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ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The People's Leader in the Struggle for National Existence
By
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, LITT. D.
Author of
"Books and Their Makers in the Middle Ages,"
"The Censorship of the Church," etc.
With the above is included the speech delivered by Lincoln in New York,
February 27, 1860; with an introduction by Charles C. Nott, late Chief
Justice of the Court of Claims, and annotations by Judge Nott and by
Cephas Brainerd of New York Bar.
1909
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The twelfth of February, 1909, was the hundredth anniversary of the
birth of Abraham Lincoln. In New York, as in other cities and towns
throughout the Union, the day was devoted to commemoration exercises,
and even in the South, in centres like Atlanta (the capture of which in
1864 had indicated the collapse of the cause of the Confederacy),
representative Southerners gave their testimony to the life and
character of the great American.
The Committee in charge of the commemoration in New York arranged for a
series of addresses to be given to the people of the city and it was my
privilege to be selected as one of the speakers. It was an indication of
the rapid passing away of the generation which had had to do with the
events of the War, that the list of orators, forty-six in all, included
only four men who had ever seen the hero whose life and character they
were describing.
In writing out later, primarily for the information of children and
grandchildren, my own address (which had been delivered without notes),
I found myself so far absorbed in the interest of the subject and in the
recollections of the War period, that I was impelled to expand the paper
so that it should present a more comprehensive study of the career and
character of Lincoln than it had been possible to attempt within the
compass of an hour's talk, and should include also references, in
outline, to the constitutional struggle that had preceded the contest
and to the chief events of the War itself with which the great War
President had been most directly concerned. The monograph, therefore,
while in the form of an essay or historical sketch, retains in certain
portions the character of the spoken address with which it originated.
It is now brought into print in the hope that it may be found of
interest for certain readers of the younger generation and may serve as
an incentive to the reading of the fuller histories of the War period,
and particularly of the best of the biographies of the great American
whom we honour as the People's leader.
I have been fortunate enough to secure (only, however, after this
monograph had been put into type) a copy of the pamphlet printed in
September, 1860, by the Young Men's Republican Union of New York, in
which is presented the text, as revised by the speaker, of the address
given by Lincoln at the Cooper Institute in February,--the address which
made him President.
This edition of the speech, prepared for use in the Presidential
campaign, contains a series of historical annotations by Cephas Brainerd
of the New York Bar and Charles C. Nott, who later rendered further
distinguished service to his country as Colonel of the 176th Regiment,
N.Y.S. Volunteers, and (after the close of the War) as chief justice of
the Court of Claims.
These young lawyers (not yet leaders of the Bar) appear to have realised
at once that the speech was to constitute the platform upon which the
issues of the Presidential election were to be contested. Not being
prophets, they were, of course, not in a position to know that the same
statements were to represent the contentions of the North upon which the
Civil War was fought out.
I am able to include, with the scholarly notes of the two lawyers, a
valuable introduction to the speech, written (as late as February, 1908)
by Judge Nott; together with certain letters which in February, 1860,
passed between him (as the representative of the Committee) and Mr.
Lincoln.
The introduction and the letters have never before been published, and
(as is the case also with the material of the notes) are now in print
only in the present volume.
I judge, therefore, that I may be doing a service to the survivors of
the generation of 1860 and also to the generations that have grown up
since the War, by utilising the occasion of the publication of my own
little monograph for the reprinting of these notes in a form for
permanent preservation and for reference on the part of students of the
history of the Republic.
G.H.P.
NEW YORK, April 2, 1909.
CONTENTS
I. THE EVOLUTION OF THE MAN
II. WORK AT THE BAR AND ENTRANCE INTO POLITICS
III. THE FIGHT AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY
IV. LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT ORGANISES THE PEOPLE FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF
NATIONAL EXISTENCE
V. THE BEGINNING OF THE CIVIL WAR
VI. THE DARK. DAYS OF 1862
VII. THE THIRD AND CRUCIAL YEAR OF THE WAR
VIII. THE FINAL CAMPAIGN
IX. LINCOLN'S TASK ENDED
APPENDIX--LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS:
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
CORRESPONDENCE WITH ROBERT LINCOLN, NOTT, AND BRAINERD
INTRODUCTION
CORRESPONDENCE WITH LINCOLN
TITLE PAGE OF ORIGINAL ISSUE
OFFICERS OF THE REPUBLICAN UNION
PREFACE TO THE LINCOLN ADDRESS
THE COOPER INSTITUTE ADDRESS
INDEX
FOOTNOTES
I
THE EVOLUTION OF THE MAN
On the twelfth of February, 1909, the hundredth anniversary of the birth
of Abraham Lincoln, Americans gathered together, throughout the entire
country, to honour the memory of a great American, one who may come to
be accepted as the greatest of Americans. It was in every way fitting
that this honour should be rendered to Abraham Lincoln and that, on such
commemoration day, his fellow-citizens should not fail to bear also in
honoured memory the thousands of other good Americans who like Lincoln
gave their lives for their country and without whose loyal devotion
Lincoln's leadership would have been in vain.
