IX

The Senatorial Contest in Illinois--"House Divided against Itself"

Speech--The Lincoln-Douglas Debates--The Freeport Doctrine--Douglas

Deposed from Chairmanship of Committee on Territories--Benjamin on

Douglas--Lincoln's Popular Majority--Douglas Gains Legislature--Greeley,

Crittenden, _et al._--"The Fight Must Go On"--Douglas's Southern

Speeches--Senator Brown's Questions--Lincoln's Warning against Popular

Sovereignty--The War of Pamphlets--Lincoln's Ohio Speeches--The John

Brown Raid--Lincoln's Comment

The hostility of the Buchanan administration to Douglas for his part in

defeating the Lecompton Constitution, and the multiplying chances

against him, served only to stimulate his followers in Illinois to

greater efforts to secure his reëlection. Precisely the same elements

inspired the hope and increased the enthusiasm of the Republicans of the

State to accomplish his defeat. For a candidate to oppose the "Little

Giant," there could be no rival in the Republican ranks to Abraham

Lincoln. He had in 1854 yielded his priority of claim to Trumbull; he

alone had successfully encountered Douglas in debate. The political

events themselves seemed to have selected and pitted these two champions

against each other. Therefore, when the Illinois State convention on

June 16, 1858, passed by acclamation a separate resolution, "That

Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of

Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A.

Douglas," it only recorded the well-known judgment of the party. After

its routine work was finished, the convention adjourned to meet again in

the hall of the State House at Springfield at eight o'clock in the

evening. At that hour Mr. Lincoln appeared before the assembled

delegates and delivered a carefully studied speech, which has become

historic. After a few opening sentences, he uttered the following

significant prediction:

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this

government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not

expect the Union to be dissolved--I do not expect the house to fall--but

I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or

all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further

spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the

belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates

will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the

States, old as well as new, North as well as South."

Then followed his critical analysis of the legislative objects and

consequences of the Nebraska Bill, and the judicial effects and

doctrines of the Dred Scott decision, with their attendant and related

incidents. The first of these had opened all the national territory to

slavery. The second established the constitutional interpretation that

neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could exclude slavery

from any United States territory. The President had declared Kansas to

be already practically a slave State. Douglas had announced that he did

not care whether slavery was voted down or voted up. Adding to these

many other indications of current politics, Mr. Lincoln proceeded:

"Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche,

which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision

declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a

State to exclude slavery from its limits.... Such a decision is all that

slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the States.... We shall

lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the

verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality,

instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

To avert this danger, Mr. Lincoln declared it was the duty of

Republicans to overthrow both Douglas and the Buchanan political

dynasty.

"Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen

hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of

resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against

us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from

the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the

constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we

brave all then to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering,

dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not

fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate

or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to

come."

Lincoln's speech excited the greatest interest everywhere throughout the

free States. The grave peril he so clearly pointed out came home to the

people of the North almost with the force of a revelation; and

thereafter their eyes were fixed upon the Illinois senatorial campaign

with undivided attention. Another incident also drew to it the equal

notice and interest of the politicians of the slave States.

Within a month from the date of Lincoln's speech, Douglas returned from

Washington and began his campaign of active speech-making in Illinois.

The fame he had acquired as the champion of the Nebraska Bill, and, more

recently, the prominence into which his opposition to the Lecompton

fraud had lifted him in Congress, attracted immense crowds to his

meetings, and for a few days it seemed as if the mere contagion of

popular enthusiasm would submerge all intelligent political discussion.

To counteract this, Mr. Lincoln, at the advice of his leading friends,

sent him a letter challenging him to joint public debate. Douglas

accepted the challenge, but with evident hesitation; and it was arranged

that they should jointly address the same meetings at seven towns in the

State, on dates extending through August, September, and October. The

terms were, that, alternately, one should speak an hour in opening, the

other an hour and a half in reply, and the first again have half an hour

in closing. This placed the contestants upon an equal footing before

their audiences. Douglas's senatorial prestige afforded him no

advantage. Face to face with the partizans of both, gathered in immense

numbers and alert with critical and jealous watchfulness, there was no

evading the square, cold, rigid test of skill in argument and truth in

principle. The processions and banners, the music and fireworks, of both

parties, were stilled and forgotten while the audience listened with

high-strung nerves to the intellectual combat of three hours' duration.

It would be impossible to give the scope and spirit of these famous

debates in the space allotted to these pages, but one of the

turning-points in the oratorical contest needs particular mention.

Northern Illinois, peopled mostly from free States, and southern

Illinois, peopled mostly from slave States, were radically opposed in

sentiment on the slavery question; even the old Whigs of central

Illinois had to a large extent joined the Democratic party, because of

their ineradicable prejudice against what they stigmatized as

"abolitionism." To take advantage of this prejudice, Douglas, in his

opening speech in the first debate at Ottawa in northern Illinois,

propounded to Lincoln a series of questions designed to commit him to

strong antislavery doctrines. He wanted to know whether Mr. Lincoln

stood pledged to the repeal of the fugitive-slave law; against the

admission of any more slave States; to the abolition of slavery in the

District of Columbia; to the prohibition of the slave trade between

different States; to prohibit slavery in all the Territories; to oppose

the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery were first

prohibited therein.

