THE PILOT OF THE NEW FAITH IN ILLINOIS
Abolitionism as a gospel showed rather paltry results for thirty years
of unceasing labor. Still its essential dogma, hatred to human bondage,
slowly but steadily held a larger place in the public thought. Mistakes
of the South and its Northern friends hurried on a crisis. The Kansas
controversy made the issue of a remorseless conflict clearer by a
concrete example of the incompatibility of freedom and slavery. The
nation was thus educated for aggressive action on the long mooted
question. The time was becoming ripe for the translation of public
sentiment into party platform, statute and decision. The Abolitionist
with relentless gospel even of war on the Constitution was altogether
too radical for the general mind. The slowly dying Whig party had not
kept pace with the advanced public thought, it was too conservative. The
democratic party kept on its path either of indifference to the slavery
issue or ardent support of the southern view and was the refuge of those
who were dead to the sweep of events. Hence the necessity of a new
party, with a platform that should sturdily proclaim resistance to the
spread of slavery in the territories; that should register a rising
spirit in the North, growing restless and sensitive as it contemplated
the increasing demands of the Southern institutions, as it grasped the
significance of the issue involving the continued existence in their
primal integrity of cherished principles of the Republic, a grappling
for political supremacy of the free labor of the North and the slave
power of the South. Mingled with the essential spirit of justice
pervading Abolitionism was the growth of the opinion that slavery was a
social and political evil. The public wrath at the repeal of a venerated
Compromise, the increasing discontent at the violent manifestations of
the friends of slavery in Kansas, prepared the public for the formation
of a radical party.
Lincoln being a man of power, was beset by three parties. He was urged
to remain a Whig by the conservatives, to become a Know-nothing by those
drifting on the political waters. Others sought to baptise him in the
spirit of Abolitionism. Lincoln had long since made his resolution to
array himself on the side of freedom. He was awaiting the right moment.
He saw the time for leadership was coming, that events were rapidly
sweeping forward to a climax. In the perturbed political condition he
was anxious not to go ahead of events and still not play the laggard.
Among all politicians in American history he was the wisest student of
the public mind.
With true vision, Lincoln foreshadowed the solemn consequences of the
Kansas struggle. He asked if there could be a more apt invention to
bring about collision and violence on the slavery question than the
"Nebraska project," and whether "the first drop of blood so shed would
not be the real knell of the Union."[305] Behind the fair form of the
Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, he saw the lurking serpent. He
was not deceived by fine, smooth words. In the beginning, he beheld the
gaping wounds of Kansas, the hypocrisy of the policy professing the name
of peace and bringing in its train the devildom of discord, the curse of
a broken, plighted compact. A letter to his friend Speed in 1855
illumines the whole subject, and is a contribution to the political
history of the time--unsurpassed in statement, in clearness of
understanding, in subdued calmness of judgment:
[305] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 200.
"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.... 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."[306]
[306] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 217.
He then bared with remorseless logic the common southern attitude: "You
say, if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders
of the Missouri outrages among 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 practicable one."[307]
[307] _Ibid._
The same letter shows he was aware of the potency of the partisan lash,
was an observer of the methods of securing results, of the cowardice and
timidity of leaders where political policy appeared on the horizon. He
confessed that in their opposition to the admission of Kansas, they
would probably be beaten; that the Democrats standing as a unit among
themselves, could, directly or indirectly, bribe enough men to carry the
day as they could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy; that
by getting hold of some man in the North whose position and ability was
such that he could make the support of the measure, whatever it might
be, a party necessity, the thing would be done.[308]
[308] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 217-218.
Then came a biting comment on the pretenses and practices of those who
were spreading the national disease, of those who had one doctrine in
public and another in private, who worshipped the God of Liberty with
speech and Mammon with their deeds. In the same letter Lincoln said that
although in a private letter or conversation the slaveholders would
express their preference that Kansas should be free, they would not vote
for a man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly and no such
man could be elected from any district in a slave State; that
slave-breeders and slave-traders were a small, detested class among
them; and yet in politics they dictated the course of the Southerners,
and were as completely their masters as they were the master of their
own negroes.[309]
[309] _Ibid._, 218.