The chief purpose, however, as I understand, of a memorial service is
not so much to glorify the dead as to enlighten and inspire the living.
We borrow the thought of his own Gettysburg address (so eloquent in its
exquisite simplicity) when we say that no words of ours can add any
glory to the name of Abraham Lincoln. His work is accomplished. His fame
is secure. It is for us, his fellow-citizens, for the older men who had
personal touch with the great struggle in which Lincoln was the nation's
leader, for the younger men who have grown up in the generation since
the War, and for the children by whom are to be handed down through the
new century the great traditions of the Republic, to secure from the
life and character of our great leader incentive, illumination, and
inspiration to good citizenship, in order that Lincoln and his
fellow-martyrs shall not have died in vain.
It is possible within the limits of this paper simply to touch upon the
chief events and experiences in Lincoln's life. It has been my endeavour
to select those that were the most important in the forming or in the
expression of his character. The term "forming" is, however, not
adequate to indicate the development of a personality like Lincoln's. We
rather think of his sturdy character as having been _forged_ into its
final form through the fiery furnace of fierce struggle, as hammered
out under the blows of difficulties and disasters, and as pressed
beneath the weight of the nation's burdens, until was at last produced
the finely tempered nature of the man we know, the Lincoln of history,
that exquisite combination of sweetness of nature and strength of
character. The type is described in Schiller's Song of the Founding of
the Bell:
Denn, wo das strenge mit dem zarten,
Wo mildes sich und starkes paarten,
Da giebt es einen guten Klang.
There is a tendency to apply the term "miraculous" to the career of
every hero, and in a sense such description is, of course, true. The
life of every man, however restricted its range, is something of a
miracle; but the course of a single life, like that of humanity, is
assuredly based on a development that proceeds from a series of
causations. Holmes says that the education of a man begins two centuries
before his birth. We may recall in this connection that Lincoln came of
good stock. It is true that his parents belonged to the class of poor
whites; but the Lincoln family can be traced from an eastern county of
England (we might hope for the purpose of genealogical harmony that the
county was Lincolnshire) to Hingham in Massachusetts, and by way of
Pennsylvania and Virginia to Kentucky. The grandfather of our Abraham
was killed, while working in his field on the Kentucky farm, by
predatory Indians shooting from the cover of the dense forest. Abraham's
father, Thomas, at that time a boy, was working in the field where his
father was murdered. Such an incident in Kentucky simply repeated what
had been going on just a century before in Massachusetts, at Deerfield
and at dozens of other settlements on the edge of the great forest which
was the home of the Indians. During the hundred years, the frontier of
the white man's domain had been moved a thousand miles to the south-west
and, as ever, there was still friction at the point of contact.
The record of the boyhood of our Lincoln has been told in dozens of
forms and in hundreds of monographs. We know of the simplicity, of the
penury, of the family life in the little one-roomed log hut that formed
the home for the first ten years of Abraham's life. We know of his
little group of books collected with toil and self-sacrifice. The
series, after some years of strenuous labour, comprised the Bible,
_Aesop's Fables_, a tattered copy of Euclid's _Geometry_, and Weems's
_Life of Washington_. The _Euclid_ he had secured as a great prize from
the son of a neighbouring farmer. Abraham had asked the boy the meaning
of the word "demonstrate." His friend said that he did not himself know,
but that he knew the word was in a book which he had at school, and he
hunted up the _Euclid_. After some bargaining, the _Euclid_ came into
Abraham's possession. In accordance with his practice, the whole
contents were learned by heart. Abraham's later opponents at the Bar or
in political discussion came to realise that he understood the meaning
of the word "demonstrate." In fact, references to specific problems of
Euclid occurred in some of his earlier speeches at the Bar.
A year or more later, when the Lincoln family had crossed the river to
Indiana, there was added to the "library" a copy of the revised Statutes
of the State. The Weems's _Washington_ had been borrowed by Lincoln from
a neighbouring farmer. The boy kept it at night under his pillow, and on
the occasion of a storm, the water blew in through the chinks of the
logs that formed the wall of the cabin, drenching the pillow and the
head of the boy (a small matter in itself) and wetting and almost
spoiling the book. This was a grave misfortune. Lincoln took his
damaged volume to the owner and asked how he could make payment for the
loss. It was arranged that the boy should put in three days' work
shucking corn on the farm. "Will that work pay for the book or only for
the damage?" asked the boy. It was agreed that the labour of three days
should be considered sufficient for the purchase of the book.
