THE CONVENTIONS OF 1856
[Sidenote] 1856.
In the State of Illinois, the spring of the year 1856 saw an almost
spontaneous impulse toward the formation of a new party. As already
described, it was a transition period in politics. The disorganization
of the Whig party was materially increased and hastened by the
failure, two years before, to make Lincoln a Senator. On the other
hand, the election of Trumbull served quite as effectively to
consolidate the Democratic rebellion against Douglas in his
determination to make the support of his Nebraska bill a test of party
orthodoxy. Many of the Northern counties had formed "Republican"
organizations in the two previous years; but the name was entirely
local, while the opposition, not yet united, but fighting in factions
against the Nebraska bill, only acknowledged political affinity under
the general term of the "Anti-Nebraska" party.
[Sidenote] 1856.
In the absence of any existing party machinery, some fifteen editors
of anti-Nebraska newspapers met for conference at Decatur on the 22d
of February and issued a call for a delegate State convention of the
"Anti-Nebraska party," to meet at Bloomington on the 29th of May.
Prominent leaders, as a rule, hesitated to commit themselves by their
presence at Decatur. Not so with Mr. Lincoln. He could not attend the
deliberations as an editor; but he doubtless lent his suggestion and
advice, for we find him among the distinguished guests and speakers at
the banquet which followed the business session, and toasts to his
candidacy as "the next United States Senator" show that his leadership
had suffered no abatement. The assembled editors purposely set the
Bloomington Convention for a somewhat late day in the campaign, and
before the time arrived the political situation in the State was
already much more clearly defined.
[Sidenote] Davidson and Stuvé, "History of Illinois," p. 616.
One factor which greatly baffled the calculations and forecast of
politicians was the Know-Nothing or American party. It was apparent to
all that this order or affiliation had during the past two years
spread into Illinois, as into other States. But as its machinery and
action were secret, and as no general election had occurred since 1854
to exhibit its numerical strength, its possible scope and influence
could only be vaguely estimated. Still it was clearly present as a
positive force. Its national council had in February at Philadelphia
nominated Fillmore and Donelson as a presidential ticket; but the
preponderating Southern membership forced an indorsement of the
Kansas-Nebraska act into its platform, which destroyed the unity and
power of the party, driving the Northern delegates to a bolt.
Nevertheless many Northern voters, indifferent to the slavery issue,
still sought to maintain its organization; and thus in Illinois the
State Council met early in May, ratified the nomination of Fillmore
for President, and nominated candidates for Governor, and other State
officers.
The Democratic party, or rather so much of that party as did not
openly repudiate the policy and principle of the Kansas-Nebraska act,
made early preparations for a vigorous campaign. The great loss in
prestige and numbers he had already sustained admonished Douglas that
his political fortunes hung in a doubtful balance. But he was a bold
and aggressive leader, to whom controversy and party warfare were
rather an inspiration than a discouragement. Under his guidance, the
Democratic State Convention nominated for Governor of Illinois William
A. Richardson, late a member of the House of Representatives, in which
body as chairman of the Committee on Territories he had been the
leader to whom the success of the Nebraska bill was specially
intrusted, and where his parliamentary management had contributed
materially to the final passage of that measure.
Thus the attitude of opposing factions and the unorganized unfolding
of public opinion, rather than any mere promptings or combinations of
leaders, developed the course of the anti-Nebraska men of Illinois.
Out of this condition sprung directly one important element of future
success. Richardson's candidacy, long foreshadowed, was seen to
require an opposing nominee of unusual popularity. He was found in the
person of Colonel William H. Bissell, late a Democratic representative
in Congress, where he had denounced disunion in 1850, and opposed the
Nebraska bill in 1854. He had led a regiment to the Mexican war, and
fought gallantly at the battle of Buena Vista. His military laurels
easily carried him into Congress; but the exposures of the Mexican
campaign also burdened him with a disease which paralyzed his lower
limbs, and compelled retirement from active politics after his second
term. He was now, however, recovering; and having already exhibited
civic talents of a high order, the popular voice made light of his
physical infirmity, and his friends declared their readiness to match
the brains of Bissell against the legs of his opponents.
