ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had greatly angered a majority
of the people of the North. The sudden rise of the Republican party in
protest against it, and the promise of Northern control of the Federal
Government, heartened them to the great struggle of 1856. But the
failure to win the populous States of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and
Illinois, and the solid front of the South, the compact pro-Southern
Senate, and the moral effect of the Dred Scott decision discouraged
them. Moreover, the Republican victories of 1854-55 proved misleading,
for in 1856 and 1858 the party failed to win a majority in the House of
Representatives. All that the ardent protestants and idealists could do
was to block extreme measures in Congress and enact laws in the
Republican States to harass the "enemy." Seward yielded the struggle to
the extent of indorsing popular sovereignty, which did indeed promise
more than any other line of procedure. Greeley, the enemy of Seward but
the arch-enemy of the South, actually proposed Douglas, the "squire of
slavery," for the Presidency in 1860. Chase seemed to be losing ground
in Ohio, where he had never had a majority on his own account. Business,
as we have already seen, had made peace with the South, and conservative
leaders of the East regarded slave-owners as in the same class morally
with bankers and railway directors.[10] The federal law against the
African slave trade could not be enforced. More than a hundred ships
sailed unmolested each year from New York Harbor to the African Coast to
bring back naked negroes for the cotton planters.
[Footnote 10: See Charles Francis Adams's letter to William Lloyd
Garrison in _The Liberator_, January 27, 1857.]
The outlook was so dark that New England leaders returned regretfully to
the proposition of John Quincy Adams of 1843, and recommended Northern
nullification and secession. Massachusetts had passed an act in 1855
which inflicted a penalty of five years of imprisonment upon any man who
aided in the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law of the United States.
The Supreme Court of Wisconsin had declared the same law
unconstitutional in 1854; in 1857 the legislature indorsed this view,
and in 1859 it claimed the right of immediate secession in case the
State was overruled by the Federal Supreme Court, or in case any attempt
should be made to enforce the obnoxious act by the General Government.
Nearly every other Northern State passed personal liberty laws which
were designed to prevent the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and
their constitutional justification was found in the supremacy of the
States and bolstered by the opinion of Judge Story, delivered in
1842,[11] which said that no private citizen need obey an
unconstitutional law, state or national, but he takes the risk of having
the courts decide it constitutional and of being punished if he acts on
his own judgment before the proper court has adjudged the act
unconstitutional.
[Footnote 11: 16 Peters' Reports of the Supreme Court, p. 536.]
It was not unnatural, then, that Charles Sumner should indorse the
abolitionist campaign against the Union, or that Benjamin F. Wade should
eulogize the Wisconsin threats to secede. Richard H. Dana, of Boston,
said that men who had called him a traitor a few years before now
stopped him on the street to talk treason. N. P. Banks, the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, said in Maine: "I am not one of the class
who cry for the perpetuation of the Union." The Worcester convention of
January 15, 1857, did actually and by big majorities pass resolutions
calling for a dissolution of the Federal Government, and its call for a
convention of all the free States, looking to the same end, was signed
by seven hundred men of all walks of life; many of them were men of
eminence. The political abolitionists and the anti-slavery men of
pronounced views were on the point of going over to the Garrison party,
which had always proclaimed that the Union was a "league with hell," and
so strong was the campaign against the Union that Governor Wise, of
Virginia, and others recommended a war upon New England in order to
bring the abolitionists to subjection.
But the darkest hour comes just before dawn. When Buchanan recommended
in the message of December, 1857, the admission of Kansas under the
Lecompton constitution, Senator Douglas, to the bewilderment of
thousands, openly denounced the President, and in the most effective
speech of his life led a secession of the Northwestern Democrats from
the dominant Southern party. He showed that the application of his
popular sovereignty doctrine in Kansas would solve the problem of
slavery in the Territories, and that the Administration was violating
the platform on which it held office in espousing the cause of the
pro-slavery men. It was a remarkable situation. In 1854 Douglas had
defeated Davis and Pierce in their far-reaching plans for the
development of the Southwest; Chase and his allies had defeated Douglas
in his counter-scheme for the growth of the Northwest in 1854-55; and
now Douglas broke the solidarity of the Democratic party and gave hope
and courage to the North, where the idea of secession was fast winning
the minds of leading men. If Douglas joined the Republicans, the
overthrow of the South was assured; if he became an independent
candidate for the Presidency, the Republicans were made certain of an
easy victory. It was this that prompted Greeley to indorse Douglas in
1857, and caused Seward to say a good word for his rival and opponent.
