THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE
Upon his return from Washington, Abraham Lincoln attended to a growing
legal practice. He apparently lost his interest in communal matters,
having tasted the allurements and bitterness of public service. He had
largely outgrown the passion for ordinary official distinction. He was
ready to go back to the circuit with its hardships and rudeness. To win
renown as a lawyer now seemed his sole ambition.
Still as the compromise measures of 1850 ended another national crisis,
he readily renewed his interest in the march of events. A loyal Whig,
still, he acceded to the Clay and Webster solution of the perturbed
political conditions with some misgiving. He poorly tolerated the
burdens added to the yoke of the fugitive slave--the premium placed upon
bondage rather than freedom. During this stormy period of general
controversy, in his lonely way he settled the main issue. A story told
by a close friend is significant of the seriousness of the struggle. As
they were coming down a hill, Herndon said to Lincoln that the time was
coming when they should all have to be either Abolitionists or
Democrats. Lincoln thought a moment and then answered ruefully that when
that time came his mind would be made up, for he believed the slavery
question could never be successfully compromised.[265]
[265] Herndon, 2, 31.
Though zealous for action, for a time, he was in the gloom of despair.
Most men were lost in their own affairs. The furtive Abolitionist raised
his voice as in a wilderness. The busy world took mean note of the cry
of anguished slave. About this time Herndon states that Lincoln was
speculating with him about the deadness of things, and deeply regretted
that his human strength was limited by his nature to rouse the world,
and despairingly exclaimed that it was hard to die and to leave one's
country no better than if one had never lived for it.[266] Here is again
communion with the soul whose thoughts were of the despised and the
lowly. To Lamon and other men who cannot rise to kinship with him in
such an hour, he must forever remain a mystery. It is for this reason
that some who were near him seldom comprehended the extensiveness of his
sympathy, seldom knew the divinity of his hopes, and his surpassing love
of kind.
[266] Lamon, 335.
Lincoln was a stumbling student in the domain of eulogy. His mind
scorned fanciful statement. He was no hero worshipper. Washington,
alone, remained the shrine of his homage. He mastered indiscriminate
devotion to person in his loyalty to principle. For this reason, to
many, he seemed impassive and self centered. It is strange that the man
so little prone to adulation should, himself, be the recipient of almost
universal adoration. So his address in 1852 on the death of Clay shows
little of the devotional element. Even in the shadow of the grave of the
great Compromiser, there is no chant of an admiring friend--no speech
leaping from the heart. Lincoln himself felt its limitations.[267] In
this address, he called attention to the striking fact that Clay never
spoke merely to be heard, that his eloquence was always directed to
practical action.
[267] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 171.
It is only when Lincoln approached the discussion of the slavery
question that he ceased commonplace commendation. He gave much time to
that issue. That he brooded over the solemn statement of the patriots of
the Republic is shown in his use of the far-famed utterance of
Jefferson: "I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay
any attention to public affairs, confident that 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 fire-bell 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 a 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."[268]
[268] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 173.
He likewise dwelt on the exulting protest of Clay against the enemies of
liberty and ultimate emancipation, who would go back to the era of our
liberty and independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual
joyous return, who would blow out the moral light and penetrate the
human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of
liberty.[269]
[269] _Ibid._, 175.
We learn something of the trend of his thoughts in his discussion of the
colonization proposal of Clay that there was a moral fitness in the idea
of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors had been torn from
her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence, who, transplanted in a
foreign land, would carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of
religion, civilization, law and liberty. Lincoln passes this benediction
on the plan: "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."[270]
[270] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 176.
Lincoln was seeking no temporary expedient. He saw that abolitionism was
only a step in the problem, that beyond freedom was the greater question
that still terrifies the Union. Statesmanlike, he was not willing merely
to trifle with the casual remedy. Like Clay, he would have put an end to
the baffling issue by an operation titanic in contemplation and
astounding in sweep. So this eulogy on Clay is largely a discussion of a
looming problem of his time, a safe sign that he was awake to the
gathering storm.
The campaign of 1852 was colorless. Both parties were arrayed on the
side maintaining the sacredness of the Compromise Measures. All slavery
agitation was severely deprecated. While the South feared and shunned
the triumph of the Whig party, there was still scant surface appearance
of a sectional contest. There was little in the issues involved to
awaken moral vitality. Lincoln took no glowing part in the electoral
contest. Lamon declares that his speeches during the campaign were
coarse, strained in humor, petulant, unworthy of the orator, and
pervasive with jealousy at the success of his rival--Douglas.[271]
[271] Lamon, 341.