A vivid picture of party uncertainty is seen in his answer to the
inquiry of Speed as to where he then stood. "I think I am a Whig; but
others say there are no Whigs, and say 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 unwhig 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 could 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."[310]
[310] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 218.
To him "Know-nothingism" transcended all questions of policy, denied the
very mission of Democracy, turned back the hour hand of political
progress and was traitor and recreant to its teachings. He was not sure
of his standing in the transitional period of party dissolution and
showed something in his mental attitude of the spirit of unrest abroad
in the nation and hardly knew whither the trend of events would carry
the American people. Cautious in moving forward on matters involving
method, he was unwedgeable when the principles of the Republic were at
stake. His note of scorn rings clear and loud to these who, in
selfishness and bigotry, sought exceptions to and a narrow
interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.
By nature Lincoln was a friend of peace. He would have rejoiced at any
plan that produced a peaceful solution of the vexed problem. No matter
how slow the march of freedom, he would have bridled his wrath. But the
aggressiveness of the South in the Kansas struggle opened his vision to
the fatuity of gradual emancipation. He grew bitter as Garrison in
statement as he contemplated the hypocritic limits on freedom, the
spread of an institution hostile to democracy with an ever widening
promise of future abatement: "On the question of liberty as a
principle," he wrote a friend, "we are not what we have been. When we
were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we
called the maxim that 'all men are created equal,' a self evident truth,
but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves
ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same
maxim 'a self evident lie.' The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled
away; it is still a great day--for burning fire-crackers!!!"[311]
[311] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 215
The groping of a giant mind concerning itself with a mammoth problem,
the germ of the great speech of Springfield that was soon to startle the
nation with its boldness likewise shows itself in this same letter. "Our
political problem now is, 'Can we as a nation continue together
permanently--forever--half slave and half free?' The problem is too
mighty for me--may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution."[312]
[312] _Ibid._, 216.
Finally the nation changed. The people, once dead to the cry of the
slave, were alive to the evil of slavery. Doctrines once deemed the
outburst of the fanatic were now on the lips of conservative men, and
Lovejoy had become the consort of the political leader. All these years,
Lincoln had waited in patience for the day when white men should be
ready to fight for the freedom of others. Civilization comes from a
sure, steady and progressive enlightenment of public sentiment. Genius
alone is helpless in the presence of a palsied national opinion.
Consider Lincoln in South Carolina in 1856, and the hopelessness of the
ideal without the company of circumstances is manifest. Living history
comes from the union of the great man and the happy moment for the
crystallization of advancing public sentiment. In this sense alone the
individual makes history, and it becomes the record of the few. The
great man is the symbol of the marching life of the multitude and
through him humanity moves resistlessly to its higher attitude.
A gathering of editors opposed to the Nebraska bill on February 22,
1856, marked the first visible step in the formation of the Republican
party in Illinois. Lincoln was, of course, not entitled to participate
in the public deliberations of that convention. That he promptly heard
the tramp of coming events is seen in his readiness to play a commanding
part in the early manifestation of the protesting movement.
Declaring that the black cloud of the American party was threatening to
drive the Germans from the ranks of the party about to be formed, Hon.
George Schieder said that he entered the Decatur convention with a
resolution in opposition to that movement, and helped to form a platform
containing a paragraph against the prescriptive doctrine of the
so-called American party. That portion of the platform condemning
Know-nothingism raised a storm of opposition, and, in despair, he
proposed submitting it to Mr. Lincoln and abiding by his decision. After
carefully reading the paragraph, Lincoln made the remark that the
resolution introduced by Mr. Schieder was nothing new, that it was
already contained in the Declaration of Independence, and that they
could not form a new party on prescriptive principles. Mr. Schieder
states that this declaration of Lincoln saved the resolution and helped
to establish the new party on the most liberal basis, and that it was
adopted at the Bloomington Convention, and next at the First
National-Republican Convention at Philadelphia. He further states that
Lincoln crystallized public sentiment, gave it a focal point, so that
the great majority of the Germans entered the new party that later made
Lincoln President.
Lincoln was in the van of the leaders who rallied to the support of the
infant party that has written such luminous pages in American history.
He showed his wonted sagacity, when an editor suggested his name as a
candidate for Governor, in immediately advising the nomination of an
anti-Nebraskan Democratic candidate, on the ground that such a
nomination would be more available.[313]
[313] Transactions McLean Co., 3, 39.