Buchanan read Douglas out of the party. Jefferson Davis denounced him as
worse than a demagogue. Judges of the Supreme Court expressed their
contempt for "the ambitious perpetual candidate." No settlement of the
Kansas question was possible under these circumstances. Douglas returned
to Illinois in the summer of 1858 to open his campaign for reëlection to
the Senate. He had never been so popular before. Chicagoans who had
denounced and spurned him as a traitor to his country in 1854 now gave
him the greatest ovation that city had ever given to any one. Big
business men, railroad builders, and laboring men hastened to give him
assurance of their favor. Even partisan opponents went over to the "new"
Douglas. In fact, the people saw that his popular sovereignty idea had
been misunderstood. It was already working out Northwestern or
Free-State control of the Territories, and the fear of losing the
Territories had been the motive for following Chase and Sumner in 1854.
But the Republicans of the Northwest had been planning to make an end of
the "Little Giant," the man who was the most feared of all the public
leaders of the time. Abraham Lincoln was to be his successor in the
Senate. Norman B. Judd, Joseph Medill, and John Wentworth were the
astute advisers of the new party in their section. Seward, Weed, and
even John J. Crittenden, the popular successor of Henry Clay in the
United States Senate, advised the Illinois Republicans not to oppose
Douglas, since Douglas was already doing the Democrats more mischief
than any new Republican Senator could hope to do. The Eastern leaders
were concerned about the campaign of 1860, and naturally they cultivated
the differences of their opponents.
Lincoln was also making plans for 1860, and a defeat of Douglas in his
own State would be a political event of the first magnitude. And there
was much promise of success. Had they not elected Lyman Trumbull in 1855
in spite of all the "great man" could do? Moreover, the Administration
had withdrawn all patronage from Douglas, and postmasters' heads were
falling fast in Illinois. Indeed, Buchanan was just then putting up
anti-Douglas tickets in many of the counties, in the expectation of
electing a legislature hostile to Douglas if not friendly to the
Washington authorities. Was there ever a better chance for the new group
of leaders? Contrary to Eastern advice they nominated Lincoln as the
opponent of Douglas, and that shrewd man and able logician challenged
the Senator to a joint debate, and the most important political
discussion in our history followed.
Lincoln had declared in a recent speech that "a house divided against
itself could not stand," and the United States he likened to the divided
house. Douglas seized upon this to show the country what a radical
abolitionist Lincoln was, for was it not a disruption of the Union of
which he spoke so cogently, and which the abolitionists were just now
urging? Nothing was more unpopular in the Northwest than disunion. All
the papers of the country now printed what Lincoln had said, and with
Douglas's disparaging comment. The business interests of the East
shuddered at the Lincoln parable.
But Lincoln took occasion at Freeport to make Douglas even more
unpopular in the South than he already was, by asking him if he did not
support the Dred Scott decision; also if he still adhered to the popular
sovereignty doctrine as a means of settling the slavery problem in the
Territories. Douglas answered in the affirmative to both queries.
Whereupon Lincoln showed that if the Dred Scott decision held, Congress
must protect slavery in all the Territories and if the popular
sovereignty idea prevailed, the squatters of any Territory might by
popular vote prohibit slavery in any Territory. Hence, according to
Douglas, slavery could be lawfully maintained and lawfully abolished at
the same time and place. Douglas recognized his predicament; but he
replied that, in spite of the court's decision, the settlers of a new
Territory might by "unfriendly" local legislation make slavery
impossible. When the papers of the country published this lame reply,
Southern men everywhere denounced in unmeasured terms "the demagogue who
promised one thing in Congress and another in Illinois." The
Lincoln-Douglas campaign continued all the autumn, and the country
became acquainted with the obscure lawyer who had persisted in his
purpose to run against Douglas contrary to the counsels of the leaders
of his party. However, Douglas was reëlected to the Senate, to the great
chagrin of both Lincoln and the President.
