Repeal of the Missouri Compromise--State Fair Debate--Peoria
Debate--Trumbull Elected--Letter to Robinson--The Know-Nothings--Decatur
Meeting--Bloomington Convention--Philadelphia Convention--Lincoln's Vote
for Vice-President--Frémont and Dayton--Lincoln's Campaign
Speeches--Chicago Banquet Speech
After the expiration of his term in Congress Mr. Lincoln applied himself
with unremitting assiduity to the practice of law, which the growth of
the State in population, and the widening of his acquaintanceship no
less than his own growth in experience and legal acumen, rendered ever
more important and absorbing.
"In 1854," he writes, "his profession had almost superseded the thought
of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
aroused him as he had never been before."
Not alone Mr. Lincoln, but, indeed, the whole nation, was so
aroused--the Democratic party, and nearly the entire South, to force the
passage of that repeal through Congress, and an alarmed majority,
including even a considerable minority of the Democratic party in the
North, to resist its passage.
Mr. Lincoln, of course, shared the general indignation of Northern
sentiment that the whole of the remaining Louisiana Territory, out of
which six States, and the greater part of two more, have since been
organized and admitted to the Union, should be opened to the possible
extension of slavery. But two points served specially to enlist his
energy in the controversy. One was personal, in that Senator Douglas of
Illinois, by whom the repeal was championed, and whose influence as a
free-State senator and powerful Democratic leader alone made the repeal
possible, had been his personal antagonist in Illinois politics for
almost twenty years. The other was moral, in that the new question
involved the elemental principles of the American government, the
fundamental maxim of the Declaration of Independence, that all men are
created equal. His intuitive logic needed no demonstration that bank,
tariff, internal improvements, the Mexican War, and their related
incidents, were questions of passing expediency; but that this sudden
reaction, needlessly grafted upon a routine statute to organize a new
territory, was the unmistakable herald of a coming struggle which might
transform republican institutions.
It was in January, 1854, that the accidents of a Senate debate threw
into Congress and upon the country the firebrand of the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise. The repeal was not consummated till the month of
May; and from May until the autumn elections the flame of acrimonious
discussion ran over the whole country like a wild fire. There is no
record that Mr. Lincoln took any public part in the discussion until the
month of September, but it is very clear that he not only carefully
watched its progress, but that he studied its phases of development, its
historical origins, and its legal bearings with close industry, and
gathered from party literature and legislative documents a harvest of
substantial facts and data, rather than the wordy campaign phrases and
explosive epithets with which more impulsive students and speakers were
content to produce their oratorical effects. Here we may again quote
Mr. Lincoln's exact written statement of the manner in which he resumed
his political activity:
"In the autumn of that year [1854] he took the stump, with no broader
practical aim or object than to secure, if possible, the reëlection of
Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once attracted a more
marked attention than they had ever before done. As the canvass
proceeded he was drawn to different parts of the State, outside of Mr.
Yates's district. He did not abandon the law, but gave his attention by
turns to that and politics. The State Agricultural Fair was at
Springfield that year, and Douglas was announced to speak there."
The new question had created great excitement and uncertainty in
Illinois politics, and there were abundant signs that it was beginning
to break up the organization of both the Whig and the Democratic
parties. This feeling brought together at the State fair an unusual
number of local leaders from widely scattered counties, and almost
spontaneously a sort of political tournament of speech-making broke out.
In this Senator Douglas, doubly conspicuous by his championship of the
Nebraska Bill in Congress, was expected to play the leading part, while
the opposition, by a common impulse, called upon Lincoln to answer him.
Lincoln performed the task with such aptness and force, with such
freshness of argument, illustrations from history, and citations from
authorities, as secured him a decided oratorical triumph, and lifted him
at a single bound to the leadership of the opposition to Douglas's
propagandism. Two weeks later, Douglas and Lincoln met at Peoria in a
similar debate, and on his return to Springfield Lincoln wrote out and
printed his speech in full.
