been for Matteson's double game--and his defeat now gives me more pleasure
than my own gives me pain. On the whole, it is perhaps as well for our
general cause that Trumbull is elected. The Nebraska men confess that
they hate it worse than anything that could have happened. It is a great
consolation to see them worse whipped than I am.
Yours forever,
A. LINCOLN.
RETURN TO LAW PROFESSION
TO SANFORD, PORTER, AND STRIKER, NEW YORK.
SPRINGFIELD, MARCH 10, 1855
GENTLEMEN:--Yours of the 5th is received, as also was that of 15th Dec,
last, inclosing bond of Clift to Pray. When I received the bond I was
dabbling in politics, and of course neglecting business. Having since been
beaten out I have gone to work again.
As I do not practice in Rushville, I to-day open a correspondence with
Henry E. Dummer, Esq., of Beardstown, Ill., with the view of getting the
job into his hands. He is a good man if he will undertake it.
Write me whether I shall do this or return the bond to you.
Yours respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.
TO O. H. BROWNING.
SPRINGFIELD, March 23, 1855.
HON. O. H. BROWNING.
MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Judge Logan has been shown to us by him; and,
with his consent, we answer it. When it became probable that there would
be a vacancy on the Supreme Bench, public opinion, on this side of the
river, seemed to be universally directed to Logan as the proper man to
fill it. I mean public opinion on our side in politics, with very small
manifestation in any different direction by the other side. The result is,
that he has been a good deal pressed to allow his name to be used, and he
has consented to it, provided it can be done with perfect cordiality and
good feeling on the part of all our own friends. We, the undersigned, are
very anxious for it; and the more so now that he has been urged, until
his mind is turned upon the matter. We, therefore are very glad of your
letter, with the information it brings us, mixed only with a regret that
we can not elect Logan and Walker both. We shall be glad, if you will
hoist Logan's name, in your Quincy papers.
Very truly your friends,
A. LINCOLN, B. S. EWARDS, JOHN T. STUART.
TO H. C. WHITNEY.
SPRINGFIELD, June 7, 1855.
H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.
MY DEAR SIR:--Your note containing election news is received; and for
which I thank you. It is all of no use, however. Logan is worse beaten
than any other man ever was since elections were invented--beaten more
than twelve hundred in this county. It is conceded on all hands that the
Prohibitory law is also beaten.
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
RESPONSE TO A PRO-SLAVERY FRIEND
TO JOSHUA. F. SPEED.
SPRINGFIELD, August 24, 1855
DEAR SPEED:--You know what a poor correspondent I am. Ever since I
received your very agreeable letter of the 22d of May, I have been
intending to write you an answer to it. You suggest that in political
action, now, you and I would differ. I suppose we would; not quite as
much, however, as you may think. You know I dislike slavery, and you fully
admit the abstract wrong of it. So far there is no cause of difference.
But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave,
especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you
would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you
yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely
to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the
Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor
creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and
unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had
together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St.
Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth
of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together
with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something
like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not
fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and
continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather
to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify
their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and
the Union. I do oppose the extension of slavery because my judgment and
feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary.
If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say, if you were
President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri
outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself
a slave State she must be admitted or the Union must be dissolved. But how
if she votes herself a slave State unfairly, that is, by the very means
for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the
Union dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first
becomes a practical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair
decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would
differ about the Nebraska law. I look upon that enactment not as a law,
but as a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, is
maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was
conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise,
under the circumstances, was nothing less than violence. It was passed in
violence because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of
many members in violence of the known will of their constituents. It is
maintained in violence, because the elections since clearly demand its
repeal; and the demand is openly disregarded.
You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I say
the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents.
It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first,
else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor
Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe
that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely
undeceived.
