there was a difference between a float and a boat, but I do not remember
that he indulged us with an argument in support of this statement. Is it
because there is a difference in size? Will not a small body and a large
one float the same way under the same influence? True a flatboat will
float faster than an egg shell and the egg shell might be blown away by
the wind, but if under the same influence they would go the same way.
Logs, floats, boards, various things the witnesses say all show the same
current. Then is not this test reliable? At all depths too the direction
of the current is the same. A series of these floats would make a line as
long as a boat and would show any influence upon any part and all parts of
the boat.
"I will now speak of the angular position of the piers. What is the amount
of the angle? The course of the river is a curve and the pier is straight.
If a line is produced from the upper end of the long pier straight with
the pier to a distance of 350 feet, and a line is drawn from a point in
the channel opposite this point to the head of the pier, Colonel Nason
says they will form an angle of twenty degrees. But the angle if measured
at the pier is seven degrees; that is, we would have to move the pier
seven degrees to make it exactly straight with the current. Would that
make the navigation better or worse? The witnesses of the plaintiff seem
to think it was only necessary to say that the pier formed an angle with
the current and that settled the matter. Our more careful and accurate
witnesses say that, though they had been accustomed to seeing the piers
placed straight with the current, yet they could see that here the current
had been made straight by us in having made this slight angle; that the
water now runs just right, that it is straight and cannot be improved.
They think that if the pier was changed the eddy would be divided and the
navigation improved.
"I am not now going to discuss the question what is a material
obstruction. We do not greatly differ about the law. The cases produced
here are, I suppose, proper to be taken into consideration by the court in
instructing a jury. Some of them I think are not exactly in point, but
I am still willing to trust his honor, Judge McLean, and take his
instructions as law. What is reasonable skill and care? This is a thing
of which the jury are to judge. I differ from the other side when it says
that they are bound to exercise no more care than was taken before the
building of the bridge. If we are allowed by the Legislature to build the
bridge which will require them to do more than before, when a pilot comes
along, it is unreasonable for him to dash on heedless of this structure
which has been legally put there. The Afton came there on the 5th and lay
at Rock Island until next morning. When a boat lies up the pilot has a
holiday, and would not any of these jurors have then gone around to the
bridge and gotten acquainted with the place? Pilot Parker has shown here
that he does not understand the draw. I heard him say that the fall from
the head to the foot of the pier was four feet; he needs information. He
could have gone there that day and seen there was no such fall. He should
have discarded passion and the chances are that he would have had no
disaster at all. He was bound to make himself acquainted with the place.
"McCammon says that the current and the swell coming from the long pier
drove her against the long pier. In other words drove her toward the very
pier from which the current came! It is an absurdity, an impossibility.
The only recollection I can find for this contradiction is in a current
which White says strikes out from the long pier and then like a ram's horn
turns back, and this might have acted somehow in this manner.
"It is agreed by all that the plaintiff's boat was destroyed and that it
was destroyed upon the head of the short pier; that she moved from the
channel where she was with her bow above the head of the long pier, till
she struck the short one, swung around under the bridge and there was
crowded and destroyed.
"I shall try to prove that the average velocity of the current through the
draw with the boat in it should be five and a half miles an hour; that it
is slowest at the head of the pier and swiftest at the foot of the pier.
Their lowest estimate in evidence is six miles an hour, their highest
twelve miles. This was the testimony of men who had made no experiment,
only conjecture. We have adopted the most exact means. The water runs
swiftest in high water and we have taken the point of nine feet above low
water. The water when the Afton was lost was seven feet above low water,
or at least a foot lower than our time. Brayton and his assistants timed
the instruments, the best instruments known in measuring currents. They
timed them under various circumstances and they found the current five
miles an hour and no more. They found that the water at the upper end ran
slower than five miles; that below it was swifter than five miles, but
that the average was five miles. Shall men who have taken no care, who
conjecture, some of whom speak of twenty miles an hour, be believed
against those who have had such a favorable and well improved opportunity?
They should not even qualify the result. Several men have given their
opinion as to the distance of the steamboat Carson, and I suppose if one
should go and measure that distance you would believe him in preference to
all of them.