In their second joint debate at Freeport, Lincoln answered that he was

pledged to none of these propositions, except the prohibition of slavery

in all Territories of the United States. In turn he propounded four

questions to Douglas, the second of which was:

"Can the people of a United States Territory in any lawful way, against

the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its

limits prior to the formation of a State constitution?"

Mr. Lincoln had long and carefully studied the import and effect of this

interrogatory, and nearly a month before, in a private letter,

accurately foreshadowed Douglas's course upon it:

"You shall have hard work," he wrote, "to get him directly to the point

whether a territorial legislature has or has not the power to exclude

slavery. But if you succeed in bringing him to it--though he will be

compelled to say it possesses no such power--he will instantly take

ground that slavery cannot actually exist in the Territories unless the

people desire it and so give it protection by territorial legislation.

If this offends the South, he will let it offend them, as at all events

he means to hold on to his chances in Illinois."

On the night before the Freeport debate the question had also been

considered in a hurried caucus of Lincoln's party friends. They all

advised against propounding it, saying, "If you do, you can never be

senator." "Gentlemen," replied Lincoln, "I am killing larger game; if

Douglas answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is

worth a hundred of this."

As Lincoln had predicted, Douglas had no resource but to repeat the

sophism he had hastily invented in his Springfield speech of the

previous year.

"It matters not," replied he, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter

decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go

into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful

means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that

slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by

local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be

established by the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to

slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by

unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into

their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation

will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the

Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the

people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and

complete under the Nebraska Bill."

In the course of the next joint debate at Jonesboro', Mr. Lincoln easily

disposed of this sophism by showing: 1. That, practically, slavery had

worked its way into Territories without "police regulations" in almost

every instance; 2. That United States courts were established to protect

and enforce rights under the Constitution; 3. That members of a

territorial legislature could not violate their oath to support the

Constitution of the United States; and, 4. That in default of

legislative support, Congress would be bound to supply it for any right

under the Constitution.

The serious aspect of the matter, however, to Douglas was not the

criticism of the Republicans, but the view taken by Southern Democratic

leaders, of his "Freeport doctrine," or doctrine of "unfriendly

legislation." His opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in the

Senate, grievous stumbling-block to their schemes as it had proved,

might yet be passed over as a reckless breach of party discipline; but

this new announcement at Freeport was unpardonable doctrinal heresy, as

rank as the abolitionism of Giddings and Lovejoy.

The Freeport joint debate took place August 27, 1858. When Congress

convened on the first Monday in December of the same year, one of the

first acts of the Democratic senators was to put him under party ban by

removing him from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, a

position he had held for eleven years. In due time, also, the Southern

leaders broke up the Charleston convention rather than permit him to be

nominated for President; and, three weeks later, Senator Benjamin of

Louisiana frankly set forth, in a Senate speech, the light in which they

viewed his apostacy:

"We accuse him for this, to wit: that having bargained with us upon a

point upon which we were at issue, that it should be considered a

judicial point; that he would abide the decision; that he would act

under the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party; that having

said that to us here in the Senate, he went home, and, under the stress

of a local election, his knees gave way; his whole person trembled. His

adversary stood upon principle and was beaten; and, lo! he is the

candidate of a mighty party for the presidency of the United States. The

senator from Illinois faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered;

but, lo! the grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp,

because of his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the

canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost him the

loss of the presidency of the United States."

In addition to the seven joint debates, both Lincoln and Douglas made

speeches at separate meetings of their own during almost every day of

the three months' campaign, and sometimes two or three speeches a day.

At the election which was held on November 2, 1858, a legislature was

chosen containing fifty-four Democrats and forty-six Republicans,

notwithstanding the fact that the Republicans had a plurality of

thirty-eight hundred and twenty-one on the popular vote. But the

apportionment was based on the census of 1850, and did not reflect

recent changes in political sentiment, which, if fairly represented,

would have given them an increased strength of from six to ten members

in the legislature. Another circumstance had great influence in causing

Lincoln's defeat. Douglas's opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in

Congress had won him great sympathy among a few Republican leaders in

the Eastern States. It was even whispered that Seward wished Douglas to

succeed as a strong rebuke to the Buchanan administration. The most

potent expression and influence of this feeling came, however, from

another quarter. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky, who, since Clay's death

in 1852, was the acknowledged leader of what remained of the Whig party,

wrote a letter during the campaign, openly advocating the reëlection of

Douglas, and this, doubtless, influenced the vote of all the Illinois

Whigs who had not yet formally joined the Republican party. Lincoln's

own analysis gives, perhaps, the clearest view of the unusual political

conditions:

"Douglas had three or four very distinguished men of the most extreme

antislavery views of any men in the Republican party expressing their

desire for his reëlection to the Senate last year. That would of itself

have seemed to be a little wonderful, but that wonder is heightened when

we see that Wise of Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who

believes in the divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire

that Douglas should be reëlected; that another man that may be said to

be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your

own State, was also agreeing with the antislavery men in the North that

Douglas ought to be reëlected. Still to heighten the wonder, a senator

from Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender and

endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the

antislavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him, and equally

opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writing letters to Illinois to

secure the reëlection of Douglas. Now that all these conflicting

elements should be brought, while at daggers' points with one another,

to support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider.