The text of this biography and the words of each valued volume in the
little "library" were absorbed into the memory of the reader. It was his
practice when going into the field for work, to take with him
written-out paragraphs from the book that he had at the moment in mind
and to repeat these paragraphs between the various chores or between the
wood-chopping until every page was committed by heart. Paper was scarce
and dear and for the boy unattainable. He used for his copying bits of
board shaved smooth with his jack-knife. This material had the advantage
that when the task of one day had been mastered, a little labour with
the jack-knife prepared the surface of the board for the work of the
next day. As I read this incident in Lincoln's boyhood, I was reminded
of an experience of my own in Louisiana. It happened frequently during
the campaign of 1863 that our supplies were cut off through the capture
of our waggon trains by that active Confederate commander, General
Taylor. More than once, we were short of provisions, and, in one
instance, a supply of stationery for which the adjutants of the brigade
had been waiting, was carried off to serve the needs of our opponents.
We tore down a convenient and unnecessary shed and utilised from the
roof the shingles, the clean portions of which made an admirable
substitute for paper. For some days, the morning reports of the brigade
were filed on shingles.
Lincoln's work as a farm-hand was varied by two trips down the river to
New Orleans. The opportunity had been offered to the young man by the
neighbouring store-keeper, Gentry, to take part in the trip of a
flat-boat which carried the produce of the county to New Orleans, to be
there sold in exchange for sugar or rum. Lincoln was, at the time of
these trips, already familiar with certain of the aspects and conditions
of slavery, but the inspection of the slave-market in New Orleans
stamped upon his sensitive imagination a fresh and more sombre picture,
and made a lasting impression of the iniquity and horror of the
institution. From the time of his early manhood, Lincoln hated slavery.
What was exceptional, however, in his state of mind was that, while
abominating the institution, he was able to give a sympathetic
understanding to the opinions and to the prejudices of the slave-owners.
In all his long fight against slavery as the curse both of the white and
of the black, and as the great obstacle to the natural and wholesome
development of the nation, we do not at any time find a trace of
bitterness against the men of the South who were endeavouring to
maintain and to extend the system.
It was of essential importance for the development of Lincoln as a
political leader, first for his State, and later in the contest that
became national, that he should have possessed an understanding, which
was denied to many of the anti-slavery leaders, of the actual nature,
character, and purpose of the men against whom he was contending. It
became of larger importance when Lincoln was directing from Washington
the policy of the national administration that he should have a
sympathetic knowledge of the problems of the men of the Border States
who with the outbreak of the War had been placed in a position of
exceptional difficulty, and that he should have secured and retained the
confidence of these men. It seems probable that if the War President
had been a man of Northern birth and Northern prejudices, if he had been
one to whom the wider, the more patient and sympathetic view of these
problems had been impossible or difficult, the Border States could not
have been saved to the Union. It is probable that the support given to
the cause of the North by the sixty thousand or seventy thousand loyal
recruits from Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Maryland, and Virginia, may
even have proved the deciding factor in turning the tide of events. The
nation's leader for the struggle seems to have been secured through a
process of natural selection as had been the case a century earlier with
Washington. We may recall that Washington died but ten years before
Lincoln was born; and from the fact that each leader was at hand when
the demand came for his service, and when without such service the
nation might have been pressed to destruction, we may grasp the hope
that in time of need the nation will always be provided with the leader
who can meet the requirement.
After Lincoln returned from New Orleans, he secured employment for a
time in the grocery or general store of Gentry, and when he was
twenty-two years of age, he went into business with a partner, some
twenty years older than himself, in carrying on such a store. He had so
impressed himself upon the confidence of his neighbours that, while he
was absolutely without resources, there was no difficulty in his
borrowing the money required for his share of the capital. The
undertaking did not prove a success. Lincoln had no business experience
and no particular business capacity, while his partner proved to be
untrustworthy. The partner decamped, leaving Lincoln to close up the
business and to take the responsibility for the joint indebtedness. It
was seventeen years before Lincoln was able, from his modest earnings as
a lawyer, to clear off this indebtedness. The debt became outlawed in
six years' time but this could not affect Lincoln's sense of the
obligation. After the failure of the business, Lincoln secured work as
county surveyor. In this, he was following the example of his
predecessor Washington, with whose career as a surveyor the youngster
who knew Weems's biography by heart, was of course familiar. His new
occupation took him through the county and brought him into personal
relations with a much wider circle than he had known in the village of
New Salem, and in his case, the personal relation counted for much; the
history shows that no one who knew Lincoln failed to be attracted by
him or to be impressed with the fullest confidence in the man's
integrity of purpose and of action.