The reader who carefully examines this speech will at once be impressed
with the genius which immediately made Mr. Lincoln a power in American
politics. His grasp of the subject is so comprehensive, his statement so
clear, his reasoning so convincing, his language so strong and eloquent
by turns, that the wonderful power he manifested in the discussions and
debates of the six succeeding years does not surpass, but only amplifies
this, his first examination of the whole brood of questions relating to
slavery precipitated upon the country by Douglas's repeal. After a
searching history of the Missouri Compromise, he attacks the
demoralizing effects and portentous consequences of its repeal.
"This declared indifference," he says, "but, as I must think, covert
real 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 among
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.... Slavery is
founded in the selfishness of man's nature--opposition to it in his love
of justice. These principles are an 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."
With argument as impetuous, and logic as inexorable, he disposes of
Douglas's plea of popular sovereignty:
"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 eternally right--but it has no
just application as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say, that
whether it has such application 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.... 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 a free people--a sad evidence
that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a principle,
we have ceased to revere.... 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."
If one compares the serious tone of this speech with the hard cider and
coon-skin buncombe of the Harrison campaign of 1840, and its lofty
philosophical thought with the humorous declamation of the Taylor
campaign of 1848, the speaker's advance in mental development at once
becomes apparent. In this single effort Mr. Lincoln had risen from the
class of the politician to the rank of the statesman. There is a
well-founded tradition that Douglas, disconcerted and troubled by
Lincoln's unexpected manifestation of power in the Springfield and
Peoria debates, sought a friendly interview with his opponent, and
obtained from him an agreement that neither one of them would make any
further speeches before the election.
The local interest in the campaign was greatly heightened by the fact
that the term of Douglas's Democratic colleague in the United States
Senate was about to expire, and that the State legislature to be elected
would have the choosing of his successor. It is not probable that
Lincoln built much hope upon this coming political chance, as the
Democratic party had been throughout the whole history of the State in
decided political control. It turned out, nevertheless, that in the
election held on November 7, an opposition majority of members of the
legislature was chosen, and Lincoln became, to outward appearances, the
most available opposition candidate. But party disintegration had been
only partial. Lincoln and his party friends still called themselves
Whigs, though they could muster only a minority of the total membership
of the legislature. The so-called Anti-Nebraska Democrats, opposing
Douglas and his followers, were still too full of traditional party
prejudice to help elect a pronounced Whig to the United States Senate,
though as strongly "Anti-Nebraska" as themselves. Five of them brought
forward, and stubbornly voted for, Lyman Trumbull, an Anti-Nebraska
Democrat of ability, who had been chosen representative in Congress from
the eighth Illinois District in the recent election. On the ninth ballot
it became evident to Lincoln that there was danger of a new Democratic
candidate, neutral on the Nebraska question, being chosen. In this
contingency, he manifested a personal generosity and political sagacity
far above the comprehension of the ordinary smart politician. He advised
and prevailed upon his Whig supporters to vote for Trumbull, and thus
secure a vote in the United States Senate against slavery extension. He
had rightly interpreted both statesmanship and human nature. His
personal sacrifice on this occasion contributed essentially to the
coming political regeneration of his State; and the five Anti-Nebraska
Democrats, who then wrought his defeat, became his most devoted personal
followers and efficient allies in his own later political triumph, which
adverse currents, however, were still to delay to a tantalizing degree.
The circumstances of his defeat at that critical stage of his career
must have seemed especially irritating, yet he preserved a most
remarkable equanimity of temper. "I regret my defeat moderately," he
wrote to a sympathizing friend, "but I am not nervous about it."
We may fairly infer that while Mr. Lincoln was not "nervous," he was
nevertheless deeply impressed by the circumstance as an illustration of
the grave nature of the pending political controversy. A letter written
by him about half a year later to a friend in Kentucky, is full of such
serious reflection as to show that the existing political conditions in
the United States had engaged his most profound thought and
investigation.
"That spirit," he wrote, "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 a 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--forever--half slave and half free?' The problem is too
mighty for me--may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution."