It is quite probable that each of these classes of men thought by the

reëlection of Douglas their peculiar views would gain something; it is

probable that the antislavery men thought their views would gain

something that Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as regards their

opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought that his views would gain

something, although he was opposed to both these other men. It is

probable that each and all of them thought they were using Douglas, and

it is yet an unsolved problem whether he was not using them all."

Lincoln, though beaten in his race for the Senate, was by no means

dismayed, nor did he lose his faith in the ultimate triumph of the cause

he had so ably championed. Writing to a friend, he said:

"You doubtless have seen ere this the result of the election here. Of

course I wished, but I did not much expect a better result.... I am glad

I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable

question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though

I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made

some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I

am gone."

And to another:

"Yours of the 13th was received some days ago. The fight must go on. The

cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even

one hundred defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the

late contest, both as the best means to break down and to uphold the

slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in

harmony long. Another explosion will soon come."

In his "House divided against itself" speech, Lincoln had emphatically

cautioned Republicans not to be led on a false trail by the opposition

Douglas had made to the Lecompton Constitution; that his temporary

quarrel with the Buchanan administration could not be relied upon to

help overthrow that pro-slavery dynasty.

"How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about

it. His avowed mission is impressing the 'public heart' to care nothing

about it.... Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle

so that our great cause may have assistance from his great ability, I

hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But, clearly, he is

not now with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to

be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own

undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the

work, who do care for the result."

Since the result of the Illinois senatorial campaign had assured the

reëlection of Douglas to the Senate, Lincoln's sage advice acquired a

double significance and value. Almost immediately after the close of the

campaign Douglas took a trip through the Southern States, and in

speeches made by him at Memphis, at New Orleans, and at Baltimore sought

to regain the confidence of Southern politicians by taking decidedly

advanced ground toward Southern views on the slavery question. On the

sugar plantations of Louisiana he said, it was not a question between

the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. He

would say that between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of

the negro; but between the negro and the white man, he would go for the

white man. The Almighty had drawn a line on this continent, on the one

side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor? on the other,

by white labor. That line did not run on 36° and 30' [the Missouri

Compromise line], for 36° and 30' runs over mountains and through

valleys. But this slave line, he said, meanders in the sugar-fields and

plantations of the South, and the people living in their different

localities and in the Territories must determine for themselves whether

their "middle belt" were best adapted to slavery or free labor. He

advocated the eventual annexation of Cuba and Central America. Still

going a step further, he laid down a far-reaching principle.

"It is a law of humanity," he said, "a law of civilization that whenever

a man or a race of men show themselves incapable of managing their own

affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of

performing the duty.... In accordance with this principle, I assert that

the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times, and in all

countries, has shown itself incapable of self-government."

This pro-slavery coquetting, however, availed him nothing, as he felt

himself obliged in the same speeches to defend his Freeport doctrine.

Having taken his seat in Congress, Senator Brown of Mississippi, toward

the close of the short session, catechized him sharply on this point.

"If the territorial legislature refuses to act," he inquired "will you

act? If it pass unfriendly acts, will you pass friendly? If it pass laws

hostile to slavery, will you annul them, and substitute laws favoring

slavery in their stead?"

There was no evading these direct questions, and Douglas answered

frankly:

"I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I do not believe a

Democratic candidate can ever carry any one Democratic State of the

North on the platform that it is the duty of the Federal government to

force the people of a Territory to have slavery when they do not want

it."

An extended discussion between Northern and Southern Democratic

senators followed the colloquy, which showed that the Freeport doctrine

had opened up an irreparable schism between the Northern and Southern

wings of the Democratic party.

In all the speeches made by Douglas during his Southern tour, he

continually referred to Mr. Lincoln as the champion of abolitionism, and

to his doctrines as the platform of the abolition or Republican party.

The practical effect of this course was to extend and prolong the

Illinois senatorial campaign of 1858, to expand it to national breadth,

and gradually to merge it in the coming presidential campaign. The

effect of this was not only to keep before the public the position of

Lincoln as the Republican champion of Illinois, but also gradually to

lift him into general recognition as a national leader. Throughout the

year 1859 politicians and newspapers came to look upon Lincoln as the

one antagonist who could at all times be relied on to answer and refute

the Douglas arguments. His propositions were so forcible and direct, his

phraseology so apt and fresh, that they held the attention and excited

comment. A letter written by him in answer to an invitation to attend a

celebration of Jefferson's birthday in Boston, contains some notable

passages:

"Soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson

from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with great

confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler

propositions of Euclid are true; but, nevertheless, he would fail,

utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The

principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society.

And yet they are denied and evaded with no small show of success. One

dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly calls

them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue that they apply

to 'superior races.' These expressions, differing in form, are identical

in object and effect--the supplanting the principles of free government,

and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would

delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They

are the vanguard, the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must

repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of

compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no

slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves,

and, under a just God, cannot long retain it."