To Herndon the caution of Lincoln seemed to partake of brotherhood with
inaction. He hardly realized the sureness of the unremitting character
of his progress. As Lincoln's partner felt the thrilling approach of a
political crisis, he resolved to unloose Lincoln from his conservative
connections without realizing that the latter was ready to dare the
future on the bark of the coming party. Delegates were to be elected for
the State Convention at Bloomington that was to breathe life into the
Republican party in Illinois. Herndon signed Mr. Lincoln's name to the
call for the Sangamon County Convention without authority and published
it in a local paper. A dramatic incident ensued:
"John T. Stuart was keeping his eye on Lincoln, with a view of keeping
him on his side--the totally dead conservative side. Mr. Stuart saw the
published call and grew mad; rushed into my office, seemed mad,
horrified, and said to me, 'Sir, did Mr. Lincoln sign that Abolition
call which is published this morning?' I answered, 'Mr. Lincoln did not
sign that call.'--'Did Lincoln authorize you to sign it?' said Mr.
Stuart. 'No, he never authorized me to sign it.'--'Then do you know that
you have ruined Mr. Lincoln?'--'I did not know that I had ruined Mr.
Lincoln; did not intend to do so; thought he was a made man by it; that
the time had come when conservatism was a crime and a blunder.'--'You,
then, take the responsibility of your acts; do you?'--'I do, most
emphatically.'"
Herndon then wrote Lincoln. He instantly replied that he adopted what
Herndon had done, and promised to meet Lovejoy and other radicals.[314]
[314] Lamon, 374-375.
Lincoln did not serve freedom in word only. A free young negro was in
danger of being sold into slavery. The Governor of Illinois was seen. He
responded that he had no right to interfere. Lincoln rose from his
chair, hat in hand, and exclaimed: "By God, Governor, I'll make the
ground in this country too hot for the foot of a slave, whether you have
the legal power to secure a release of this boy or not."[315]
[315] Herndon, 2, 47-48.
During all the trying time when the liberty of Kansas was in the
balance, when violence was being met with violence, when even
conservative men drifted into the movement to aid the free state men in
opposing the Government, he remained master of himself, looked beyond
the passion of the moment to the abiding realities. Herndon, who was a
participant in this movement, unfolds a view of the calm, far sighted
man, who knew that violence was the father of great evils and not a safe
foundation for a free state. He says that Lincoln was informed of their
intents, and took the first opportunity that he could to dissuade them
from their partially formed purpose. They spoke of liberty, justice, and
God's higher law. He answered that he believed "in the providence of the
most men, the largest purse, and the longest cannon"; that if they were
in the minority, they could not succeed, and that if they were in the
majority they could succeed with the ballot, throwing away the bullet.
He advised them that, "In a democracy where the majority rule by the
ballot through the forms of law, physical rebellions and bloody
resistances" were radically wrong, unconstitutional, and were treason.
He besought them to revolutionize through the ballot-box, and "restore
the Government once more to the affections and hearts of men, by making
it express, as it was intended to do, the highest spirit of justice and
liberty." Their attempt, he continued, to resist the laws of Kansas by
force, was criminal and all their feeble attempts would end in bringing
sorrow on their heads, and ruin the cause they would freely die to
preserve.[316] Well might Herndon say that this speech saved them from
the greatest follies.[317] Instead of desperate measures, money was
forwarded under legitimate conditions, Lincoln joining in the
subscription.
[316] Lamon, 372-373.
[317] Herndon, 2, 49.
The second step in the formation of the Republican party was the
Convention at Bloomington. Tragic events had taken place in the State
and Nation; signs of the sombre character of the approaching conflict.
Sumner was struck down in the Senate by the dastard attacks of Brooks,
an act which sent a shudder of anger and indignation through the North
and a wave of approbation through the South. This incident alone showed
the strain that the moorings of the Nation were undergoing. In Illinois,
too, violence asserted its hideousness, and a delegate, Paul Selby, was
treacherously assaulted by political opponents. The spread of the Civil
War in Kansas heightened the magnitude of the occasion. The seriousness
of the National and State situation had taken hold of the delegates. The
gravity of public affairs aroused mad instincts. Many were ready for
radical conduct, were ready to meet force with force, and violence with
violence.
