IN CONGRESS AND ON THE STUMP.
The Mexican War--Internal Improvements--Slavery in the
District of Columbia--Public Lands--Retires to Private Life--
Kansas-Nebraska Bill--Withdraws in favor of Senator Trumbull--
Formation of Republican Party--Nominated for U. S. Senator--
Opening Speech of Mr. Lincoln--Douglas Campaign--The Canvass--
Tribute to the Declaration of Independence--Result of the Contest.
Mr. Lincoln was early recognized as one of the foremost of the Western
men upon the floor of the House. His Congressional record is that
of a Whig of those days. Believing that Mr. Polk’s administration
had mismanaged affairs with Mexico at the outset, he, in common with
others of his party, was unwilling, while voting supplies and favoring
suitable rewards for our gallant soldiers, to be forced into an
unqualified indorsement of the war with that country from its beginning
to its close.
Accordingly, December 22d, 1847, he introduced a series of resolutions
of inquiry concerning the origin of the war, calling for definite
official information, which were laid over under the rule, and never
acted upon. Upon a test question on abandoning the war, without any
material result accomplished, he voted with the minority in favor of
laying that resolution upon the table.
In all questions bearing upon the matter of internal improvements,
he took an active interest. He took manly ground in favor of the
unrestricted right of petition, and favored a liberal policy toward the
people in disposing of the public lands. He exerted himself during the
canvass of 1848, to secure the election of General Taylor, delivering
several effective campaign speeches in New England and the West.
At the second session of the Thirtieth Congress, he voted in favor of
laying upon the table a resolution instructing the Committee on the
District of Columbia to report a bill prohibiting the slave-trade in
the District, and subsequently read a substitute which he favored. This
substitute contained the form of a bill enacting that no person not
already within the District, should be held in slavery therein, and
providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves already within the
District, with compensation to the owners, if a majority of the legal
voters of the District should assent to the act, at an election to be
holden for the purpose. It made an exception of the right of citizens
of the slave-holding States coming to the District on public business,
to “be attended into and out of said District, and while there, by the
necessary servants of themselves and their families.”
In regard to the grant of public lands to the new States, to aid in the
construction of railways and canals, he favored the interests of his
own constituents, under such restrictions as the proper scope of these
grants required.
Having declined to be a candidate for re-election, he retired once
more to private life, resuming the professional practice which had been
temporarily interrupted by his public duties, and taking no active part
in politics through the period of General Taylor’s administration, or
in any of the exciting scenes of 1850.
The introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill by Stephen A. Douglas, in
1854, aroused him from his repose, and summoned him once more to battle
for the right. In the canvass of that year, he was one of the most
active leaders of the anti-Nebraska movement, addressing the people
repeatedly from the stump, with all his characteristic earnestness and
energy, and powerfully aided in effecting the remarkable political
changes of that year in Illinois.
The Legislature that year having to choose a United States Senator, and
for the first time in the history of the State, the election of one
opposed to the Democratic party being within the reach of possibility,
Mr. Lincoln, although the first choice of the great body of the
opposition, with characteristic self-sacrificing disposition, appealed
to his old Whig friends to go over in a solid body to Mr. Trumbull,
a man of Democratic antecedents, who could command the full vote of
the anti-Nebraska Democrats; and the latter was consequently elected.
Mr. Lincoln was subsequently offered the nomination for Governor of
Illinois, but declined the honor in favor of Col. William H. Bissell,
who was elected by a decisive majority.
In the formation of the Republican party as such, Mr. Lincoln bore
an active and influential part, his name being presented, but
ineffectually, at the first National Convention of that party, for
Vice-President; laboring earnestly during the canvass of 1856, for the
election of General Fremont, whose electoral ticket he headed.
After Mr. Douglas had taken ground against Mr. Buchanan’s
administration relative to the so-called Lecompton Constitution of
Kansas, and had received the indorsement of the Democratic party of
Illinois--his re-election as Senator depending upon the result of the
State election in 1858--the Republican Convention of that year with
shouts of applause, unanimously resolved that Abraham Lincoln was “the
first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United
States Senate, as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas.” At the close of
the proceedings, he delivered the following speech, which struck the
key-note of his contest with Senator Douglas, one of the most exciting
and remarkable ever witnessed in this country:
“GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first know where we
are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what
to do, and how to do it. We are now far on into the fifth year,
since a policy was initiated, with the avowed object, and confident
promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation
of that policy, that agitation had not only not ceased, but has
constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until
a crisis shall have been reached, and passed. ‘A house divided
against itself can not stand.’ I believe this Government can not
endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but I do
expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing,
or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the
further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its
advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful
in all the States, old as well as new--North as well as South.
“Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let any one who
doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal
combination--piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider
not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well
adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction,
and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the
evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief
master-workers from the beginning.
“But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by
the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the
point already gained, and give chance for more. The new year of
1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the States by
State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by
Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle,
which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This
opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first
point gained.