Douglas's quarrel with the Buchanan administration had led many

Republicans to hope that they might be able to utilize his name and his

theory of popular sovereignty to aid them in their local campaigns.

Lincoln knew from his recent experience the peril of this delusive party

strategy, and was constant and earnest in his warnings against adopting

it. In a little speech after the Chicago municipal election on March 1,

1859, he said:

"If we, the Republicans of this State, had made Judge Douglas our

candidate for the Senate of the United States last year, and had elected

him, there would to-day be no Republican party in this Union.... Let the

Republican party of Illinois dally with Judge Douglas, let them fall in

behind him and make him their candidate, and they do not absorb him--he

absorbs them. They would come out at the end all Douglas men, all

claimed by him as having indorsed every one of his doctrines upon the

great subject with which the whole nation is engaged at this hour--that

the question of negro slavery is simply a question of dollars and

cents? that the Almighty has drawn a line across the continent, on one

side of which labor--the cultivation of the soil--must always be

performed by slaves. It would be claimed that we, like him, do not care

whether slavery is voted up or voted down. Had we made him our candidate

and given him a great majority, we should never have heard an end of

declarations by him that we had indorsed all these dogmas."

To a Kansas friend he wrote on May 14, 1859:

"You will probably adopt resolutions in the nature of a platform. I

think the only temptation will be to lower the Republican standard in

order to gather recruits In my judgment, such a step would be a serious

mistake, and open a gap through which more would pass out than pass in.

And this would be the same whether the letting down should be in

deference to Douglasism, or to the Southern opposition element; either

would surrender the object of the Republican organization--the

preventing of the spread and nationalization of slavery.... Let a union

be attempted on the basis of ignoring the slavery question, and

magnifying other questions which the people are just now not caring

about, and it will result in gaining no single electoral vote in the

South, and losing every one in the North."

To Schuyler Colfax (afterward Vice-President) he said in a letter dated

July 6, 1859:

"My main object in such conversation would be to hedge against divisions

in the Republican ranks generally and particularly for the contest of

1860. The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to

'platform' for something which will be popular just there, but which,

nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere and especially in a national

convention. As instances: the movement against foreigners in

Massachusetts; in New Hampshire, to make obedience to the

fugitive-slave law punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to repeal the

fugitive-slave law; and squatter sovereignty, in Kansas. In these things

there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national

conventions, if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of

conventions is very likely to find its way into them."

And again, to another warm friend in Columbus, Ohio, he wrote in a

letter dated July 28, 1859:

"There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me some

uneasiness. It is their leaning toward 'popular sovereignty.' There are

three substantial objections to this. First, no party can command

respect which sustains this year what it opposed last. Secondly Douglas

(who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious

one) would have little support in the North, and, by consequence, no

capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for his friends thus

magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's

popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a just principle,

nationalizes slavery, and revives the African slave-trade inevitably.

Taking slaves into new Territories, and buying slaves in Africa, are

identical things, identical rights or identical wrongs, and the argument

which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for

a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from

having slaves, and when you have found it, it will be an equally good

one why Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from importing

slaves from Africa."

An important election occurred in the State of Ohio in the autumn of

1859, and during the canvass Douglas made two speeches in which, as

usual, his pointed attacks were directed against Lincoln by name. Quite

naturally, the Ohio Republicans called Lincoln to answer him, and the

marked impression created by Lincoln's replies showed itself not alone

in their unprecedented circulation in print in newspapers and pamphlets,

but also in the decided success which the Ohio Republicans gained at the

polls. About the same time, also, Douglas printed a long political essay

in "Harper's Magazine," using as a text quotations from Lincoln's "House

divided against itself" speech, and Seward's Rochester speech defining

the "irrepressible conflict." Attorney-General Black of President

Buchanan's cabinet here entered the lists with an anonymously printed

pamphlet in pungent criticism of Douglas's "Harper" essay; which again

was followed by reply and rejoinder on both sides.

Into this field of overheated political controversy the news of the John

Brown raid at Harper's Ferry on Sunday, October 19, fell with startling

portent. The scattering and tragic fighting in the streets of the little

town on Monday; the dramatic capture of the fanatical leader on Tuesday

by a detachment of Federal marines under the command of Robert E. Lee,

the famous Confederate general of subsequent years; the undignified

haste of his trial and condemnation by the Virginia authorities; the

interviews of Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative

Vallandigham with the prisoner; his sentence, and execution on the

gallows on December 2; and the hysterical laudations of his acts by a

few prominent and extreme abolitionists in the East, kept public

opinion, both North and South, in an inflamed and feverish state for

nearly six weeks.

Mr. Lincoln's habitual freedom from passion, and the steady and

common-sense judgment he applied to this exciting event, which threw

almost everybody into an extreme of feeling or utterance, are well

illustrated by the temperate criticism he made of it a few months later:

"John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It

was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which

the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the

slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not

succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many

attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and

emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he

fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the

attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's

attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry

were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast

blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other,

does not disprove the sameness of the two things."