[Sidenote] January 23, 1850, Appendix, "Globe," 1849-50, p. 78.
One piece of his history rendered him specially acceptable to young
and spirited Western voters. His service in Congress began amid
exciting debates over the compromise measures of 1850, when the
Southern fire-eaters were already rampant. Seddon, of Virginia, in his
eagerness to depreciate the North and glorify the South, affirmed in a
speech that at the battle of Buena Vista, "at that most critical
juncture when all seemed lost save honor," amid the discomfiture and
rout of "the brave but unfortunate troops of the North through a
mistaken order," "the noble regiment of Mississippians" had snatched
victory from the jaws of death. Replying some days later to Seddon's
innuendo, Bissell, competent by his presence on the battle-field to
bear witness, retorted that when the 2d Indiana gave way, it was
McKee's 2d Kentucky, Hardin's 1st Illinois, and Bissell's 2d Illinois
which had retrieved the fortunes of the hour, and that the vaunted
Mississippi regiment was not within a mile and a half of the scene of
action. Properly this was an issue of veracity between Seddon and
Bissell, of easy solution. But Jefferson Davis, who commanded the
Mississippi regiment in question, began an interchange of notes with
Bissell which from the first smelt of gunpowder. "Were his reported
remarks correct?" asked Davis in substance. Bissell answered, repeating
the language of his speech and defining the spot and the time to which
it applied, adding: "I deem it due, in justice alike to myself and the
Mississippi regiment, to say that I made no charge against that
regiment." Davis persisting, then asked, in substance, whether he
meant to deny General Lane's official report that "the regiment of
Mississippians came to the rescue at the proper time to save the
fortunes of the day." Bissell rejoined: "My remarks had reference to a
different time and place from those referred to by General Lane."
[Sidenote] Pamphlet, Printed correspondence.
At this point both parties might with great propriety have ended the
correspondence. Sufficient inquiry had been met by generous
explanation. But Davis, apparently determined to push Bissell to the
wall, now sent his challenge. This time, however, he met his match, in
courage. Bissell named an officer of the army as his second,
instructing him to suggest as weapons "muskets, loaded with ball and
buckshot." The terms of combat do not appear to have been formally
proposed between the friends who met to arrange matters, but they were
evidently understood; the affair was hushed up, with the simple
addition to Bissell's first reply that he was willing to award the
Mississippi regiment "the credit due to their gallant and
distinguished services in that battle."
[Sidenote] 1856.
The Bloomington Convention came together according to call on the 29th
of May. By this time the active and observant politicians of the State
had become convinced that the anti-Nebraska struggle was not a mere
temporary and insignificant "abolition" excitement, but a deep and
abiding political issue, involving in the fate of slavery the fate of
the nation. Minor and past differences were therefore generously
postponed or waived in favor of a hearty coalition on the single
dominant question. A most notable gathering of the clans was the
result. About one-fourth of the counties sent regularly chosen
delegates; the rest were volunteers. In spirit and enthusiasm it was
rather a mass-meeting than a convention; but every man present was in
some sort a leader in his own locality. The assemblage was much more
representative than similar bodies gathered by the ordinary caucus
machinery. It was an earnest and determined council of five or six
hundred cool, sagacious, independent thinkers, called together by a
great public exigency, led and directed by the first minds of the
State. Not only did it show a brilliant array of eminent names, but a
remarkable contrast of former antagonisms: Whigs, Democrats,
Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Abolitionists; Norman B. Judd, Richard
Yates, Ebenezer Peck, Leonard Swett, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Owen
Lovejoy, Orville H. Browning, Ichabod Godding, Archibald Williams, and
many more. Chief among these, as adviser and actor, was Abraham
Lincoln.