“This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been
provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of
‘_squatter sovereignty_,’ otherwise called ‘_sacred right of
self-government_,’ which latter phrase, though expressive of the
only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this
attempted use of it as to amount to just this: that if any one man
choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object.
That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in
the language which follows: ‘It being the true intent and meaning
of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State,
nor exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly
free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own
way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.’
“Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of ‘squatter
sovereignty,’ and ‘sacred right of self-government.’
“‘But,’ said opposition members, ‘let us be more specific--let us
_amend_ the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the
territory _may_ exclude slavery.’ ‘Not we,’ said the friends of the
measure; and down they voted the amendment.
“While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
involving the question of a negro’s freedom, by reason of his
owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and then
a territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him
as a slave--for a long time in each--was passing through the U. S.
Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both the Nebraska
Bill and law suit were brought to a decision in the same month
of May, 1854. The negro’s name was ‘Dred Scott,’ which name now
designates the decision finally made in the case.
“Before the then next Presidential election case, the law came
to, and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States;
but the decision of it was deferred until _after_ the election.
Still, _before_ the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the
Senate, requests the leading advocate of the Nebraska Bill to state
_his opinion_ whether a people of a territory can constitutionally
exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, ‘That is
a question for the Supreme Court.’
“The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the
_indorsement_, such as it was, secured. That was the _second_ point
gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular
majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps,
was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing
President in his last annual message, as impressively as possible
echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the
indorsement.
“The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but
ordered a re-argument. The Presidential inauguration came, and
still no decision of the court; but the incoming President, in his
Inaugural Address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the
forthcoming decision, _whatever it might be_. Then, in a few days
came the decision.
“This was the third point gained.
“The reputed author of the Nebraska Bill finds an early occasion
to make a speech at this capitol indorsing the Dred Scott
decision and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new
President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter
to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his
astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained. At
length a squabble springs up between the President and the author
of the Nebraska Bill on the mere question of fact, whether the
Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by
the people of Kansas; and, in that squabble, the latter declares
that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares
not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand
his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or
voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of
the policy he would impress upon the public mind--the principle for
which he declares he has suffered much, and is ready to suffer to
the end.
“And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental
feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred
left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott
decision, ‘squatter sovereignty’ squatted out of existence, tumbled
down like temporary scaffolding--like the mould at the foundry,
served through one blast, and fell back into loose sand--helped to
carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint
struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution,
involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle
was made on a point--the right of a people to make their own
Constitution--upon which he and the Republicans have never differed.
“The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection
with Senator Douglas’s ‘care not’ policy, constitute the piece of
machinery in its present state of advancement. The working points
of that machinery are:
“First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no
descendant of such, can ever be a citizen of any State in the
sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States.
“This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every
possible event, of the benefit of this provision of the United
States Constitution, which declares that--‘The citizens of each
State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States.’
“Secondly, that ‘subject to the Constitution of the United States,’
neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can exclude slavery
from any United States Territory.
“This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the
Territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property,
and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution
through all the future.
“Thirdly, that whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in
a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United
States courts will not decide, but will leave it to be decided by
the courts of any slave State the negro may be forced into by the
master.
“This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if
acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at
an election, then, to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred
Scott’s master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free State
of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one,
or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free State.
“Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould
public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care
whether slavery is voted down or voted up.
“This shows exactly where we now are, and partially also, whither
we are tending.
“It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and
run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated.
Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than
they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left
“perfectly free,” “subject only to the Constitution.” What the
Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see.
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred
Scott decision afterward to come in, and declare that perfect
freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all.
“Why was the amendment expressly declaring the right of the people
to exclude slavery, voted down? Plainly enough now, the adoption of
it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.
“Why was the court decision held up? Why even a Senator’s
individual opinion withheld till after the Presidential election?
Plainly enough now; the speaking out then would have damaged the
“_perfectly free_” argument upon which the election was to be
carried.
“Why the outgoing President’s felicitation on the indorsement? Why
the delay of a re-argument? Why the incoming President’s advance
exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the
cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to
mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a
fall. And why the hasty after-indorsements of the decision, by the
President and others?
“We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the
result of pre-concert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers,
different portions of which we know have been gotten out, at
different times and places, and by different workmen--Stephen,
Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance--and when we see these
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a
house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and
all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly
adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or
too few--not omitting even scaffolding--or, if a single piece be
lacking, we can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and
prepared to yet bring such piece in--in such a case, we find it
impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and
James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked
upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was
struck.
“It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people
of a State as well as Territory, were to be left ‘_perfectly
free_,’ ‘_subject only to the Constitution_.’ Why mention a State?
They were legislating for Territories, and not for or about States.
Certainly the people of a State are and ought to be subject to
the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this
lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of
a Territory and the people of a State therein lumped together,
and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being
precisely the same?