X

Lincoln's Kansas Speeches--The Cooper Institute Speech--New England

Speeches--The Democratic Schism--Senator Brown's Resolutions--Jefferson

Davis's Resolutions--The Charleston Convention--Majority and Minority

Reports--Cotton State Delegations Secede--Charleston Convention

Adjourns--Democratic Baltimore Convention Splits--Breckinridge

Nominated--Douglas Nominated--Bell Nominated by Union Constitutional

Convention--Chicago Convention--Lincoln's Letters to Pickett and

Judd--The Pivotal States--Lincoln Nominated

During the month of December, 1859, Mr. Lincoln was invited to the

Territory of Kansas, where he made speeches at a number of its new and

growing towns. In these speeches he laid special emphasis upon the

necessity of maintaining undiminished the vigor of the Republican

organization and the high plane of the Republican doctrine.

"We want, and must have," said he, "a national policy as to slavery

which deals with it as being a wrong. Whoever would prevent slavery

becoming national and perpetual yields all when he yields to a policy

which treats it either as being right, or as being a matter of

indifference." "To effect our main object we have to employ auxiliary

means. We must hold conventions, adopt platforms, select candidates, and

carry elections. At every step we must be true to the main purpose. If

we adopt a platform falling short of our principle, or elect a man

rejecting our principle, we not only take nothing affirmative by our

success, but we draw upon us the positive embarrassment of seeming

ourselves to have abandoned our principle."

A still more important service, however, in giving the Republican

presidential campaign of 1860 precise form and issue was rendered by him

during the first three months of the new year. The public mind had

become so preoccupied with the dominant subject of national politics,

that a committee of enthusiastic young Republicans of New York and

Brooklyn arranged a course of public lectures by prominent statesmen and

Mr. Lincoln was invited to deliver the third one of the series. The

meeting took place in the hall of the Cooper Institute in New York, on

the evening of February 27, 1860; and the audience was made up of ladies

and gentlemen comprising the leading representatives of the wealth,

culture, and influence of the great metropolis.

Mr. Lincoln's name and arguments had filled so large a space in Eastern

newspapers, both friendly and hostile, that the listeners before him

were intensely curious to see and hear this rising Western politician.

The West was even at that late day but imperfectly understood by the

East. The poets and editors, the bankers and merchants of New York

vaguely remembered having read in their books that it was the home of

Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, the country of bowie-knives and pistols,

of steamboat explosions and mobs, of wild speculation and the

repudiation of State debts; and these half-forgotten impressions had

lately been vividly recalled by a several years' succession of newspaper

reports retailing the incidents of Border Ruffian violence and

free-State guerrilla reprisals during the civil war in Kansas. What was

to be the type, the character, the language of this speaker? How would

he impress the great editor Horace Greeley, who sat among the invited

guests? David Dudley Field, the great lawyer, who escorted him to the

platform; William Cullen Bryant, the great poet, who presided over the

meeting?

Judging from after effects, the audience quickly forgot these

questioning thoughts. They had but time to note Mr. Lincoln's impressive

stature, his strongly marked features, the clear ring of his rather

high-pitched voice, and the almost commanding earnestness of his manner.

His beginning foreshadowed a dry argument using as a text Douglas's

phrase that "our fathers, when they framed the government under which we

live, understood this question just as well and even better than we do

now," But the concise statements, the strong links of reasoning, and the

irresistible conclusions of the argument with which the speaker followed

his close historical analysis of how "our fathers" understood "this

question," held every listener as though each were individually merged

in the speaker's thought and demonstration.

"It is surely safe to assume," said he, with emphasis, "that the

thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution and the seventy-six

members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken

together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called 'our

fathers who framed the government under which we live.' And, so

assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole

life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local

from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the

Federal government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories."

With equal skill he next dissected the complaints, the demands, and the

threats to dissolve the Union made by the Southern States, pointed out

their emptiness, their fallacy, and their injustice, and defined the

exact point and center of the agitation.

"Holding, as they do," said he, "that slavery is morally right and

socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national

recognition of it, as a legal right and a social blessing. Nor can we

justifiably withhold this on any ground, save our conviction that

slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and

constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced

and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its

nationality--its universality! If it is wrong, they cannot justly insist

upon its extension--its enlargement. All they ask we could readily

grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily

grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our

thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole

controversy.... Wrong as we think slavery is we can yet afford to let it

alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising

from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will

prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to

overrun us here in the free States? If our sense of duty forbids this,

then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be

diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so

industriously plied and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some

middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a

man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy

of 'don't care,' on a question about which all true men do care; such as

Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to disunionists;

reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the

righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring

men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington did. Neither

let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor

frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of

dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in

that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."

The close attention bestowed on its delivery, the hearty applause that

greeted its telling points, and the enthusiastic comments of the

Republican journals next morning showed that Lincoln's Cooper Institute

speech had taken New York by storm. It was printed in full in four of

the leading New York dailies, and at once went into large circulation in

carefully edited pamphlet editions. From New York, Lincoln made a tour

of speech-making through several of the New England States, and was

everywhere received with enthusiastic welcome and listened to with an

eagerness that bore a marked result in their spring elections. The

interest of the factory men who listened to these addresses was equaled,

perhaps excelled, by the gratified surprise of college professors when

they heard the style and method of a popular Western orator that would

bear the test of their professional criticism and compare with the best

examples in their standard text-books.

