Crocodile that name is also applied to the whole river, which figures
on old Portuguese maps as the Oori (or Oira) and Bembe. Though
claiming the territory through which it ran the Portuguese made no
attempt to trace the river. This was first done by Captain J. F.
Elton, who in 1870 travelling from the Tati goldfields sought to open
a road to the sea via the Limpopo. He voyaged down the river from the
Shashi confluence to the Toli Azimé Falls, which he discovered,
following the stream thence on foot to the low country. The lower
course of the river had been explored 1868-1869 by another British
traveller--St Vincent Whitshed Erskine. It was first navigated by a
sea-going craft in 1884, when G. A. Chaddock of the British mercantile
service succeeded in crossing the bar, while its lower course was
accurately surveyed by Portuguese officers in 1895-1896. At the
junction of the Lotsani, one of the Bechuanaland affluents, with the
Limpopo, are ruins of the period of the Zimbabwes.
LINACRE (or LYNAKER), THOMAS (c. 1460-1524), English humanist and
physician, was probably born at Canterbury. Of his parentage or descent
nothing certain is known. He received his early education at the
cathedral school of Canterbury, then under the direction of William
Celling (William Tilly of Selling), who became prior of Canterbury in
1472. Celling was an ardent scholar, and one of the earliest in England
who cultivated Greek learning. From him Linacre must have received his
first incentive to this study. Linacre entered Oxford about the year
1480, and in 1484 was elected a fellow of All Souls' College. Shortly
afterwards he visited Italy in the train of Celling, who was sent by
Henry VIII. as an envoy to the papal court, and he accompanied his
patron as far as Bologna. There he became the pupil of Angelo Poliziano,
and afterwards shared the instruction which that great scholar imparted
at Florence to the sons of Lorenzo de' Medici. The younger of these
princes became Pope Leo X., and was in after years mindful of his old
companionship with Linacre. Among his other teachers and friends in
Italy were Demetrius Chalcondylas, Hermolaus Barbaras, Aldus Romanus the
printer of Venice, and Nicolaus Leonicenus of Vicenza. Linacre took the
degree of doctor of medicine with great distinction at Padua. On his
return to Oxford, full of the learning and imbued with the spirit of the
Italian Renaissance, he formed one of the brilliant circle of Oxford
scholars, including John Colet, William Grocyn and William Latimer, who
are mentioned with so much warm eulogy in the letters of Erasmus.
Linacre does not appear to have practised or taught medicine in Oxford.
About the year 1501 he was called to court as tutor of the young prince
Arthur. On the accession of Henry VIII. he was appointed the king's
physician, an office at that time of considerable influence and
importance, and practised medicine in London, having among his patients
most of the great statesmen and prelates of the time, as Cardinal
Wolsey, Archbishop Warham and Bishop Fox.
After some years of professional activity, and when in advanced life,
Linacre received priest's orders in 1520, though he had for some years
previously held several clerical benefices. There is no doubt that his
ordination was connected with his retirement from active life. Literary
labours, and the cares of the foundation which owed its existence
chiefly to him, the Royal College of Physicians, occupied Linacre's
remaining years till his death on the 20th of October 1524.
Linacre was more of a scholar than a man of letters, and rather a man of
learning than a scientific investigator. It is difficult now to judge of
his practical skill in his profession, but it was evidently highly
esteemed in his own day. He took no part in political or theological
questions, and died too soon to have to declare himself on either side in
the formidable controversies which were even in his lifetime beginning to
arise. But his career as a scholar was one eminently characteristic of
the critical period in the history of learning through which he lived. He
was one of the first Englishmen who studied Greek in Italy, whence he
brought back to his native country and his own university the lessons of
the "New Learning." His teachers were some of the greatest scholars of
the day. Among his pupils was one--Erasmus--whose name alone would
suffice to preserve the memory of his instructor in Greek, and others of
note in letters and politics, such as Sir Thomas More, Prince Arthur and
Queen Mary. Colet, Grocyn, William Lilye and other eminent scholars were
his intimate friends, and he was esteemed by a still wider circle of
literary correspondents in all parts of Europe.
Linacre's literary activity was displayed in two directions, in pure
scholarship and in translation from the Greek. In the domain of
scholarship he was known by the rudiments of (Latin) grammar
(_Progymnasmata Grammatices vulgaria_), composed in English, a revised
version of which was made for the use of the Princess Mary, and
afterwards translated into Latin by Robert Buchanan. He also wrote a
work on Latin composition, _De emendata structura Latini sermonis_,
which was published in London in 1524 and many times reprinted on the
continent of Europe.
Linacre's only medical works were his translations. He desired to make
the works of Galen (and indeed those of Aristotle also) accessible to
all readers of Latin. What he effected in the case of the first,
though not trifling in itself, is inconsiderable as compared with the
whole mass of Galen's writings; and of his translations from
Aristotle, some of which are known to have been completed, nothing has
survived. The following are the works of Galen translated by Linacre:
(1) _De sanitate tuenda_, printed at Paris in 1517; (2) _Methodus
medendi_ (Paris, 1519); (3) _De temperamentis et de Inaequali
Intemperie_ (Cambridge, 1521); (4) _De naturalibus facultatibus_
(London, 1523); (5) _De symptomatum differentiis et causis_ (London,
1524); (6) _De pulsuum Usu_ (London, without date). He also translated
for the use of Prince Arthur an astronomical treatise of Proclus, _De
sphaera_, which was printed at Venice by Aldus in 1499. The accuracy
of these translations and their elegance of style were universally
admitted. They have been generally accepted as the standard versions
of those parts of Galen's writings, and frequently reprinted, either
as a part of the collected works or separately.
But the most important service which Linacre conferred upon his own
profession and science was not by his writings. To him was chiefly
owing the foundation by royal charter of the College of Physicians in
London, and he was the first president of the new college, which he
further aided by conveying to it his own house, and by the gift of his
library. Shortly before his death Linacre obtained from the king
letters patent for the establishment of readerships in medicine at
Oxford and Cambridge, and placed valuable estates in the hands of
trustees for their endowment. Two readerships were founded in Merton
College, Oxford, and one in St John's College, Cambridge, but owing to
neglect and bad management of the funds, they fell into uselessness
and obscurity. The Oxford foundation was revived by the university
commissioners in 1856 in the form of the Linacre professorship of
anatomy. Posterity has done justice to the generosity and public
spirit which prompted these foundations; and it is impossible not to
recognize a strong constructive genius in the scheme of the College of
Physicians, by which Linacre not only first organized the medical
profession in England, but impressed upon it for some centuries the
stamp of his own individuality.
The intellectual fastidiousness of Linacre, and his habits of minute
accuracy were, as Erasmus suggests, the chief cause why he left no
more permanent literary memorials. It will be found, perhaps,
difficult to justify by any extant work the extremely high reputation
which he enjoyed among the scholars of his time. His Latin style was
so much admired that, according to the flattering eulogium of Erasmus,
Galen spoke better Latin in the version of Linacre than he had before
spoken Greek; and even Aristotle displayed a grace which he hardly
attained to in his native tongue. Erasmus praises also Linacre's
critical judgment ("vir non exacti tantum sed severi judicii").
According to others it was hard to say whether he were more
distinguished as a grammarian or a rhetorician. Of Greek he was
regarded as a consummate master; and he was equally eminent as a
"philosopher," that is, as learned in the works of the ancient
philosophers and naturalists. In this there may have been some
exaggeration; but all have acknowledged the elevation of Linacre's
character, and the fine moral qualities summed up in the epitaph
written by John Caius: "Fraudes dolosque mire perosus; fidus amicis;
omnibus ordinibus juxta carus."