Not quite three years later Mr. Lincoln made the concluding problem of
this letter the text of a famous speech. On the day before his first
inauguration as President of the United States, the "Autocrat of all the
Russias," Alexander II, by imperial decree emancipated his serfs; while
six weeks after the inauguration the "American masters," headed by
Jefferson Davis, began the greatest war of modern times to perpetuate
and spread the institution of slavery.
The excitement produced by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in
1854, by the election forays of the Missouri Border Ruffians into Kansas
in 1855, and by the succeeding civil strife in 1856 in that Territory,
wrought an effective transformation of political parties in the Union,
in preparation for the presidential election of that year. This
transformation, though not seriously checked, was very considerably
complicated by an entirely new faction, or rather by the sudden revival
of an old one, which in the past had called itself Native Americanism,
and now assumed the name of the American Party, though it was more
popularly known by the nickname of "Know-Nothings," because of its
secret organization. It professed a certain hostility to foreign-born
voters and to the Catholic religion, and demanded a change in the
naturalization laws from a five years' to a twenty-one years'
preliminary residence. This faction had gained some sporadic successes
in Eastern cities, but when its national convention met in February,
1856, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President, the
pending slavery question, that it had hitherto studiously ignored,
caused a disruption of its organization; and though the adhering
delegates nominated Millard Fillmore for President and A.J. Donelson for
Vice-President, who remained in the field and were voted for, to some
extent, in the presidential election, the organization was present only
as a crippled and disturbing factor, and disappeared totally from
politics in the following years.
Both North and South, party lines adjusted themselves defiantly upon the
single issue, for or against men and measures representing the extension
or restriction of slavery. The Democratic party, though radically
changing its constituent elements, retained the party name, and became
the party of slavery extension, having forced the repeal and supported
the resulting measures; while the Whig party entirely disappeared, its
members in the Northern States joining the Anti-Nebraska Democrats in
the formation of the new Republican party. Southern Whigs either went
boldly into the Democratic camp, or followed for a while the delusive
prospects of the Know-Nothings.
This party change went on somewhat slowly in the State of Illinois,
because that State extended in territorial length from the latitude of
Massachusetts to that of Virginia, and its population contained an
equally diverse local sentiment. The northern counties had at once
become strongly Anti-Nebraska; the conservative Whig counties of the
center inclined to the Know-Nothings; while the Kentuckians and
Carolinians, who had settled the southern end, had strong antipathies to
what they called abolitionism, and applauded Douglas and repeal.
The agitation, however, swept on, and further hesitation became
impossible. Early in 1856 Mr. Lincoln began to take an active part in
organizing the Republican party. He attended a small gathering of
Anti-Nebraska editors in February, at Decatur, who issued a call for a
mass convention which met at Bloomington in May, at which the Republican
party of Illinois was formally constituted by an enthusiastic gathering
of local leaders who had formerly been bitter antagonists, but who now
joined their efforts to resist slavery extension. They formulated an
emphatic but not radical platform, and through a committee selected a
composite ticket of candidates for State offices, which the convention
approved by acclamation. The occasion remains memorable because of the
closing address made by Mr. Lincoln in one of his most impressive
oratorical moods. So completely were his auditors carried away by the
force of his denunciation of existing political evils, and by the
eloquence of his appeal for harmony and union to redress them, that
neither a verbatim report nor even an authentic abstract was made during
its delivery: but the lifting inspiration of its periods will never fade
from the memory of those who heard it.
About three weeks later, the first national convention of the Republican
party met at Philadelphia, and nominated John C. Frémont of California
for President. There was a certain fitness in this selection, from the
fact that he had been elected to the United States Senate when
California applied for admission as a free State, and that the
resistance of the South to her admission had been the entering wedge of
the slavery agitation of 1850. This, however, was in reality a minor
consideration. It was rather his romantic fame as a daring Rocky
Mountain explorer, appealing strongly to popular imagination and
sympathy, which gave him prestige as a presidential candidate.
