We love Lincoln because his life plucks every harp-string in true
democracy. Lincoln is the answer to Socialism. He represents
individualism, justifying opportunity. Self-government stands
vindicated in his name. The thought of him is at once an inspiration
and challenge to the poorest and most ignorant boy or man in America.
But we love him most of all because he saved the nation which
Washington began, and, in the bloody act of salvation, brought human
slavery to an end in the great Republic.
In following Lincoln through his picturesque and gaunt youth and
through his service in the Illinois Legislature and in Congress to the
point where the inner and outer influences of his life, his soul and
its environments, merged into one supreme idea--the preservation of
the Union--we must not forget the things that preceded the final test
of his life.
Up to Lincoln’s time it had not been determined whether the
fathers of the Republic had really produced a nation, or merely a
contract or treaty between independent and sovereign States. The
system of separated, incoordinate and aloof colonies--a shrewd and
stubborn British device for keeping their American subjects weak by
disunion--grew into the system of States which formed the Republic.
When the Constitution of the United States was framed, ten of the
thirteen States had prohibited the importation of slaves. Georgia and
the two Carolinas still permitted the slave trade with Africa. In order
not to leave these three States out of the Union, the Constitution
permitted the importation of slaves until 1808. But the conscious
horror of that concession is to be recognized in the care with which
the word slavery is avoided. To satisfy all the slave-owning States,
whose consent was necessary to the adoption of the Constitution,
slavery itself, within those States, was recognized and sanctioned by a
clause providing that five slaves should equal three free persons as a
basis of representation in the national House of Representatives.
So that, whether we like the remembrance or not, it is a fact that the
founders of the nation actually did sanction slavery, although there
was some righteous talk in the Constitutional Convention over the
reluctant compromise.
While this convention, in Philadelphia, was legalizing slavery,
the Continental Congress, in New York, passed an ordinance for the
government of the “territory of the United States northwest of the
river Ohio,” providing that slavery should be forever prohibited in
that territory.
In 1820 the ocean slave-trade was declared to be piracy, punishable by
death.
In that same year Congress, under pressure from the slave owners,
adopted the Missouri Compromise, by which Missouri was admitted to the
Union as a slave State, with the proviso that slavery should be always
forbidden in any other part of the territory north of 36° 30´ north
latitude.
New England raged against slavery. Her abolitionists cried out against
it night and day. To the assertion of the South that slaves were
valuable property, legally acquired and legally held, they answered
that slavery was a deep damnation in the sight of God, an unspeakably
cruel crime, intolerable among civilized men. They helped slaves to
escape from their masters, and did everything in their power to make a
farce of the laws under which such fugitives might be returned.
A great gulf opened between the free States and the slave States, a
gulf flaming with passion and menace. Could the nation hold together?
There were tremendous scenes in the Senate in 1850, when a compromise
was reached. California was to be admitted a free State, slavery was
to be abolished in the District of Columbia, and there was to be an
effective Fugitive Slave Law. These were the principal points.
Henry Clay, in his seventy-third year, spoke for two days in favor of
compromise and peace, picturing the frightful war that must result from
a failure to agree. John C. Calhoun, pale, haggard and dying, rose from
his sick bed, staggered into the Senate on the arms of friends and,
being too weak to speak, sat there while his plea for the rights of the
South was read. Then he went back to his bed to die a few days later,
groaning, “The South! The poor South! God knows what will become of
her.” Daniel Webster, too, raised his voice for compromise in one of
his noblest orations. William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase bitterly
opposed any compromise on the basis of the Fugitive Slave Law. So
fierce did the debate become that Senator Benton drew a pistol on
Senator Foote.
Yet in the end, the compromise was adopted and the Fugitive Slave Law
was passed.
Then, in 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois,
introduced a bill providing a government for the immense country now
included in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and portions of
Wyoming and Colorado--a country larger than all the existing free
States. All this region was in the area from which slavery was forever
prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. Yet Douglas’ bill provided that
whenever any part of the territory should be admitted to the Union the
question of slavery or free-soil should be decided by its inhabitants.
This was the famous “squatter sovereignty” idea, a virtual repeal of
the Missouri Compromise.
After a desperate fight in Congress, Douglas carried his bill. It
was a startling step and a direct bid for the Democratic nomination
for the Presidency. By this act Douglas made himself one of the most
conspicuous men in the country.
Hell seemed to break loose after President Pierce signed this bill. It
became impossible to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. The anti-slavery
agitation in the North broke out with indescribable fury. “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin” was published. The abolitionists were almost insane with anger
and indignation. Douglas was denounced as a scoundrel who had sold
himself to the slaveholders for the sake of his Presidential ambitions.
Lincoln was a well-supported candidate for the United States Senate
in 1854, but he gave up his chance and threw his strength to Lyman
Trumbull, a weaker candidate, rather than risk the election of a
pro-slavery Senator.
Miss Tarbell gives this picture of Lincoln by his friend, Judge Dickey:
“After a while we went upstairs to bed. There were two beds in our
room, and I remember that Lincoln sat up in his nightshirt on the edge
of the bed arguing the point with me. At last we went to sleep. Early
in the morning I woke up, and there was Lincoln half sitting up in bed.
‘Dickey,’ he said, ‘I tell you this nation cannot exist half slave and
half free.’ ‘Oh, Lincoln,’ said I, ‘go to sleep.’”
The Territories of Kansas and Nebraska became the center of interest,
for whether they would be slave States or free States must depend
upon the vote of their inhabitants, and that was a simple question of
emigration.
Bands of colonists were sent to Kansas by both the slavery and
anti-slavery forces. The work of colonizing the State was organized on
a large scale by both sides. The pro-slavery men from Missouri crossed
into Kansas in 1854 and elected a pro-slavery delegate to Congress. In
1855 about five thousand Missourians, armed with pistols and bowie
knives, invaded Kansas and carried the elections for the Territorial
Legislature. This Legislature enacted the Missouri slavery laws and,
in addition, provided the death penalty for inciting slaves to leave
their masters or revolt. The Free Soil Kansans thereupon elected a
Constitutional Convention, and organized a State government, with a
constitution prohibiting slavery.
Thus there were two governments in Kansas, one pro-slavery, the other
anti-slavery. Blood began to flow as the hostile governments collided.
In 1856 Preston Brooks, a nephew of Senator Butler, of South Carolina,
stole up behind Senator Sumner, who had brilliantly defended the
Free Soilers of Kansas, and beat him on the head with a heavy cane
till he fell unconscious. The pro-slavery Kansans sacked the town of
Lawrence. John Brown and his abolitionist fanatics went from cabin to
cabin in Kansas, killing and mutilating pro-slavery men. Riots and
murders terrorized the State. It was war to the knife between slavery
and anti-slavery. And Douglas, in Washington, was pressing his bill
declaring that, as soon as Kansas had ninety-three thousand voters,
the pro-slavery Territorial Legislature should call a convention and
organize the State.