DEFEAT OF THE LITTLE GIANT
LINCOLN had worked very hard in Illinois. All this year he was making
speeches; educating the people of the State; helping them to understand
the big questions before them; making things clear in his own mind by
putting them into the clear and simple words that would carry their
importance to the minds of others.
A great meeting was held, summoned by the editors of the newspapers
that were against the Kansas Bill; they invited prominent men from
different parts of the country to come and address them.
Lincoln was among those who went, and his speech was by far the most
important of all that were delivered there. He had not, indeed,
intended to say anything; but he was roused by the weakness of those
who did address the meeting. Springing to his feet, he poured out what
was in his mind, and could not be kept back, in such burning and
eloquent words that the reporters dropped their pencils and listened
spellbound. The whole audience was carried away by excitement: it was
one of the greatest speeches that Lincoln ever made, we are told by
all who heard it, but there is no record of it. Lincoln himself spoke
in a transport of enthusiasm: the words came, how he hardly knew; he
could not afterwards write down what he had said. The reporters were so
deeply moved that they only took down a sentence here and there. The
speech was a warning to the growing Republican party: sentences were
quoted and remembered.
The North was indeed beginning to awaken to the need of uniting against
slavery; but it took four years before it fully awoke. And as long as
the North was divided the South was irresistible. When the presidential
election came, in 1856, the votes of the South carried the day.
[Illustration: Springing to his feet, he poured out what was in his
mind]
Had a strong man, with definite and wise views, been elected, had
Lincoln been elected, the war between North and South that came four
years later might have been prevented. But Lincoln’s fame had not
yet travelled far beyond Illinois; he was not even nominated. Mr.
Buchanan, the new President, called himself a Democrat: he believed
in Douglas’s policy of State rights; but he was a tool in the hands
of the South. Weak and undecided, his stupid administration made war
inevitable. He did not satisfy the South; and he showed the North how
great a danger they were in, so that when the next election came they
were ready to act.
The Republican party gradually grew strong. More and more Northern
voters came to see that its policy, no extension of slavery, was the
only right one. The pro-slavery party in Kansas continued to behave in
the most violent way; civil war continued.
In Congress, Charles Sumner made a number of eloquent speeches on what
he called the “crime against Kansas”; and in them he openly attacked
slavery. One day, as he was sitting in the members’ reading-room, a
Southern member called Brookes came in. Although there were several
other people in the room, Brookes fell upon Sumner, and with his
heavy walking-stick, which was weighted with lead at the end, beat
him within an inch of his life. For the next four years Sumner was an
invalid, and unable to take part in politics. This incident caused
great indignation in the North; their indignation was heightened by the
attempt to force slavery on Kansas, till it grew in very many cases to
a real hatred of slavery itself.
But there was still a large party in the North which did not disapprove
of slavery. This party was led, of course, by Douglas. Douglas had
been successful up till now, because he represented the ordinary man
of the North, whose conscience was not yet awake, who did not see that
slavery, in itself, was wrong. Lincoln had never really succeeded until
now, because his conscience had always been awake, and the ordinary
Northerner was not ready to follow him.
The whole question of slavery was brought under discussion in the next
year--1857--by the famous case of a negro called Dred Scott. Dred
Scott claimed his freedom before the United States courts, because his
master, a doctor, had taken him to live in the free State of Illinois.
The chief-justice--Taney--was an extreme pro-slavery man. He was not
satisfied with deciding the case against Dred Scott; he went much
further, and declared that since a negro is property and not a person
in the legal sense, he could not bring a case before an American
court. A negro, he declared, has no rights which a white man is bound
to respect.
The South, of course, was delighted with this verdict. What it meant
was this. When the Declaration of Independence declared that all men
are equal, and possess right to life and liberty, what was intended was
not all men, but all white men, since black men are not legally men.
And yet free negroes had fought in the War of Independence, and signed
the Declaration.
To the North such reasoning was hateful. People like Mr. Seward of New
York began to say, If slavery is part of the Constitution of America,
there is a law that is higher than the Constitution--the moral law.
Abraham Lincoln in a noble speech declared: “In some respects the black
woman is certainly not my equal, but in her natural right to eat the
bread she earns with her own hands she is my equal, and the equal of
all others.” The point was, could a negro have rights? The Dred Scott
decision declared “no,” the South shouted “no.” The Republican party
said “yes.” In this same year a free election at last took place in
Kansas; and a huge majority decided that the State should not hold
slaves.
All these events showed that troublous times were coming.
In the next year a set of speeches was made which showed people how
things stood. In 1858 Lincoln stood against Douglas as candidate for
the State of Illinois. Douglas was one of the most famous and popular
men then living in America. He was far the cleverest man and the best
speaker of his party; he stood for all those who, though they might not
want to have slaves themselves, thought that slavery was not wrong;
that black men were intended by a kind Providence to be useful to white
men. If any State wanted slaves, let them have them--why not?