The materials for Linacre's biography are to a large extent contained
in the older biographical collections of George Lilly (in Paulus
Jovius, _Descriptio Britanniae_), Bale, Leland and Pits, in Wood's
_Athenae Oxonienses_ and in the _Biographia Britannica_; but all are
completely collected in the _Life of Thomas Linacre_, by Dr Noble
Johnson (London, 1835). Reference may also be made to Dr Munk's _Roll
of the Royal College of Physicians_ (2nd ed., London, 1878); and the
Introduction, by Dr J. F. Payne, to a facsimile reproduction of
Linacre's version of _Galen de temperamentis_ (Cambridge, 1881). With
the exception of this treatise, none of Linacre's works or
translations has been reprinted in modern times.
LINARES, an inland province of central Chile, between Talca on the N.
and Nuble on the S., bounded E. by Argentina and W. by the province of
Maule. Pop. (1895) 101,858; area, 3942 sq. m. The river Maule forms its
northern boundary and drains its northern and north-eastern regions. The
province belongs partly to the great central valley of Chile and partly
to the western slopes of the Andes, the S. Pedro volcano rising to a
height of 11,800 ft. not far from the sources of the Maule. The northern
part is fertile, as are the valleys of the Andean foothills, but arid
conditions prevail throughout the central districts, and irrigation is
necessary for the production of crops. The vine is cultivated to some
extent, and good pasturage is found on the Andean slopes. The province
is traversed from N. to S. by the Chilean Central railway, and the river
Maule gives access to the small port of Constitucion, at its mouth. From
Parral, near the southern boundary, a branch railway extends westward to
Cauquenes, the capital of Maule. The capital, Linares, is centrally
situated, on an open plain, about 20 m. S. of the river Maule. It had a
population of 7331 in 1895 (which an official estimate of 1902 reduced
to 7256). Parral (pop. 8586 in 1895; est. 10,219 in 1902) is a railway
junction and manufacturing town.
LINARES, a town of southern Spain, in the province of Jaen, among the
southern foothills of the Sierra Morena, 1375 ft. above sea-level and 3
m. N.W. of the river Guadalimar. Pop. (1900) 38,245. It is connected by
four branch railways with the important argentiferous lead mines on the
north-west, and with the main railways from Madrid to Seville, Granada
and the principal ports on the south coast. The town was greatly
improved in the second half of the 19th century, when the town hall,
bull-ring, theatre and many other handsome buildings were erected; it
contains little of antiquarian interest save a fine fountain of Roman
origin. Its population is chiefly engaged in the lead-mines, and in such
allied industries as the manufacture of gunpowder, dynamite, match for
blasting purposes, rope and the like. The mining plant is entirely
imported, principally from England; and smelting, desilverizing and the
manufacture of lead sheets, pipes, &c., are carried on by British firms,
which also purchase most of the ore raised. Linares lead is unsurpassed
in quality, but the output tends to decrease. There is a thriving local
trade in grain, wine and oil. About 2 m. S. is the village of Cazlona,
which shows some remains of the ancient _Castulo_. The ancient mines
some 5 m. N., which are now known as Los Pozos de Anibal, may possibly
date from the 3rd century B.C., when this part of Spain was ruled by the
Carthaginians.
LINCOLN, EARLS OF. The first earl of Lincoln was probably William de
Roumare (c. 1095-c. 1155), who was created earl about 1140, although it
is possible that William de Albini, earl of Arundel, had previously held
the earldom. Roumare's grandson, another William de Roumare (c. 1150-c.
1198), is sometimes called earl of Lincoln, but he was never recognized
as such, and about 1148 King Stephen granted the earldom to one of his
supporters, Gilbert de Gand (d. 1156), who was related to the former
earl. After Gilbert's death the earldom was dormant for about sixty
years; then in 1216 it was given to another Gilbert de Gand, and later
it was claimed by the great earl of Chester, Ranulf, or Randulph, de
Blundevill (d. 1232). From Ranulf the title to the earldom passed
through his sister Hawise to the family of Lacy, John de Lacy (d. 1240)
being made earl of Lincoln in 1232. He was son of Roger de Lacy (d.
1212), justiciar of England and constable of Chester. It was held by
the Lacys until the death of Henry, the 3rd earl. Henry served Edward I.
in Wales, France and Scotland, both as a soldier and a diplomatist. He
went to France with Edmund, earl of Lancaster, in 1296, and when Edmund
died in June of this year, succeeded him as commander of the English
forces in Gascony; but he did not experience any great success in this
capacity and returned to England early in 1298. The earl fought at the
battle of Falkirk in July 1298, and took some part in the subsequent
conquest of Scotland. He was then employed by Edward to negotiate
successively with popes Boniface VIII. and Clement V., and also with
Philip IV. of France; and was present at the death of the English king
in July 1307. For a short time Lincoln was friendly with the new king,
Edward II., and his favourite, Piers Gaveston; but quickly changing his
attitude, he joined earl Thomas of Lancaster and the baronial party, was
one of the "ordainers" appointed in 1310 and was regent of the kingdom
during the king's absence in Scotland in the same year. He died in
London on the 5th of February 1311, and was buried in St Paul's
Cathedral. He married Margaret (d. 1309), granddaughter and heiress of
William Longsword, 2nd earl of Salisbury, and his only surviving child,
Alice (1283-1348), became the wife of Thomas, earl of Lancaster, who
thus inherited his father-in-law's earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury.
Lincoln's Inn in London gets its name from the earl, whose London
residence occupied this site. He founded Whalley Abbey in Lancashire,
and built Denbigh Castle.
In 1349 Henry Plantagenet, earl (afterwards duke) of Lancaster, a nephew
of Earl Thomas, was created earl of Lincoln; and when his grandson Henry
became king of England as Henry IV. in 1399 the title merged in the
crown. In 1467 John de la Pole (c. 1464-1487), a nephew of Edward IV.,
was made earl of Lincoln, and the same dignity was conferred in 1525
upon Henry Brandon (1516-1545), son of Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk.
Both died without sons, and the next family to hold the earldom was that
of Clinton.
EDWARD FIENNES CLINTON, 9th Lord Clinton (1512-1585), lord high admiral
and the husband of Henry VIII.'s mistress, Elizabeth Blount, was created
earl of Lincoln in 1572. Before his elevation he had rendered very
valuable services both on sea and land to Edward VI., to Mary and to
Elizabeth, and he was in the confidence of the leading men of these
reigns, including William Cecil, Lord Burghley. From 1572 until the
present day the title has been held by Clinton's descendants. In 1768
Henry Clinton, the 9th earl (1720-1794), succeeded his uncle Thomas
Pelham as 2nd duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, and since this date the
title of earl of Lincoln has been the courtesy title of the eldest son
of the duke of Newcastle.
See G. E. C.(okayne), _Complete Peerage_, vol. v. (1893).
LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (1809-1865), sixteenth president of the United States
of America, was born on "Rock Spring" farm, 3 m. from Hodgenville, in
Hardin (now Larue) county, Kentucky, on the 12th of February 1809.[1]
His grandfather,[2] Abraham Lincoln, settled in Kentucky about 1780 and
was killed by Indians in 1784. His father, Thomas (1778-1851), was born
in Rockingham (then Augusta) county, Virginia; he was hospitable,
shiftless, restless and unsuccessful, working now as a carpenter and now
as a farmer, and could not read or write before his marriage, in
Washington county, Kentucky, on the 12th of June 1806, to Nancy Hanks
(1783-1818), who was, like him, a native of Virginia, but had much more
strength of character and native ability, and seemed to have been, in
intellect and character, distinctly above the social class in which she
was born. The Lincolns had removed from Elizabethtown, Hardin county,
their first home, to the Rock Spring farm, only a short time before
Abraham's birth; about 1813 they removed to a farm of 238 acres on Knob
Creek, about 6 m. from Hodgenville; and in 1816 they crossed the Ohio
river and settled on a quarter-section, 1½ m. E. of the present village
of Gentryville, in Spencer county, Indiana. There Abraham's mother died
on the 5th of October 1818. In December 1819 his father married, at his
old home, Elizabethtown, Mrs Sarah (Bush) Johnston (d. 1869), whom he
had courted years before, whose thrift greatly improved conditions in
the home, and who exerted a great influence over her stepson. Spencer
county was still a wilderness, and the boy grew up in pioneer
surroundings, living in a rude log-cabin, enduring many hardships and
knowing only the primitive manners, conversation and ambitions of
sparsely settled backwoods communities. Schools were rare, and teachers
qualified only to impart the merest rudiments. "Of course when I came of
age I did not know much," wrote he years afterward, "still somehow I
could read, write and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I
have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this
store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure
of necessity." His entire schooling, in five different schools, amounted
to less than a twelvemonth; but he became a good speller and an
excellent penman. His own mother taught him to read, and his stepmother
urged him to study. He read and re-read in early boyhood the Bible,
Aesop, _Robinson Crusoe_, _Pilgrim's Progress_, Weems's _Life of
Washington_ and a history of the United States; and later read every
book he could borrow from the neighbours, Burns and Shakespeare becoming
favourites. He wrote rude, coarse satires, crude verse, and compositions
on the American government, temperance, &c. At the age of seventeen he
had attained his full height, and began to be known as a wrestler,
runner and lifter of great weights. When nineteen he made a journey as a
hired hand on a flatboat to New Orleans.
In March 1830 his father emigrated to Macon county, Illinois (near the
present Decatur), and soon afterward removed to Coles county. Being now
twenty-one years of age, Abraham hired himself to Denton Offutt, a
migratory trader and storekeeper then of Sangamon county, and he helped
Offutt to build a flatboat and float it down the Sangamon, Illinois and
Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. In 1831 Offutt made him clerk of his
country store at New Salem, a small and unsuccessful settlement in
Menard county; this gave him moments of leisure to devote to
self-education. He borrowed a grammar and other books, sought
explanations from the village schoolmaster and began to read law. In
this frontier community law and politics claimed a large proportion of
the stronger and the more ambitious men; the law early appealed to
Lincoln and his general popularity encouraged him as early as 1832 to
enter politics. In this year Offutt failed and Lincoln was thus left
without employment. He became a candidate for the Illinois House of
Representatives; and on the 9th of March 1832 issued an address "To the
people of Sangamon county" which betokens talent and education far
beyond mere ability to "read, write and cipher," though in its
preparation he seems to have had the help of a friend. Before the
election the Black Hawk Indian War broke out; Lincoln volunteered in one
of the Sangamon county companies on the 21st of April and was elected
captain by the members of the company. It is said that the oath of
allegiance was administered to Lincoln at this time by Lieut. Jefferson
Davis. The company, a part of the 4th Illinois, was mustered out after
the five weeks' service for which it volunteered, and Lincoln
re-enlisted as a private on the 29th of May, and was finally mustered
out on the 16th of June by Lieut. Robert Anderson, who in 1861 commanded
the Union troops at Fort Sumter. As captain Lincoln was twice in
disgrace, once for firing a pistol near camp and again because nearly
his entire company was intoxicated. He was in no battle, and always
spoke lightly of his military record. He was defeated in his campaign
for the legislature in 1832, partly because of his unpopular adherence
to Clay and the American system, but in his own election precinct, he
received nearly all the votes cast. With a friend, William Berry, he
then bought a small country store, which soon failed chiefly because of
the drunken habits of Berry and because Lincoln preferred to read and to
tell stories--he early gained local celebrity as a story-teller--rather
than sell; about this time he got hold of a set of Blackstone. In the
spring of 1833 the store's stock was sold to satisfy its creditors, and
Lincoln assumed the firm's debts, which he did not fully pay off for
fifteen years. In May 1833, local friendship, disregarding politics,
procured his appointment as postmaster of New Salem, but this paid him
very little, and in the same year the county surveyor of Sangamon county
opportunely offered to make him one of his deputies. He hastily
qualified himself by study, and entered upon the practical duties of
surveying farm lines, roads and town sites. "This," to use his own
words, "procured bread, and kept body and soul together."
In 1834 Lincoln was elected (second of four successful candidates, with
only 14 fewer votes than the first) a member of the Illinois House of
Representatives, to which he was re-elected in 1836, 1838 and 1840,
serving until 1842. In his announcement of his candidacy in 1836 he
promised to vote for Hugh L. White of Tennessee (a vigorous opponent of
Andrew Jackson in Tennessee politics) for president, and said: "I go for
all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its
burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of
suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females)"--a
sentiment frequently quoted to prove Lincoln a believer in woman's
suffrage. In this election he led the poll in Sangamon county. In the
legislature, like the other representatives of that county, who were
called the "Long Nine," because of their stature, he worked for internal
improvements, for which lavish appropriations were made, and for the
division of Sangamon county and the choice of Springfield as the state
capital, instead of Vandalia. He and his party colleagues followed
Stephen A. Douglas in adopting the convention system, to which Lincoln
had been strongly opposed. In 1837 with one other representative from
Sangamon county, named Dan Stone, he protested against a series of
resolutions, adopted by the Illinois General Assembly, expressing
disapproval of the formation of abolition societies and asserting, among
other things, that "the right of property in slaves is sacred to the
slave holding states under the Federal Constitution"; and Lincoln and
Stone put out a paper in which they expressed their belief "that the
institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but
that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase
than abate its evils," "that the Congress of the United States has no
power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of
slavery in the different states," "that the Congress of the United
States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised
unless at the request of the people of the District." Lincoln was very
popular among his fellow legislators, and in 1838 and in 1840 he
received the complimentary vote of his minority colleagues for the
speakership of the state House of Representatives. In 1842 he declined a
renomination to the state legislature and attempted unsuccessfully to
secure a nomination to Congress. In the same year he became interested
in the Washingtonian temperance movement.
In 1846 he was elected a member of the National House of Representatives
by a majority of 1511 over his Democratic opponent, Peter Cartwright,
the Methodist preacher. Lincoln was the only Whig member of Congress
elected in Illinois in 1846. In the House of Representatives on the 22nd
of December 1847 he introduced the "Spot Resolutions," which quoted
statements in the president's messages of the 11th of May 1846 and the
7th and 8th of December that Mexican troops had invaded the territory of
the United States, and asked the president to tell the precise "spot" of
invasion; he made a speech on these resolutions in the House on the 12th
of January 1848. His attitude toward the war and especially his vote for
George Ashmun's amendment to the supply bill at this session, declaring
that the Mexican War was "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced
by the President," greatly displeased his constituents. He later
introduced a bill regarding slavery in the District of Columbia, which
(in accordance with his statement of 1837) was to be submitted to the
vote of the District for approval, and which provided for compensated
emancipation, forbade the bringing of slaves into the District of
Columbia, except by government officials from slave states, and the
selling of slaves away from the District, and arranged for the
emancipation after a period of apprenticeship of all slave children born
after the 1st of January 1850. While he was in Congress he voted
repeatedly for the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. At the close of his
term in 1848 he declined an appointment as governor of the newly
organized Territory of Oregon and for a time worked, without success,
for an appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office. During
the presidential campaign he made speeches in Illinois, and in
Massachusetts he spoke before the Whig State Convention at Worcester on
the 12th of September, and in the next ten days at Lowell, Dedham,
Roxbury, Chelsea, Cambridge and Boston. He had become an eloquent and
influential public speaker, and in 1840 and 1844 was a candidate on the
Whig ticket for presidential elector.
