affirmed; nor should it be on this occasion, where so many thinking
differently join in doing honor to his memory. A free people in times of
peace and quiet when pressed by no common danger-naturally divide into
parties. At such times the man who is of neither party is not, cannot be,
of any consequence. Mr. Clay therefore was of a party. Taking a prominent
part, as he did, in all the great political questions of his country for
the last half century, the wisdom of his course on many is doubted and
denied by a large portion of his countrymen; and of such it is not now
proper to speak particularly. But there are many others, about his course
upon which there is little or no disagreement amongst intelligent and
patriotic Americans. Of these last are the War of 1812, the Missouri
question, nullification, and the now recent compromise measures. In 1812
Mr. Clay, though not unknown, was still a young man. Whether we should
go to war with Great Britain being the question of the day, a minority
opposed the declaration of war by Congress, while the majority, though
apparently inclined to war, had for years wavered, and hesitated to act
decisively. Meanwhile British aggressions multiplied, and grew more daring
and aggravated. By Mr. Clay more than any other man the struggle was
brought to a decision in Congress. The question, being now fully before
Congress, came up in a variety of ways in rapid succession, on most of
which occasions Mr. Clay spoke. Adding to all the logic of which the
subject was susceptible that noble inspiration which came to him as it
came to no other, he aroused and nerved and inspired his friends, and
confounded and bore down all opposition. Several of his speeches on these
occasions were reported and are still extant, but the best of them all
never was. During its delivery the reporters forgot their vocation,
dropped their pens, and sat enchanted from near the beginning to quite the
close. The speech now lives only in the memory of a few old men, and the
enthusiasm with which they cherish their recollection of it is absolutely
astonishing. The precise language of this speech we shall never know; but
we do know we cannot help knowing--that with deep pathos it pleaded the
cause of the injured sailor, that it invoked the genius of the Revolution,
that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry, and of Washington, that
it appealed to the interests, the pride, the honor, and the glory of
the nation, that it shamed and taunted the timidity of friends, that it
scorned and scouted and withered the temerity of domestic foes, that
it bearded and defied the British lion, and, rising and swelling and
maddening in its course, it sounded the onset, till the charge, the shock,
the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all passed in vivid review
before the entranced hearers.
Important and exciting as was the war question of 1812, it never so
alarmed the sagacious statesmen of the country for the safety of the
Republic as afterward did the Missouri question. This sprang from
that unfortunate source of discord--negro slavery. When our Federal
Constitution was adopted, we owned no territory beyond the limits or
ownership of the States, except the territory northwest of the River Ohio
and east of the Mississippi. What has since been formed into the States
of Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits of
or owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina. As to the
Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even before the adoption
of the Constitution that slavery should never go there. On the admission
of States into the Union, carved from the territory we owned before the
Constitution, no question, or at most no considerable question, arose
about slavery--those which were within the limits of or owned by the old
States following respectively the condition of the parent State, and those
within the Northwest Territory following the previously made provision.
But in 1803 we purchased Louisiana of the French, and it included with
much more what has since been formed into the State of Missouri. With
regard to it, nothing had been done to forestall the question of slavery.
When, therefore, in 1819, Missouri, having formed a State constitution
without excluding slavery, and with slavery already actually existing
within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for admission, almost
the entire representation of the non-slaveholding States objected. A
fearful and angry struggle instantly followed. This alarmed thinking
men more than any previous question, because, unlike all the former,
it divided the country by geographical lines. Other questions had their
opposing partisans in all localities of the country and in almost every
family, so that no division of the Union could follow such without a
separation of friends to quite as great an extent as that of opponents.
Not so with the Missouri question. On this a geographical line could be
traced, which in the main would separate opponents only. This was the
danger. Mr. Jefferson, then in retirement, wrote:
"I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any attention
to public affairs, confident they were in good hands and content to be a
passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this
momentous question, like a firebell in the night, awakened and filled
me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is
hushed, indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final
sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral
and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men,
will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth
who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy
reproach in any practicable way.