Rarely has a deliberative body met under circumstances more exciting
than did this one. The Congressional debates at Washington and the
civil war in Kansas were each at a culmination of passion and
incident. Within ten days Charles Sumner had been struck down in the
Senate Chamber, and the town of Lawrence sacked by the guerrilla posse
of Atchison and Sheriff Jones. Ex-Governor Reeder, of that suffering
Territory, addressed the citizens of Bloomington and the
earliest-arriving delegates on the evening of the 28th, bringing into
the convention the very atmosphere of the Kansas conflict.
The convention met and conducted its work with earnestness and
dignity. Bissell, already designated by unmistakable popular
indications, was nominated for governor by acclamation. The candidate
for lieutenant-governor was named in like manner. So little did the
convention think or care about the mere distribution of political
honors on the one hand, and so much, on the other, did it regard and
provide for the success of the cause, that it did not even ballot for
the remaining candidates on the State ticket, but deputed to a
committee the task of selecting and arranging them, and adopted its
report as a whole and by acclamation. The more difficult task of
drafting a platform was performed by another committee, with such
prudence that it too received a unanimous acceptance. It boldly
adopted the Republican name, formulated the Republican creed, and the
convention further appointed delegates to the coming Republican
National Convention.
There were stirring speeches by eloquent leaders, eagerly listened to
and vociferously applauded; but scarcely a man moved from his seat in
the crowded hall until Mr. Lincoln had been heard. Every one felt the
fitness of his making the closing argument and exhortation, and right
nobly did he honor their demand. A silence full of emotion filled the
assembly as for a moment before beginning his tall form stood in
commanding attitude on the rostrum, the impressiveness of his theme
and the significance of the occasion reflected in his thoughtful and
earnest features. The spell of the hour was visibly upon him; and
holding his audience in rapt attention, he closed in a brilliant
peroration with an appeal to the people to join the Republican
standard, to
Come as the winds come, when forests are rended;
Come as the waves come, when navies are stranded.
The influence was irresistible; the audience rose and acknowledged the
speaker's power with cheer upon cheer. Unfortunately the speech was
never reported; but its effect lives vividly in the memory of all who
heard it, and it crowned his right to popular leadership in his own
State, which thereafter was never disputed.
[Sidenote] 1856.
The organization of the Republican party for the nation at large
proceeded very much in the same manner as that in the State of
Illinois. Pursuant to separate preliminary correspondence and calls
from State committees, a general meeting of prominent Republicans and
anti-Nebraska politicians from all parts of the North, and even from a
few border slave-States, came together at Pittsburgh on Washington's
birthday, February 22. Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania sent the
largest contingents; but around this great central nucleus were
gathered small but earnest delegations aggregating between three and
four hundred zealous leaders, representing twenty-eight States and
Territories. It was merely an informal mass convention; but many of
the delegates were men of national character, each of whose names was
itself a sufficient credential. Above all, the members were cautious,
moderate, conciliatory, and unambitious to act beyond the requirements
of the hour. They contented themselves with the usual parliamentary
routine; appointed a committee on national organization; issued a call
for a delegate convention; and adopted and put forth a stirring
address to the country. Their resolutions were brief and formulated
but four demands: the repeal of all laws which allow the introduction
of slavery into Territories once consecrated to freedom; resistance by
constitutional means to slavery in any United States Territory; the
immediate admission of Kansas as a free-State, and the overthrow of
the present national Administration.
In response to the official call embodied in the Pittsburgh address,
the first National Convention of the Republican party met at
Philadelphia on the 17th of June, 1856. The character and dignity of
the Pittsburgh proceedings assured the new party of immediate prestige
and acceptance; with so favorable a sponsorship it sprang full-armed
into the political conflict. That conflict which opened the year with
the long congressional contest over the speakership, and which found
its only solution in the choice of Banks by a plurality vote, had been
fed by fierce congressional debates, by presidential messages and
proclamations, by national conventions, by the Sumner assault, by the
Kansas war; the body politic throbbed with activity and excitement in
every fiber. Every free-State and several border States and
Territories were represented in the Philadelphia Convention; its
regular and irregular delegates counted nearly a thousand local
leaders, full of the zeal of new proselytes; Henry S. Lane, of
Indiana, was made its permanent chairman.