In 1834 his political friend and colleague John Todd Stuart (1807-1885),
a lawyer in full practice, had urged him to fit himself for the bar, and
had lent him text-books; and Lincoln, working diligently, was admitted
to the bar in September 1836. In April 1837 he quitted New Salem, and
removed to Springfield, which was the county-seat and was soon to become
the capital of the state, to begin practice in a partnership with
Stuart, which was terminated in April 1841; from that time until
September 1843 he was junior partner to Stephen Trigg Logan (1800-1880),
and from 1843 until his death he was senior partner of William Henry
Herndon (1818-1891). Between 1849 and 1854 he took little part in
politics, devoted himself to the law and became one of the leaders of
the Illinois bar. His small fees--he once charged $3.50 for collecting
an account of nearly $600.00--his frequent refusals to take cases which
he did not think right and his attempts to prevent unnecessary
litigation have become proverbial. Judge David Davis, who knew Lincoln
on the Illinois circuit and whom Lincoln made in October 1862 an
associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, said that
he was "great both at _nisi prius_ and before an appellate tribunal." He
was an excellent cross-examiner, whose candid friendliness of manner
often succeeded in eliciting important testimony from unwilling
witnesses. Among Lincoln's most famous cases were: one (_Bailey_ v.
_Cromwell_, 4 Ill. 71; frequently cited) before the Illinois Supreme
Court in July 1841 in which he argued against the validity of a note in
payment for a negro girl, adducing the Ordinance of 1787 and other
authorities; a case (tried in Chicago in September 1857) for the Rock
Island railway, sued for damages by the owners of a steamboat sunk after
collision with a railway bridge, a trial in which Lincoln brought to the
service of his client a surveyor's knowledge of mathematics and a
riverman's acquaintance with currents and channels, and argued that
crossing a stream by bridge was as truly a common right as navigating it
by boat, thus contributing to the success of Chicago and railway
commerce in the contest against St Louis and river transportation; the
defence (at Beardstown in May 1858) on the charge of murder of William
("Duff") Armstrong, son of one of Lincoln's New Salem friends, whom
Lincoln freed by controverting with the help of an almanac the testimony
of a crucial witness that between 10 and 11 o'clock at night he had seen
by moonlight the defendant strike the murderous blow--this dramatic
incident is described in Edward Eggleston's novel, _The Graysons_; and
the defence on the charge of murder (committed in August 1859) of
"Peachy" Harrison, a grandson of Peter Cartwright, whose testimony was
used with great effect.
From law, however, Lincoln was soon drawn irresistibly back into
politics. The slavery question, in one form or another, had become the
great overshadowing issue in national, and even in state politics; the
abolition movement, begun in earnest by W. L. Garrison in 1831, had
stirred the conscience of the North, and had had its influence even upon
many who strongly deprecated its extreme radicalism; the Compromise of
1850 had failed to silence sectional controversy, and the Fugitive Slave
Law, which was one of the compromise measures, had throughout the North
been bitterly assailed and to a considerable extent had been nullified
by state legislation; and finally in 1854 the slavery agitation was
fomented by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the
Missouri Compromise and gave legislative sanction to the principle of
"popular sovereignty"--the principle that the inhabitants of each
Territory as well as of each state were to be left free to decide for
themselves whether or not slavery was to be permitted therein. In
enacting this measure Congress had been dominated largely by one
man--Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois--then probably the most powerful
figure in national politics. Lincoln had early put himself on record as
opposed to slavery, but he was never technically an abolitionist; he
allied himself rather with those who believed that slavery should be
fought within the Constitution, that, though it could not be
constitutionally interfered with in individual states, it should be
excluded from territory over which the national government had
jurisdiction. In this, as in other things, he was eminently
clear-sighted and practical. Already he had shown his capacity as a
forcible and able debater; aroused to new activity upon the passage of
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he regarded as a gross breach of
political faith, he now entered upon public discussion with an
earnestness and force that by common consent gave him leadership in
Illinois of the opposition, which in 1854 elected a majority of the
legislature; and it gradually became clear that he was the only man who
could be opposed in debate to the powerful and adroit Douglas. He was
elected to the state House of Representatives, from which he immediately
resigned to become a candidate for United States senator from Illinois,
to succeed James Shields, a Democrat; but five opposition members, of
Democratic antecedents, refused to vote for Lincoln (on the second
ballot he received 47 votes--50 being necessary to elect) and he turned
the votes which he controlled over to Lyman Trumbull, who was opposed to
the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and thus secured the defeat of Joel Aldrich
Matteson (1808-1883), who favoured this act and who on the eighth ballot
had received 47 votes to 35 for Trumbull and 15 for Lincoln. The various
anti-Nebraska elements came together, in Illinois as elsewhere, to form
a new party at a time when the old parties were disintegrating; and in
1856 the Republican party was formally organized in the state. Lincoln
before the state convention at Bloomington of "all opponents of
anti-Nebraska legislation" (the first Republican state convention in
Illinois) made on the 29th of May a notable address known as the "Lost
Speech." The National Convention of the Republican Party in 1856 cast
110 votes for Lincoln as its vice-presidential candidate on the ticket
with Fremont, and he was on the Republican electoral ticket of this
year, and made effective campaign speeches in the interest of the new
party. The campaign in the state resulted substantially in a drawn
battle, the Democrats gaining a majority in the state for president,
while the Republicans elected the governor and state officers. In 1858
the term of Douglas in the United States Senate was expiring, and he
sought re-election. On the 16th of June 1858 by unanimous resolution of
the Republican state convention Lincoln was declared "the first and only
choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as
the successor of Stephen A. Douglas," who was the choice of his own
party to succeed himself. Lincoln, addressing the convention which
nominated him, gave expression to the following bold prophecy:--
"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."