"These measurements were made when the boat was not in the draw. It has
been ascertained what is the area of the cross section of this stream and
the area of the face of the piers, and the engineers say that the piers
being put there will increase the current proportionally as the space
is decreased. So with the boat in the draw. The depth of the channel was
twenty-two feet, the width one hundred and sixteen feet; multiply these
and you have the square-feet across the water of the draw, viz.: 2552
feet. The Afton was 35 feet wide and drew 5 feet, making a fourteenth
of the sum. Now, one-fourteenth of five miles is five-fourteenths of one
mile--about one third of a mile--the increase of the current. We will call
the current five and a half miles per hour. The next thing I will try to
prove is that the plaintiff's (?) boat had power to run six miles an hour
in that current. It had been testified that she was a strong, swift boat,
able to run eight miles an hour up stream in a current of four miles an
hour, and fifteen miles down stream. Strike the average and you will find
what is her average--about eleven and a half miles. Take the five and a
half miles which is the speed of the current in the draw and it leaves the
power of that boat in that draw at six miles an hour, 528 feet per minute
and 8 4/5 feet to the second.
"Next I propose to show that there are no cross currents. I know their
witnesses say that there are cross currents--that, as one witness says,
there were three cross currents and two eddies; so far as mere statement,
without experiment, and mingled with mistakes, can go, they have proved.
But can these men's testimony be compared with the nice, exact, thorough
experiments of our witnesses? Can you believe that these floats go across
the currents? It is inconceivable that they could not have discovered
every possible current. How do boats find currents that floats cannot
discover? We assume the position then that those cross currents are not
there. My next proposition is that the Afton passed between the S. B.
Carson and the Iowa shore. That is undisputed.
"Next I shall show that she struck first the short pier, then the long
pier, then the short one again and there she stopped." Mr. Lincoln then
cited the testimony of eighteen witnesses on this point.
"How did the boat strike when she went in? Here is an endless variety of
opinion. But ten of them say what pier she struck; three of them testify
that she struck first the short, then the long and then the short for the
last time. None of the rest substantially contradict this. I assume that
these men have got the truth because I believe it an established fact.
My next proposition is that after she struck the short and long pier and
before she got back to the short pier the boat got right with her bow
up. So says the pilot Parker--that he got her through until her starboard
wheel passed the short pier. This would make her head about even with the
head of the long pier. He says her head was as high or higher than the
head of the long pier. Other witnesses confirmed this one. The final
stroke was in the splash door aft the wheel. Witnesses differ, but the
majority say that she struck thus."
Court adjourned.
14th day, Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1857.
Mr. A. LINCOLN resumed. He said he should conclude as soon as possible.
He said the colored map of the plaintiff which was brought in during one
stage of the trial showed itself that the cross currents alleged did not
exist. That the current as represented would drive an ascending boat to
the long pier but not to the short pier, as they urge. He explained from a
model of a boat where the splash door is, just behind the wheel. The boat
struck on the lower shoulder of the short pier as she swung around in the
splash door; then as she went on around she struck the point or end of
the pier, where she rested. "Her engineers," said Mr. Lincoln, "say the
starboard wheel then was rushing around rapidly. Then the boat must have
struck the upper point of the pier so far back as not to disturb the
wheel. It is forty feet from the stern of the Afton to the splash door,
and thus it appears that she had but forty feet to go to clear the pier.
How was it that the Afton with all her power flanked over from the channel
to the short pier without moving one foot ahead? Suppose she was in the
middle of the draw, her wheel would have been 31 feet from the short pier.
The reason she went over thus is her starboard wheel was not working. I
shall try to establish the fact that the wheel was not running and that
after she struck she went ahead strong on this same wheel. Upon the last
point the witnesses agree, that the starboard wheel was running after she
struck, and no witnesses say that it was running while she was out in the
draw flanking over."
Mr. Lincoln read from the testimonies of various witnesses to prove that
the starboard wheel was not working while the Afton was out in the stream.
"Other witnesses show that the captain said something of the machinery of
the wheel, and the inference is that he knew the wheel was not working.
The fact is undisputed that she did not move one inch ahead while she was
moving this 31 feet sideways. There is evidence proving that the current
there is only five miles an hour, and the only explanation is that her
power was not all used--that only one wheel was working. The pilot says
he ordered the engineers to back her up. The engineers differ from him
and said they kept on going ahead. The bow was so swung that the current
pressed it over; the pilot pressed the stern over with the rudder, though
not so fast but that the bow gained on it, and only one wheel being
in motion the boat nearly stood still so far as motion up and down is
concerned, and thus she was thrown upon this pier. The Afton came into the
draw after she had just passed the Carson, and as the Carson no doubt kept
the true course the Afton going around her got out of the proper way, got
across the current into the eddy which is west of a straight line drawn
down from the long pier, was compelled to resort to these changes of
wheels, which she did not do with sufficient adroitness to save her. Was
it not her own fault that she entered wrong, so far wrong that she never
got right? Is the defence to blame for that?