The party was too young and its prospect of immediate success too
slender to develop any serious rivalry for a presidential nomination.
Because its strength lay evidently among the former adherents of the
now dissolved and abandoned Whig party, William H. Seward of course
took highest rank in leadership; after him stood Salmon P. Chase as
the representative of the independent Democrats, who, bringing fewer
voters, had nevertheless contributed the main share of the courageous
pioneer work. It is a just tribute to their sagacity that both were
willing to wait for the maturer strength and riper opportunities of
the new organization. Justice John McLean, of the Supreme Bench, an
eminent jurist, a faithful Whig, whose character happily combined both
the energy and the conservatism of the great West, also had a large
following; but as might have been expected, the convention found a
more typical leader, young in years, daring in character, brilliant in
exploit; and after one informal ballot it nominated John C. Frémont,
of California. The credit of the selection and its successful
management has been popularly awarded to Francis P. Blair, senior,
famous as the talented and powerful newspaper lieutenant of President
Jackson; but it was rather an intuitive popular choice, which at the
moment seemed so appropriate as to preclude necessity for artful
intrigue.
[Illustration: MILLARD FILLMORE.]
There was a dash of romance in the personal history of Frémont which
gave his nomination a high popular relish. Of French descent, born in
Savannah, Georgia, orphaned at an early age, he acquired a scientific
education largely by his own unaided efforts in private study; a sea
voyage as teacher of mathematics, and employment in a railroad survey
through the wilderness of the Tennessee Mountains, developed the taste
and the qualifications that made him useful as an assistant in
Nicollet's scientific exploration of the great plateau where the
Mississippi River finds its sources, and secured his appointment as
second lieutenant of topographical engineers. These labors brought him
to Washington, where the same Gallic restlessness which made the
restraint of schools insupportable, brought about an attachment,
elopement, and marriage with the daughter of Senator Thomas H. Benton,
of Missouri.
Reconciliation followed in good time; and the unexplored Great West
being Benton's peculiar hobby, through his influence Frémont was sent
with an exploring party to the Rocky Mountains. Under his command
similar expeditions were repeated again and again to that mysterious
wonderland; and never were the wildest fictions read with more avidity
than his official reports of daily adventure, danger and discovery, of
scaling unclimbed mountains, wrecking his canoes on the rapids of
unvisited rivers, parleying and battling with hostile Indians, and
facing starvation while hemmed in by trackless snows. One of these
journeys had led him to the Pacific coast when our war with Mexico let
loose the spirit of revolution in the Mexican province of California.
With his characteristic restless audacity Frémont joined his little
company of explorers to a local insurrectionary faction of American
settlers, and raised a battalion of mounted volunteers. Though acting
without Government orders, he cooperated with the United States naval
forces sent to take possession of the California coast, and materially
assisted in overturning the Mexican authority and putting the remnant
of her military officials to flight. At the close of the conquest he
was for a short time military governor; and when, through the famous
gold discoveries, California was organized as a State and admitted to
the Union, Frémont became for a brief period one of her first United
States Senators.
So salient a record could not well be without strong contrasts, and of
these unsparing criticism took advantage. Hostile journals delineated
Frémont as a shallow, vainglorious, "woolly-horse," "mule-eating,"
"free-love," "nigger-embracing" black Republican; an extravagant,
insubordinate, reckless adventurer; a financial spendthrift and
political mountebank. As the reading public is not always skillful in
winnowing truth from libel when artfully mixed in print, even the
grossest calumnies were not without their effect in contributing to
his defeat. But to the sanguine zeal of the new Republican party, the
"Pathfinder" was a heroic and ideal leader; for, upon the vital point
at issue, his anti-slavery votes and clear declarations satisfied every
doubt and inspired unlimited confidence.