In this speech, delivered in the state House of Representatives, Lincoln
charged Pierce, Buchanan, Taney and Douglas with conspiracy to secure
the Dred Scott decision. Yielding to the wish of his party friends, on
the 24th of July, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a joint public
discussion.[3] The antagonists met in debate at seven designated places
in the state. The first meeting was at Ottawa, La Salle County, about 90
m. south-west of Chicago, on the 21st of August. At Freeport, on the
Wisconsin boundary, on the 27th of August, Lincoln answered questions
put to him by Douglas, and by his questions forced Douglas to "betray
the South" by his enunciation of the "Freeport heresy," that, no matter
what the character of Congressional legislation or the Supreme Court's
decision "slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is
supported by local police regulations." This adroit attempt to reconcile
the principle of popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision,
though it undoubtedly helped Douglas in the immediate fight for the
senatorship, necessarily alienated his Southern supporters and assured
his defeat, as Lincoln foresaw it must, in the presidential campaign of
1860. The other debates were: at Jonesboro, in the southern part of the
state, on the 15th of September; at Charleston, 150 m. N.E. of
Jonesboro, on the 18th of September; and, in the western part of the
state, at Galesburg (Oct. 7), Quincy (Oct. 13) and Alton (Oct. 15). In
these debates Douglas, the champion of his party, was over-matched in
clearness and force of reasoning, and lacked the great moral earnestness
of his opponent; but he dexterously extricated himself time and again
from difficult argumentative positions, and retained sufficient support
to win the immediate prize. At the November election the Republican vote
was 126,084, the Douglas Democratic vote was 121,940 and the Lecompton
(or Buchanan) Democratic vote was 5091; but the Democrats, through a
favourable apportionment of representative districts, secured a majority
of the legislature (Senate: 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans; House: 40
Democrats, 35 Republicans), which re-elected Douglas. Lincoln's speeches
in this campaign won him a national fame. In 1859 he made two speeches
in Ohio--one at Columbus on the 16th of September criticising Douglas's
paper in the September _Harper's Magazine_, and one at Cincinnati on the
17th of September, which was addressed to Kentuckians,--and he spent a
few days in Kansas, speaking in Elwood, Troy, Doniphan, Atchison and
Leavenworth, in the first week of December. On the 27th of February 1860
in Cooper Union, New York City, he made a speech (much the same as that
delivered in Elwood, Kansas, on the 1st of December) which made him
known favourably to the leaders of the Republican party in the East and
which was a careful historical study criticising the statement of
Douglas in one of his speeches in Ohio that "our fathers when they
framed the government under which we live understood this question
[slavery] just as well and even better than we do now," and Douglas's
contention that "the fathers" made the country (and intended that it
should remain) part slave. Lincoln pointed out that the majority of the
members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 opposed slavery and
that they did not think that Congress had no power to control slavery in
the Territories. He spoke at Concord, Manchester, Exeter and Dover in
New Hampshire, at Hartford (5th March), New Haven (6th March),
Woonsocket (8th March) and Norwich (9th March). The Illinois State
Convention of the Republican party, held at Decatur on the 9th and 10th
of May 1860, amid great enthusiasm declared Abraham Lincoln its first
choice for the presidential nomination, and instructed the delegation to
the National Convention to cast the vote of the state as a unit for him.
The Republican national convention, which made "No Extension of Slavery"
the essential part of the party platform, met at Chicago on the 16th of
May 1860. At this time William H. Seward was the most conspicuous
Republican in national politics, and Salmon P. Chase had long been in
the fore-front of the political contest against slavery. Both had won
greater national fame than had Lincoln, and, before the convention met,
each hoped to be nominated for president. Chase, however, had little
chance, and the contest was virtually between Seward and Lincoln, who by
many was considered more "available," because it was thought that he
could (and Seward could not) secure the vote of certain doubtful states.
Lincoln's name was presented by Illinois and seconded by Indiana. At
first Seward had the strongest support. On the first ballot Lincoln
received only 102 votes to 173½ for Seward. On the second ballot Lincoln
received 181 votes to Seward's 184½. On the third ballot the 50½ votes
formerly given to Simon Cameron[4] were given to Lincoln, who received
231½ votes to 180 for Seward, and without taking another ballot enough
votes were changed to make Lincoln's total 354 (233 being necessary for
a choice) and the nomination was then made unanimous. Hannibal Hamlin,
of Maine, was nominated for the vice-presidency. The convention was
singularly tumultuous and noisy; large claques were hired by both
Lincoln's and Seward's managers. During the campaign Lincoln remained in
Springfield, making few speeches and writing practically no letters for
publication. The campaign was unusually animated--only the Whig campaign
for William Henry Harrison in 1840 is comparable to it: there were great
torchlight processions of "wide-awake" clubs, which did "rail-fence," or
zigzag, marches, and carried rails in honour of their candidate, the
"rail-splitter." Lincoln was elected by a popular vote of 1,866,452 to
1,375,157 for Douglas, 847,953 for Breckinridge and 590,631 for Bell--as
the combined vote of his opponents was so much greater than his own he
was often called "the minority president"; the electoral vote was:
Lincoln, 180; John C. Breckinridge, 72; John Bell, 39; Stephen A.
Douglas, 12. On the 4th of March 1861 Lincoln was inaugurated as
president. (For an account of his administration see UNITED STATES:
_History_.)
During the campaign radical leaders in the South frequently asserted
that the success of the Republicans at the polls would mean that the
rights of the slave-holding states under the Federal constitution, as
interpreted by them, would no longer be respected by the North, and
that, if Lincoln were elected, it would be the duty of these
slave-holding states to secede from the Union. There was much opposition
in these states to such a course, but the secessionists triumphed, and
by the time President Lincoln was inaugurated, South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas had formally
withdrawn from the Union. A provisional government under the designation
"The Confederate States of America," with Jefferson Davis as president,
was organized by the seceding states, which seized by force nearly all
the forts, arsenals and public buildings within their limits. Great
division of sentiment existed in the North, whether in this emergency
acquiescence or coercion was the preferable policy. Lincoln's inaugural
address declared the Union perpetual and acts of secession void, and
announced the determination of the government to defend its authority,
and to hold forts and places yet in its possession. He disclaimed any
intention to invade, subjugate or oppress the seceding states. "You can
have no conflict," he said, "without being yourselves the aggressors."
Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour, had been besieged by the
secessionists since January; and, it being now on the point of surrender
through starvation, Lincoln sent the besiegers official notice on the
8th of April that a fleet was on its way to carry provisions to the
fort, but that he would not attempt to reinforce it unless this effort
were resisted. The Confederates, however, immediately ordered its
reduction, and after a thirty-four hours' bombardment the garrison
capitulated on the 13th of April 1861. (For the military history of the
war, see AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.)
With civil war thus provoked, Lincoln, on the 15th of April, by
proclamation called 75,000 three months' militia under arms, and on the
4th of May ordered the further enlistment of 64,748 soldiers and 18,000
seamen for three years' service. He instituted by proclamation of the
19th of April a blockade of the Southern ports, took effective steps to
extemporize a navy, convened Congress in special session (on the 4th of
July), and asked for legislation and authority to make the war "short,
sharp and decisive." The country responded with enthusiasm to his
summons and suggestions; and the South on its side was not less active.
The slavery question presented vexatious difficulties in conducting the
war. Congress in August 1861 passed an act (approved August 6th)
confiscating rights of slave-owners to slaves employed in hostile
service against the Union. On the 30th of August General Fremont by
military order declared martial law and confiscation against active
enemies, with freedom to their slaves, in the State of Missouri.
Believing that under existing conditions such a step was both
detrimental in present policy and unauthorized in law, President Lincoln
directed him (2nd September) to modify the order to make it conform to
the Confiscation Act of Congress, and on the 11th of September annulled
the parts of the order which conflicted with this act. Strong political
factions were instantly formed for and against military emancipation,
and the government was hotly beset by antagonistic counsel. The
Unionists of the border slave states were greatly alarmed, but Lincoln
by his moderate conservatism held them to the military support of the
government.[5] Meanwhile he sagaciously prepared the way for the supreme
act of statesmanship which the gathering national crisis already dimly
foreshadowed. On the 6th of March 1862, he sent a special message to
Congress recommending the passage of a resolution offering pecuniary aid
from the general government to induce states to adopt gradual
abolishment of slavery. Promptly passed by Congress, the resolution
produced no immediate result except in its influence on public opinion.