"The cession of that kind of property--for it is so misnamed--is a
bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a
general emancipation and expatriation could be effected, and gradually and
with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the wolf by
the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in
one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once engaged his
whole energies to avert it. It began, as I have said, in 1819; and it did
not terminate till 1821. Missouri would not yield the point; and Congress
that is, a majority in Congress--by repeated votes showed a determination
not to admit the State unless it should yield. After several failures,
and great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question that a
majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote rejected, and,
as all seemed to think, finally. A sullen gloom hung over the nation. All
felt that the rejection of Missouri was equivalent to a dissolution of the
Union, because those States which already had what Missouri was rejected
for refusing to relinquish would go with Missouri. All deprecated and
deplored this, but none saw how to avert it. For the judgment of members
to be convinced of the necessity of yielding was not the whole difficulty;
each had a constituency to meet and to answer to. Mr. Clay, though worn
down and exhausted, was appealed to by members to renew his efforts at
compromise. He did so, and by some judicious modifications of his plan,
coupled with laborious efforts with individual members and his own
overmastering eloquence upon that floor, he finally secured the admission
of the State. Brightly and captivating as it had previously shown, it was
now perceived that his great eloquence was a mere embellishment, or at
most but a helping hand to his inventive genius and his devotion to his
country in the day of her extreme peril.
After the settlement of the Missouri question, although a portion of the
American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a majority even
appear generally to have been opposed to him on questions of ordinary
administration, he seems constantly to have been regarded by all as the
man for the crisis. Accordingly, in the days of nullification, and more
recently in the reappearance of the slavery question connected with
our territory newly acquired of Mexico, the task of devising a mode of
adjustment seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent--and
his performance of the task in each case was little else than a literal
fulfilment of the public expectation.
Mr. Clay's efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and afterward in
behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their respective struggles for civil
liberty, are among the finest on record, upon the noblest of all themes,
and bear ample corroboration of what I have said was his ruling passion--a
love of liberty and right, unselfishly, and for their own sakes.
Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am
unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's
views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was on principle and in feeling
opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest, public
efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty years, were
both made in favor of gradual emancipation. He did not perceive that on
a question of human right the negroes were to be excepted from the human
race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves. Cast into life when
slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he did not perceive,
as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated
without producing a greater evil even to the cause of human liberty
itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose
both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who would shiver into
fragments the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated
Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather than
slavery should continue a single hour, together with all their more
halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving, their just
execration; and the name and opinions and influence of Mr. Clay are fully
and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them. But I
would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against
the opposite extreme--against a few but an increasing number of men who,
for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to
ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that "all men
are created free and equal." So far as I have learned, the first American
of any note to do or attempt this was the late John C. Calhoun; and if I
mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the messages of the
Governor of South Carolina. We, however, look for and are not much shocked
by political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina. But only
last year I saw with astonishment what purported to be a letter of a very
distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied, with apparent
approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing the following to me
very unsatisfactory language:
"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in mine.
Professional abolitionists have made more use of it than of any passage in
the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint Voltaire, and was
baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost universally regarded as
canonical authority`All men are born free and equal.'
"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am
sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must
admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not dogmatically
say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism."
This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in the
fresher days of the republic. Let us contrast with it the language of that
truly national man whose life and death we now commemorate and lament: I
quote from a speech of Mr. Clay delivered before the American Colonization
Society in 1827:
"We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this question.
The society goes into no household to disturb its domestic tranquillity.
It addresses itself to no slaves to weaken their obligations of obedience.
It seeks to affect no man's property. It neither has the power nor the
will to affect the property of any one contrary to his consent. The
execution of its scheme would augment instead of diminishing the value of
property left behind. The society, composed of free men, conceals itself
only with the free. Collateral consequences we are not responsible for.
It is not this society which has produced the great moral revolution which
the age exhibits. What would they who thus reproach us have done? If they
would repress all tendencies toward liberty and ultimate emancipation,
they must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of this society.
They must go back to the era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle
the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return. They must renew the
slave trade, with all its train of atrocities. They must suppress the
workings of British philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of
the unfortunate West Indian slave. They must arrest the career of South
American deliverance from thraldom. They must blow out the moral lights
around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all which America presents
to a benighted world--pointing the way to their rights, their liberties,
and their happiness. And when they have achieved all those purposes their
work will be yet incomplete. They must penetrate the human soul, and
eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty. Then, and not till
then, when universal darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate
slavery and repress all sympathy and all humane and benevolent efforts
among free men in behalf of the unhappy portion of our race doomed to
bondage."