Though Lincoln was sure from the first, of the sin of slavery, still,
even at this period, he continued in conduct with slow paced movement as
if half afraid of being ahead of the sweep of events. Herndon aided in
helping him keep abreast with advanced abolition literature, and sought
to win him to a championship of the radical school. Like Washington, he
marked out his own path. Neither friend nor foe could swerve him, hasten
or check his advance. Broad-minded, open to appeal, no man was less
influenceable in final judgment. Herndon's weighty statement confirms
this distinctiveness of Lincoln's individuality. "I was never conscious
of having made this impression on Mr. Lincoln, nor do I believe I ever
changed his views. I will go further and say, that, from the profound
nature of his conclusions and the labored method by which he arrived at
them, no man is entitled to the credit of having either changed or
greatly modified them."[272]
[272] Herndon, 2, 32.
At first, he began in his office in plain speech to comment upon the
virulent contest between freedom and slavery, contending that delay was
intensifying the ultimate clash, that like two wild beasts in sight of
each other, but chained and held apart, the deadly antagonists would
some day break their bonds, and then the question would be settled.[273]
[273] _Ibid._, 35.
He spoke bitterly of the attitude of the judiciary, the men who should
have been in the very front of the fight; who seemed more zealous of the
right of property than that of personal liberty. He said that it was
singular that the Courts would hold that a man never lost his right to
his property that has been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost
his right to himself if he was stolen.[274] Thus his mind moved faster
than public sentiment, and thus he became prepared for decisive action
before the culminating Kansas and Nebraska affair threw the North into
commotion. He seemed the barometer of the national conscience, and
though his slow progress appeared painful to the radical yet it was
genuine and far more remorseless than immature reform. When the
conservative mind of Lincoln was stirred to action, it was a definite
sign of progress. He saw that the steady march of slavery was slowly
perverting the very principles of democracy, that it was a challenge to
the integrity of the republic, that sooner or later it would subvert the
government or be subverted by the government.
[274] _Ibid._, 36.
He noted that there were about six hundred thousand men non-slaveholding
whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand slave holders; that
when a convention recently assembled, there was not a single
representative of the non-slaveholding class. He told a friend that the
thing was spreading like wildfire over the country and that in a few
years Illinois would be ready to accept the institution. When asked to
what he attributed the change that was going on in public opinion, he
said that he had put that question to a Kentuckian shortly before, who
answered by saying that one might have any amount of land, money or
bank-stock, and while travelling around, nobody would be wiser; but, if
one had a darky trudging at his heels, everybody would see him, and know
that he owned a slave; that if a young man went courting, the only
inquiry was, how many negroes he or she owned. He added, that the love
for slave property was swallowing up every other mercenary possession;
that its ownership betokened, not only the possession of wealth, but
indicated the gentleman of leisure, who was above and scorned
labor.[275]
[275] Lamon, 347.
It has been a historical fashion to brand Douglas as the author of all
the ills that came in the course of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation. He
has suffered more than any other northern leader for participation
therein. He did not inaugurate; he reluctantly adopted radical action to
maintain his leadership in the Democratic party. The abolitionists were
growing more resolute and exacting in their demands, startling the
northern conscience. No compromise could still their protests; they
would not tolerate constitutional obligations that stood in the way of
immediate emancipation. At the South, the slave dynasty was daily
growing more restless under the real or assumed danger from northern
agitation. New enactments were deemed indispensable, as if legislation
could stay the rising tide of sentiment against the return of fugitive
slaves. The South was, under the educational tutelage of Calhoun,
prepared to demand the right to carry slaves throughout every inch of
the national territory without restraint from Congress.
Compromise could delay but not settle such a contest. When moral
instincts were aroused on one side and fear on the other, the inevitable
clash could not be permanently avoided. Dixon of Kentucky, through his
far-reaching statement upon the question of slavery he knew no
"Whiggery" and no Democracy,[276] decisively noted the new era in
American politics, and showed the desperate chasm that daily grew more
divisive, not to be covered over until the blood of a million men was
offered up as a sacrifice to the most momentous martyrdom in history.
Atchison of Missouri, who declared he would sacrifice everything but his
hope of heaven for slavery,[277] was anxious for the place of Douglas
that he might champion the legislation that would secure the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise. To gain this position, he would relinquish his
distinction as Acting President pro tem of the Senate.