"For several days we were entertained with depositions about boats
'smelling a bar.' Why did the Afton then, after she had come up smelling
so close to the long pier sheer off so strangely. When she got to the
centre of the very nose she was smelling she seemed suddenly to have lost
her sense of smell and to have flanked over to the short pier."
Mr. Lincoln said there was no practicability in the project of building
a tunnel under the river, for there "is not a tunnel that is a successful
project in this world. A suspension bridge cannot be built so high but
that the chimneys of the boats will grow up till they cannot pass. The
steamboat men will take pains to make them grow. The cars of a railroad
cannot without immense expense rise high enough to get even with a
suspension bridge or go low enough to get through a tunnel; such expense
is unreasonable.
"The plaintiffs have to establish that the bridge is a material
obstruction and that they have managed their boat with reasonable care and
skill. As to the last point high winds have nothing to do with it, for it
was not a windy day. They must show due skill and care. Difficulties going
down stream will not do, for they were going up stream. Difficulties
with barges in tow have nothing to do with the accident, for they had no
barge." Mr. Lincoln said he had much more to say, many things he could
suggest to the jury, but he wished to close to save time.
TO JESSE K. DUBOIS.
DEAR DUBOIS:
BLOOMINGTON, Dec. 19, 1857.
J. M. Douglas of the I. C. R. R. Co. is here and will carry this letter.
He says they have a large sum (near $90,000) which they will pay into the
treasury now, if they have an assurance that they shall not be sued
before Jan., 1859--otherwise not. I really wish you could consent to this.
Douglas says they cannot pay more, and I believe him.
I do not write this as a lawyer seeking an advantage for a client; but
only as a friend, only urging you to do what I think I would do if I were
in your situation. I mean this as private and confidential only, but I
feel a good deal of anxiety about it.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
TO JOSEPH GILLESPIE.
SPRINGFIELD, Jan. 19, 1858.
MY DEAR SIR: This morning Col. McClernand showed me a petition for a
mandamus against the Secretary of State to compel him to certify the
apportionment act of last session; and he says it will be presented to the
court to-morrow morning. We shall be allowed three or four days to get up
a return, and I, for one, want the benefit of consultation with you.
Please come right up.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
TO J. GILLESPIE.
SPRINGFIELD, Feb 7, 1858
MY DEAR SIR: Yesterday morning the court overruled the demurrer to Hatches
return in the mandamus case. McClernand was present; said nothing about
pleading over; and so I suppose the matter is ended.
The court gave no reason for the decision; but Peck tells me
confidentially that they were unanimous in the opinion that even if the
Gov'r had signed the bill purposely, he had the right to scratch his name
off so long as the bill remained in his custody and control.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
TO H. C. WHITNEY.
SPRINGFIELD, December 18, 1857.
HENRY C. WHITNEY, ESQ.
MY DEAR SIR:--Coming home from Bloomington last night I found your letter
of the 15th.
I know of no express statute or decisions as to what a J. P. upon the
expiration of his term shall do with his docket books, papers, unfinished
business, etc., but so far as I know, the practice has been to hand over
to the successor, and to cease to do anything further whatever, in perfect
analogy to Sections 110 and 112, and I have supposed and do suppose this
is the law. I think the successor may forthwith do whatever the retiring
J. P. might have done. As to the proviso to Section 114 I think it was put
in to cover possible cases, by way of caution, and not to authorize the J.
P. to go forward and finish up whatever might have been begun by him.
The view I take, I believe, is the Common law principle, as to retiring
officers and their successors, to which I remember but one exception,
which is the case of Sheriff and ministerial officers of that class.
I have not had time to examine this subject fully, but I have great
confidence I am right. You must not think of offering me pay for this.
Mr. John O. Johnson is my friend; I gave your name to him. He is doing the
work of trying to get up a Republican organization. I do not suppose "Long
John" ever saw or heard of him. Let me say to you confidentially, that I
do not entirely appreciate what the Republican papers of Chicago are
so constantly saying against "Long John." I consider those papers truly
devoted to the Republican cause, and not unfriendly to me; but I do think
that more of what they say against "Long John" is dictated by personal
malice than themselves are conscious of. We can not afford to lose the
services of "Long John" and I do believe the unrelenting warfare made upon
him is injuring our cause. I mean this to be confidential.