The attitude of the Democratic party in the coming presidential campaign

was now also rapidly taking shape. Great curiosity existed whether the

radical differences between its Northern and Southern wings could by any

possibility be removed or adjusted, whether the adherents of Douglas and

those of Buchanan could be brought to join in a common platform and in

the support of a single candidate. The Democratic leaders in the

Southern States had become more and more out-spoken in their pro-slavery

demands. They had advanced step by step from the repeal of the Missouri

Compromise in 1854, the attempt to capture Kansas by Missouri invasions

in 1855 and 1856, the support of the Dred Scott decision and the

Lecompton fraud in 1857, the repudiation of Douglas's Freeport heresy in

1858, to the demand for a congressional slave code for the Territories

and the recognition of the doctrine of property in slaves. These last

two points they had distinctly formulated in the first session of the

Thirty-sixth Congress. On January 18, 1860, Senator Brown of Mississippi

introduced into the Senate two resolutions, one asserting the

nationality of slavery, the other that, when necessary, Congress should

pass laws for its protection in the Territories. On February 2 Jefferson

Davis introduced another series of resolutions intended to serve as a

basis for the national Democratic platform, the central points of which

were that the right to take and hold slaves in the Territories could

neither be impaired nor annulled, and that it was the duty of Congress

to supply any deficiency of laws for its protection. Perhaps even more

significant than these formulated doctrines was the pro-slavery spirit

manifested in the congressional debates. Two months were wasted in a

parliamentary struggle to prevent the election of the Republican, John

Sherman, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, because the

Southern members charged that he had recommended an "abolition" book;

during which time the most sensational and violent threats of disunion

were made in both the House and the Senate, containing repeated

declarations that they would never submit to the inauguration of a

"Black Republican" President.

When the national Democratic convention met at Charleston, on April 23,

1860, there at once became evident the singular condition that the

delegates from the free States were united and enthusiastic in their

determination to secure the nomination of Douglas as the Democratic

candidate for President, while the delegates from the slave States were

equally united and determined upon forcing the acceptance of an extreme

pro-slavery platform. All expectations of a compromise, all hope of

coming to an understanding by juggling omissions or evasions in their

declaration of party principles were quickly dissipated. The platform

committee, after three days and nights of fruitless effort, presented

two antagonistic reports. The majority report declared that neither

Congress nor a territorial legislature could abolish or prohibit slavery

in the Territories, and that it was the duty of the Federal government

to protect it when necessary. To this doctrine the Northern members

could not consent; but they were willing to adopt the ambiguous

declaration that property rights in slaves were judicial in their

character, and that they would abide the decisions of the Supreme Court

on such questions.

The usual expedient of recommitting both reports brought no relief from

the deadlock. A second majority and a second minority report exhibited

the same irreconcilable divergence in slightly different language, and

the words of mutual defiance exchanged in debating the first report rose

to a parliamentary storm when the second came under discussion. On the

seventh day the convention came to a vote, and, the Northern delegates

being in the majority, the minority report was substituted for that of

the majority of the committee by one hundred and sixty-five to one

hundred and thirty-eight delegates--in other words, the Douglas

platform was declared adopted. Upon this the delegates of the cotton

States--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas,

and Arkansas--withdrew from the convention. It soon appeared, however,

that the Douglas delegates had achieved only a barren victory. Their

majority could indeed adopt a platform, but, under the acknowledged

two-thirds rule which governs Democratic national conventions, they had

not sufficient votes to nominate their candidate. During the fifty-seven

ballots taken, the Douglas men could muster only one hundred and

fifty-two and one half votes of the two hundred and two necessary to a

choice; and to prevent mere slow disintegration the convention adjourned

on the tenth day, under a resolution to reassemble in Baltimore on June

18.

Nothing was gained, however, by the delay. In the interim, Jefferson

Davis and nineteen other Southern leaders published an address

commending the withdrawal of the cotton States delegates, and in a

Senate debate Davis laid down the plain proposition, "We want nothing

more than a simple declaration that negro slaves are property, and we

want the recognition of the obligation of the Federal government to

protect that property like all other."

Upon the reassembling of the Charleston convention at Baltimore, it

underwent a second disruption on the fifth day; the Northern wing

nominated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and the Southern wing John C.

Breckinridge of Kentucky as their respective candidates for President.

In the meanwhile, also, regular and irregular delegates from some

twenty-two States, representing fragments of the old Whig party, had

convened at Baltimore on May 9 and nominated John Bell of Tennessee as

their candidate for President, upon a platform ignoring the slavery

issue and declaring that they would "recognize no other political

principle than the Constitution of the country, the union of the States,

and the enforcement of the laws."

In the long contest between slavery extension and slavery restriction

which was now approaching its culmination the growing demands and

increasing bitterness of the pro-slavery party had served in an equal

degree to intensify the feelings and stimulate the efforts of the

Republican party; and, remembering the encouraging opposition strength

which the united vote of Frémont and Fillmore had shown in 1856, they

felt encouraged to hope for possible success in 1860, since the Fillmore

party had practically disappeared throughout the free States. When,

therefore, the Charleston convention was rent asunder and adjourned on

May 10 without making a nomination, the possibility of Republican

victory seemed to have risen to probability. Such a feeling inspired the

eager enthusiasm of the delegates to the Republican national convention

which met, according to appointment, at Chicago on May 16.