A practical step, however, soon followed. In April Congress passed and
the president approved (6th April) an act emancipating the slaves in the
District of Columbia, with compensation to owners--a measure which
Lincoln had proposed when in Congress. Meanwhile slaves of loyal masters
were constantly escaping to military camps. Some commanders excluded
them altogether; others surrendered them on demand; while still others
sheltered and protected them against their owners. Lincoln tolerated
this latitude as falling properly within the military discretion
pertaining to local army operations. A new case, however, soon demanded
his official interference. On the 9th of May 1862 General David Hunter,
commanding in the limited areas gained along the southern coast, issued
a short order declaring his department under martial law, and
adding--"Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether
incompatible. The persons in these three States--Georgia, Florida and
South Carolina--heretofore held as slaves are, therefore, declared for
ever free." As soon as this order, by the slow method of communication
by sea, reached the newspapers, Lincoln (May 19) published a
proclamation declaring it void; adding further, "Whether it be competent
for me as commander-in-chief of the army and navy to declare the slaves
of any state or states free, and whether at any time or in any case it
shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the
government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which under my
responsibility I reserve to myself, and which I cannot feel justified in
leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally
different questions from those of police regulations in armies or
camps." But in the same proclamation Lincoln recalled to the public his
own proposal and the assent of Congress to compensate states which would
adopt voluntary and gradual abolishment. "To the people of these states
now," he added, "I must earnestly appeal. I do not argue. I beseech you
to make the argument for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind
to the signs of the times." Meanwhile the anti-slavery sentiment of the
North constantly increased. Congress by express act (approved on the
19th of June) prohibited the existence of slavery in all territories
outside of states. On July the 12th the president called the
representatives of the border slave states to the executive mansion, and
once more urged upon them his proposal of compensated emancipation. "If
the war continues long," he said, "as it must if the object be not
sooner attained, the institution in your states will be extinguished by
mere friction and abrasion--by the mere incidents of the war. It will be
gone, and you will have nothing valuable in lieu of it." Although
Lincoln's appeal brought the border states to no practical decision--the
representatives of these states almost without exception opposed the
plan--it served to prepare public opinion for his final act. During the
month of July his own mind reached the virtual determination to give
slavery its _coup de grâce_; on the 17th he approved a new Confiscation
Act, much broader than that of the 6th of August 1861 (which freed only
those slaves in military service against the Union) and giving to the
president power to employ persons of African descent for the suppression
of the rebellion; and on the 22nd he submitted to his cabinet the draft
of an emancipation proclamation substantially as afterward issued.
Serious military reverses constrained him for the present to withhold
it, while on the other hand they served to increase the pressure upon
him from anti-slavery men. Horace Greeley having addressed a public
letter to him complaining of "the policy you seem to be pursuing with
regard to the slaves of the rebels," the president replied on the 22nd
of August, saying, "My paramount object is to save the Union, and not
either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the
slaves, I would do it; and, if I could do it by freeing some and leaving
others alone, I would also do that." Thus still holding back violent
reformers with one hand, and leading up halting conservatives with the
other, he on the 13th of September replied among other things to an
address from a delegation: "I do not want to issue a document that the
whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative like the pope's
bull against the comet.... I view this matter as a practical war
measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages
it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.... I have not decided
against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter
under advisement."
The year 1862 had opened with important Union victories. Admiral A. H.
Foote captured Fort Henry on the 6th of February, and Gen. U. S. Grant
captured Fort Donelson on the 16th of February, and won the battle of
Shiloh on the 6th and 7th of April. Gen. A. E. Burnside took possession
of Roanoke island on the North Carolina coast (7th February). The famous
contest between the new ironclads "Monitor" and "Merrimac" (9th April),
though indecisive, effectually stopped the career of the Confederate
vessel, which was later destroyed by the Confederates themselves. (See
HAMPTON ROADS.) Farragut, with a wooden fleet, ran past the twin forts
St Philip and Jackson, compelled the surrender of New Orleans (26th
April), and gained control of the lower Mississippi. The succeeding
three months brought disaster and discouragement to the Union army.
M'Clellan's campaign against Richmond was made abortive by his timorous
generalship, and compelled the withdrawal of his army. Pope's army,
advancing against the same city by another line, was beaten back upon
Washington in defeat. The tide of war, however, once more turned in the
defeat of Lee's invading army at South Mountain and Antietam in Maryland
on the 14th and on the 16th and 17th of September, compelling him to
retreat.
With public opinion thus ripened by alternate defeat and victory,
President Lincoln, on the 22nd of September 1862, issued his preliminary
proclamation of emancipation, giving notice that on the 1st of January
1863, "all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of
a state the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United
States shall be then, thenceforward and for ever free." In his message
to Congress on the 1st of December following, he again urged his plan of
gradual, compensated emancipation (to be completed on the 1st of
December 1900) "as a means, not in exclusion of, but additional to, all
others for restoring and preserving the national authority throughout
the Union." On the 1st day of January 1863 the final proclamation of
emancipation was duly issued, designating the States of Arkansas, Texas,
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina,
and certain portions of Louisiana and Virginia, as "this day in
rebellion against the United States," and proclaiming that, in virtue of
his authority as commander-in-chief, and as a necessary war measure for
suppressing rebellion, "I do order and declare that all persons held as
slaves within said designated states and parts of states are and
henceforward shall be free," and pledging the executive and military
power of the government to maintain such freedom. The legal validity of
these proclamations was never pronounced upon by the national courts;
but their decrees gradually enforced by the march of armies were soon
recognized by public opinion to be practically irreversible.[6] Such
dissatisfaction as they caused in the border slave states died out in
the stress of war. The systematic enlistment of negroes and their
incorporation into the army by regiments, hitherto only tried as
exceptional experiments, were now pushed with vigour, and, being
followed by several conspicuous instances of their gallantry on the
battlefield, added another strong impulse to the sweeping change of
popular sentiment. To put the finality of emancipation beyond all
question, Lincoln in the winter session of 1863-1864 strongly supported
a movement in Congress to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment,
but the necessary two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives could
not then be obtained. In his annual message of the 6th of December 1864,
he urged the immediate passage of the measure. Congress now acted
promptly: on the 31st of January 1865, that body by joint resolution
proposed to the states the 13th amendment of the Federal Constitution,
providing that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their
jurisdiction." Before the end of that year twenty-seven out of the
thirty-six states of the Union (being the required three-fourths) had
ratified the amendment, and official proclamation made by President
Johnson on the 18th of December 1865, declared it duly adopted.
The foreign policy of President Lincoln, while subordinate in importance
to the great questions of the Civil War, nevertheless presented several
difficult and critical problems for his decision. The arrest (8th of
November 1861) by Captain Charles Wilkes of two Confederate envoys
proceeding to Europe in the British steamer "Trent" seriously threatened
peace with England. Public opinion in America almost unanimously
sustained the act; but Lincoln, convinced that the rights of Great
Britain as a neutral had been violated, promptly, upon the demand of
England, ordered the liberation of the prisoners (26th of December).
Later friendly relations between the United States and Great Britain,
where, among the upper classes, there was a strong sentiment in favour
of the Confederacy, were seriously threatened by the fitting out of
Confederate privateers in British ports, and the Administration owed
much to the skilful diplomacy of the American minister in London,
Charles Francis Adams. A still broader foreign question grew out of
Mexican affairs, when events culminating in the setting up of Maximilian
of Austria as emperor under protection of French troops demanded the
constant watchfulness of the United States. Lincoln's course was one of
prudent moderation. France voluntarily declared that she sought in
Mexico only to satisfy injuries done her and not to overthrow or
establish local government or to appropriate territory. The United
States Government replied that, relying on these assurances, it would
maintain strict non-intervention, at the same time openly avowing the
general sympathy of its people with a Mexican republic, and that "their
own safety and the cheerful destiny to which they aspire are intimately
dependent on the continuance of free republican institutions throughout
America." In the early part of 1863 the French Government proposed a
mediation between the North and the South. This offer President Lincoln
(on the 6th of February) declined to consider, Seward replying for him
that it would only be entering into diplomatic discussion with the
rebels whether the authority of the government should be renounced, and
the country delivered over to disunion and anarchy.