“While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the
Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring
judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United
States neither permits Congress nor a Territorial Legislature, to
exclude slavery from any United States Territory, they all omit to
declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a State, or
the people of a State, to exclude it. _Possibly_, this was a mere
_omission_; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had
sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in
the people of a State to exclude slavery from their limits, just
as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the
people of a Territory, into the Nebraska bill--I ask, who can be
quite sure that it would not have been voted down, in the one case
as it had been in the other.
“The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a
State over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more
than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too,
of the Nebraska Act. On one occasion his exact language is, ‘except
in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the
United States, the law of the State is supreme over the subject of
slavery within its jurisdiction.’
“In what cases the power of the State is so restrained by the
United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely
as the same question, as to the restraint on the power of the
Territories was left open in the Nebraska Act. Put that and that
together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may ere
long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring
that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State
to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be
expected if the doctrine of ‘care not whether slavery be voted down
or voted up,’ shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give
promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.
“Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike
lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision is
probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the
present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall
lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on
the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the
reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave
State.
“To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now
before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what
we have to do. But how can we best do it?
“There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and
yet whisper softly, that Senator Douglas is the _aptest_ instrument
there is, with which to effect that object. They do not tell us,
nor has he told us, that he wishes any such object to be effected.
They wish us to infer all, from the facts that he now has a little
quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has
regularly voted with us, on a single point, upon which he and we
have never differed.
“They remind us that _he_ is a very _great man_, and that the
largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But ‘a
_living dog_ is better than a _dead lion_.’ Judge Douglas, if not
a _dead_ lion for this work, is at least a _caged_ and _toothless_
one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don’t care
anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the ‘public
heart’ to care nothing about it.
“A leading Douglas Democrat newspaper thinks Douglas’s superior
talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African
slave-trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade
is approaching? He has not said so. Does he _really_ think so? But
if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove
it a _sacred right_ of white men to take negro slaves into the new
Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right
to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And, unquestionably
they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia.
“He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of
slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can
he oppose the foreign slave-trade--how can he refuse that trade in
that ‘property’ shall be ‘perfectly free’--unless he does it as a
_protection_ to the home production? And as the home _producers_
will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a
ground of opposition.
“Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser
to-day than he was yesterday--that he may rightfully change when he
finds himself wrong. But can we for that reason run ahead and infer
that he will make any particular change, of which he himself has
given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such
vague inferences?
“Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas’s position,
question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive
to him. Whenever, _if ever_, he and we can come together on
_principle_, so that our great cause may have assistance from his
great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.
“But clearly, he is not now with us--he does not pretend to be--he
does not promise ever to be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to,
and conducted by its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are
free, whose hearts are in the work--who do care for the result.
“Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen
hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of
resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we
gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle
through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and
pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter now?--_now_--when
that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent?
“The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail--if we stand firm,
we shall not fail. _Wise counsels_ may _accelerate_ or _mistakes
delay_ it, but, sooner or later, the victory is _sure_ to come.”
In this most vigorously prosecuted canvass Illinois was stumped
throughout its length and breadth by both candidates and their
respective advocates, and the struggle was watched with interest by the
country at large. From county to county, from township to township, and
village to village the two champions travelled, frequently in the same
car or carriage, and in the presence of immense crowds of men, women,
and children--for the wives and daughters of the hardy yeomanry were
naturally interested--argued, face to face, the important points of
their political belief and contended nobly for the mastery.
In one of his speeches during this memorable campaign, Mr. Lincoln paid
the following tribute to the Declaration of Independence:--
“These communities, (the thirteen colonies,) by their
representatives in old Independence Hall, said to the world of men,
‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are born
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.’ This was their majestic interpretation of the economy
of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble
understanding of the justice of the Creator to His creatures.
Yes, gentlemen, to all His creatures, to the whole great family
of man. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the
Divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on,
and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only
the race of men then living, but they reached forward and seized
upon the furthest posterity. They created a beacon to guide their
children and their children’s children, and the countless myriads
who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they
were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and
so they established these great self-evident truths that when, in
the distant future, some man, some faction, some interest, should
set up the doctrine that none but rich men, or none but white men,
or none but Anglo-Saxon white men, were entitled to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again
to the Declaration of Independence, and take courage to renew the
battle, which their fathers began, so that truth, and justice,
and mercy, and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be
extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to
limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of
liberty was being built.
“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting
with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if
you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its
grandeur, and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you
have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in
those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty, let
me entreat you to come back--return to the fountain whose waters
spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me,
take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but
come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence.
“You may do any thing with me you choose, if you will but heed
these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the
Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending
no indifference to earthly honors, I _do claim_ to be actuated
in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office.
I charge you to drop every paltry and insignificant thought for
any man’s success. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge Douglas is
nothing. _But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity--the
Declaration of American Independence._”
In the election which closed this contest, the Republican candidate
received 126,084 votes; the Douglas Democrats, 121,940; and the
Lecompton Democrats, 5,091. Mr. Douglas was, however, re-elected
to the Senate by the Legislature, in which, owing to the peculiar
apportionment of the legislative districts his supporters had a
majority of eight in joint ballot.