey League and the National Basketball Association teams play a very similar schedule. On average, each team has a day off between games, sometimes two days off. Though there are back-to-back games, they are relatively infrequent. NBA teams play between 14 and 22 back-to-back games a season, and for the NHL it usually ranges between 9 and 19. The NFL has a full week between games, the exception being the new Thursday games that each team plays once, leaving them only four days' rest once a year.

But baseball players play every single day. Ten days straight, then a day off, then seven more games, then a day off, then ten more games. Typically a baseball team plays 27 games every 30 days. For the NHL and NBA it would be 14 per month, and for the NFL the number would be 4.

Getting to the Playoffs: It's a grind

In all four sports, getting to the postseason requires a total team effort—in fact an all-out total organizational effort. Teams must be deep, have bench strength and the capability of moving players in and out of the lineup, and on and off the roster, who can take the place of key players who go down for an injury, or who have to miss games for whatever reason. While this is true of the other three major sports as well, it is most certainly even more of a concern for baseball teams because of the sheer volume of games in which a team must field a competitive lineup.

Each league's regular season* is a marathon, not a sprint. NFL teams play for 17 weeks, 16 games. The NHL has an 82-game season over six months, paralleled by an NBA season of 84 games over the same timeframe. Baseball is the biggest marathon of all—a true test of resilience and endurance—162 games usually starting around the beginning of April and finishing about the end of September.

NHL teams carry 23-man rosters, of which 20 can be active for any particular game. The NBA is similar, with 15-man rosters of which 13 can be on the bench for a given game. In the NFL, the teams have 53 players on a roster, but only 46 can suit up on game day. In Major League Baseball, teams have a 25-man active roster, and all 25 are at the park every day.

The Postseason Playoffs: Sport by Sport

The National Football League:

Of the 32 teams, 12 qualify for the playoffs. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season. Each team plays once a week, the exception being that the four top teams get the first week off. For a typical qualifier to reach the Super Bowl, the team must play three consecutive weeks. At that point both remaining teams have two weeks off before the Super Bowl.

In short, the playoffs, with a game each week, reflects the same means of advancement as is present in regular season grind.

The National Hockey League:

16 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. The playoffs are conducted in the exact same manner as the regular season: a game, a day off, a game, a day off, a game, a day off, and so on. Just as in the regular season, there are occasionally two days off. But the playoffs require the same stamina, the same approach as that required to make the playoffs.

The National Basketball Association

Major League Baseball

10 of the 30 teams qualify for the postseason. (Although four of those teams qualify only for a one-game do-or-die play-in game.)

Here is where all similarity to baseball ends.

Unlike the other three sports whose playoffs mirror the test of the regular season, and whose conditions are the same as the regular season, Major League Baseball playoffs in no way resemble the sport itself. In hockey, basketball and football, the teams win playoff games and reach the pinacle of the sport in exactly the same way that they qualify to try to do so.

Not so in baseball. They are two entirely different concepts. Teams make the playoffs only because they have depth, five-man pitching rotations and can play day-in and day-out at a high level. But the baseball playoffs suddenly become a kind of "all-star" game within each team's roster. MLB playoffs are conducted in a way that more closely follows the NBA and the NHL. Teams have enormous numbers of days off.

Here's the key point: No Major League Baseball team could even qualify for the postseason if they played the same way during the regular season that they do in the playoffs. None.

In the regular season Major League Baseball teams have to use a 5-man starting rotation, with pitchers pitching every 5th day. There are not enough days off to have even a four-man rotation, let alone a team with three pitchers. Even the best team in baseball using only a 4-man rotation, would wear them out, and most likely end up with a record of something like 66-96, or 70-92—and that would be if they were otherwise teh best team in the sport.

The 2014 Baseball Postseason is Typical

As examples, last year's World Series teams the Kansas City Royals played only 15 games in 30 days, and the San Francisco Giants played only 17 games in 30 days. The 12 to 15 days off in the non-baseball fantasy world of the MLB postseason, means that teams can turn to three pitchers and give all of them plenty of rest. But it isn't the way baseball really works.

At one point, the Royals had 5 consecutive days off, and the Giants had 4. This never happens in the regular season. Even the All-Star break is only three days. Very rarely is there anything beyond a one-day break, and even that happens only a couple of times a month.

What this means is that neither team used the team that got them to the playoffs. (The NFL, NBA and NHL teams ALL used the very same teams that got them to the playoffs.)

Baseball teams use a three-man pitching rotation in the playoffs. Sometimes, they essentially opt for two pitchers only—conceding the likelihood that some of their games are going to be lost—when their third-, or rarely fourth-best pitcher has to face one of their opponents' two-man or three-man rotation members.

Imagine an NFL team using only one running back and three wide receivers, instead of rotating through their roster in the course of a playoff game—or using only 4 defensive backs and 4 linebackers, instead of rotating 8 or 9 DBs and 6 or 7 linebackers? In hockey, would a team use only two or three of their forward lines? Would an NBA team use only the starting five? They would never make the post season if they tried to present that product to their fans during the regular season.

Those are the equivalents of what Major League Baseball sets up every fall. No other sport drags its playoffs out in such a way as to completely change the playing field—completely change the dynamics of its game.

Why Does Baseball Do This?

MLB does this because the TV networks want to drag out the games so that they can try to have one game each day This requires an unnecessary staggering of games, and creates the phenomenon of 15 off-days in a month.

What about travel days?

What about them? Baseball has travel days constantly. A team may play in Chicago one day and in Miami the next, or in New York one day and Phoenix the very next day. Travel days as a routine part of the game are again, a phenomenon of television, and stretching out the playoffs.

In years past, travel days were employed only when necessary. The famous "subway series" games were played on seven consecutive days. Why? Because there was no "travel day" required to go from Brooklyn to the Bronx. Today, they would put in artificial travel days.

Even fairly long train trips didn't necessarily matter. The 1948 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Boston Braves was played in six consecutive days, October 6 & 7 in Boston, October 8, 9 & 10 in Cleveland, and October 11 back in Boston.

This reflects actual baseball, the way the teams play day-in and day-out, and the kind of unique test that baseball presents to its athletes, its managers and management, and to its fans.

In the modern world of charter planes, teams fly from coast to coast to play games on consecutive days. The artificial "travel day" should be eliminated so that teams can play in the playoffs in the same way that got them there in the first place.

*All these leagues also have pre-seasons and training camps, which add an additional 6-8 weeks to each player's year.

Email us with your feedback, comments, questions and ideas.

On the Trail of Lincoln and Douglas: Galesburg, Illinois, October 7. Douglas: "...this Government was made by our fathers on the white basis. It was made by white men for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, and was intended to be administered by white men in all time to come."

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