[276] Greeley, 1, 229.
[277] Nicolay & Hay, 1, 346.
For twenty years, Douglas had fought in the party ranks until he stood
fair to become its leader. He had either to become champion of the new
policy, or as he saw it, to sacrifice the work of a lifetime. In the
party councils he contested the wisdom of the policy and eloquently
portrayed its far-reaching consequences. He loved his country but not
all of his kind. Patriot but not humanitarian, he would not peer behind
the curtain of a clashing North and South. The nature of the bitter
conflict through which Douglas passed before he submitted to the
southern policy, appears from his counsel to a young student and friend
never to go into politics; that if he did, no matter how clear it might
be to him that the present was an inheritance from the past, no matter
how conscientiously he might feel that his hands were tied, with loyalty
to ancient institutions rather than what he might prefer to do if free
to choose, still he would be vilified, traduced, and finally sacrificed
to some local interest or unreasoning passion like Adams, Webster and
Clay. He continued that he was surprised that the proposal to repeal
came from the South and dreaded the effect, and said so; still for
nearly twenty years he had fought for a place among the leaders of the
party which seemed to him most likely to promote the prosperity of his
country, and had won it.... If he retained his leadership, he argued
that he might help to guide the party aright in some graver crisis, and
if he threw it away, he not only destroyed himself, but he became
powerless for good forever after.
He then impetuously contended that an individual ought not to oppose his
judgment to that of a great party, and besides though surprised at its
source, he believed that the repeal would work to the advancement of
freedom rather than otherwise, as his vilifiers charged. He finally
pleaded that he was politically right in keeping within the pale of the
Constitution; and right as to the moral effect, and right as a party
leader anxious to help in keeping his party true to the whole
country.[278] Thus Douglas made his way to the sons of the South and
became the father of the Nebraska controversy and of the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.
[278] Illinois State Historical Society, IV. 49.
Douglas had not trained himself in the school of political defeat and
hesitated to forego his prestige of leadership. To gain the South, he
risked his hold on the North. Had he had the courage to dare, the wisdom
to know, the moral heroism to do, he might have become the foremost
personality in American politics, honoring instead of shadowing the
history of his time. In a solemn moment he took counsel of his fears
rather than his integrity, and doubted the triumph of the one cause that
has revolutionized history. With all his political sagacity, he lacked
the supreme instinct that transcends the shrewdness of the day and links
itself to the final triumphing movement.
During the spring and summer of 1854 when the whole North quivered with
the hurrying march of events following the Nebraska agitation, and
thundered its protests into Washington, Lincoln grew to the demands of
the hour with his wonted sureness. He turned over and over the whole
issue. He did not halt at the injustice of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, but went beyond its consideration to the problems of the
age, of which that act was only a grave symptom.
Now and then in small meetings, he spoke out of the fullness of his
feelings. His friends scanned a strange change. Coming to listen to his
quaint stories, they returned, exalted by hearing a speaker who raised
the controversy above the shifting events of the hour to the broad
tableland where right and wrong meet on the field of battle. They beheld
a man who lifted the discussion into the pure realms of eternal
justice, above all questions of policy, into the arena of the higher
humanity. Prejudices of a lifetime trembled in the balance. Men were
baptised with a new political faith. They instinctively turned to the
master and yielded, to the power of a personality speaking in the name
of immortal righteousness. He was no longer in his former haunts, the
tavern or the grocery. He was seen "mousing" around libraries. He was
communing with the Fathers of the Republic, seeking wisdom from them.
These five years following his Congressional experience are noteworthy
in his life, though scantily known. Now and then a chance remark, the
eulogy on Clay, a letter to a friend, reveal a strong man struggling
with a giant problem. During all this time, he was thinking out the
portentous question that was agitating a tempest. The greatest contests
of the world are not fought on the battlefield, in the presence of vast
armies, when the drum beats or the bugle calls to action. The sublimest
battles in history are waged in the lonely soul. There, the destiny of
nations is determined before its formal expression in legislative
discussion, judicial decision or national controversy.
The grasping disposition of slavery convinced Lincoln that the encounter
was inevitable. Before the formation of the Republican party, he
sanctioned the statement that the time was approaching when it would be
necessary to take a determined stand either for or against slavery.
During this period, he waited and bided his time; all these years he saw
with joy, clouded with occasional despair, the day approaching when
another blow could be struck for freedom, for the principles of the
fathers and for the spreading of democratic influence. These were
splendid years of preparation.