As Lincoln said, “Douglas is so put up by nature, that a lash upon his
back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else’s back does not hurt
him.”
Those who did not know Lincoln thought it absurd that he, an unknown
man from the country, should dare to stand against Douglas, the “Little
Giant.” But Lincoln was not afraid; he did not think of himself; he
wanted people to hear what he had to say. He arranged with Douglas
that they should hold a number of meetings together in Illinois. They
arranged it in this way. At half the meetings Douglas spoke first
for an hour; then Lincoln replied, speaking for an hour and a half,
and Douglas answered him in half-an-hour’s speech. At the other half,
Lincoln began and Douglas followed, Lincoln ending.
You can imagine one of these meetings. A large hall, roughly built for
the most part, the seats often made of planks laid on top of unhewn
logs, packed with two or three thousand people, intensely eager to hear
and learn. Some of them were already followers of Douglas, the most
popular man in America: all of them had heard of the “Little Giant,”
the cleverest speaker in the States. Immense cheering as Douglas rose
to his feet. A small man with a big head: a handsome face with quickly
moving, keen, dark eyes; faultlessly dressed. A well-bred gentleman,
secure of himself--a lawyer with all his art at the end of his tongue:
able to persuade any one that black was white, to wrap up anything
in so many charming words that only the cleverest could see when one
statement did not follow from another, when an argument was not a
proof: quick to see and stab the weak points in any one else. A voice
rich and mellow, various and well trained, pleased all who heard it.
For an hour he spoke, amid complete silence, only broken by outbursts
of applause. When he ended, there were deafening cheers--then a pause,
and “Lincoln,” “Lincoln,” from all parts of the hall.
Lincoln seemed an awkward countryman beside the senator. His tall body
seemed too big for the platform, and his ill-fitting black clothes
hung loosely upon it, as if they had been made for some one else. When
he began to speak his voice was harsh and shrill. His huge hands,
the hands of a labourer, with the big knuckles and red, ugly wrists,
got knotted together as if nothing could unfix them. Soon, however,
he became absorbed in what he was saying; he ceased to be nervous;
everything seemed to change. As he forgot himself, his body seemed
to expand and straighten itself, so that every one else looked small
and mean beside him; his voice became deep and clear, reaching to the
farthest end of the hall, and his face, that had appeared ugly, was lit
up with an inner light that made it more than beautiful. The deep grey
eyes seemed to each man in the hall to be looking at him and piercing
his soul. The language was so simple that the most ignorant man in the
hall could follow it and understand. Everything was clear. There was
no hiding under fine words; nothing was left out, nothing unnecessary
was said. No one could doubt what Lincoln meant; and he was not going
to let any one doubt what Douglas meant.
The greatest debate of all was that at the meeting at Freeport. At
Freeport Lincoln asked Douglas a question, against the advice of all
his friends. He asked whether, if a State wanted not to have slavery,
it could so decide? Lincoln knew that if Douglas said “No. A state
which had slavery must keep it,” the people of Illinois would not vote
for him, and he would lose this election. If he said “yes” he would be
elected, and not Lincoln. Lincoln knew this; he knew that if Douglas
said “yes,” he was safe, and he would say “yes.”
“Where do you come in, then?” his friends asked him. “Why do you ask
him this? If you do, Douglas is sure to get in. You are ruining your
own chances.”
“I do not come in anywhere,” said Lincoln; “but that does not matter.
What does matter is this. If Douglas says ‘yes,’ as he will, he will
get into the Senate now; but two years after this he will stand for
election as President. If he says ‘yes’ now, the South will vote
against him then, and he will not be elected. He must not be elected.
No one who believes in spreading slavery must be elected. It does not
matter about me.”
Lincoln was quite right. He saw further than any one else. Douglas said
“yes,” and he was elected for Illinois. But the Democratic party in
the South, whose support had made him strong, began to distrust him.
“Douglas,” said Lincoln, “is followed by a crowd of blind men; I want
to make some of these blind men see.”
Lincoln was defeated, but he did not think of himself. His speeches
against Douglas were printed and read all over America. He was invited
to speak in Ohio; and in the next year, in the beginning of 1860, a
society in New York asked him to come and give them an address on
politics.
A huge audience, in which were all the best known and most brilliant
men of the day, gathered to hear him; an audience very much unlike any
that he had addressed before. They were all anxious to see what he
was like--this backwoodsman and farm-labourer, who had met the great
Stephen Arnold Douglas and proved a match for him in argument; whose
speeches had been printed to express the views of a whole party.