From the four corners of the State, dauntless anti-Nebraska Democrats,
conservative Whig, distraught Know-nothing, bitter Abolitionist, and
those drifting on the tide of events, gathered under a common impulse in
opposition to the vaunting slave party. Beneath the surface there was
memory of former antagonism. The problem of the hour was the uniting of
these discordant elements into the homogeneity of common conviction;
submerging old and cherished affiliations with a flood of fealty to a
new gospel; the transmuting raw recruits; quickening the martial spirit
commonly the product only of long service.
It was a time for a momentous speech. Several leaders of distinction had
addressed the convention, when the audience, with instinctive wisdom,
called for Lincoln to make the closing address. It was one of those rare
moments in human affairs when words may turn the tide of events. He
caught the wandering thoughts of troubled men and gave them
continuity.[318] Those long without a political faith were rejoiced to
find a home. Like an inspired giant, he was aglow with the greatness of
his theme. He spoke as the spirit of the age might have spoken, if it
had broken into eloquence sublime and resistless. Men were brought face
to face with immortal justice, with eternal righteousness. The humblest
hearer lived in the thrill of such communion. Reporters dropped their
pencils and forgot their work; even Herndon, who was wont to take notes
when Lincoln spoke, threw pen and paper aside, subdued and overcome by
the majesty of his partner's speech.
[318] Transactions McLean Co., 3, 91.
It was not alone a triumph in immediate results, but also a triumph in
moulding the abiding convictions of men. Above all the enthusiasm of the
moment, there still remained his solid logic, a logic that made
Republicans of life-long Democrats. John M. Palmer declared that he
remembered only one expression of speech, "We will not dissolve the
Union, and you shall not do it." Others dwelt on his declaration to
meet the occasion with ballots and not bullets, and so the minds of men
as well as the impulses were wisely educated. The address became famous
as "the lost speech." Its renown grew with age. It became sacred to the
memory of those who heard it and time hallowed its history.[319]
[319] Tarbell, 1, 296.
In the light of later events, the platform adopted at the Bloomington
Convention seems conservative. It simply rebuked the administration for
its attitude on the Kansas issue, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
and the extension of slavery into Territories.[320]
[320] Lamon, 376.
When the first flood of enthusiasm, after the Bloomington Convention,
subsided, a mysterious apathy, a stifling indifference, met the new
movement, a not unusual phenomenon in politics or human affairs. Such a
time had now come. It was at this period dark and trying that Lincoln
towered in lonely grandeur. It was easy enough to be brave and vaunting
at a convention when thousands hung on every word. But now it took a
higher heroism to be true to the cause. Then Lincoln did not flinch.
With superb step, with elated soul, with increasing intrepidity, he
continued the championship of the same principles that took captive the
delegates at Bloomington. He spoke like one in the wilderness.
Lamon tells the story of a ratification meeting five days after the
Bloomington Convention:--"Mr. Herndon got out huge posters, announcing
the event, and employed a band of musicians to parade the streets and
'drum up a crowd.' As the hour of meeting drew near, he 'lit up the
Court House with many blazes,' rung the bells and blew a horn. At seven
o'clock the meeting should have been called to order, but it turned out
to be extremely slim. There was nobody present, with all those
brilliant lights, but A. Lincoln, W. H. Herndon and W. H. Pain. 'When
Lincoln came into the Court-room,' says the bill-poster and horn-blower
of this great demonstration, 'he came with a sadness and a sense of the
ludicrous on his face. He walked to the stand, mounted it in a kind of
mockery,--mirth and sadness all combined,--and said: 'Gentlemen, this
meeting is larger than I knew it would be. I knew that Herndon and
myself would come, but I did not know that any one else would be here;
and yet another has come,--you, John Pain. These are sad times, and seem
out of joint. All seems dead, dead, dead: but the age is not yet dead;
it liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of
life and motion, the world does move nevertheless. Be hopeful. Now let
us adjourn and appeal to the people.'"[321]
[321] Lamon, 377-378.
In June the first National Republican Convention met at Philadelphia.
Young, aggressive and flushed with enthusiasm, it put forth as the
standard bearer, John C. Fremont, the daring, romantic pathfinder.