However picturesquely Frémont for the moment loomed up as the
standard-bearer of the Republican party, historical interest centers
upon the second act of the Philadelphia Convention. It shows us how
strangely to human wisdom vibrate the delicately balanced scales of
fate; or rather how inscrutable and yet how unerring are the
far-reaching processes of divine providence. The principal candidate
having been selected without contention or delay, the convention
proceeded to a nomination for Vice-President. On the first informal
ballot William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, received 259 votes and
Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, 110; the remaining votes being scattered
among thirteen other names.[1] The dominating thought of the
convention being the assertion of principle, and not the promotion of
men, there was no further contest;[2] and though Mr. Dayton had not
received a majority support, his nomination was nevertheless at once
made unanimous. Those who are familiar with the eccentricities of
nominating conventions when in this listless and drifting mood know
how easily an opportune speech from some eloquent delegate or a few
adroitly arranged delegation caucuses might have reversed this result;
and imagination may not easily construct the possible changes in
history which a successful campaign of the ticket in that form might
have wrought. What would have been the consequences to America and
humanity had the Rebellion, even then being vaguely devised by
Southern Hotspurs, burst upon the nation in the winter of 1856, with
the nation's sword of commander-in-chief in the hand of the impulsive
Frémont, and Lincoln, inheriting the patient wariness and cool blood
of three generations of pioneers and Indian-fighters, wielding only
the powerless gavel of Vice-President? But the hour of destiny had not
yet struck.
The platform devised by the Philadelphia Convention was unusually bold
in its affirmations, and most happy in its phraseology. Not only did
it "deny the authority of Congress, or of a territorial legislature,
of any individual or association of individuals, to give legal
existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States"; it
further "Resolved, That the Constitution confers upon Congress
sovereign power over the Territories of the United States for their
government, and that in the exercise of this power it is both the
right and the duty of Congress to prohibit in the Territories those
twin relics of barbarism--polygamy and slavery." At Buchanan, recently
nominated by the Democratic National Convention in Cincinnati, it
aimed a barbed shaft: "Resolved, That the highwayman's plea that
'might makes right,' embodied in the Ostend circular, was in every
respect unworthy of American diplomacy, and would bring shame and
dishonor upon any government or people that gave it their sanction."
It demanded the maintenance of the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, of the Federal Constitution, of the rights of the
States, and the union of the States. It favored a Pacific railroad,
congressional appropriations for national rivers and harbors; it
affirmed liberty of conscience and equality of rights; it arraigned
the policy of the Administration; demanded the immediate admission of
Kansas as a State, and invited "the affiliation and coöperation of men
of all parties, however differing from them in other respects, in
support of the principles declared."
The nominees and platform of the Philadelphia Convention were accepted
by the opposition voters of the free-States with an alacrity and an
enthusiasm beyond the calculation of even the most sanguine; and in
November a vote was recorded in their support which, though then
unsuccessful, laid the secure foundation of an early victory, and
permanently established a great party destined to carry the country
through trials and vicissitudes equal in magnitude and results to any
which the world had hitherto witnessed.
In that year none of the presidential honors were reserved for the
State of Illinois. While Lincoln thus narrowly missed a nomination for
the second place on the Republican ticket, his fellow-citizen and
competitor, Douglas, failed equally to obtain the nomination he so
much coveted as the candidate of the Democratic party. The Democratic
National Convention had met at Cincinnati on the 2d day of June, 1856.
If Douglas flattered himself that such eminent services as he had
rendered the South would find this reward, his disappointment must
have been severe. While the benefits he had conferred were lightly
estimated or totally forgotten, former injuries inflicted in his name
were keenly remembered and resented. But three prominent candidates,
Buchanan, Pierce, and Douglas, were urged upon the convention. The
indiscreet crusade of Douglas's friends against "old fogies" in 1852
had defeated Buchanan and nominated Pierce; now, by the turn of
political fortune, Buchanan's friends were able to wipe out the double
score by defeating both Pierce and Douglas. Most of the Southern
delegates seem to have been guided by the mere thought of present
utility; they voted to renominate Pierce because of his subservient
Kansas policy, forgetting that Douglas had not only begun it, but was
their strongest ally to continue it. When after a day of fruitless
balloting they changed their votes to Douglas, Buchanan, the so-called
"old fogy," just returned from the English mission, and therefore not
handicapped by personal jealousies and heart-burnings, had secured the
firm adhesion of a decided majority mainly from the North.[3]
The "two-thirds rule" was not yet fulfilled, but at this juncture the
friends of Pierce and Douglas yielded to the inevitable, and withdrew
their favorites in the interest of "harmony." On the seventeenth
ballot, therefore, and the fifth day of the convention, James
Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, became the unanimous nominee of the
Democratic party for President, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky,
for Vice-President.