II
WORK AT THE BAR AND ENTRANCE INTO POLITICS
In 1834, when he was twenty-five years old, Lincoln made his first
entrance into politics, presenting himself as candidate for the
Assembly. His defeat was not without compensations; he secured in his
own village or township, New Salem, no less than 208 out of the 211
votes cast. This prophet had honour with those who knew him. Two years
later, he tried again and this time with success. His journeys as a
surveyor had brought him into touch with, and into the confidence of,
enough voters throughout the county to secure the needed majority.
Lincoln's active work as a lawyer lasted from 1834 to 1860, or for about
twenty-six years. He secured in the cases undertaken by him a very large
proportion of successful decisions. Such a result is not entirely to be
credited to his effectiveness as an advocate. The first reason was that
in his individual work, that is to say, in the matters that were taken
up by himself rather than by his partner, he accepted no case in the
justice of which he did not himself have full confidence. As his fame as
an advocate increased, he was approached by an increasing number of
clients who wanted the advantage of the effective service of the young
lawyer and also of his assured reputation for honesty of statement and
of management. Unless, however, he believed in the case, he put such
suggestions to one side even at the time when the income was meagre and
when every dollar was of importance.
Lincoln's record at the Bar has been somewhat obscured by the value of
his public service, but as it comes to be studied, it is shown to have
been both distinctive and important. His law-books were, like those of
his original library, few, but whatever volumes he had of his own and
whatever he was able to place his hands upon from the shelves of his
friends, he mastered thoroughly. His work at the Bar gave evidence of
his exceptional powers of reasoning while it was itself also a large
influence in the development of such powers. The counsel who practised
with and against him, the judges before whom his arguments were
presented, and the members of the juries, the hard-headed working
citizens of the State, seem to have all been equally impressed with the
exceptional fairness with which the young lawyer presented not only his
own case but that of his opponent. He had great tact in holding his
friends, in convincing those who did not agree with him, and in winning
over opponents; but he gave no futile effort to tasks which his judgment
convinced him would prove impossible. He never, says Horace Porter,
citing Lincoln's words, "wasted any time in trying to massage the back
of a political porcupine." "A man might as well," says Lincoln,
"undertake to throw fleas across the barnyard with a shovel."
He had as a youngster won repute as a teller of dramatic stories, and
those who listened to his arguments in court were expecting to have his
words to the jury brightened and rendered for the moment more effective
by such stories. The hearers were often disappointed in such
expectation. Neither at the Bar, nor, it may be said here, in his later
work as a political leader, did Lincoln indulge himself in the telling a
story for the sake of the story, nor for the sake of the laugh to be
raised by the story, nor for the momentary pleasure or possible
temporary advantage of the discomfiture of the opponent. The story was
used, whether in law or in politics, only when it happened to be the
shortest and most effective method of making clear an issue or of
illustrating a statement. In later years, when he had upon him the
terrible burdens of the great struggle, Lincoln used stories from time
to time as a vent to his feelings. The impression given was that by an
effort of will and in order to keep his mind from dwelling too
continuously upon the tremendous problems upon which he was engaged, he
would, by the use of some humorous reminiscence, set his thoughts in a
direction as different as possible from that of his cares. A third and
very valuable use of the story which grew up in his Washington days was
to turn aside some persistent but impossible application; and to give to
the applicant, with the least risk of unnecessary annoyance to his
feelings, the "no" that was necessary. It is doubtless also the case
that, as has happened to other men gifted with humour, Lincoln's
reputation as a story-teller caused to be ascribed to him a great series
of anecdotes and incidents of one kind or another, some of which would
have been entirely outside of, and inconsistent with, his own standard
and his own method. There is the further and final word to be said about
Lincoln's stories, that they were entitled to the geometrical
commendation of "being neither too long nor too broad."
In 1846, Lincoln was elected to Congress as a Whig. The circle of
acquaintances whom he had made in the county as surveyor had widened out
with his work as a lawyer; he secured a unanimous nomination and was
elected without difficulty in a constituency comprising six counties. I
find in the record of the campaign the detail that Lincoln returned to
certain of his friends who had undertaken to find the funds for election
expenses, $199.90 out of the $200 subscribed.
In 1847, Lincoln was one of the group of Whigs in Congress who opposed
the Mexican War. These men took the ground that the war was one of
aggression and spoliation. Their views, which were quite prevalent
throughout New England, are effectively presented in Lowell's _Biglow
Papers._ When the army was once in the field, Lincoln was, however,
ready to give his Congressional vote for the fullest and most energetic
support. A year or more later, he worked actively for the election of
General Taylor. He took the ground that the responsibility for the war
rested not with the soldiers who had fought it to a successful
conclusion, but with the politicians who had devised the original
land-grabbing scheme.
In 1849, we find Lincoln's name connected with an invention for lifting
vessels over shoals. His sojourn on the Sangamon River and his memory of
the attempt, successful for the moment but ending in failure, to make
the river available for steamboats, had attracted his attention to the
problem of steering river vessels over shoals.