Lincoln received one hundred and ten votes for the vice-presidency. So
little was this distinction anticipated, that at first he refused to
believe that he was the recipient of the flattering compliment, saying
that it must have been the great Lincoln from Massachusetts.
Like the Bloomington gathering the National Convention instinctively
linked itself in strength to the impressing principles of the
Declaration of Independence. It took a bolder and more advanced stand
than the Illinois Convention, denying the authority of Congress to give
legal existence to slavery in any Territory and that it was its right
and duty to prohibit therein those "twin relics of barbarism, polygamy
and slavery."[322]
[322] Nicolay & Hay, 2, 36-37.
In the ensuing campaign, Lincoln, as a presidential elector and orator
towered in the State as strong in his invigorating championship of the
Republican policies. He made fifty speeches. Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa
sent for him. The impress of his personality was humbly, but pervasively
winning the hearts and minds of men. One man wrote with sure faith,
"Come to our place, because in you do our people place more confidence
than in any other man. Men who do not read want the story told as you
only can tell it. Others may make fine speeches but it would not be
'Lincoln said so in his speech.'"[323] A college president spoke of him
with reverence, as, "one providentially raised up for a time like this,
and even should defeat come in the contest, it would be some consolation
to remember we had Hector for a leader."[324]
[323] Herndon, 2, 56.
[324] _Ibid._
He was most skillful in seeing the danger of Fillmore as a candidate in
withholding strength from Fremont. He studied the problem as keenly as a
legal proposition. No man in all of the United States saw the issues
more plainly or could state it as precisely. To a Fillmore man he wrote
that every vote withheld from Fremont and given to Fillmore in Illinois
actually lessened Fillmore's chance of being President, for if Buchanan
got all the slave states and Pennsylvania, and one other State, he would
be elected, but if Fillmore got the slave states of Maryland and
Kentucky, then Buchanan would not be elected and Fillmore would go into
the House of Representatives, and might be made President by a
compromise. Likewise he argued that if Fillmore's friends threw away a
few thousand votes on him in Indiana, it would inevitably give those
states to Buchanan, which would more than compensate him for the loss of
Maryland and Kentucky; that it was as plain as adding up the weight of
three small hogs for Fillmore who had no possible chance to carry
Illinois for himself, to let Fremont take it, and thus keep it out of
the hands of Buchanan. Lamon remarks that this letter was discovered by
the Buchanan men, printed in their newspapers, and pronounced, as its
author anticipated, "a mean trick," and that it was a dangerous document
to them, and was calculated to undermine the very citadel of their
strength.[325]
[325] Lamon, 382.
Lincoln's fear of Fillmore was justified by events. While Fremont was
defeated, Bissel the Republican was elected Governor by a fair margin.
To Lincoln, the defeat of Fremont was prophetic of future triumph. With
infinitely surer vision than President Pierce, he perceived the trend of
events. Beyond seeming setback, he beheld the triumphing movement. He
likened the President to a rejected lover making merry at the wedding of
his rival, in felicitating himself hugely over the late presidential
election, in considering the result a signal triumph of good men, and a
very pointed rebuke of bad ones. To the statement of Pierce that the
people did it, Lincoln called attention to the fact that those who voted
for Buchanan, were in a minority of the whole people by about four
hundred thousand votes, and thus the "rebuke" might not be quite as
durable as he seemed to think and that the majority might not choose to
remain permanently rebuked by that minority.[326]
[326] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 225.
Strong in the belief that slavery was at war with the essential spirit
of the Republic, he declared that the government rested on public
opinion; that public opinion, on any subject, always had a "central
idea," and that "central idea" in American political public opinion was
until recently "the equality of man," and although it submitted
patiently to some inequality as a matter of actual necessity, its
constant working was a steady progress toward the practical equality of
all men and the late Presidential election was a struggle by one party
to discard that central idea and to substitute as a central idea the
perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all countries and
colors.[327]
[327] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 225.
This conviction vivified him with new hopes. The leader called to those
in the valley of doubt and indifference to leave their low-vaulted
chamber: "Then let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing
be; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good
old 'central idea' of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is
with us; God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare that 'all
States as States are equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are
equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both
these and much more, that 'all men are created equal.'"[328]
[328] _Ibid._, 226.