The famous "Cincinnati platform" holds a conspicuous place in party
literature for length, for vigor of language, for variety of topics,
for boldness of declaration; and yet, strange to say, its chief merit
and utility lay in the skillful concealment of its central thought and
purpose. About one-fourth of its great length is devoted to what to
the eye looks like a somewhat elaborate exposition of the doctrines of
the party on the slavery question. Eliminate the verbiage and there
only remains an indorsement of the "principles contained in the
organic laws establishing the Territory of Kansas and Nebraska"
(non-interference by Congress with slavery in State and Territory, or
in the District of Columbia); and the practical application of "the
principles" is thus further defined: "Resolved, That we recognize the
right of the people of all the Territories, including Kansas and
Nebraska, acting through the legally and fairly expressed will of a
majority of actual residents, and whenever the number of their
inhabitants justifies it, to form a constitution with or without
domestic slavery, and be admitted into the Union upon terms of perfect
equality with the other States."
We have already seen how deliberately the spirit and letter of "the
principle" was violated by the Democratic National Administration of
President Pierce, and by nearly all the Democratic Senators and
Representatives in Congress; and we shall see how the more explicit
resolution was again even more flagrantly violated by the Democratic
National Administration and party under President Buchanan.
For the time, however, these well-rounded phrases were especially
convenient: first, to prevent any schism in the Cincinnati Convention
itself, and, secondly, to furnish points for campaign speeches;
politicians not having any pressing desire, nor voters the requisite
critical skill, to demonstrate how they left untouched the whole brood
of pertinent queries which the discussion had already raised, and
which at its next national convention were destined to disrupt and
defeat the Democratic party. For this occasion the studied ambiguity
of the Cincinnati platform made possible a last coöperation of North
and South, in the face of carefully concealed mental reservations, to
secure a presidential victory.
It is not the province of this work to describe the incidents of the
national canvass, but only to record its results. At the election of
November, 1856, Buchanan was chosen President. The popular vote in the
nation at large stood: Buchanan, 1,838,169; Frémont, 1,341,264;
Fillmore, 874,534. By States Buchanan received the votes of fourteen
slave-States and five free-States, a total of 174 electors; Frémont
the vote of eleven free-States, a total of 114 electors; and Fillmore
the vote of one slave-State, a total of eight electors.[4]
In the campaign which preceded Mr. Buchanan's election, Mr. Lincoln,
at the head of the Frémont electoral ticket for Illinois, took a
prominent part, traversing the State in every direction, and making
about fifty speeches. Among the addresses which he thus delivered in
the different counties, it is interesting to read a fragment of a
speech he made at Galena, Illinois, discussing the charge of
"sectionalism," the identical pretext upon which the South inaugurated
its rebellion against his Administration four years afterwards:
You further charge us with being disunionists. If you mean that it
is our aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself answer that it is
untrue; for those who act with me I answer that it is untrue. Have
you heard us assert that as our aim? Do you really believe that
such is our aim? Do you find it in our platform, our speeches, our
conventions, or anywhere? If not, withdraw the charge.
But you may say that though it is not our aim, it will be the
result, if we succeed, and that we are therefore disunionists in
fact. This is a grave charge you make against us, and we certainly
have a right to demand that you specify in what way we are to
dissolve the Union. How are we to effect this?
The only specification offered is volunteered by Mr. Fillmore in
his Albany speech. His charge is that if we elect a President and
Vice-President both from the free-States it will dissolve the
Union. This is open folly. The Constitution provides that the
President and Vice-President of the United States shall be of
different States; but says nothing as to the latitude and longitude
of those States. In 1828 Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C.