After the excitement following the break of Douglas with his party, the
Republican newspapers, which had urged Douglas as their candidate for
1860, returned to their partisan attitude. To most people it seemed
clear that Seward should be the Republican candidate in the next
campaign, and Seward was also convinced that his own nomination was
necessary and inevitable. The conservative wing of the party in the
East, and especially New England, was devoted to him. As time went on
the prize seemed more and more certain, though there were other
competitors in the field. Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, Chase, of
Ohio, Lincoln, of Illinois, and Edward Bates, of Missouri, were
"favorite sons." For the Democrats the outlook was anything but
cheering. The "regulars" could not speak of Douglas but with
imprecations. Although Douglas controlled absolutely all the Democratic
organizations in eight Northwestern States, if we include Missouri, a
most strenuous campaign was waged from Washington against him in the
hope of getting control of the general committee of the next convention.
John Slidell, of Louisiana, and August Belmont, agent of the
Rothschilds, in New York, guided the maneuvers. In December, 1859, when
Douglas entered upon his new term with an air of triumph, the Senate
majority, led by Jefferson Davis, promptly removed him from the
chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, which was the signal for
the opening of the fierce political war that preceded the assembling of
the Democratic Convention in Charleston.
Meanwhile John Brown, influenced by the political currents then running
in favor of the North, led a small band of men into western Virginia.
The object was to start a slave insurrection and in the end set free all
the negroes of the South. Brown received or was promised $25,000 and was
supported by men of the first respectability. On October 16, 1859, Brown
seized the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry and called upon the
slaves to rise against their masters. In the fighting which ensued
Colonel Washington, a grand-nephew of General Washington, was wounded;
but few took notice of names in that first onset of the Civil War or
thought of the common history of the sections. Governor Wise, of
Virginia, hastened the militia to the scene, and Captain Robert E. Lee
led a small force of United States troops to the relief of the
endangered community. Brown failed in his efforts to arouse the negroes,
who were not the restless and resentful race they were thought to be. He
was soon surrounded and captured. A few people were killed, but the
institution of slavery was not touched.
But the noise of the attack was heard around the world. In the North men
of the highest standing proclaimed Brown a hero. At the time of his
execution in December so thoughtful a man as Emerson compared Brown's
gallows to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. For a time the social
conscience of the East, at least, sensed this attack as a blow against
the common _Erbfeind_, as the Germans say of the French. It was the
"arrogant South" that had been struck. But when the Congressional
investigation was held, Republican leaders and religious organizations
everywhere insisted that they had never known the man, though there was
a widespread feeling that it would be wise for the Governor of Virginia
not to visit the death penalty upon the "deluded" prisoner.
Governor Wise was not the man to forgive an assault on the Old Dominion,
and he never thought of granting a pardon. He urged Virginia to
reorganize her militia, and he filled the state armory with some of the
weapons which were used with fatal effect at First Bull Run. Other
Southern States followed the example of Virginia and laid in supplies
for a conflict which many thought inevitable. Nor was it without
significance that new military companies and regiments were organized
and drilled in many parts of the North during the year 1860.
After months of angry and useless debates in Washington, the leaders of
the Democratic party gathered in Charleston in April, 1860, to nominate
their candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. No other town
in the United States was more unfriendly to the cause of the leading
candidate, Douglas. As the delegates gathered, it was seen that every
delegation from every Northwestern State was instructed to vote as a
unit for Douglas, and it became evident that a safe majority would
insist on his nomination. The enthusiasm of the followers of the "Little
Giant" surpassed all similar demonstrations at previous conventions. On
the other hand, the committee on resolutions was opposed to Douglas, and
by a vote of 17 to 16 it reported a platform which was simply a
restatement of the Dred Scott decision, adding only that the Federal
Government was bound by the Constitution to protect slavery in the
Territories. When this report was read in the convention the Douglas
majority rejected it, and accepted the minority report, which was the
"popular sovereignty" of Douglas and the platform of 1856, for which all
the South had stood in the campaign of that year. The convention was
deadlocked, for the South could defeat Douglas for the nomination under
the two-thirds rule, and Douglas could prevent the adoption of any
Southern program or the nomination of any candidate other than himself.
On Sunday, April 30, the clergy and the congregations of the city prayed
as never before for a peaceable solution of the problem before the
country, and every one seemed to recognize the gravity of the situation.
On Monday evening, William L. Yancey, "the fire-eater" of Alabama, after
a most remarkable speech, broke the deadlock by leading a bolt of
practically all the lower Southern States. The Tammany Hall delegation
of New York followed. The bolters held a meeting in another hall and
called a convention of their element of the party in Richmond in June.
The Douglas majority likewise adjourned a day or two later to meet in
Baltimore at the same time.
