"Fellow citizens, my friend, Mr. Douglas, made the startling
announcement to-day that the Whigs are dead. If that be so, you will
now experience the novelty of hearing a speech from a dead man." With
his arms waving like windmill-sails, and his frame vibrating in every
one of the seventy-five inches perpendicular, he shrilled: "And I
suppose you might properly say, or sing, in the language of the old
hymn: 'Hark, from the tombs a doleful sound!'"--(Lincoln-Douglas
Debate, 1858.)
* * * * *
"IF I MUST GO DOWN, LET IT BE LINKED TO TRUTH."
In 1856, a red-letter day in American politics, the Republican party
was organized at Bloomington, Illinois, and, after his speech at the
inauguration, Abraham Lincoln was hailed as the foremost of the league
throughout the West. A civil war raged, as he had foretold, in Kansas,
through repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and Douglas was forced to
about face and actually vote, as senator in Congress against the very
measures he advocated, with the Republicans. He sought reelection, and
so believed he would allure them over to his side. At the Republican
State Convention in June, however, Lincoln was the unanimous
representative for Cook County, and he made the celebrated speech known
as "The House Divided Against Itself." This discourse had been
rehearsed before his clique of friends--the men who afterward boasted
that they made the President out of the "little one-horse lawyer of a
little one-horse town!" They agreed that it was sound and energetic,
but that it would not be politic to speak it then. The Republicans were
cautious, and shrank from uniting with the advanced theorists known as
the Abolitionists.
Lincoln slowly repeated the debated passage:
"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I will deliver it as
written. I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech
than be victorious without it."
Before the persistence the advisers again implored him to moderate the
lines. "It would defeat his election--it will kill the embryo party!"
and so on.
But after silent reflection, he suddenly and warmly said:
"Friends, if it must be that I must go down because of this speech,
then let me go down linked to truth--_die_ in the advocacy of what is
right and just."
That famous utterance of what was fermenting in the great heart of the
people, and which perfect oneness with it and his own, enabled him to
be the touchstone of the Satan yet disguised, cleared the sky, and all
saw the battle, if not the doom, of the black stain on the United
States.
* * * * *