A large, temporary wooden building, christened "The Wigwam," had been

erected in which to hold its sessions, and it was estimated that ten

thousand persons were assembled in it to witness the proceedings.

William H. Seward of New York was recognized as the leading candidate,

but Chase of Ohio, Cameron of Pennsylvania, Bates of Missouri, and

several prominent Republicans from other States were known to have

active and zealous followers. The name of Abraham Lincoln had also often

been mentioned during his growing fame, and, fully a year before, an

ardent Republican editor of Illinois had requested permission to

announce him in his newspaper. Lincoln, however, discouraged such

action at that time, answering him:

"As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must in candor say I do

not think myself fit for the presidency. I certainly am flattered and

gratified that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but

I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as

you suggest, should be made."

He had given an equally positive answer to an eager Ohio friend in the

preceding July; but about Christmas 1859, an influential caucus of his

strongest Illinois adherents made a personal request that he would

permit them to use his name, and he gave his consent, not so much in any

hope of becoming the nominee for President, as in possibly reaching the

second place on the ticket; or at least of making such a showing of

strength before the convention as would aid him in his future senatorial

ambition at home, or perhaps carry him into the cabinet of the

Republican President, should one succeed. He had not been eager to enter

the lists, but once having agreed to do so, it was but natural that he

should manifest a becoming interest, subject, however, now as always, to

his inflexible rule of fair dealing and honorable faith to all his party

friends.

"I do not understand Trumbull and myself to be rivals," he wrote

December 9, 1859. "You know I am pledged not to enter a struggle with

him for the seat in the Senate now occupied by him; and yet I would

rather have a full term in the Senate than in the presidency."

And on February 9 he wrote to the same Illinois friend:

"I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me not to be

nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for

me not to get the Illinois delegates. What I expected when I wrote the

the letter to Messrs. Dole and others is now happening. Your discomfited

assailants are most bitter against me; and they will, for revenge upon

me, lay to the Bates egg in the South, and to the Seward egg in the

North, and go far toward squeezing me out in the middle with nothing.

Can you not help me a little in this matter in your end of the

vineyard?"

It turned out that the delegates whom the Illinois State convention sent

to the national convention at Chicago were men not only of exceptional

standing and ability, but filled with the warmest zeal for Mr. Lincoln's

success; and they were able at once to impress upon delegates from other

States his sterling personal worth and fitness, and his superior

availability. It needed but little political arithmetic to work out the

sum of existing political chances. It was almost self-evident that in

the coming November election victory or defeat would hang upon the

result in the four pivotal States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana,

and Illinois. It was quite certain that no Republican candidate could

carry a single one of the fifteen slave States; and equally sure that

Breckinridge, on his extreme pro-slavery platform, could not carry a

single one of the eighteen free States. But there was a chance that one

or more of these four pivotal free States might cast its vote for

Douglas and popular sovereignty.

A candidate was needed, therefore, who could successfully cope with

Douglas and the Douglas theory; and this ability had been convincingly

demonstrated by Lincoln. As a mere personal choice, a majority of the

convention would have preferred Seward; but in the four pivotal States

there were many voters who believed Seward's antislavery views to be

too radical. They shrank apprehensively from the phrase in one of his

speeches that "there is a higher law than the Constitution." These

pivotal States all lay adjoining slave States, and their public opinion

was infected with something of the undefined dread of "abolitionism."

When the delegates of the pivotal States were interviewed, they frankly

confessed that they could not carry their States for Seward, and that

would mean certain defeat if he were the nominee for President. For

their voters Lincoln stood on more acceptable ground. His speeches had

been more conservative; his local influence in his own State of Illinois

was also a factor not to be idly thrown away.

Plain, practical reasoning of this character found ready acceptance

among the delegates to the convention. Their eagerness for the success

of the cause largely overbalanced their personal preferences for

favorite aspirants. When the convention met, the fresh, hearty

hopefulness of its members was a most inspiring reflection of the public

opinion in the States that sent them. They went at their work with an

earnestness which was an encouraging premonition of success, and they

felt a gratifying support in the presence of the ten thousand spectators

who looked on at their work. Few conventions have ever been pervaded by

such a depth of feeling, or exhibited such a reserve of latent

enthusiasm. The cheers that greeted the entrance of popular favorites,

and the short speeches on preliminary business, ran and rolled through

the great audience in successive moving waves of sound that were echoed

and reëchoed from side to side of the vast building. Not alone the

delegates on the central platform, but the multitude of spectators as

well, felt that they were playing a part in a great historical event.

The temporary, and afterward the permanent organization, was finished on

the first day, with somewhat less than usual of the wordy and

tantalizing small talk which these routine proceedings always call

forth. On the second day the platform committee submitted its work,

embodying the carefully considered and skilfully framed body of

doctrines upon which the Republican party, made up only four years

before from such previously heterogeneous and antagonistic political

elements was now able to find common and durable ground of agreement.