The historic Jacksonian party had broken into factions. Each faction
nominated a candidate. The Southerners, supported by the Buchanan
Administration, named John C. Breckinridge, a moderate, in the vain hope
of winning some Northern States; the Douglas men offered, of course,
their favorite, and insisted that theirs was the only true Union ticket.
A third convention was called to meet in Baltimore, and its nominees
were John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. This
was the remnant of the Know-Nothings of 1856. They asked for the
maintenance of the Union as it was; but in the ensuing election they
polled three hundred thousand fewer votes than Fillmore had received in
1856.
The Republicans met in Chicago about the middle of May, the advantage of
local sentiment being in Lincoln's favor. The Seward men and their
"rooters" came in trainloads from New York and Boston, and both in
Chicago and Charleston a plentiful supply of whiskey had its share in
the manufacture of enthusiasm. Cameron was the stumbling-block of the
conservative Eastern Republicans, and he was expected to command his
price. Horace Greeley, cast out of the Republican camp by the Seward men
in New York, came as a delegate from Oregon, and he was busy from morn
till night trying to defeat Seward. Chase, Lincoln, and Bates, though
they were not in the convention, were doing what they could to defeat
the great New York leader on the ground that he could not possibly carry
Indiana and Illinois. It was more than a friendly rivalry.
In drafting the platform no reference was to be made to the idealistic
Declaration of Independence, so popular in 1856; but the resolute threat
of a bolt, by Joshua R. Giddings, caused a reconsideration and the
adoption of the brief reference which one reads in the historic
document. All raids into States or Territories were duly denounced, and
slavery itself was guaranteed in all its rights. The Pacific railroad
scheme of Douglas was again indorsed, and the old land policy of the
West found expression in the free homestead plank. The tariff ideas of
Clay appeared in a clause which promised protection to American
industry, better wages to American labor, and higher prices for farm
products. One sees here the genius of political management, not the fire
of reformers, and if the Southerners had kept cool they could have read
between the lines of this declaration all the guarantees that they
required, save alone on the subject of slavery in the new Territories,
which the Republicans could not possibly yield and hold their followers
together. It was an alliance of the East and the Northwest, arranged by
Seward in much the same way that Calhoun arranged the combination of
1828 which raised Jackson to the Presidency.
To the surprise of the country and especially of the East, Cameron,
Greeley, and Bates proved able to defeat Seward, and Lincoln was
nominated. Many people of the East had never heard of the successful
candidate till they read in the papers that he had won. Lincoln was
moderate in temper and conciliatory in tone, like the platform, but he
was a sincere democrat, one who was in mind and thought one of the
people. The great men of the party who had borne the burden and heat of
the day felt outraged. Sumner never forgave Lincoln for his lack of
culture, and for a time it seemed that Seward would not give his humble
rival the support necessary to success. "The rail-splitter" of Illinois
was ridiculed in the older Republican States as no other presidential
candidate had been since "Old Hickory" offered himself as against the
seasoned statesmanship of John Quincy Adams. The gentry of the East were
in a worse plight than were the Southern statesmen of 1828, for Lincoln
was more of a democrat than Jackson had been.
But if certain classes of the East accepted mournfully the candidate of
their party, the plain people everywhere, farmers, mechanics,
shopkeepers, and the smaller industrial interests, rejoiced that one of
their own had been selected. While it is not likely that this caused
many changes from one party to another, it did tend to bring out the
vote and prevent the election from going to the House. Professional
abolitionists could not honestly support the platform of the
Republicans, but anti-slavery men, old-line Whigs, half of the former
Know-Nothing party, and all of those who had so long feared or hated the
South could cheerfully vote for Lincoln. In the Northwest it was an
evenly matched contest. Douglas was only a little less popular than his
great rival, the cause of his final defeat being the decision of the
German element to cast in their lot with the Republicans. Carl Schurz,
one of the best men who ever took part in American public life, and a
radical of the radicals, exercised a decisive influence and turned the
tide in Illinois and Iowa, where a few thousand votes lost would have
defeated Lincoln. Though the enthusiasm of the Republicans was not so
great as it had been in 1856, the people of the East and the Northwest
did unite against the South, as planned in the Chicago platform, which
so well represented the interests of the combination.