That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it will ask to be
admitted into the Union, I take to be already a settled question, and so
settled by the very means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle of
law ever held by any court North or South, every negro taken to Kansas
is free; yet, in utter disregard of this,--in the spirit of violence
merely,--that beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang any
man who shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights. This is the
subject and real object of the law. If, like Haman, they should hang upon
the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners for
their fate. In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the restoration of the
Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a Territory, and when, by
all these foul means, it seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I
shall oppose it. I am very loath in any case to withhold my assent to
the enjoyment of property acquired or located in good faith; but I do not
admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held in slavery
is a probability with any man. Any man who has sense enough to be the
controller of his own property has too much sense to misunderstand the
outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business. But I digress. In my
opposition to the admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we
may be beaten. If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to dissolve
the Union. I think it probable, however, we shall be beaten. Standing as
a unit among yourselves, You can, directly and indirectly, bribe enough
of our men to carry the day, as you could on the open proposition to
establish a monarchy. Get hold of some man in the North whose position and
ability is such that he can make the support of your measure, whatever it
may be, a Democratic party necessity, and the thing is done. Apropos of
this, let me tell you an anecdote. Douglas introduced the Nebraska Bill in
January. In February afterward there was a called session of the Illinois
Legislature. Of the one hundred members composing the two branches of that
body, about seventy were Democrats. These latter held a caucus in which
the Nebraska Bill was talked of, if not formally discussed. It was thereby
discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the measure. In
a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have resolutions passed approving
the bill; and they were passed by large majorities!!!! The truth of this
is vouched for by a bolting Democratic member. The masses, too, Democratic
as well as Whig, were even nearer unanimous against it; but, as soon
as the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way the
Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly
astonishing.
You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a Christian
you will rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I
do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although in
a private letter or conversation you will express your preference that
Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would say
the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected from any district
in a slave State. You think Stringfellow and company ought to be hung; and
yet at the next Presidential election you will vote for the exact type and
representative of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and slave-traders are
a small, odious, and detested class among you; and yet in politics they
dictate the course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as
you are the master of your own negroes. You inquire where I now stand.
That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are
no Whigs, and that I am an Abolitionist. When I was at Washington, I voted
for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard of any
one attempting to un-Whig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the
extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could
I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of
degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to
me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that "all men
are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal,
except negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men
are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it
comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make
no pretense of loving liberty,--to Russia, for instance, where despotism
can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October. My kindest
regards to Mrs. Speed. On the leading subject of this letter I have more
of her sympathy than I have of yours; and yet let me say I am,
Your friend forever,
A. LINCOLN.
1856
REQUEST FOR A RAILWAY PASS
TO R. P. MORGAN
SPRINGFIELD, February 13, 1856.
R. P. MORGAN, ESQ.:
Says Tom to John, "Here's your old rotten wheelbarrow. I've broke it usin'
on it. I wish you would mend it, 'case I shall want to borrow it this
arternoon." Acting on this as a precedent, I say, "Here's your old
'chalked hat,--I wish you would take it and send me a new one, 'case I
shall want to use it the first of March."
Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.
(A 'chalked hat' was the common term, at that time, for a railroad pass.)
SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE FIRST REPUBLICAN STATE CONVENTION
OF ILLINOIS, HELD AT BLOOMINGTON, ON MAY 29, 1856.
[From the Report by William C. Whitney.]
(Mr. Whitney's notes were made at the time, but not written out until
1896. He does not claim that the speech, as here reported, is literally
correct only that he has followed the argument, and that in many cases the
sentences are as Mr. Lincoln spoke them.)
Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: I was over at [Cries of "Platform!" "Take
the platform!"]--I say, that while I was at Danville Court, some of our
friends of Anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield and elected me as one
delegate to represent old Sangamon with them in this convention, and I
am here certainly as a sympathizer in this movement and by virtue of that
meeting and selection. But we can hardly be called delegates strictly,
inasmuch as, properly speaking, we represent nobody but ourselves. I think
it altogether fair to say that we have no Anti-Nebraska party in Sangamon,
although there is a good deal of Anti-Nebraska feeling there; but I say
for myself, and I think I may speak also for my colleagues, that we who
are here fully approve of the platform and of all that has been done [A
voice, "Yes!"], and even if we are not regularly delegates, it will be
right for me to answer your call to speak. I suppose we truly stand for
the public sentiment of Sangamon on the great question of the repeal,
although we do not yet represent many numbers who have taken a distinct
position on the question.