In 1864, when I was campaigning on the Red River in Louisiana, I noticed
with interest a device that had been put into shape for the purpose of
lifting river steamers over shoals. This device took the form of stilts
which for the smaller vessels (and only the smaller steamers could as a
rule be managed in this way) were fastened on pivots from the upper deck
on the outside of the hull and were worked from the deck with a force of
two or three men at each stilt. The difficulty on the Red River was that
the Rebel sharp-shooters from the banks made the management of the
stilts irregular.
In 1854, Douglas carried through Congress the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. This
bill repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and cancelled also the
provisions of the series of compromises of 1850. Its purpose was to
throw open for settlement and for later organisation as Slave States the
whole territory of the North-west from which, under the Missouri
Compromise, slavery had been excluded. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill not only
threw open a great territory to slavery but re-opened the whole slavery
discussion. The issues that were brought to the front in the discussions
about this bill, and in the still more bitter contests after the passage
of the bill in regard to the admission of Kansas as a Slave State, were
the immediate precursors of the Civil War. The larger causes lay further
back, but the War would have been postponed for an indefinite period if
it had not been for the pressing on the part of the South for the right
to make Slave States throughout the entire territory of the country, and
for the readiness on the part of certain Democratic leaders of the
North, of whom Douglas was the chief, to accept this contention, and
through such expedients to gain, or to retain, political control for the
Democratic party.
In one of the long series of debates in Congress on the question of the
right to take slaves into free territory, a planter from South Carolina
drew an affecting picture of his relations with his old coloured
foster-mother, the "mammy" of the plantation. "Do you tell me," he said,
addressing himself to a Free-soil opponent, "that I, a free American
citizen, am not to be permitted, if I want to go across the Missouri
River, to take with me my whole home circle? Do you say that I must
leave my old 'Mammy' behind in South Carolina?" "Oh!" replied the
Westerner, "the trouble with you is not that you cannot take your
'Mammy' into this free territory, but that you are not to be at liberty
to sell her when you get her there."
Lincoln threw himself with full earnestness of conviction and ardour
into the fight to preserve for freedom the territory belonging to the
nation. In common with the majority of the Whig party, he held the
opinion that if slavery could be restricted to the States in which it
was already in existence, if no further States should be admitted into
the Union with the burden of slavery, the institution must, in the
course of a generation or two, die out. He was clear in his mind that
slavery was an enormous evil for the whites as well as for the blacks,
for the individual as for the nation. He had himself, as a young man,
been brought up to do toilsome manual labour. He would not admit that
there was anything in manual labour that ought to impair the respect of
the community for the labourer or the worker's respect for himself. Not
the least of the evils of slavery was, in his judgment, its inevitable
influence in bringing degradation upon labour and the labourer.
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act made clear to the North that the
South would accept no limitations for slavery. The position of the
Southern leaders, in which they had the substantial backing of their
constituents, was that slaves were property and that the Constitution,
having guaranteed the protection of property to all the citizens of the
commonwealth, a slaveholder was deprived of his constitutional rights as
a citizen if his control of this portion of his property was in any way
interfered with or restricted. The argument in behalf of this extreme
Southern claim had been shaped most eloquently and most forcibly by John
C. Calhoun during the years between 1830 and 1850. The Calhoun opinion
was represented a few years later in the Presidential candidacy of John
C. Breckinridge. The contention of the more extreme of the Northern
opponents of slavery voters, whose spokesmen were William Lloyd
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, James G. Birney, Owen Lovejoy, and others,
was that the Constitution in so far as it recognised slavery (which it
did only by implication) was a compact with evil. They held that the
Fathers had been led into this compact unwittingly and without full
realisation of the responsibilities that they were assuming for the
perpetuation of a great wrong. They refused to accept the view that
later generations of American citizens were to be bound for an
indefinite period by this error of judgment on the part of the Fathers.
They proposed to get rid of slavery, as an institution incompatible with
the principles on which the Republic was founded. They pointed out that
under the Declaration of Independence all men had an equal right to
"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and that there was no
limitation of this claim to men of white race. If it was not going to be
possible to argue slavery out of existence, these men preferred to have
the Union dissolved rather than to bring upon States like Massachusetts
a share of the responsibility for the wrong done to mankind and to
justice under the laws of South Carolina.