Calhoun, of South Carolina, were elected President and
Vice-President, both from slave-States; but no one thought of
dissolving the Union then on that account. In 1840 Harrison, of
Ohio, and Tyler, of Virginia, were elected. In 1841 Harrison died
and John Tyler succeeded to the presidency, and William R. King, of
Alabama, was elected acting Vice-President by the Senate; but no
one supposed that the Union was in danger. In fact, at the very
time Mr. Fillmore uttered this idle charge, the state of things in
the United States disproved it. Mr. Pierce, of New Hampshire, and
Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free-States, are President and
Vice-President, and the Union stands and will stand. You do not
pretend that it ought to dissolve the Union, and the facts show
that it won't; therefore the charge may be dismissed without
further consideration.
[Sidenote] Galena "Advertiser," copied into the Illinois "State
Journal," August 8, 1856.
No other specification is made, and the only one that could be made
is, that the restoration of the restriction of 1820 making the
United States territory free territory would dissolve the Union.
Gentlemen, it will require a decided majority to pass such an act.
We, the majority, being able constitutionally to do all that we
purpose, would have no desire to dissolve the Union. Do you say
that such restriction of slavery would be unconstitutional, and
that some of the States would not submit to its enforcement? I
grant you that an unconstitutional act is not a law; but I do not
ask and will not take your construction of the Constitution. The
Supreme Court of the United States is the tribunal to decide such a
question, and we will submit to its decisions; and if you do also,
there will be an end of the matter. Will you? If not, who are the
disunionists, you or we? We, the majority, would not strive to
dissolve the Union; and if any attempt is made it must be by you,
who so loudly stigmatize us as disunionists.
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.
With three presidential tickets in the field--with the Democrats
seeking the election of Buchanan and Breckinridge, the Americans, or
Know-Nothings, asking votes for Fillmore and Donelson, and the
Republicans making proselytes for Frémont and Dayton--the political
campaign of 1856 was one of unabated activity and excitement. In the
State of Illinois the contest resulted in a drawn battle. The American
party held together with tolerable firmness in its vote for President,
but was largely disintegrated in its vote on the ticket for State
officers. The consequence was that Illinois gave a plurality of 9164
for Buchanan, the Democratic candidate for President, while at the
same time it gave a plurality of 4729 for Bissell, the Republican
candidate for Governor.[5]
Half victory as it was, it furnished the Illinois Republicans a
substantial hope of the full triumph which they achieved four years
later. About a month after this election, at a Republican banquet
given in Chicago on the 10th of December, 1856, Abraham Lincoln spoke
as follows, partly in criticism of the last annual message of
President Pierce, but more especially pointing out the rising star of
promise:
We have another annual presidential message. Like a rejected
lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, the President
felicitates himself hugely over the late presidential election.
He considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and
good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones. He says the
people did it. He forgets that the "people," as he complacently
calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the
whole people by about four hundred thousand votes--one full tenth
of all the votes. Remembering this, he might perceive that the
"rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think--that
the majority may not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that
minority.
The President thinks the great body of us Frémonters, being
ardently attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a
few wicked and designing men. There is a slight difference of
opinion on this. We think he, being ardently attached to the hope
of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had
liberty every way. He is the cat's-paw. By much dragging of
chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt
off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further
use. As the fool said of _King Lear_, when his daughters had
turned him out-of-doors, "He's a shelled peascod." [That's a
sheal'd peascod.]
So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the
domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing
everything in our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws
of moral authority," for the whole party on belief, and for
myself on knowledge, I pronounce the charge an unmixed and
unmitigated falsehood.
[Sidenote] Illinois "State Journal," December 16, 1856.
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. Less than a year ago the
Richmond "Enquirer," an avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of
color, in order to favor his views, invented the phrase "State
equality," and now the President, in his message, adopts the
"Enquirer's" catch-phrase, telling us the people "have asserted
the constitutional equality of each and all of the States of the
Union as States." The President flatters himself that the new
central idea is completely inaugurated; and so indeed it is, so
far as the mere fact of a presidential election can inaugurate
it. To us it is left to know that the majority of the people have
not yet declared for it, and to hope that they never will. 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."
