If I were you I would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not), you can return to your own home. Chapman feels very
kindly to you, and I have no doubt he will make your situation very
pleasant.
_Note for Law Lecture. Written about July 1, 1850_
I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a
lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I
have been moderately successful. The leading rule for a lawyer, as for
the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for
to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall
behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do
all the labour pertaining to it which can then be done. When you bring a
common law-suit, if you have the facts for doing so, write the
declaration at once. If a law point be involved, examine the books, and
note the authority you rely on upon the declaration itself, where you
are sure to find it when wanted. The same of defences and pleas. In
business not likely to be litigated,--ordinary collection cases,
foreclosures, partitions, and the like,--make all examinations of
titles, and note them and even draft orders and decrees in advance. The
course has a triple advantage; it avoids omissions and neglect, saves
your labour when once done, performs the labour out of court when you
have leisure, rather than in court when you have not.
Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the
lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in
other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make
a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than
relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of
speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his
case is a failure in advance.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to compromise whenever
you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real
loser--in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peace-maker the lawyer
has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be
business enough.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who
does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually
overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon
to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be
infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.
The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread
and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to
both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. As a
general rule, never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a
small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common
mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case as if something was
still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack
interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence
in the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance.
Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure
to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee-note--at least not
before the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence
and dishonesty--negligence by losing interest in the case, and
dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration
to fail.
There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest.
I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and
honours are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it
appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct
and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young
man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular
belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment
you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a
lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of
which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.
_A Fragment. Written about July 1, 1854_
Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the
British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort.
We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired
labourers amongst us. How little they know whereof they speak! There is
no permanent class of hired labourers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago
I was a hired labourer. The hired labourer of yesterday labours on his
own account to-day, and will hire others to labour for him to-morrow.
Advancement--improvement in condition--is the order of things in a
society of equals. As labour is the common burden of our race, so the
effort of some to shift their share of the burden on to the shoulders of
others is the great durable curse of the race. Originally a curse for
transgression upon the whole race, when, as by slavery, it is
concentrated on a part only, it becomes the double-refined curse of God
upon his creatures.
Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. The
power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is wonderful. The
slave-master himself has a conception of it, and hence the system of
tasks among slaves. The slave whom you cannot drive with the lash to
break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him to
break a hundred, and promise him pay for all he does over, he will break
you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod.
And yet perhaps it does not occur to you that, to the extent of your
gain in the case, you have given up the slave system and adopted the
free system of labour.
_A Fragment on Slavery. July 1854_
If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B,
why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may
enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It is colour, then; the
lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule
you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than
your own.
You do not mean colour exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually
the superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave
them? Take care again. By this rule you are to be slave to the first man
you meet with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest, and if you make it your
interest you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can
make it his interest he has the right to enslave you.
_Lincoln's Reply to Senator Douglas at Peoria, Illinois. The Origin of
the Wilmot Proviso. October 16, 1854_
... Our war with Mexico broke out in 1846. When Congress was about
adjourning that session, President Polk asked them to place two millions
of dollars under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if found
practicable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico,
and acquiring some part of her territory. A bill was duly gotten up for
the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in the House of
Representatives, when a Democratic member from Pennsylvania by the name
of David Wilmot moved as an amendment, "Provided, that in any territory
thus acquired there shall never be slavery." _This is the origin of the
far-famed Wilmot Proviso._ It created a great flutter; but it stuck like
wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill passed with it through the
House. The Senate, however, adjourned without final action on it, and so
both the appropriation and the proviso were lost for the time.
... This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal,
for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the
enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as
hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,
and especially because it forces so many good men amongst ourselves into
an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty,
criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is
no right principle of action but self-interest.
Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice against
the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation.
If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If
it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I
believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals
on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, and
others who would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of
existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North
and become tip-top Abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South and
become most cruel slave-masters.
When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin
of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the
institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in
any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I
surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to
do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to
do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a
moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I
think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden
execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they
would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus
shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten
days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is
it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not
hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for
me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them
politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of
this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of
whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound
judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A
universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely
disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It does seem to me that
systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their
tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the
South.
Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the
extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say, that inasmuch as
you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not
object to your taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is perfectly
logical, if there is no difference between hogs and slaves. But while
you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask
whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as
much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world,
only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no
larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority, South
as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more
divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain.
These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern people manifest in many
ways their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that,
after all, there is humanity in the negro. If they deny this let me
address them a few plain questions.
In 1820 you joined the North almost unanimously in declaring the African
slave-trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of death. Why
did you do this? If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join
in providing that men should be hung for it? The practice was no more
than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy them. But
you never thought of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses,
wild buffaloes, or wild bears.
Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native
tyrants known as the _slave-dealer_. He watches your necessities, and
crawls up to buy your slave at a speculating price. If you cannot help
it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your
door. You despise him utterly; you do not recognize him as a friend, or
even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may
rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through
the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join
hands with the men you meet; but with the slave-dealer you avoid the
ceremony,--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows
rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep
up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this?
You do not so treat the man who deals in cotton, corn, or tobacco.
And yet again. There are in the United States and Territories, including
the District of Columbia, over four hundred and thirty thousand free
blacks. At five hundred dollars per head, they are worth over two
hundred millions of dollars. How comes this vast amount of property to
be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free
cattle running at large. How is this? All these free blacks are the
descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves; and they would be
slaves now but for something that has operated on their white owners,
inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice to liberate them. What is that
something? Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it is your
sense of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that the
poor negro has some natural right to himself,--that those who deny it
and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.
And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave, and
estimate him as only the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you
will not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing what two hundred
millions of dollars could not induce you to do?
But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come. That argument is "the sacred right of
self-government." ... Some poet has said,--
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I
meet that argument,--I rush in,--I take that bull by the horns.... My
faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases
with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the
sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities
of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is
politically wise as well as naturally just,--politically wise in saving
us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at
Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia,
or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is
right,--absolutely and internally right; but it has no just application
as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has
any application here depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If
he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of
self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is a
man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to
say that he, too, shall not govern himself? When the white man governs
himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also
governs another man, that is more than self-government,--that is
despotism. If the negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that
"all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in
connection with one man's making a slave of another.
Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases
our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to
govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few
miserable negroes!"
Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to
be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the
contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another
man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading
principle,--the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.
Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it
in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and
when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings
them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal
the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration
of Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will
continue to speak....
The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. Slavery may or may not be
established in Nebraska. But whether it be or not, we shall have
repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit of
compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national
compromise? The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which first
gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved the Union--we shall have
strangled and cast from us for ever. And what shall we have in lieu of
it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted to excess; the North
betrayed, as they believed, brooding on wrong and burning for revenge.
One side will provoke, the other resent. The one will taunt, the other
defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already a few in the North
defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and even menace the institution of slavery in the States
where it exists. Already a few in the South claim the constitutional
right to take and hold slaves in the free States, demand the revival of
the slave-trade, and demand a treaty with Great Britain by which
fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet they are but few on
either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the
final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of
all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these,
and fatally increase the number of both.
... Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they
be thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an
old Whig, to tell them good-humouredly that I think this is very silly?
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist in
restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he
attempts to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. In the latter case you stand
with the Southern disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In
both cases you are right In both cases you expose the dangerous
extremes. In both you stand on the middle ground and hold the ship level
and steady. In both you are national, and nothing less than national.
This is the good old Whig ground. To desert such ground because of any
company is to be less than a Whig, less than a man, less than an
American.
I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of
this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it
because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one
man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling over-prosperity, we forget right;
that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere. I object to it
because the Fathers of the Republic eschewed and rejected it. The
argument of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in
favour of slavery, and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did
they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they
could not help, and they cast the blame on the British king for having
permitted its introduction. Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit
of their age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and
toleration only by necessity.
But now it is to be transformed into a _sacred right_.... Henceforth it
is to be the chief jewel of the nation,--the very figure-head of the
ship of State. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the
grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty
years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now
from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for
some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self-government. These
principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and
Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other....
Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us purify it.
Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the
Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of moral right, back
upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of necessity. Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in
peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let
all Americans, let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great
and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union,
but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for ever worthy
of the saving.
_From Letter to the Hon. Geo. Robertson, Lexington, Kentucky.
Springfield, Illinois. August 15, 1855_
My dear Sir, ... You are not a friend of slavery in the abstract. In
that speech you spoke of "the peaceful extinction of slavery" and used
other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was, at some
time, to have an end. Since then we have had thirty-six years of
experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is
no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. The signal failure
of Henry Clay and other good and great men, in 1849, to effect anything
in favour of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, together with a thousand
other signs, extinguishes that hope utterly. On the question of liberty,
as a principle, 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!
That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself
become extinct with the _occasion_ and the _men_ of the Revolution.
Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted
systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact that not a
single State has done the like since. So far as peaceful, voluntary
emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America,
scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the free mind, is now as
fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of the lost souls of
the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his
crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans, sooner than will our
American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.
Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together
_permanently--for ever_--half slave, and half free?" The problem is too
mighty for me. May God in his mercy superintend the solution.
Your much obliged friend, and humble servant,
A. LINCOLN.
_Extracts from Letter to Joshua F. Speed. August 24, 1855_