The Whig party, whose great leader, Henry Clay, had closed his life in
1852, just at the time when Lincoln was becoming prominent in politics,
held that all citizens were bound by the compact entered into by their
ancestors, first under the Articles of Confederation of 1783, and later
under the Constitution of 1789. Our ancestors had, for the purpose of
bringing about the organisation of the Union, agreed to respect the
institution of slavery in the States in which it existed. The Whigs of
1850, held, therefore, that in such of the Slave States as had been part
of the original thirteen, slavery was an institution to be recognised
and protected under the law of the land. They admitted, further, that
what their grandfathers had done in 1789, had been in a measure
confirmed by the action of their fathers in 1820. The Missouri
Compromise of 1820, in making clear that all States thereafter organised
north of the line thirty-six thirty were to be Free States, made clear
also that States south of that line had the privilege of coming into the
Union with the institution of slavery and that the citizens in these
newer Slave States should be assured of the same recognition and rights
as had been accorded to those of the original thirteen.
The Missouri Compromise permitted also the introduction of Missouri
itself into the Union as a Slave State (as a counterpoise to the State
of Maine admitted the same year), although almost the entire territory
of the State of Missouri was north of the latitude 36° 30'.
We may recall that, under the Constitution, the States of the South,
while denying the suffrage to the negro, had secured the right to
include the negro population as a basis for their representation in the
lower House. In apportioning the representatives to the population, five
negroes were to be counted as the equivalent of three white men. The
passage, in 1854, of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the purpose of which was
to confirm the existence of slavery and to extend the institution
throughout the country, was carried in the House by thirteen votes. The
House contained at that time no less than twenty members representing
the negro population. The negroes were, therefore, in this instance
involuntarily made the instruments for strengthening the chains of their
own serfdom.
It was in 1854 that Lincoln first propounded the famous question, "Can
the nation endure half slave and half free?" This question, slightly
modified, became the keynote four years later of Lincoln's contention
against the Douglas theory of "squatter sovereignty." The organisation
of the Republican party dates from 1856. Various claims have been made
concerning the precise date and place at which were first presented the
statement of principles that constituted the final platform of the
party, and in regard to the men who were responsible for such statement.
At a meeting held as far back as July, 1854, at Jackson, Michigan, a
platform was adopted by a convention which had been brought together to
formulate opposition to any extension of slavery, and this Jackson
platform did contain the substance of the conclusions and certain of the
phrases which later were included in the Republican platform. In
January, 1856, Parke Godwin published in _Putnam's Monthly_, of which he
was political editor, an article outlining the necessary constitution of
the new party. This article gave a fuller expression than had thus far
been made of the views of the men who were later accepted as the leaders
of the Republican party. In May, 1856, Lincoln made a speech at
Bloomington, Illinois, setting forth the principles for the anti-slavery
campaign as they were understood by his group of Whigs. In this speech,
Lincoln speaks of "that perfect liberty for which our Southern
fellow-citizens are sighing, the liberty of making slaves of other
people"; and again, "It is the contention of Mr. Douglas, in his claim
for the rights of American citizens, that if _A_ sees fit to enslave
_B_, no other man shall have the right to object." Of this Bloomington
speech, Herndon says: "It was logic; it was pathos; it was enthusiasm;
it was justice, integrity, truth, and right. The words seemed to be set
ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by a great wrong. The
utterance was hard, knotty, gnarly, backed with wrath."
From this time on, Lincoln was becoming known throughout the country as
one of the leaders in the new issues, able and ready to give time and
service to the anti-slavery fight and to the campaign work of the
Republican organisation. This political service interfered to some
extent with his work at the Bar, but he did not permit political
interests to stand in the way of any obligations that had been assumed
to his clients. He simply accepted fewer cases, and to this extent
reduced his very moderate earnings. In his work as a lawyer, he never
showed any particular capacity for increasing income or for looking
after his own business interests. It was his principle and his practice
to discourage litigation. He appears, during the twenty-five years in
which he was in active practice, to have made absolutely no enemies
among his professional opponents. He enjoyed an exceptional reputation
for the frankness with which he would accept the legitimate contentions
of his opponents or would even himself state their case. Judge David
Davis, before whom Lincoln had occasion during these years to practise,
says that the Court was always prepared to accept as absolutely fair and
substantially complete Lincoln's statement of the matters at issue.
Davis says it occasionally happened that Lincoln would supply some
consideration of importance on his opponent's side of the case that the
other counsel had overlooked. It was Lincoln's principle to impress upon
himself at the outset the full strength of the other man's position. It
was also his principle to accept no case in the justice of which he had
not been able himself to believe. He possessed also by nature an
exceptional capacity for the detection of faulty reasoning; and his
exercise of the power of analysis in his work at the Bar proved of great
service later in widening his influence as a political leader. The power
that he possessed, when he was assured of the justice of his cause, of
convincing court and jury became the power of impressing his convictions
upon great bodies of voters. Later, when he had upon his shoulders the
leadership of the nation, he took the people into his confidence; he
reasoned with them as if they were sitting as a great jury for the
determination of the national policy, and he was able to impress upon
them his perfect integrity of purpose and the soundness of his
conclusions,--conclusions which thus became the policy of the nation.