His appearance was strange and impressive. When he stood up his height
was astonishing, because his legs were very long, and when sitting he
did not appear tall. His face, thin and marked by deep lines, was very
sad. A mass of black hair was pushed back from his high forehead: his
eyebrows were black too, and stood out in his pale face: his dark-grey
eyes were set deep in his head. The mouth could smile, but now it was
stern and sad. The face was unlike other faces: when he spoke it was
beautiful, for he felt everything he said. Abraham Lincoln was a common
man: he had had no advantages of birth, of training: he had known
extreme poverty: for years he had struggled without success in mean and
small occupations: he had no knowledge but what he had taught himself.
But no one who heard him speak could think him common.
Speaking now to an audience in which were the cleverest people in New
York, people who had read everything and seen everything and been
everywhere, who had had every opportunity that he had not, he impressed
them as much as he had impressed the people of Illinois. He was one of
the greatest orators that ever lived. His words went straight to the
people to whom they were spoken. What he said was as straightforward
and as certain as a sum in arithmetic, as easy to follow: and behind
it all you felt that the man believed every word of what he said, and
spoke because he must. The truth was in him.
Lincoln’s address in New York convinced the Republican party that here
was the man they wanted.
In 1860 there came the presidential election, always the most important
event in American politics; this year more important than ever before.
For the last half-century almost the Democratic party had been in
power. They had been strong because they were united: they united the
people of the South and those people in the North who thought that it
was waste of time to discuss slavery, since slavery was part of the
Constitution. Their policy on slavery had been to leave it alone. As
long as they did this there was nothing to create another party in
the North strong enough to oppose them. But when Douglas, in order to
make his own position strong in the South, made slavery practical
politics by bringing in a bill to allow Kansas to have slaves; and when
the judges in the Dred Scott case roused sympathy with the negroes by
declaring that slaves were not men but property, then the question
united the divided North into a strong Republican party in which all
were agreed. There was to be no slavery north of Mason and Dixon’s
line. The attempt to force slavery on Kansas split the Democratic
party. One section was led by Douglas, who had gone as far as he could:
he was not ready to force Kansas to have slaves, if she did not want
them, because people from Missouri wanted her to have them. He saw
that to force slavery on the North in this way would mean division
and war, and therefore he refused to go any further. By this refusal
Douglas lost his supporters in the South. They joined the section led
by Jefferson Davis--the Southern candidate for the presidentship.
Jefferson Davis was the true leader of the South. Douglas as well as
Lincoln had begun life as the child of a poor pioneer: each had risen
by his own abilities and by constant hard work. Jefferson Davis was a
true aristocrat. He was the son of rich and educated parents. All his
life he had been waited on by slaves and surrounded by every comfort.
While Lincoln was ploughing or hewing wood, while Douglas was working
hard at the bar, Davis went first to the university at Kentucky and
then to the military academy at West Point, from which he passed to the
army. He served as a lieutenant at the time of the Black Hawk war, and
it is very likely that he came across Lincoln, who was serving as a
volunteer. After serving seven years in the army he married and settled
down as a cotton planter in Mississippi. His estates were worked by
slaves, of course. To him the negro was an animal, quite different from
the white man, meant by nature to be under him and to serve him. Black
men, unlike white, did not exist for themselves, with the equal right
to live possessed by a man, an insect, or a tree, but had been created
solely to be useful to white men.
No two men could be more unlike than Lincoln and Davis. The groundwork
of Davis’ nature was an intense pride. A friend described him as “as
ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard.” He was cold in manner
and seldom laughed. Lincoln was entirely humble-minded, full of
passionate longing to help the weak. To Lincoln what was common was
therefore precious. Jefferson Davis said the minority, and not the
majority, ought to rule. And their looks were as unlike as their minds.
Jefferson Davis, with his beautiful proud face, as cold and as handsome
as a statue, expressed the utter contempt and scorn of the aristocrat
for everything and every one beneath him.
When the Democratic party met at Charleston to nominate their candidate
for the presidentship, they were hopelessly divided. Douglas’s Freeport
speech had set the South against him. For the last four years there
had been a growing section which said that, as long as the South was
fastened to the North, slavery was not safe. Now seven states, led by
South Carolina, left the Democratic meeting and nominated Davis as
their candidate.
The Republican party met at Chicago. There was only one man strong,
reasonable, and sane enough for every section of the party to accept.
This was Abraham Lincoln. At the time of his nomination, Lincoln was
playing barnball with his children in the field behind his house. When
told that he had been chosen, he said, “You must be able to find some
better man than me.” But he was ready to take up the difficult task.
He knew that he could serve his country, and he was not afraid. He
had a clear ideal before him--to preserve America as one united whole.
He saw that war might come. As he had said, five years before, America
could not endure for ever half slave and half free--it must be all
free: and the South would not let slavery go without war.
The election came in November. The result was that Lincoln was elected
President. For four years the destiny of his country was in his hands.