A FORTUNATE ESCAPE
When Congress came together again in December, there was such a change
in the temper of its members that no one would have imagined, on
seeing the House divided, that it was the same body which had
assembled there a year before. The election was over; the Whigs were
to control the Executive Department of the Government for four years
to come; the members themselves were either reflected or defeated; and
there was nothing to prevent the gratification of such private
feelings as they might have been suppressing during the canvass in the
interest of their party. It was not long before some of the Northern
Democrats began to avail themselves of this new liberty. They had
returned burdened with a sense of wrong. They had seen their party put
in deadly peril by reason of its fidelity to the South, and they had
seen how little their Southern brethren cared for their labors and
sacrifices, in the enormous gains which Taylor had made in the South,
carrying eight out of fifteen slave States. They were in the humor to
avenge themselves by a display of independence on their own account,
at the first opportunity. The occasion was not long in presenting
itself. A few days after Congress opened, Mr. Root, of Ohio,
introduced a resolution instructing the Committee on Territories to
bring in a bill "with as little delay as practicable" to provide
territorial governments for California and New Mexico, which should
"exclude slavery there-from." This resolution would have thrown the
same House into a panic twelve months before, but now it passed by a
vote of 108 to 80--in the former number were all the "Whigs from the
North and all the Democrats but eight," and in the latter the entire
South and the eight referred to.
The Senate, however, was not so susceptible to popular impressions,
and the bill, prepared in obedience to the mandate of the House, never
got farther than the desk of the Senate Chamber. The pro-slavery
majority in that body held firmly together till near the close of the
session, when they attempted to bring in the new territories without
any restriction as to slavery, by attaching what is called "a rider"
to that effect to the Civil Appropriation Bill. The House resisted,
and returned the bill to the Senate with the rider unhorsed. A
committee of conference failed to agree. Mr. McClernand, a Democrat
from Illinois, then moved that the House recede from its disagreement,
which was carried by a few Whig votes, to the dismay of those who were
not in the secret, when Richard W. Thompson (who was thirty years
afterwards Secretary of the Navy) instantly moved that the House do
concur with the Senate, with this amendment, that the existing laws of
those territories be for the present and until Congress should amend
them, retained. This would secure them to freedom, as slavery had long
ago been abolished by Mexico. This amendment passed, and the Senate
had to face the many-pronged dilemma, either to defeat the
Appropriation Bill, or to consent that the territories should be
organized as free communities, or to swallow their protestations that
the territories were in sore need of government and adjourn, leaving
them in the anarchy they had so feelingly depicted. They chose the
last as the least dangerous course, and passed the Appropriation Bill
in its original form.
Mr. Lincoln took little part in the discussions incident to these
proceedings; he was constantly in his seat, however, and voted
generally with his party, and always with those opposed to the
extension of slavery. He used to say that he had voted for the Wilmot
proviso, in its various phases, forty-two times. He left to others,
however, the active work on the floor. His chief preoccupation during
this second session was a scheme which links itself characteristically
with his first protest against the proscriptive spirit of slavery ten
years before in the Illinois Legislature and his immortal act fifteen
years afterwards in consequence of which American slavery ceased to
exist. He had long felt in common with many others that the traffic in
human beings under the very shadow of the Capitol was a national
scandal and reproach. He thought that Congress had the power under the
Constitution to regulate or prohibit slavery in all regions under its
exclusive jurisdiction, and he thought it proper to exercise that
power with due regard to vested rights and the general welfare. He
therefore resolved to test the question whether it were possible to
remove from the seat of government this stain and offense.
[Sidenote: Gidding's diary, January 8, 9, and 11, 1849: published in
the "Cleveland Post," March 31, 1878.]
He proceeded carefully and cautiously about it, after his habit. When
he had drawn up his plan, he took counsel with some of the leading
citizens of Washington and some of the more prominent members of
Congress before bringing it forward. His bill obtained the cordial
approval of Colonel Seaton, the Mayor of Washington, whom Mr. Lincoln
had consulted as the representative of the intelligent slave-holding
citizens of the District, and of Joshua R. Giddings, whom he regarded
as the leading abolitionist in Congress, a fact which sufficiently
proves the practical wisdom with which he had reconciled the demands
of right and expediency. In the meantime, however, Mr. Gott, a member
from New York, had introduced a resolution with a rhetorical preamble
directing the proper committee to bring in a bill prohibiting the
slave-trade in the District. This occasioned great excitement, much
caucusing and threatening on the part of the Southern members, but
nothing else. In the opinion of the leading antislavery men, Mr.
Lincoln's bill, being at the same time more radical and more
reasonable, was far better calculated to effect its purpose. Giddings
says in his diary: "This evening (January 11), our whole mess remained
in the dining-room after tea, and conversed upon the subject of Mr.