The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816. Mr. Clay, though
not its projector, was one of its earliest members; and he died, as for
many preceding years he had been, its president. It was one of the
most cherished objects of his direct care and consideration, and the
association of his name with it has probably been its very greatest
collateral support. He considered it no demerit in the society that it
tended to relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of
the free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation. In the same speech from which we have quoted he says:
"There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children,
whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and
violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back to their
native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law, and liberty.
May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the universe, whose
ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus to transform an
original crime into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate portion of
the globe?"
This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding
year has added strength to the hope of its realization. May it indeed be
realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were
lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had
already served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters never
befall us! If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming
generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our
land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same time in
restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with bright
prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither races
nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a
glorious consummation. And if to such a consummation the efforts of Mr.
Clay shall have contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished, and
none of his labors will have been more valuable to his country and his
kind.
But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country
is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has
been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have
demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone.
Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of
Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies He will
not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.
NOTE. We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy of Major
Wm. H. Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of the Illinois State
Journal.
CHALLENGED VOTERS
OPINION ON THE ILLINOIS ELECTION LAW.
SPRINGFIELD, November 1, 1852
A leading article in the Daily Register of this morning has induced some
of our friends to request our opinion on the election laws as applicable
to challenged voters. We have examined the present constitution of the
State, the election law of 1849, and the unrepealed parts of the election
law in the revised code of 1845; and we are of the opinion that any person
taking the oath prescribed in the act of 1849 is entitled to vote unless
counter-proof be made satisfactory to a majority of the judges that such
oath is untrue; and that for the purpose of obtaining such counter-proof,
the proposed voter may be asked questions in the way of cross-examination,
and other independent testimony may be received. We base our opinion as
to receiving counter-proof upon the unrepealed Section nineteen of the
election law in the revised code.
A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EDWARDS
S. T. LOGAN.
S. H. TREAT
1853
LEGAL OFFICE WORK
TO JOSHUA R. STANFORD.
PEKIN, MAY 12, 1853
Mr. JOSHUA R. STANFORD.
SIR:--I hope the subject-matter of this letter will appear a sufficient
apology to you for the liberty I, a total stranger, take in addressing
you. The persons here holding two lots under a conveyance made by you, as
the attorney of Daniel M. Baily, now nearly twenty-two years ago, are in
great danger of losing the lots, and very much, perhaps all, is to depend
on the testimony you give as to whether you did or did not account to
Baily for the proceeds received by you on this sale of the lots. I,
therefore, as one of the counsel, beg of you to fully refresh your
recollection by any means in your power before the time you may be called
on to testify. If persons should come about you, and show a disposition to
pump you on the subject, it may be no more than prudent to remember that
it may be possible they design to misrepresent you and embarrass the real
testimony you may ultimately give. It may be six months or a year before
you are called on to testify.
Respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
1854
TO O. L. DAVIS.
SPRINGFIELD, June 22, 1854.
O. L. DAVIS, ESQ.
DEAR SIR:--You, no doubt, remember the enclosed memorandum being handed me
in your office. I have just made the desired search, and find that no such
deed has ever been here. Campbell, the auditor, says that if it were here,
it would be in his office, and that he has hunted for it a dozen times,
and could never find it. He says that one time and another, he has heard
much about the matter, that it was not a deed for Right of Way, but a
deed, outright, for Depot-ground--at least, a sale for Depot-ground, and
there may never have been a deed. He says, if there is a deed, it is most
probable General Alexander, of Paris, has it.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
NEBRASKA MEASURE
TO J. M. PALMER
[Confidential]
SPRINGFIELD, Sept. 7, 1854.
HON. J. M. PALMER.