He calls himself a "mast-fed lawyer" and it is true that his
opportunities for reading continued to be most restricted. Davis said in
regard to Lincoln's work as a lawyer: "He had a magnificent equipoise of
head, conscience, and heart. In non-essentials he was pliable; but on
the underlying principles of truth and justice, his will was as firm as
steel." We find from the record of Lincoln's work in the Assembly and
later in Congress that he would never do as a Representative what he was
unwilling to do as an individual. His capacity for seeing the humorous
side of things was of course but a phase of a general clearness of
perception. The man who sees things clearly, who is able to recognise
both sides of a matter, the man who can see all round a position, the
opposite of the man in blinders, that man necessarily has a sense of
humour. He is able, if occasion presents, to laugh at himself. Lincoln's
capacity for absorbing and for retaining information and for having this
in readiness for use at the proper time was, as we have seen, something
that went back to his boyhood. He says of himself: "My mind is something
like a piece of steel; it is very hard to scratch anything on it and
almost impossible after you have got it there to rub it out."
Lincoln's correspondence has been preserved with what is probably
substantial completeness. The letters written by him to friends,
acquaintances, political correspondents, individual men of one kind or
another, have been gathered together and have been brought into print
not, as is most frequently the case, under the discretion or judgment of
a friendly biographer, but by a great variety of more or less
sympathetic people. It would seem as if but very few of Lincoln's
letters could have been mislaid or destroyed. One can but be impressed,
in reading these letters, with the absolute honesty of purpose and of
statement that characterises them. There are very few men, particularly
those whose active lives have been passed in a period of political
struggle and civil war, whose correspondence could stand such a test.
There never came to Lincoln requirement to say to his correspondent,
"Burn this letter."
III
THE FIGHT AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY
In 1856, the Supreme Court, under the headship of Judge Taney, gave out
the decision of the Dred Scott case. The purport of this decision was
that a negro was not to be considered as a person but as a chattel; and
that the taking of such negro chattel into free territory did not cancel
or impair the property rights of the master. It appeared to the men of
the North as if under this decision the entire country, including in
addition to the national territories the independent States which had
excluded slavery, was to be thrown open to the invasion of the
institution. The Dred Scott decision, taken in connection with the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise (and the two acts were doubtless a
part of one thoroughly considered policy), foreshadowed as their logical
and almost inevitable consequence the bringing of the entire nation
under the control of slavery. The men of the future State of Kansas made
during 1856-57 a plucky fight to keep slavery out of their borders. The
so-called Lecompton Constitution undertook to force slavery upon Kansas.
This constitution was declared by the administration (that of President
Buchanan) to have been adopted, but the fraudulent character of the
voting was so evident that Walker, the Democratic Governor, although a
sympathiser with slavery, felt compelled to repudiate it. This
constitution was repudiated also by Douglas, although Douglas had
declared that the State ought to be thrown open to slavery. Jefferson
Davis, at that time Secretary of War, declared that "Kansas was in a
state of rebellion and that the rebellion must be crushed." Armed bands
from Missouri crossed the river to Kansas for the purpose of casting
fraudulent votes and for the further purpose of keeping the Free-soil
settlers away from the polls.
This fight for freedom in Kansas gave a further basis for Lincoln's
statement "that a house divided against itself cannot stand; this
government cannot endure half slave and half free." It was with this
statement as his starting-point that Lincoln entered into his famous
Senatorial campaign with Douglas. Douglas had already represented
Illinois in the Senate for two terms and had, therefore, the advantage
of possession and of a substantial control of the machinery of the
State. He had the repute at the time of being the leading political
debater in the country. He was shrewd, forcible, courageous, and, in the
matter of convictions, unprincipled. He knew admirably how to cater to
the prejudices of the masses. His career thus far had been one of
unbroken success. His Senatorial fight was, in his hope and expectation,
to be but a step towards the Presidency. The Democratic party, with an
absolute control south of Mason and Dixon's Line and with a very
substantial support in the Northern States, was in a position, if
unbroken, to control with practical certainty the Presidential election
of 1860. Douglas seemed to be the natural leader of the party. It was
necessary for him, however, while retaining the support of the Democrats
of the North, to make clear to those of the South that his influence
would work for the maintenance and for the extension of slavery.
The South was well pleased with the purpose and with the result of the
Dred Scott decision and with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. It
is probable, however, that if the Dred Scott decision had not given to
the South so full a measure of satisfaction, the South would have been
more ready to accept the leadership of a Northern Democrat like Douglas.