If you quietly co-operate with Mr. J. O. Johnson on getting up an
organization, I think it will be right.
Your friend as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
1858
ANOTHER POLITICAL PATRONAGE REFERENCE
TO EDWARD G. MINER.
SPRINGFIELD, Feb.19, 1858.
MY DEAR SIR:
Mr. G. A. Sutton is an applicant for superintendent of the addition of the
Insane Asylum, and I understand it partly depends on you whether he gets
it.
Sutton is my fellow-townsman and friend, and I therefore wish to say for
him that he is a man of sterling integrity and as a master mechanic and
builder not surpassed by any in our city, or any I have known anywhere, as
far as I can judge. I hope you will consider me as being really interested
for Mr. Sutton and not as writing merely to relieve myself of importunity.
Please show this to Col. William Ross and let him consider it as much
intended for him as for yourself.
Your friend as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
POLITICAL COMMUNICATION
TO W. H. LAMON, ESQ.
SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 11, 1858
DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 9th written at Joliet is just received. Two or
three days ago I learned that McLean had appointed delegates in favor
of Lovejoy, and thenceforward I have considered his renomination a fixed
fact. My opinion--if my opinion is of any consequence in this case, in
which it is no business of mine to interfere--remains unchanged, that
running an independent candidate against Lovejoy will not do; that it will
result in nothing but disaster all round. In the first place, whosoever
so runs will be beaten and will be spotted for life; in the second place,
while the race is in progress, he will be under the strongest temptation
to trade with the Democrats, and to favor the election of certain of their
friends to the Legislature; thirdly, I shall be held responsible for it,
and Republican members of the Legislature who are partial to Lovejoy will
for that purpose oppose us; and lastly, it will in the end lose us the
district altogether. There is no safe way but a convention; and if in that
convention, upon a common platform which all are willing to stand upon,
one who has been known as an abolitionist, but who is now occupying none
but common ground, can get the majority of the votes to which all look for
an election, there is no safe way but to submit.
As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that is one of
the chances I have to run, and which I intend to run with patience.
I write in the court room. Court has opened, and I must close.
Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.
BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY,
JUNE 15, 1858.
The compiler of the Dictionary of Congress states that while preparing
that work for publication, in 1858, he sent to Mr. Lincoln the usual
request for a sketch of his life, and received the following reply:
Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Education, defective.
Profession, a lawyer.
Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk war.
Postmaster at a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature and was
a member of the lower house of Congress.
Yours, etc.,
A. LINCOLN.
THE PAPERS AND WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN
VOLUME THREE
CONSTITUTIONAL EDITION
By Abraham Lincoln
Edited by Arthur Brooks Lapsley
THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I
POLITICAL SPEECHES & DEBATES of LINCOLN WITH DOUGLAS In the Senatorial
Campaign of 1858 in Illinois SPEECH AT SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 17, 1858
[The following speech was delivered at Springfield, Ill., at the close of
the Republican State Convention held at that time and place, and by which
Convention Mr. LINCOLN had been named as their candidate for United States
Senator. Mr. DOUGLAS was not present.]
Mr. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION:--If we could first know
where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to
do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy
was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting
an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that
agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my
opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and
passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this
government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not
expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but
I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing,
or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will
push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old
as well as new, North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete
legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak compounded of the
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider, not only
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also
let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or
rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of
action, among its chief architects, from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the
States by State Constitutions, and from most of the National territory by
Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which
ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the
National territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
But, so far, Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people,
real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained, and
give chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well
as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise
called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though
expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted
in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man
choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That
argument was incorporated into the Nebraska Bill itself, in the language
which follows:
"It being the true intent and meaning of this Act not to legislate slavery
into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave
the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the
United States."
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter
sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said
opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare
that the people of the Territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the
friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska Bill was passing through Congress, a law case,
involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having
voluntarily taken him first into a free State, and then into a territory
covered by the Congressional Prohibition, and held him as a slave for a
long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for
the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska Bill and lawsuit were brought
to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred
Scott," which name now designates the decision finally made in the case.
Before the then next Presidential election, the law case came to, and was
argued in, the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it
was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator
Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of
the Nebraska Bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter
answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."