The South gave every evidence that secession would follow the election
of Lincoln, and when the Maine campaign indicated that Lincoln would
surely be chosen, Douglas gave up his canvass in the Northwest and went
South in the hope of saving the Union by urging the leaders there that
secession would mean war. In Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama he
foretold plainly the awful consequences of secession. But the lower
South paid little heed; their leaders, Rhett and Yancey, were ready to
take the first steps to disrupt the Union upon the receipt of news that
the Democrats had lost the election. To them Lincoln was not only a
democrat who believed in the equality of men before the law; he was
also a "black Republican," the head of a sectional party whose platform
bespoke sectional interests and the isolation of the South.
[Illustration: The Presidential Election of 1860 California & Oregon]
[Illustration: The Presidential Election of 1860]
In the end Lincoln received a popular vote slightly greater than that of
Buchanan in 1856, and the electoral vote of every State from Maine to
Iowa and Minnesota. Douglas received a larger vote than Frémont had
received, but only twelve electoral votes. It was plain that the people
of the North were by no means unanimous, and that Lincoln would have
great difficulty in carrying out any severely anti-Southern measures,
especially as the Republicans had failed to carry a majority of the
congressional districts. Thus the blunders of Douglas and Chase in 1854
had started the dogs of sectional warfare, and now a solid North
confronted a solid South, with only two or three undecided buffer
States, like Maryland and Missouri, between them.
Abraham Lincoln, born in Kentucky of Virginia parentage, married to a
Southern woman, accustomed from boyhood to the narrow circumstances of
the poor, and still unused to the ways of the great, was called to the
American Presidency. He was not brusque and warlike as Jackson had been;
he was a kindly philosopher, a free-thinker in religion at the head of
an orthodox people, or peoples. A shrewd judge of human character and
the real friend of the poor and the dependent, Lincoln, like his
aristocratic prototype, Thomas Jefferson, believed implicitly in the
common man. He was ready to submit anything he proposed to a vote of the
mass of lowly people, who knew little of state affairs and who never
expected to be seen or heard in Washington. People who had preached
democracy to Europe for nearly a century had now the opportunity of
submitting to democracy. It was the severest test to which the Federal
Government had ever been subjected.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Rear Admiral Chadwick's _Causes of the Civil War_, in the _American
Nation_ series (1906); Nicolay and Hay's _Abraham Lincoln: A History_
(1890); Ida M. Tarbell's _The Life of Abraham Lincoln_ (1900); O. G.
Villard's _John Brown; A Biography_ (1910); G. T. Curtis's _The Life of
James Buchanan_ (1883); A. H. Stephen's _War between the States_
(1868-70); Jefferson Davis's _Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government_ (1881); Murat Halstead's _Conventions of 1860_; G. Koerner's
_Memoirs_; Carl Schurz's _Reminiscences_; James A. Pike's _First Blows
of the Civil War_ (1879); George W. Julian's _Political Recollections_
(1884); and Henry S. Foote's _Casket of Reminiscences_ (1874), may be
added to the works already mentioned. E. D. Fite's _The Campaign of
1860_ (1911) is valuable, although Rhode's account of the campaign
equals Fite's; and E. Stanwood's _A History of the Presidency_ (1898)
gives the platforms and the votes of the parties for each national
election.
_The Tribune Almanac_ gives the votes by counties, while Richardson's
_Messages and Papers of the Presidents_, already named in earlier notes,
and the _Statutes at Large of the United States_ supply the texts of
important papers, laws, and treaties. Richard Peters's _Reports of Cases
Argued in the Supreme Court_ and B. C. Howard's continuation of this
series supply the decisions of the Federal Supreme Court. U. B.
Phillips's _Correspondence of Toombs, Stephens, and Cobb_, in the
_Reports of the American Historical Association_ (1911), is a valuable
contribution to the sources of the period.
Special studies of importance are: W. E. B. DuBois's _Suppression of the
African Slave Trade_ (1896); M. G. McDougall's _Fugitive Slaves_ (1891),
J. C. Hurd's _Law of Freedom and Bondage_ (1858); Edward McPherson's
_Political History of the United States_ (1865); John H. Latané's
_Diplomacy of the United States in Regard to Cuba_, in _American
Historical Association Reports_ (1907); J. M. Callahan's _Evolution of
Seward's Mexican Policy_ (1909); Phillips's _Life of Robert Toombs_
(1914); and H. White's _Life of Lyman Trumbull_ (1913). Of peculiar
value for the spirit of the times are: Mrs. Roger A. Pryor's
_Reminiscences of Peace and War_ (1905); Mrs. James Chesnut's _A Diary
from Dixie_ (1905); and William H. Russell's _My Diary North and South_
(1863).