We are in a trying time--it ranges above mere party--and this movement
to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the help and good
counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion makes itself very strongly
felt, and a change is made in our present course, blood will flow on
account of Nebraska, and brother's hands will be raised against brother!
[The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive, if not,
indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over me. Others gave
a similar experience.]
I have listened with great interest to the earnest appeal made to Illinois
men by the gentleman from Lawrence [James S. Emery] who has just addressed
us so eloquently and forcibly. I was deeply moved by his statement of the
wrongs done to free-State men out there. I think it just to say that all
true men North should sympathize with them, and ought to be willing to
do any possible and needful thing to right their wrongs. But we must not
promise what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we cannot;
we must be calm and moderate, and consider the whole difficulty, and
determine what is possible and just. We must not be led by excitement
and passion to do that which our sober judgments would not approve in our
cooler moments. We have higher aims; we will have more serious business
than to dally with temporary measures.
We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for a right.
We know that great political and moral wrongs are done, and outrages
committed, and we denounce those wrongs and outrages, although we cannot,
at present, do much more. But we desire to reach out beyond those personal
outrages and establish a rule that will apply to all, and so prevent any
future outrages.
We have seen to-day that every shade of popular opinion is represented
here, with Freedom, or rather Free Soil, as the basis. We have come
together as in some sort representatives of popular opinion against the
extension of slavery into territory now free in fact as well as by law,
and the pledged word of the statesmen of the nation who are now no more.
We come--we are here assembled together--to protest as well as we can
against a great wrong, and to take measures, as well as we now can, to
make that wrong right; to place the nation, as far as it may be possible
now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and the plain
way to do this is to restore the Compromise, and to demand and determine
that Kansas shall be free! [Immense applause.] While we affirm, and
reaffirm, if necessary, our devotion to the principles of the Declaration
of Independence, let our practical work here be limited to the above. We
know that there is not a perfect agreement of sentiment here on the public
questions which might be rightfully considered in this convention, and
that the indignation which we all must feel cannot be helped; but all of
us must give up something for the good of the cause. There is one desire
which is uppermost in the mind, one wish common to us all, to which no
dissent will be made; and I counsel you earnestly to bury all resentment,
to sink all personal feeling, make all things work to a common purpose in
which we are united and agreed about, and which all present will agree is
absolutely necessary--which must be done by any rightful mode if there
be such: Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! [Applause.] The test--the
pinch--is right there. If we lose Kansas to freedom, an example will be
set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end. We, therefore, in
the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to the root of the tree."
Temporizing will not do longer; now is the time for decision--for firm,
persistent, resolute action. [Applause.]
The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of wholesome
legislation, but was and is an act of legislative usurpation, whose
result, if not indeed intention, is to make slavery national; and unless
headed off in some effective way, we are in a fair way to see this land
of boasted freedom converted into a land of slavery in fact. [Sensation.]
Just open your two eyes, and see if this be not so. I need do no more than
state, to command universal approval, that almost the entire North, as
well as a large following in the border States, is radically opposed to
the planting of slavery in free territory. Probably in a popular vote
throughout the nation nine tenths of the voters in the free States, and
at least one-half in the border States, if they could express their
sentiments freely, would vote NO on such an issue; and it is safe to say
that two thirds of the votes of the entire nation would be opposed to it.
And yet, in spite of this overbalancing of sentiment in this free country,
we are in a fair way to see Kansas present itself for admission as a slave
State. Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law of Kansas, to deny that
slavery exists there even now. By every principle of law, a negro in
Kansas is free; yet the bogus Legislature makes it an infamous crime to
tell him that he is free!
Statutes of Kansas, 1555, chapter 151, Sec. 12: If any free person, by
speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that persons have not the right
to hold slaves in this Territory, or shall introduce into this Territory,
print, publish, write, circulate . . . any book, paper, magazine,
pamphlet, or circular containing any denial of the right of persons
to hold slaves in this Territory such person shall be deemed guilty of
felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labor for a term of not
less than two years. Sec. 13. No person who is conscientiously opposed
to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this
Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution for any
violation of any Sections of this Act.
