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It showed him to be a master of invective. "Go it, husband; go it, bear," was Mr. Lincoln's comment on that part of Douglas's address. I went to the debate with a very strong prejudice against Douglas, looking upon him as one of the most time-serving of those Northern men whom the Abolitionists called "dough-faces." I confess that my views of the man were considerably modified.
The Northern leaders of both of the old political parties Whig and Democratic were what the Abolitionists called "dough-faces," being Northern men with Southern principles. The Church was "a dumb dog," and the press simply drifted with the tide. It was not at all strange that the slaveholders expected to go on from conquest to conquest. There were two policies they could adopt.
Your dough-faces will profess, but at a point will fly the track, sir; they can't stand, sir; they can't stand pressing. Interest, interest, sir, is their moving motive. Do you not see it in their action in this matter? Missouri is a fertile and lovely country; they want it for the purpose of settlement with their own people.
In Congress they sat and loafed with the soles of their boots turned up for the inspection of the ladies in the galleries. Their language and gestures as they expectorated hither and thither were often as coarse as their positions, while they ranted about the "laws and Constitution," and cracked their slave-whips over the heads of the dough-faces sent from the Northern States.
We are all docile dough-faces, They knead us with the fist, They, the dashing southern lords, We labor as they list; For them we speak or hold our tongues, For them we turn and twist. We join them in their howl against Free soil and "abolition," That firebrand that assassin knife Which risk our land's condition, And leave no peace of life to any Dough-faced politician.
And what if children, growing up, In future seasons read The thing we do? and heart and tongue Accurse us for the deed? The future cannot touch us; The present gain we heed. Then, all together, dough-faces! Let's stop the exciting clatter, And pacify slave-breeding wrath By yielding all the matter; For otherwise, as sure as guns, The Union it will shatter.
There are political parties under the names of Whigs, Democrats, Know-nothings, Freesoilers, Fusionists, Hunkers, Woolly-heads, Dough-faces, Hard-shells, Soft-shells, Silver- greys, and I know not what besides; all of them extremely puzzling to the stranger, but of great local significance.
They branded Northern politicians with Southern principles as "dough-faces." But their hardest and sharpest expletives were reserved for those Northern clergymen who were either pro-slavery or non-committal. They blistered them all over with their lashings. In speaking of one of the most noted among them, Lowell describes him as
It rose and fell, but still came nearer and nearer to the attacking party of dough-faces, who for their part could not guess that Bob Holliday had put a lighted candle into an Indian's skull, and then tied this ghost's lantern to a wire attached to the end of a fishing-rod, which he operated from behind the house.
It was yet an hour and a half before the moon would be up, and there was time for some fun. Two boys from the neighborhood, who had joined the party, agreed to furnish dough-faces for them all. Nothing more ghastly than masks of dough can well be imagined, and when the boys all put them on, and had turned their coats wrong-side out, they were almost afraid of one another.
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