The Civil War gradually grew to dimensions beyond all expectation. By
January 1863 the Union armies numbered near a million men, and were kept
up to this strength till the end of the struggle. The Federal war debt
eventually reached the sum of $2,700,000,000. The fortunes of battle
were somewhat fluctuating during the first half of 1863, but the
beginning of July brought the Union forces decisive victories. The
reduction of Vicksburg (4th of July) and Port Hudson (9th of July), with
other operations, restored complete control of the Mississippi, severing
the Southern Confederacy. In the east Lee had the second time marched
his army into Pennsylvania to suffer a disastrous defeat at Gettysburg,
on the 1st, 2nd and 3rd of July, though he was able to withdraw his
shattered forces south of the Potomac. At the dedication of this
battlefield as a soldiers' cemetery in November, President Lincoln made
the following oration, which has taken permanent place as a classic in
American literature:--
"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a
great civil war testing whether that nation, or any nation so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that
we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we
cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living
and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor
power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is
for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work
which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us--that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that
cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we
here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that
this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth."
In the unexpected prolongation of the war, volunteer enlistments became
too slow to replenish the waste of armies, and in 1863 the government
was forced to resort to a draft. The enforcement of the conscription
created much opposition in various parts of the country, and led to a
serious riot in the city of New York on the 13th-16th of July. President
Lincoln executed the draft with all possible justice and forbearance,
but refused every importunity to postpone it. It was made a special
subject of criticism by the Democratic party of the North, which was now
organizing itself on the basis of a discontinuance of the war, to
endeavour to win the presidential election of the following year.
Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, having made a violent public speech at
Mt. Vernon, Ohio, on the 1st of May against the war and military
proceedings, was arrested on the 5th of May by General Burnside, tried
by military commission, and sentenced on the 16th to imprisonment; a
writ of _habeas corpus_ had been refused, and the sentence was changed
by the president to transportation beyond the military lines. By way of
political defiance the Democrats of Ohio nominated Vallandigham for
governor on the 11th of June. Prominent Democrats and a committee of the
Convention having appealed for his release, Lincoln wrote two long
letters in reply discussing the constitutional question, and declaring
that in his judgment the president as commander-in-chief in time of
rebellion or invasion holds the power and responsibility of suspending
the privilege of the writ of _habeas corpus_, but offering to release
Vallandigham if the committee would sign a declaration that rebellion
exists, that an army and navy are constitutional means to suppress it,
and that each of them would use his personal power and influence to
prosecute the war. This liberal offer and their refusal to accept it
counteracted all the political capital they hoped to make out of the
case; and public opinion was still more powerfully influenced in behalf
of the president's action, by the pathos of the query which he
propounded in one of his letters: "Must I shoot the simple-minded
soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily
agitator who induces him to desert?" When the election took place in
Ohio, Vallandigham was defeated by a majority of more than a hundred
thousand.
Many unfounded rumours of a willingness on the part of the Confederate
States to make peace were circulated to weaken the Union war spirit. To
all such suggestions, up to the time of issuing his emancipation
proclamation, Lincoln announced his readiness to stop fighting and grant
amnesty, whenever they would submit to and maintain the national
authority under the Constitution of the United States. Certain agents in
Canada having in 1864 intimated that they were empowered to treat for
peace, Lincoln, through Greeley, tendered them safe conduct to
Washington. They were by this forced to confess that they possessed no
authority to negotiate. The president thereupon sent them, and made
public, the following standing offer:--
"To whom it may concern:
"Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, the
integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and
which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now
at war against the United States, will be received and considered by
the Executive Government of the United States, and will be met by
liberal terms on substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or
bearers thereof shall have safe conduct both ways.
"July 18, 1864."
"ABRAHAM LINCOLN."
A noteworthy conference on this question took place near the close of
the Civil War, when the strength of the Confederacy was almost
exhausted. F. P. Blair, senior, a personal friend of Jefferson Davis,
acting solely on his own responsibility, was permitted to go from
Washington to Richmond, where, on the 12th of January 1865, after a
private and unofficial interview, Davis in writing declared his
willingness to enter a conference "to secure peace to the two
countries." Report being duly made to President Lincoln, he wrote a note
(dated 18th January) consenting to receive any agent sent informally
"with the view of securing peace to the people of our common country."
Upon the basis of this latter proposition three Confederate
commissioners (A. H. Stevens, J. A. C. Campbell and R. M. T. Hunter)
finally came to Hampton Roads, where President Lincoln and Secretary
Seward met them on the U.S. steam transport "River Queen," and on the
3rd of February 1865 an informal conference of four hours' duration was
held. Private reports of the interview agree substantially in the
statement that the Confederates proposed a cessation of the Civil War,
and postponement of its issues for future adjustment, while for the
present the belligerents should unite in a campaign to expel the French
from Mexico, and to enforce the Monroe doctrine. President Lincoln,
however, although he offered to use his influence to secure compensation
by the Federal government to slave-owners for their slaves, if there
should be "voluntary abolition of slavery by the states," a liberal and
generous administration of the Confiscation Act, and the immediate
representation of the southern states in Congress, refused to consider
any alliance against the French in Mexico, and adhered to the
instructions he had given Seward before deciding to personally accompany
him. These formulated three indispensable conditions to adjustment:
first, the restoration of the national authority throughout all the
states; second, no receding by the executive of the United States on the
slavery question; third, no cessation of hostilities short of an end of
the war, and the disbanding of all forces hostile to the government.
These terms the commissioners were not authorized to accept, and the
interview ended without result.
As Lincoln's first presidential term of four years neared its end, the
Democratic party gathered itself for a supreme effort to regain the
ascendancy lost in 1860. The slow progress of the war, the severe
sacrifice of life in campaign and battle, the enormous accumulation of
public debt, arbitrary arrests and suspension of _habeas corpus_, the
rigour of the draft, and the proclamation of military emancipation
furnished ample subjects of bitter and vindictive campaign oratory. A
partisan coterie which surrounded M'Clellan loudly charged the failure
of his Richmond campaign to official interference in his plans.
Vallandigham had returned to his home in defiance of his banishment
beyond military lines, and was leniently suffered to remain. The
aggressive spirit of the party, however, pushed it to a fatal extreme.
The Democratic National Convention adopted (August 29, 1864) a
resolution (drafted by Vallandigham) declaring the war a failure, and
demanding a cessation of hostilities; it nominated M'Clellan for
president, and instead of adjourning _sine die_ as usual, remained
organized, and subject to be convened at any time and place by the
executive national committee. This threatening attitude, in conjunction
with alarming indications of a conspiracy to resist the draft, had the
effect to thoroughly consolidate the war party, which had on the 8th of
June unanimously renominated Lincoln, and had nominated Andrew Johnson
of Tennessee for the vice-presidency. At the election held on the 8th of
November 1864, Lincoln received 2,216,076 of the popular votes, and
M'Clellan (who had openly disapproved of the resolution declaring the
war a failure) but 1,808,725; while of the presidential electors 212
voted for Lincoln and 21 for M'Clellan. Lincoln's second term of office
began on the 4th of March 1865.
While this political contest was going on the Civil War was being
brought to a decisive close. Grant, at the head of the Army of the
Potomac, followed Lee to Richmond and Petersburg, and held him in siege
to within a few days of final surrender. General W. T. Sherman,
commanding the bulk of the Union forces in the Mississippi Valley, swept
in a victorious march through the heart of the Confederacy to Savannah
on the coast, and thence northward to North Carolina. Lee evacuated
Richmond on the 2nd of April, and was overtaken by Grant and compelled
to surrender his entire army on the 9th of April 1865. Sherman pushed
Johnston to a surrender on the 26th of April. This ended the war.