The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and liberty;
for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and well known by the
most common experience, that men will do things under the terror of the
party lash that they would not on any account or for any consideration
do otherwise; while men who will march up to the mouth of a loaded cannon
without shrinking will run from the terrible name of "Abolitionist,"
even when pronounced by a worthless creature whom they, with good reason,
despise. For instance--to press this point a little--Judge Douglas
introduced his Nebraska Bill in January; and we had an extra session of
our Legislature in the succeeding February, in which were seventy-five
Democrats; and at a party caucus, fully attended, there were just three
votes, out of the whole seventy-five, for the measure. But in a few days
orders came on from Washington, commanding them to approve the measure;
the party lash was applied, and it was brought up again in caucus,
and passed by a large majority. The masses were against it, but party
necessity carried it; and it was passed through the lower house of
Congress against the will of the people, for the same reason. Here is
where the greatest danger lies that, while we profess to be a government
of law and reason, law will give way to violence on demand of this
awful and crushing power. Like the great Juggernaut--I think that is the
name--the great idol, it crushes everything that comes in its way, and
makes a [?]--or, as I read once, in a blackletter law book, "a slave is
a human being who is legally not a person but a thing." And if the
safeguards to liberty are broken down, as is now attempted, when they have
made things of all the free negroes, how long, think you, before they
will begin to make things of poor white men? [Applause.] Be not deceived.
Revolutions do not go backward. The founder of the Democratic party
declared that all men were created equal. His successor in the leadership
has written the word "white" before men, making it read "all white men are
created equal." Pray, will or may not the Know-Nothings, if they should
get in power, add the word "Protestant," making it read "all Protestant
white men...?"
Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals in other
quarters. John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his respects to, you will
recollect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie"; while at
the birthplace of freedom--in the shadow of Bunker Hill and of the "cradle
of liberty," at the home of the Adamses and Warren and Otis--Choate,
from our side of the house, dares to fritter away the birthday promise
of liberty by proclaiming the Declaration to be "a string of glittering
generalities"; and the Southern Whigs, working hand in hand with
proslavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories practical. Thomas
Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element in slavery,
solemnly declared that he trembled for his country when he remembered that
God is just; while Judge Douglas, with an insignificant wave of the hand,
"don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down." Now, if slavery
is right, or even negative, he has a right to treat it in this trifling
manner. But if it is a moral and political wrong, as all Christendom
considers it to be, how can he answer to God for this attempt to spread
and fortify it? [Applause.]
But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can maintain a
negative, or merely neutral, position on this question; and, accordingly,
he avows that the Union was made by white men and for white men and their
descendants. As matter of fact, the first branch of the proposition is
historically true; the government was made by white men, and they were
and are the superior race. This I admit. But the corner-stone of the
government, so to speak, was the declaration that "all men are created
equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
[Applause.]
And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were particular
to keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the reason being that
slavery would ultimately come to an end, and they did not wish to have any
reminder that in this free country human beings were ever prostituted to
slavery. [Applause.] Nor is it any argument that we are superior and the
negro inferior--that he has but one talent while we have ten. Let the
negro possess the little he has in independence; if he has but one talent,
he should be permitted to keep the little he has. [Applause:] But slavery
will endure no test of reason or logic; and yet its advocates, like
Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic, or noisy assumption it might better
be termed, like the above, in order to prepare the mind for the gradual,
but none the less certain, encroachments of the Moloch of slavery upon the
fair domain of freedom. But however much you may argue upon it, or smother
it in soft phrase, slavery can only be maintained by force--by violence.
The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was by violence. It was a violation
of both law and the sacred obligations of honor, to overthrow and trample
under foot a solemn compromise, obtained by the fearful loss to freedom of
one of the fairest of our Western domains. Congress violated the will and
confidence of its constituents in voting for the bill; and while public
sentiment, as shown by the elections of 1854, demanded the restoration of
this compromise, Congress violated its trust by refusing simply because it
had the force of numbers to hold on to it. And murderous violence is being
used now, in order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in
any other way. [Sensation.]