Lincoln's bill to abolish slavery. It was approved by all; I believe
it as good a bill as we could get at this time, and am willing to pay
for slaves in order to save them from the Southern market, as I
suppose every man in the District would sell his slaves if he saw that
slavery was to be abolished." Mr. Lincoln therefore moved, on the 16th
of January, as an amendment to Gott's proposition, that the committee
report a bill for the total abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia, the terms of which he gave in full. They were in substance
the following:
The first two sections prohibit the bringing of slaves into the
district or selling them out of it, provided, however, that officers
of the Government, being citizens of slave-holding States, may bring
their household servants with them for a reasonable time and take them
away again. The third provides a temporary system of apprenticeship
and eventual emancipation for children born of slavemothers after
January 1, 1850. The fourth provides for the manumission of slaves by
the Government on application of the owners, the latter to receive
their full cash value. The fifth provides for the return of fugitive
slaves from Washington and Georgetown. The sixth submits this bill
itself to a popular vote in the District as a condition of its
promulgation as law.
These are the essential points of the measure and the success of Mr.
Lincoln in gaining the adhesion of the abolitionists in the House is
more remarkable than that he should have induced the Washington
Conservatives to approve it. But the usual result followed as soon as
it was formally introduced to the notice of Congress, It was met by
that violent and excited opposition which greeted any measure, however
intrinsically moderate and reasonable, which was founded on the
assumption that slavery was not in itself a good and desirable thing.
The social influences of Washington were brought to bear against a
proposition which the Southerners contended would vulgarize society,
and the genial and liberal mayor was forced to withdraw his approval
as gracefully or as awkwardly as he might. The prospects of the bill
were seen to be hopeless, as the session was to end on the 4th of
March, and no further effort was made to carry it through. Fifteen
years afterwards, in the stress and tempest of a terrible war, it was
Mr. Lincoln's strange fortune to sign a bill sent him by Congress for
the abolition of slavery in Washington; and perhaps the most
remarkable thing about the whole transaction, was that while we were
looking politically upon a new heaven and a new earth,--for the vast
change in our moral and economic condition might justify so audacious
a phrase,--when there was scarcely a man on the continent who had not
greatly shifted his point of view in a dozen years, there was so
little change in Mr. Lincoln. The same hatred of slavery, the same
sympathy with the slave, the same consideration for the slaveholder as
the victim of a system he had inherited, the same sense of divided
responsibility between the South and the North, the same desire to
effect great reforms with as little individual damage and injury, as
little disturbance of social conditions as possible, were equally
evident when the raw pioneer signed the protest with Dan Stone at
Vandalia, when the mature man moved the resolution of 1849 in the
Capitol, and when the President gave the sanction of his bold
signature to the act which swept away the slave-shambles from the city
of Washington.
[Illustration: JOSHUA R. GIDDINGS.]
His term in Congress ended on the 4th of March, 1849, and he was not a
candidate for reflection. A year before he had contemplated the
possibility of entering the field again. He then wrote to his friend
and partner Herndon: "It is very pleasant for me to learn from yon
that there are some who desire that I should be reelected. I most
heartily thank them for their kind partiality; and I can say, as Mr.
Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that 'personally I would not
object' to a reelection, although I thought at the time [of his
nomination], and still think, it would be quite as well for me to
return to the law at the end of a single term. I made the declaration
that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly
with others, to keep peace among our friends, and keep the district
from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself, so
that, if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I
could not refuse the people the right of sending me again. But to
enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to
enter me, is what my word and honor forbid."
But before his first session ended he gave up all idea of going back,
and heartily concurred in the nomination of Judge Logan to succeed
him. The Sangamon district was the one which the Whigs of Illinois had
apparently the best prospect of carrying, and it was full of able and
ambitious men, who were nominated successively for the only place
which gave them the opportunity of playing a part in the national
theater at Washington. They all served with more or less distinction,
but for eight years no one was ever twice a candidate. A sort of
tradition had grown up, through which a perverted notion of honor and
propriety held it discreditable in a member to ask for reelection.
This state of things was not peculiar to that district, and it
survives with more or less vigor throughout the country to this day,
to the serious detriment of Congress. This consideration, coupled with
what is called the claim of locality, must in time still further
deteriorate the representatives of the States at Washington. To ask in
a nominating convention who is best qualified for service in Congress
is always regarded as an impertinence; but the question "what county
in the district has had the Congressman oftenest" is always considered
in order. For such reasons as these Mr. Lincoln refused to allow his
name to go before the voters again, and the next year he again
refused, writing an emphatic letter for publication, in which he said
that there were many Whigs who could do as much as he "to bring the
district right side up."