DEAR SIR:--You know how anxious I am that this Nebraska measure shall be
rebuked and condemned everywhere. Of course I hope something from your
position; yet I do not expect you to do anything which may be wrong in
your own judgment; nor would I have you do anything personally injurious
to yourself. You are, and always have been, honestly and sincerely a
Democrat; and I know how painful it must be to an honest, sincere man to
be urged by his party to the support of a measure which in his conscience
he believes to be wrong. You have had a severe struggle with yourself, and
you have determined not to swallow the wrong. Is it not just to yourself
that you should, in a few public speeches, state your reasons, and thus
justify yourself? I wish you would; and yet I say, don't do it, if you
think it will injure you. You may have given your word to vote for Major
Harris; and if so, of course you will stick to it. But allow me to suggest
that you should avoid speaking of this; for it probably would induce some
of your friends in like manner to cast their votes. You understand. And
now let me beg your pardon for obtruding this letter upon you, to whom
I have ever been opposed in politics. Had your party omitted to make
Nebraska a test of party fidelity, you probably would have been the
Democratic candidate for Congress in the district. You deserved it, and
I believe it would have been given you. In that case I should have been
quite happy that Nebraska was to be rebuked at all events. I still should
have voted for the Whig candidate; but I should have made no speeches,
written no letters; and you would have been elected by at least a thousand
majority.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
TO A. B. MOREAU.
SPRINGFIELD, September 7, 1854
A. B. MOREAU, ESQ.
SIR:--Stranger though I am, personally, being a brother in the faith, I
venture to write you. Yates can not come to your court next week. He
is obliged to be at Pike court where he has a case, with a fee of five
hundred dollars, two hundred dollars already paid. To neglect it would be
unjust to himself, and dishonest to his client. Harris will be with you,
head up and tail up, for Nebraska. You must have some one to make an
anti-Nebraska speech. Palmer is the best, if you can get him, I think. Jo.
Gillespie, if you can not get Palmer, and somebody anyhow, if you can
get neither. But press Palmer hard. It is in his Senatorial district, I
believe.
Yours etc.,
A. LINCOLN.
REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS--PEORIA SPEECH
SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS, IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS,
OCTOBER 16, 1854.
I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience to meet
me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock. It is now several minutes
past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over three hours. If you hear me
at all, I wish you to hear me through. It will take me as long as it has
taken him. That will carry us beyond eight o'clock at night. Now, every
one of you who can remain that long can just as well get his supper,
meet me at seven, and remain an hour or two later. The Judge has already
informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me. I doubt not but
you have been a little surprised to learn that I have consented to give
one of his high reputation and known ability this advantage of me. Indeed,
my consenting to it, though reluctant, was not wholly unselfish, for I
suspected, if it were understood that the Judge was entirely done, you
Democrats would leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I felt
confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.
The audience signified their assent to the arrangement, and adjourned to
seven o'clock P.M., at which time they reassembled, and Mr. Lincoln spoke
substantially as follows:
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its
restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say. As I desire
to present my own connected view of this subject, my remarks will not
be specifically an answer to Judge Douglas; yet, as I proceed, the main
points he has presented will arise, and will receive such respectful
attention as I may be able to give them. I wish further to say that I do
not propose to question the patriotism or to assail the motives of any man
or class of men, but rather to confine myself strictly to the naked
merits of the question. I also wish to be no less than national in all
the positions I may take, and whenever I take ground which others have
thought, or may think, narrow, sectional, and dangerous to the Union, I
hope to give a reason which will appear sufficient, at least to some, why
I think differently.
And as this subject is no other than part and parcel of the larger general
question of domestic slavery, I wish to make and to keep the distinction
between the existing institution and the extension of it so broad and
so clear that no honest man can misunderstand me, and no dishonest one
successfully misrepresent me.
In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise is, a
short history of the preceding kindred subjects will perhaps be proper.
When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the
country to which this compromise applies. Indeed, strictly speaking, the
Confederacy then owned no country at all; the States respectively owned
the country within their limits, and some of them owned territory
beyond their strict State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern
Territory--the country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all
Indiana, all Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been
formed. She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since
been formed into the State of Kentucky. North Carolina thus owned what
is now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned,
in separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama. Connecticut, I
think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio, being the same where they
now send Giddings to Congress and beat all creation in making cheese.