Up to a certain point in the conflict, they had felt the need of Douglas
and had realised the importance of the support that he was in a position
to bring from the North. When, however, the Missouri Compromise had been
repealed and the Supreme Court had declared that slaves must be
recognised as property throughout the entire country, the Southern
claims were increased to a point to which certain of the followers of
Douglas were not willing to go. It was a large compliment to the young
lawyer of Illinois to have placed upon him the responsibility of
leading, against such a competitor as Douglas, the contest of the Whigs,
and of the Free-soilers back of the Whigs, against any further extension
of slavery, a contest which was really a fight for the continued
existence of the nation.
Lincoln seems to have gone into the fight with full courage, the courage
of his convictions. He felt that Douglas was a trimmer, and he believed
that the issue had now been brought to a point at which the trimmer
could not hold support on both sides of Mason and Dixon's Line. He
formulated at the outset of the debate a question which was pressed
persistently upon Douglas during the succeeding three weeks. This
question was worded as follows: "Can the people of a United States
territory, prior to the formation of a State constitution or against the
protest of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery?" Lincoln's
campaign advisers were of opinion that this question was inadvisable.
They took the ground that Douglas would answer the question in such way
as to secure the approval of the voters of Illinois and that in so doing
he would win the Senatorship. Lincoln's response was in substance: "That
may be. I hold, however, that if Douglas answers this question in a way
to satisfy the Democrats of the North, he will inevitably lose the
support of the more extreme, at least, of the Democrats of the South. We
may lose the Senatorship as far as my personal candidacy is concerned.
If, however, Douglas fails to retain the support of the South, he cannot
become President in 1860. The line will be drawn directly between those
who are willing to accept the extreme claims of the South and those who
resist these claims. A right decision is the essential thing for the
safety of the nation." The question gave no little perplexity to
Douglas. He finally, however, replied that in his judgment the people of
a United States territory had the right to exclude slavery. When asked
again by Lincoln how he brought this decision into accord with the Dred
Scott decision, he replied in substance: "Well, they have not the right
to take constitutional measures to exclude slavery but they can by local
legislation render slavery practically impossible." The Dred Scott
decision had in fact itself overturned the Douglas theory of popular
sovereignty or "squatter sovereignty." Douglas was only able to say that
his sovereignty contention made provision for such control of domestic
or local regulations as would make slavery impossible.
The South, rendered autocratic by the authority of the Supreme Court,
was not willing to accept the possibility of slavery being thus
restricted out of existence in any part of the country. The Southerners
repudiated Douglas as Lincoln had prophesied they would do. Douglas had
been trying the impossible task of carrying water on both shoulders. He
gained the Senatorship by a narrow margin; he secured in the vote in the
Legislature a majority of eight, but Lincoln had even in this fight won
the support of the people. His majority on the popular vote was four
thousand.
The series of debates between these two leaders came to be of national
importance. It was not merely a question of the representation in the
Senate from the State of Illinois, but of the presentation of arguments,
not only to the voters of Illinois but to citizens throughout the entire
country, in behalf of the restriction of slavery on the one hand or of
its indefinite expansion and protection on the other. The debate was
educational not merely for the voters who listened, but for the
thousands of other voters who read the reports. It would be an enormous
advantage for the political education of candidates and for the
education of voters if such debates could become the routine in
Congressional and Presidential campaigns. Under the present routine, we
have, in place of an assembly of voters representing the conflicting
views of the two parties or of the several political groups, a
homogeneous audience of one way of thinking, and speakers who have no
opponent present to check the temptation to launch forth into wild
statements, personal abuse, and irresponsible conclusions. An
interruption of the speaker is considered to be a disturbance of order,
and the man who is not fully in sympathy with the views of the audience
is likely to be put out as an interloper. With a system of joint
debates, the speakers would be under an educational repression. False
or exaggerated statements would not be made, or would not be made
consciously, because they would be promptly corrected by the other
fellow. There would of necessity come to be a better understanding and a
larger respect for the positions of the opponent. The men who would be
selected as leaders or speakers to enforce the contentions of the party,
would have to possess some reasoning faculty as well as oratorical
fluency. The voters, instead of being shut in with one group of
arguments more or less reasonable, would be brought into touch with the
arguments of other groups of citizens. I can conceive of no better
method for bringing representative government on to a higher plane and
for making an election what it ought to be, a reasonable decision by
reasoning voters, than the institution of joint debates.
I cite certain of the incisive statements that came into Lincoln's seven
debates. "A slave, says Judge Douglas (on the authority of Judge Taney),
is a human being who is legally not a person but a thing." "I contend
[says Lincoln] that slavery is founded on the selfishness of man's
nature. Slavery is a violation of the eternal right, and as long as God
reigns and as school-children read, that black evil can never be
consecrated into God's truth." "A man does not lose his right to a piece
of property which has been stolen. Can a man lose a right to himself if
he himself has been stolen?" The following words present a summary of
Lincoln's statements: