SLAVERY
IT would be a great mistake to think that Abraham Lincoln won success
easily.
Looking back over the lives of great men, one is apt to think “How
fortune helped them;” “What astonishing luck they must have had;” when
one knows the end, it seems certain from the beginning. But when you
know more about any one really great man, you are sure to find that he
has risen only by endless hard work, and by knowing from the beginning
what he wanted to be and do, and thinking only of that.
Success is never easy, and for Lincoln the path to it was a hard and
uphill way. You have seen in what difficulties his life began; how he
taught himself everything he learned, and made for himself every penny
that he possessed. His first effort to get into Parliament, like his
first efforts to make a living, seemed a failure. But this did not make
him despair. Other people had risen, and he was going to rise. He was
sure of one thing, that there is always plenty of room at the top, and
he meant to reach the top. There is always a place for a man of strong
purpose, who is honest, and who can think for himself. If a man really
wants to serve his country, nothing need prevent him from doing it. And
Lincoln saw that the first step to serving your country well is to be a
good workman, a good friend, and a good citizen of your own town.
When the next election came he stood again, and this time he was
elected; and after his two years of service came to an end, he was
elected again. For eight years he was a member of the Parliament of his
own State of Illinois; then, after four years away from politics, he
was made member of Congress--that is, of the American Parliament, to
which the States send representatives.
To be in Parliament was to be in touch with the big world; to have a
share in the settlement of big questions. In the Illinois Parliament,
Lincoln met a great many clever men; men who rose to important posts
later. Few of them suspected that this tall, awkward, country-looking
young lawyer, who did not speak much, but could tell such
extraordinarily funny stories when he chose, was going to rise to be
American President, to prove himself greater than any American of their
time. Most of the members were small lawyers like himself. They were
sent to Parliament because they were men in whom their fellow-citizens
had confidence. They were honest men, but few of them had any more
knowledge of politics than Lincoln himself.
The State of Illinois was very new, and its affairs had not yet become
complicated. Lincoln soon learnt the ins and outs of parliamentary
business; and he only found one man who was a better speaker than
himself. This was a man with whom he was to have a great deal to do all
his life; a man already well known in politics, and followed by a large
party.
His name was Stephen Arnold Douglas. He was two years younger than
Lincoln; like him he had been brought up in the rough surroundings of
the West, where he had gone as a boy. His father was poor, but he
was a gentleman. Well educated himself, he had given his son a good
education of a sort.
When he was twenty-one Douglas became a lawyer. Very soon he became
the foremost barrister in North Illinois, and soon entered the State
Parliament. In the year of Lincoln’s election he had been made
Secretary of State; he was therefore a person of importance. Douglas
was extremely clever; as a boy he learnt things quickly, and remembered
them easily, unlike Lincoln, who learnt very slowly; he had a wonderful
power of speech: he was ready and able to speak on any subject, and,
even if he really knew very little about it, he always gave people the
impression that he knew everything. He used to tell people what they
wanted to hear, whereas Lincoln had a way of speaking the truth whether
it was pleasant or not.
Douglas was very popular: he understood how to rule men, and he was
intensely ambitious. Ambition was the strongest feeling in his heart;
and his ambition was for himself: he dreamed already of being President
of the United States. He was a short, thickly-built man; but it was the
smallness of his mind, his selfish aims, that made Lincoln say that
Douglas was the least man that he had ever met: he seemed to “Honest
Abe” to care not at all for what he said or did, so long as his own
success was safe; success was his one object.
It was an ambition very different from Lincoln’s. Indeed, Lincoln was
unlike any of the members whom he met: his aims were quite different
from theirs. He looked to a future beyond himself. He did not think of
his own success. What he wanted to attain by success was the power to
help his country. Patriotism was his first and strongest feeling, and
his patriotism was of the truest kind. He did not want to make America
great because she ruled over a vast extent of territory: such greatness
did not appeal to him at all. He wanted her to be great in the sense
that she really lived up to the ideal set before her for ever in the
Declaration of Independence--the ideal of a union of free men governing
themselves well.
And Lincoln’s ideals were real to him: in every question he was guided
by his patriotism. He did not mind saying what he thought, whether
people liked him for it or not: they must like him for what he was,
and not for what he said, and unless they loved what was right, their
liking was not worth having. When, after long thinking, he came to
see what he thought the truth on any subject, he spoke out so that
every one who heard must understand: he never said one thing and meant
another, as Douglas did: he was as honest in his thoughts as in his
actions.
Now in American politics there was one great question, more important
than every other, the question of slavery. Cautious politicians, men
with an eye to their own success, thought that this question had better
be left alone. Really thoughtful men, men like Lincoln, saw that this
question could not be left alone for ever. Some day, and the sooner the
better, it must be settled. Anyhow, it was every honest man’s duty to
say what he thought. It is difficult now to realise quite what slavery
meant. Perhaps you have read or heard of a book called “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin.” It was written about this time by an American lady, who wanted
to make all Americans see what slavery did mean--how terrible it could
be.
If you drew a line across America just south of Lincoln’s State of
Illinois, slavery did not exist in the Northern States; it did exist
in all the Southern States. Whenever the question was discussed, most
people from the North thought it rather a bad thing, some thought it a
very bad thing; people from the South all thought it was a good, or at
least, a necessary, thing. They all agreed as a rule in thinking that,
whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, there it was, and there was
no good discussing it.
The real wrong lay far back in the past. Centuries ago, merchants had
brought negroes over from Africa, and sold them in America as slaves.
As is always the case, when once the wrong had been brought in,
when the evil had begun, it was almost impossible to get rid of it
when people had grown used to it. When people could buy slaves who
did not cost very much to do work for them, they did not want to do
it themselves, especially if the work was disagreeable. They began
to believe that black men were intended by nature to do all the
disagreeable things. English merchants made great fortunes by bringing
slaves to America; and the English Government supported them. And when,
after the war, America was a free country, the Union of States which
made it so was half composed of States that held slaves. These slaves
were most valuable property. The men who drew up the Constitution,
George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton,
declared in it, “All men are free and equal: all men possess rights,
which no one can take away from them.” The Northern States gave up
their slaves, and decided that slavery was illegal: the Southern States
did not. They refused to join the Union unless they were allowed to
keep their slaves. Now of course it was absurd to call a country free
where slavery existed, or to say that all men have rights when millions
of black men had no rights at all.
To the Southerner a black man was not a man, but a piece of property.
But it would not be quite fair to think that the Northerners who gave
up slaves had always more lofty ideas than the Southerners. You must
remember that slaves were much more useful in the South than in the
North. The climate of the North was cold, and the work not of the sort
that could be well done by untrained negroes. In the South it was
so hot that it was difficult for white men to work, and work on the
plantations needed no special skill.
At the time when the Declaration of Independence was drawn up and
signed, one thing seemed to every American more important than
anything else: that the country should be united in one whole. North
and South must join together; no difference could outweigh a common
nationality. The Southerners would not join the Union unless they were
allowed to keep their slaves: therefore the Northerners left slavery in
the South. They hoped, however, that it would gradually die out; and
therefore a law was passed which declared that after twenty years no
more slaves were to be brought from Africa.
When Southerners declared, as they very often did, that slaves were
very well treated, that they were much happier and more comfortable
than if they were free, this was true to a certain extent. Those slaves
who were employed in the houses and gardens of their masters, those who
were used as servants, were often very well treated. But however well
they were treated, it is wrong for a man to have other men entirely
in his power; wrong for him, and wrong for them. And although some
masters did not abuse their power, some did--and all could, if ever
they wanted to--without feeling that they were doing anything wrong. A
white gentleman could beat his black slave to death if he chose; he
would not be punished any more than if he beat a dog to death, and his
friends would still think him a gentleman. Moreover, far the greater
number of the slaves were not used as servants, but used as labourers
on the cotton plantations. Here they were under the charge of an
overseer. His one idea was to get as much work out of them as possible.
They worked all day, and at night were often herded together in any
sort of shed.
After Eli Whitney, a young American, invented a machine called the
cotton gin, by using which one negro could pick twenty times as
much cotton in a day as before, the business of working the cotton
plantations with slaves made the Southern landowners very rich.
Slaves were cheap: in a few days they made as much for their masters
as they cost them, and their masters could make them work as hard
as they liked. They were quite ignorant: their masters taught them
nothing; they had no way of escape; they were absolutely at the mercy
of the overseer with his whip. The masters came to regard these black
fellow-beings simply as property: not so valuable as a horse, rather
more useful than a dog; they often forgot that they had any feelings.
Children were sold away from their parents; a husband was sent to one
plantation, and his wife to another. They were sometimes beaten for
the smallest fault. If they tried to escape, bloodhounds were used to
hunt them down. Dealers led them about in chains, and sold them in the
public market exactly like animals. People who came from the North
to the South, as Abraham Lincoln did, on his trip down the Ohio, and
saw how the slaves were treated, were often shocked; but in the South
people were used to it.
North of a certain line, slavery did not exist. Slaves used sometimes
to run away from their masters and escape across this line; but in
every Northern State there was a law, that escaped slaves had to be
handed back to their master if he claimed them. The masters used to
offer a reward to any one who handed back to them the body of their
slave, alive or dead. This led to all sorts of difficulties, because
in the Northern States a great many free negroes lived. Very often
some one who was eager for the reward would capture an innocent free
negro and hand him over to the master, declaring that he answered to
the description of the missing slave. The question as to whether he
was, or not, was decided not in the Northern State where he had been
captured, but in the Southern State where the master lived, and no
Southern court could be trusted to decide fairly in a case between a
white man and a black.
Gradually this injustice roused a small party in the North, which
openly declared that slavery was an abominable thing, and ought not to
exist in America. The Abolitionists, as they called themselves, said
that it was a disgrace to a free country that slavery should exist in
it; that as long as it did exist, the Declaration of Independence had
no meaning. Slavery ought to be abolished.
When Abraham Lincoln was about twenty-one, a paper called _The
Liberator_ began to appear. It was edited by a great man called William
Lloyd Garrison. Its object was to rouse people to see the evils of
slavery, and to get it made illegal. The Abolitionists were few in
number, and very unpopular. They had to suffer for their beliefs in
the North as well as in the South. The offices where _The Liberator_
was printed were attacked by mobs of furious people, who burst in
at the doors, broke every pane of glass in the windows, destroyed
the printing press, and threw the type into the river. In St. Louis,
William Lloyd Garrison was dragged round the town with a rope round his
waist, while crowds of angry people hooted and hissed, spat at him,
and threw rotten eggs and stones at his head. He only just escaped
death. Many of his followers were murdered in the open streets. Even
in Illinois, an innocent preacher, who had sympathised with them, was
thrown into the river and drowned.
The Southern States were roused to fury. In the North, even sensible
people who did not like slavery thought it very unwise to say anything
against it. Slavery was a fact--it was no good to discuss it. Several
Northern States sent petitions to Parliament, declaring their opinion
that it was very unwise to discuss Abolition.
In Illinois, this was the view taken by nearly all Lincoln’s friends.
Lincoln did not agree with them. He thought the Abolitionists very
often unwise; nothing, he saw, could be more dangerous than to rouse
the feeling of the South: but nothing could make him seem to approve of
slavery.
For Lincoln to see that any action was right, and to do it, was the
same thing. He and one other man, called Stone, sent in a protest to
the Illinois Parliament; in it they declared that they believed slavery
to be founded upon injustice and upon bad policy. Lincoln spoke because
he must. He had seen what slavery meant, and he hated slavery. But he
saw that the South would not allow slavery to be abolished: if the
North tried to do it, the country would be divided into two halves.
He was not ready to face that. His love for his country came before
everything. Everything must be borne, rather than that it should be
divided.
The Abolitionists were a small party; and for the next seventeen years,
the question of slavery was left as it was, as far as Parliament was
concerned. During these seventeen years, Lincoln was perpetually
turning it over in his mind; thinking and reading about it, and helping
other people to think about it too.