Around its central tenet, which denied "the authority of Congress, of a

territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence

to slavery in any territory of the United States," were grouped vigorous

denunciations of the various steps and incidents of the pro-slavery

reaction, and its prospective demands; while its positive

recommendations embraced the immediate admission of Kansas, free

homesteads to actual settlers, river and harbor improvements of a

national character, a railroad to the Pacific Ocean, and the maintenance

of existing naturalization laws.

The platform was about to be adopted without objection when a flurry of

discussion arose over an amendment, proposed by Mr. Giddings of Ohio, to

incorporate in it that phrase of the Declaration of Independence which

declares the right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of

happiness. Impatience was at once manifested lest any change should

produce endless delay and dispute. "I believe in the Ten Commandments,"

commented a member, "but I do not want them in a political platform";

and the proposition was voted down. Upon this the old antislavery

veteran felt himself agrieved, and, taking up his hat, marched out of

the convention. In the course of an hour's desultory discussion

however, a member, with stirring oratorical emphasis, asked whether the

convention was prepared to go upon record before the country as voting

down the words of the Declaration of Independence--whether the men of

1860, on the free prairies of the West, quailed before repeating the

words enunciated by the men of '76 at Philadelphia. In an impulse of

patriotic reaction, the amendment was incorporated into the platform,

and Mr. Giddings was brought back by his friends, his face beaming with

triumph; and the stormy acclaim of the audience manifested the deep

feeling which the incident evoked.

On the third day it was certain that balloting would begin, and crowds

hurried to the Wigwam in a fever of curiosity. Having grown restless at

the indispensable routine preliminaries, when Mr. Evarts nominated

William H. Seward of New York for President, they greeted his name with

a perfect storm of applause. Then Mr. Judd nominated Abraham Lincoln of

Illinois and in the tremendous cheering that broke from the throats of

his admirers and followers the former demonstration dwindled to

comparative feebleness. Again and again these contests of lungs and

enthusiasm were repeated as the choice of New York was seconded by

Michigan, and that of Illinois by Indiana.

When other names had been duly presented, the cheering at length

subsided, and the chairman announced that balloting would begin. Many

spectators had provided themselves with tally-lists, and when the first

roll-call was completed were able at once to perceive the drift of

popular preference. Cameron, Chase, Bates, McLean, Dayton, and Collamer

were indorsed by the substantial votes of their own States; but two

names stood out in marked superiority: Seward, who had received one

hundred and seventy-three and one half votes, and Lincoln, one hundred

and two.

The New York delegation was so thoroughly persuaded of the final success

of their candidate that they did not comprehend the significance of this

first ballot. Had they reflected that their delegation alone had

contributed seventy votes to Seward's total, they would have understood

that outside of the Empire State, upon this first showing, Lincoln held

their favorite almost an even race. As the second ballot progressed,

their anxiety visibly increased. They watched with eagerness as the

complimentary votes first cast for State favorites were transferred now

to one, now to the other of the recognized leaders in the contest, and

their hopes sank when the result of the second ballot was announced:

Seward, one hundred and eighty-four and one half, Lincoln, one hundred

and eighty-one; and a volume of applause, which was with difficulty

checked by the chairman, shook the Wigwam at this announcement.

Then followed a short interval of active caucusing in the various

delegations, while excited men went about rapidly interchanging

questions, solicitations, and messages between delegations from

different States. Neither candidate had yet received a majority of all

the votes cast, and the third ballot was begun amid a deep, almost

painful suspense, delegates and spectators alike recording each

announcement of votes on their tally-sheets with nervous fingers. But

the doubt was of short duration. The second ballot had unmistakably

pointed out the winning man. Hesitating delegations and fragments from

many States steadily swelled the Lincoln column. Long before the

secretaries made the official announcement, the totals had been figured

up: Lincoln, two hundred and thirty one and one half, Seward, one

hundred and eighty. Counting the scattering votes, four hundred and

sixty-five ballots had been cast, and two hundred and thirty-three were

necessary to a choice. Seward had lost four and one half, Lincoln had

gained fifty and one half, and only one and one half votes more were

needed to make a nomination.

The Wigwam suddenly became as still as a church, and everybody leaned

forward to see whose voice would break the spell. Before the lapse of a

minute, David K. Cartter sprang upon his chair and reported a change of

four Ohio votes from Chase to Lincoln. Then a teller shouted a name

toward the skylight, and the boom of cannon from the roof of the Wigwam

announced the nomination and started the cheering of the overjoyed

Illinoisans down the long Chicago streets; while in the Wigwam,

delegation after delegation changed its vote to the victor amid a tumult

of hurrahs. When quiet was somewhat restored, Mr. Evarts, speaking for

New York and for Seward, moved to make the nomination unanimous, and Mr.

Browning gracefully returned the thanks of Illinois for the honor the

convention had conferred upon the State. In the afternoon the convention

completed its work by nominating Hannibal Hamlin of Maine for

Vice-President; and as the delegates sped homeward in the night trains,

they witnessed, in the bonfires and cheering crowds at the stations,

that a memorable presidential campaign was already begun.