It was at this point that the career of Abraham Lincoln had a narrow and
fortunate escape from a premature and fatal prominence. The Illinois
Bloomington convention had sent him as a delegate to the Philadelphia
convention; and, no doubt very unexpectedly to himself, on the first
ballot for a candidate for Vice-President he received one hundred and
ten votes against two hundred and fifty-nine votes for William L. Dayton
of New Jersey, upon which the choice of Mr. Dayton was at once made
unanimous. But the incident proves that Mr. Lincoln was already gaining
a national fame among the advanced leaders of political thought.
Happily, a mysterious Providence reserved him for larger and nobler
uses.
The nominations thus made at Philadelphia completed the array for the
presidential battle of 1856. The Democratic national convention had met
at Cincinnati on June 2, and nominated James Buchanan for President and
John C. Breckinridge for Vice-President. Its work presented two points
of noteworthy interest, namely: that the South, in an arrogant
pro-slavery dictatorship, relentlessly cast aside the claims of Douglas
and Pierce, who had effected the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and
nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that
super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently
rendered; also, that in a platform of intolerable length there was such
a cunning ambiguity of word and concealment of sense, such a double
dealing of phrase and meaning, as to render it possible that the
pro-slavery Democrats of the South and some antislavery Democrats of the
North might join for the last time to elect a "Northern man with
Southern principles."
Again, in this campaign, as in several former presidential elections,
Mr. Lincoln was placed upon the electoral ticket of Illinois, and he
made over fifty speeches in his own and adjoining States in behalf of
Frémont and Dayton. Not one of these speeches was reported in full, but
the few fragments which have been preserved show that he occupied no
doubtful ground on the pending issues. Already the Democrats were
raising the potent alarm cry that the Republican party was sectional,
and that its success would dissolve the Union. Mr. Lincoln did not then
dream that he would ever have to deal practically with such a
contingency, but his mind was very clear as to the method of meeting it.
Speaking for the Republican party, he said:
"But the Union in any event will not be dissolved. We don't want to
dissolve it, and if you attempt it, we won't let you. With the purse and
sword, the army and navy and treasury, in our hands and at our command,
you could not do it. This government would be very weak, indeed, if a
majority, with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury,
could not preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined,
unorganized minority. All this talk about the dissolution of the Union
is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the Union; you
shall not."
While the Republican party was much cast down by the election of
Buchanan in November, the Democrats found significant cause for
apprehension in the unexpected strength with which the Frémont ticket
had been supported in the free States. Especially was this true in
Illinois, where the adherents of Frémont and Fillmore had formed a
fusion, and thereby elected a Republican governor and State officers.
One of the strong elements of Mr. Lincoln's leadership was the cheerful
hope he was always able to inspire in his followers, and his abiding
faith in the correct political instincts of popular majorities. This
trait was happily exemplified in a speech he made at a Republican
banquet in Chicago about a month after the presidential election.
Recalling the pregnant fact that though Buchanan gained a majority of
the electoral vote, he was in a minority of about four hundred thousand
of the popular vote for President, Mr. Lincoln thus summed up the
chances of Republican success in the future:
"Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public
opinion, can change the government, practically, just so much. Public
opinion on any subject always has a 'central idea,' from which all its
minor thoughts radiate. That 'central idea' in our political public
opinion at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be,
'the equality of men.' And although it has always submitted patiently to
whatever of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity,
its constant working has been a steady progress towards the practical
equality of all men. The late presidential election was a struggle by
one party to discard that central idea and to substitute for it the
opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract; the workings of
which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its
extension to all countries and colors.... All of us who did not vote for
Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand.
But in the late contest we were divided between Frémont and Fillmore.
Can we not come together for the future? Let every one who really
believes, and is resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a
failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he
has done only what he thought best--let every such one have charity to
believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be
bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the
real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old 'central ideas' of the
republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us; God is with us. We
shall again be able, not to declare that 'all States as States are
equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew
the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more,
that 'all men are created equal.'"