Colonel Baker had come back from the wars with all the glitter of
Cerro Gordo about him, but did not find the prospect of political
preferment flattering in Sangamon County, and therefore, with that
versatility and sagacity which was more than once to render him signal
service, he removed to the Galena district, in the extreme north-
western corner of the State, and almost immediately on his arrival
there received a nomination to Congress. He was doubly fortunate in
this move, as the nomination he was unable to take away from Logan
proved useless to the latter, who was defeated after a hot contest.
Baker therefore took the place of Lincoln as the only Whig member from
Illinois, and their names occur frequently together in the
arrangements for the distribution of "Federal patronage" at the close
of the Administration of Polk and the beginning of that of Taylor.
[Sidenote: MS letter from Lincoln to Schooler. Feb. 2, 1869.]
During the period while the President-elect was considering the
appointment of his Cabinet, Lincoln used all the influence he could
bring to bear, which was probably not very much, in favor of Baker for
a place in the Government. The Whig members of the Legislatures of
Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin joined in this effort, which came to
nothing. The recommendations to office which Lincoln made after the
inauguration of General Taylor are probably unique of their kind. Here
is a specimen which is short enough to give entire. It is addressed to
the Secretary of the Interior: "I recommend that William Butler be
appointed Pension Agent for the Illinois agency when the place shall
be vacant. Mr. Hurst, the present incumbent, I believe has performed
the duties very well. He is a decided partisan, and I believe expects
to be removed. Whether he shall be, I submit to the Department. This
office is not confined to my district, but pertains to the whole
State; so that Colonel Baker has an equal right with myself to be
heard concerning it. However, the office is located here (at
Springfield); and I think it is not probable any one would desire to
remove from a distance to take it."
We have examined a large number of his recommendations--for with a
complete change of administration there would naturally be great
activity among the office-seekers--and they are all in precisely the
same vein. He nowhere asks for the removal of an incumbent; he never
claims a place as subject to his disposition; in fact, he makes no
personal claim whatever; he simply advises the Government, in case a
vacancy occurs, who, in his opinion, is the best man to fill it. When
there are two applicants, he indicates which is on the whole the
better man, and sometimes adds that the weight of recommendations is
in favor of the other! In one instance he sends forward the
recommendations of the man whom he does not prefer, with an
indorsement emphasizing the importance of them, and adding: "From
personal knowledge I consider Mr. Bond every way worthy of the office
and qualified to fill it. Holding the individual opinion that the
appointment of a different gentleman would be better, I ask especial
attention and consideration for his claims, and for the opinions
expressed in his favor by those over whom I can claim no superiority."
The candor, the fairness and moderation, together with the respect for
the public service which these recommendations display, are all the
more remarkable when we reflect that there was as yet no sign of a
public conscience upon the subject. The patronage of the Government
was scrambled for, as a matter of course, in the mire into which
Jackson had flung it.
For a few weeks in the spring of 1849 Mr. Lincoln appears in a
character which is entirely out of keeping with all his former and
subsequent career. He became, for the first and only time in his life,
an applicant for an appointment at the hands of the President. His
bearing in this attitude was marked by his usual individuality. In the
opinion of many Illinoisans it was important that the place of
Commissioner of the General Land Office should be given to a citizen
of their State, one thoroughly acquainted with the land law in the
West and the special needs of that region. A letter to Lincoln was
drawn up and signed by some half-dozen of the leading Whigs of the
State asking him to become an applicant for that position.
He promptly answered, saying that if the position could be secured for
a citizen of Illinois only by his accepting it, he would consent; but
he went on to say that he had promised his best efforts to Cyrus
Edwards for that place, and had afterwards stipulated with Colonel
Baker that if J. L. D. Morrison, another Mexican hero, and Edwards
could come to an understanding with each other as to which should
withdraw, he would join in recommending the other; that he could not
take the place, therefore, unless it became clearly impossible for
either of the others to get it. Some weeks later, the impossibility
referred to having become apparent, Mr. Lincoln applied for the place;
but a suitor for office so laggard and so scrupulous as he, stood very
little chance of success in contests like those which periodically
raged at Washington during the first weeks of every new
administration. The place came, indeed, to Illinois, but to neither of
the three we have mentioned. The fortunate applicant was Justin
Butterfield, of Chicago, a man well and favorably known among the
early members of the Illinois bar, [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy
footnote relocated to chapter end.] who, however, devoted less
assiduous attention to the law than to the business of office-seeking,
which he practiced with fair success all his days.
It was in this way that Abraham Lincoln met and escaped one of the
greatest dangers of his life. In after days he recognized the error he
had committed, and congratulated himself upon the happy deliverance he
had obtained through no merit of his own. The loss of at least four
years of the active pursuit of his profession would have been
irreparable, leaving out of view the strong probability that the
singular charm of Washington life to men who have a passion for
politics might have kept him there forever. It has been said that a
residence in Washington leaves no man precisely as it found him. This
is an axiom which may be applied to most cities in a certain sense,
but it is true in a peculiar degree of our capital.
To the men who go there from small rural communities in the South and
the West, the bustle and stir, the intellectual movement, such as it
is, the ordinary subjects of conversation, of such vastly greater
importance than anything they have previously known, the daily, even
hourly combats on the floor of both houses, the intrigue and the
struggle of office-hunting, which engage vast numbers besides the
office-seekers, the superior piquancy and interest of the scandal
which is talked at a Congressional boarding-house over that which
seasons the dull days at village-taverns--all this gives a savor to
life in Washington the memory of which doubles the tedium of the
sequestered vale to which the beaten legislator returns when his brief
hour of glory is over. It is this which brings to the State
Department, after every general election, that crowd of specters, with
their bales of recommendations from pitying colleagues who have been
reelected, whose diminishing prayers run down the whole gamut of
supplication from St. James to St. Paul of Loando, and of whom at the
last it must be said, as Mr. Evarts once said after an unusually heavy
day, "Many called, but few chosen." Of those who do not achieve the
ruinous success of going abroad to consulates that will not pay their
board, or missions where they avoid daily shame only by hiding their
penury and their ignorance away from observation, a great portion
yield to their fate and join that fleet of wrecks which floats forever
on the pavements of Washington.
It is needless to say that Mr. Lincoln received no damage from his
term of service in Washington, but we know of nothing which shows so
strongly the perilous fascination of the place as the fact that a man
of his extraordinary moral and mental qualities could ever have
thought for a moment of accepting a position so insignificant and
incongruous as that which he was more than willing to assume when he
left Congress. He would have filled the place with honor and credit--
but at a monstrous expense. We do not so much refer to his exceptional
career and his great figure in history; these momentous contingencies
could not have suggested themselves to him. But the place he was
reasonably sure of filling in the battle of life should have made a
subordinate office in Washington a thing out of the question. He was
already a lawyer of skill and reputation; an orator upon whom his
party relied to speak for them to the people. An innate love of combat
was in his heart; he loved discussion like a medieval schoolman. The
air was already tremulous with faint bugle-notes that heralded a
conflict of giants on a field of moral significance to which he was
fully alive and awake, where he was certain to lead at least his
hundreds and his thousands. Yet if Justin Butterfield had not been a
more supple, more adroit, and less scrupulous suitor for office than
himself, Abraham Lincoln would have sat for four inestimable years at
a bureau-desk in the Interior Department, and when the hour of action
sounded in Illinois, who would have filled the place which he took as
if he had been born for it? Who could have done the duty which he bore
as lightly as if he had been fashioned for it from the beginning of
time?
His temptation did not end even with Butterfield's success. The
Administration of General Taylor, apparently feeling that some
compensation was due to one so earnestly recommended by the leading
Whigs of the State, offered Mr. Lincoln the governorship of Oregon.
This was a place more suited to him than the other, and his acceptance
of it was urged by some of his most judicious friends [Footnote: Among
others John T. Stuart, who is our authority for this statement.] on
the ground that the new Territory would soon be a State, and that he
could come back as a senator. This view of the matter commended itself
favorably to Lincoln himself, who, however, gave it up on account of
the natural unwillingness of his wife to remove to a country so wild
and so remote.
This was all as it should be. The best place for him was Illinois, and
he went about his work there until his time should come.
[Relocated Footnote: Butterfield had a great reputation for ready wit
and was suspected of deep learning. Some of his jests are still
repeated by old lawyers in Illinois, and show at least a well-marked
humorous intention. On one occasion he appeared before Judge Pope to
ask the discharge of the famous Mormon Prophet, Joe Smith, who was in
custody surrounded by his church dignitaries. Bowing profoundly to the
court and the ladies who thronged the hall, he said: "I appear before
you under solemn and peculiar circumstances. I am to address the Pope,
surrounded by angels, in the presence of the holy apostles, in behalf
of the Prophet of the Lord." We once heard Lincoln say of Butterfield
that he was one of the few Whigs in Illinois who approved the Mexican
war. His reason, frankly given, was that he had lost an office in New
York by opposing the war of 1812. "Henceforth," he said with cynical
vehemence, "I am for war, pestilence, and famine." He was once
defending the Shawneetown Bank and advocating the extension of its
charter; an opposing lawyer contended that this would be creating a
new bank. Butterfield brought a smile from the court and a laugh from
the bar by asking "whether when the Lord lengthened the life of
Hezekiah he made a new man, or whether it was the same old Hezekiah?"]