Though these fragments of addresses give us only an imperfect
reflection of the style of Mr. Lincoln's oratory during this period,
they nevertheless show its essential characteristics, a pervading
clearness of analysis, and that strong tendency to axiomatic
definition which gives so many of his sentences their convincing force
and durable value. They also show us the combination, not often found
in such happy balance, of the politician's discernment of fact with
the statesman's wisdom of theory--how present forces of national life
are likely to be moved by future impulses of national will. The
politician could see the four hundred thousand voters who would give
victory to some party in the near future. It required the wisdom of
the statesman to divine that the public opinion which would direct
how these votes were to be cast, could most surely be created by an
appeal to those generous "central ideas" of the human mind which
favor equality against caste and freedom against slavery. Perhaps
the most distinctively representative quality these addresses exhibit
is the patriotic spirit and faith which led him to declare so
dogmatically in this campaign of 1856, what the nation called upon
him a few years later to execute by the stern powers of war, "We do
not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not."
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[1] For David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, 43; Preston King, of New York,
9; Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, 36; Thomas H. Ford, of Ohio, 7;
Cassius M. Clay, of Kentucky, 3; Jacob Collamer, of Vermont, 15;
William F. Johnston, of Pennsylvania, 2; Nathaniel P. Banks, of
Massachusetts, 46; Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, 7; William
Pennington, of New Jersey, 1; ---- Carey, of New Jersey, 3; S.C.
Pomeroy, of Kansas, 8; J.R. Giddings, of Ohio, 2. The vote in detail
for Lincoln was: Maine, 1; New Hampshire, 8; Massachusetts, 7; Rhode
Island, 2; New York, 3; Pennsylvania, 11; Ohio, 2; Indiana, 26;
Illinois, 33; Michigan, 5; and California, 12.
[2] Mr. T.S. Van Dyke, son of one of the delegates, kindly writes
us: "Nothing that Mr. Lincoln has ever written is more characteristic
than the following note from him to my father just after the
convention--not for publication, but merely as a private expression
of his feelings to an old acquaintance:
"SPRINGFIELD, ILL.,
"June 27, 1856.
"Hon. JOHN VAN DYKE.
"MY DEAR SIR: Allow me to thank you for your kind notice of me in
the Philadelphia Convention.
"When you meet Judge Dayton present my respects, and tell him I
think him a far better man than I for the position he is in, and
that I shall support both him and Colonel Frémont most cordially.
Present my best respects to Mrs. V., and believe me,
"Yours truly,
"A. LINCOLN."
[3] On the sixteenth ballot Buchanan received 168 votes, of which 121
were from the free-States and 47 from the slave-States; Douglas
received 122 votes, of which 49 were from the free-States and 73 from
the slave-States; Cass received 6 votes, all from the free-States;
Pierce had been finally dropped on the previous ballot.--"Proceedings
of the Cincinnati Convention," p. 45.
[4] The vote more in detail was as follows:
For Buchanan, slave-States, Alabama, 9; Arkansas, 4; Delaware, 3;
Florida, 3; Georgia, 10; Kentucky, 12; Louisiana, 6; Mississippi, 7;
Missouri, 9; North Carolina, 10; South Carolina, 8; Tennessee, 12;
Texas, 4; Virginia, 15. Free States, California, 4; Illinois, 11;
Indiana, 13; New Jersey, 7; Pennsylvania, 27. Total, 174.
For Frémont, free-States, Connecticut, 6; Iowa, 4; Maine, 8;
Massachusetts, 13; Michigan, 6; New Hampshire, 5; New York, 35; Ohio,
23; Rhode Island, 4; Vermont, 5; Wisconsin, 5. Total, 114.
For Fillmore, slave-State, Maryland, 8.
[5] For President, Buchanan (Democrat), 105,344; Frémont (Republican),
96,180; Fillmore (American), 37,451. For Governor, Richardson (Democrat),
106,643; Bissell (Republican), 111,372; Morris (American), 19,241.