Lincoln being at the time on a visit to the army, entered Richmond the
day after its surrender. Returning to Washington, he made his last
public address on the evening of the 11th of April, devoted mainly to
the question of reconstructing loyal governments in the conquered
states. On the evening of the 14th of April he attended Ford's theatre
in Washington. While seated with his family and friends absorbed in the
play, John Wilkes Booth, an actor, who with others had prepared a plot
to assassinate the several heads of government, went into the little
corridor leading to the upper stage-box, and secured it against ingress
by a wooden bar. Then stealthily entering the box, he discharged a
pistol at the head of the president from behind, the ball penetrating
the brain. Brandishing a huge knife, with which he wounded Colonel
Rathbone who attempted to hold him, the assassin rushed through the
stage-box to the front and leaped down upon the stage, escaping behind
the scenes and from the rear of the building, but was pursued, and
twelve days afterwards shot in a barn where he had concealed himself.
The wounded president was borne to a house across the street, where he
breathed his last at 7 A.M. on the 15th of April 1865.
President Lincoln was of unusual stature, 6 ft. 4 in., and of spare
but muscular build; he had been in youth remarkably strong and skilful
in the athletic games of the frontier, where, however, his popularity
and recognized impartiality oftener made him an umpire than a
champion. He had regular and prepossessing features, dark complexion,
broad high forehead, prominent cheek bones, grey deep-set eyes, and
bushy black hair, turning to grey at the time of his death. Abstemious
in his habits, he possessed great physical endurance. He was almost as
tender-hearted as a woman. "I have not willingly planted a thorn in
any man's bosom," he was able to say. His patience was inexhaustible.
He had naturally a most cheerful and sunny temper, was highly social
and sympathetic, loved pleasant conversation, wit, anecdote and
laughter. Beneath this, however, ran an undercurrent of sadness; he
was occasionally subject to hours of deep silence and introspection
that approached a condition of trance. In manner he was simple,
direct, void of the least affectation, and entirely free from
awkwardness, oddity or eccentricity. His mental qualities were--a
quick analytic perception, strong logical powers, a tenacious memory,
a liberal estimate and tolerance of the opinions of others, ready
intuition of human nature; and perhaps his most valuable faculty was
rare ability to divest himself of all feeling or passion in weighing
motives of persons or problems of state. His speech and diction were
plain, terse, forcible. Relating anecdotes with appreciative humour
and fascinating dramatic skill, he used them freely and effectively in
conversation and argument. He loved manliness, truth and justice. He
despised all trickery and selfish greed. In arguments at the bar he
was so fair to his opponent that he frequently appeared to concede
away his client's case. He was ever ready to take blame on himself and
bestow praise on others. "I claim not to have controlled events," he
said, "but confess plainly that events have controlled me." The
Declaration of Independence was his political chart and inspiration.
He acknowledged a universal equality of human rights. "Certainly the
negro is not our equal in colour," he said, "perhaps not in many other
respects; still, in the right to put into his mouth the bread that his
own hands have earned, he is the equal of every other man white or
black." He had unchanging faith in self-government. "The people," he
said, "are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to
overthrow the constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the
constitution." Yielding and accommodating in non-essentials, he was
inflexibly firm in a principle or position deliberately taken. "Let us
have faith that right makes might," he said, "and in that faith let us
to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it." The emancipation
proclamation once issued, he reiterated his purpose never to retract
or modify it. "There have been men base enough," he said, "to propose
to me to return to slavery our black warriors of Port Hudson and
Olustee, and thus win the respect of the masters they fought. Should I
do so I should deserve to be damned in time and eternity. Come what
will, I will keep my faith with friend and foe." Benevolence and
forgiveness were the very basis of his character; his world-wide
humanity is aptly embodied in a phrase of his second inaugural: "With
malice toward none, with charity for all." His nature was deeply
religious, but he belonged to no denomination.
Lincoln married in Springfield on the 4th of November 1842, Mary Todd
(1818-1882), also a native of Kentucky, who bore him four sons, of whom
the only one to grow up was the eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln (b. 1843),
who graduated at Harvard in 1864, served as a captain on the staff of
General Grant in 1865, was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1867, was
secretary of war in the cabinets of Presidents Garfield and Arthur in
1881-1885, and United States Minister to Great Britain in 1889-1893, and
was prominently connected with many large corporations, becoming in 1897
president of the Pullman Co.
Of the many statues of President Lincoln in American cities, the best
known is that, in Chicago, by St Gaudens. Among the others are two by
Thomas Ball, one in statuary hall in the Capitol at Washington, and one
in Boston; two--one in Rochester, N.Y., and one in Springfield, Ill.--by
Leonard W. Volk, who made a life-mask and a bust of Lincoln in 1860; and
one by J. Q. A. Ward, in Lincoln Park, Washington. Francis B. Carpenter
painted in 1864 "Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation," now in
the Capitol at Washington.
See _The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln_ (12 vols., New York,
1906-1907; enlarged from the 2-volume edition of 1894 by John G.
Nicolay and John Hay). There are various editions of the
Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858; perhaps the best is that edited by E.
E. Sparks (1908). There are numerous biographies, and biographical
studies, including: John G. Nicolay and John Hay, _Abraham Lincoln: A
History_ (10 vols., New York, 1890), a monumental work by his private
secretaries who treat primarily his official life; John G. Nicolay, _A
Short Life of Abraham Lincoln_ (New York, 1904), condensed from the
preceding; John T. Morse, Jr., _Abraham Lincoln_ (2 vols., Boston,
1896), in the "American Statesmen" series, an excellent brief
biography, dealing chiefly with Lincoln's political career; Ida M.
Tarbell, _The Early Life of Lincoln_ (New York, 1896) and _Life of
Abraham Lincoln_ (2 vols., New York, 1900), containing new material to
which too great prominence and credence is sometimes given; Carl
Schurz, _Abraham Lincoln: An Essay_ (Boston, 1891), a remarkably able
estimate; Ward H. Lamon, _The Life of Abraham Lincoln from his Birth
to his Inauguration as President_ (Boston, 1872), supplemented by
_Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847-1865_ (Chicago, 1895), compiled
by Dorothy Lamon, valuable for some personal recollections, but
tactless, uncritical, and marred by the effort of the writer, who as
marshal of the District of Columbia, knew Lincoln intimately, to prove
that Lincoln's melancholy was due to his lack of religious belief of
the orthodox sort; William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik, _Abraham
Lincoln, the True Story of a Great Life_ (3 vols., Chicago, 1889;
revised, 2 vols., New York, 1892), an intimate and ill-proportioned
biography by Lincoln's law partner who exaggerates the importance of
the petty incidents of his youth and young manhood; Isaac N. Arnold,
_History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery_ (Chicago,
1867), revised and enlarged as _Life of Abraham Lincoln_ (Chicago,
1885), valuable for personal reminiscences; Gideon Welles, _Lincoln
and Seward_ (New York, 1874), the reply of Lincoln's secretary of the
navy to Charles Francis Adams's eulogy (delivered in Albany in April
1873) on Lincoln's secretary of state, W. H. Seward, in which Adams
claimed that Seward was the premier of Lincoln's administration; F. B.
Carpenter, _Six Months in the White House_ (New York, 1866), an
excellent account of Lincoln's daily life while president; Robert T.
Hill, _Lincoln the Lawyer_ (New York, 1906); A. Rothschild, _Lincoln,
the Master of Men_ (Boston, 1906); J. Eaton and E. O. Mason, _Grant,
Lincoln, and the Freedmen_ (New York, 1907); R. W. Gilder, _Lincoln,
the Leader, and Lincoln's Genius for Expression_ (New York, 1909); M.
L. Learned, _Abraham Lincoln: An American Migration_ (Philadelphia,
1909), a careful study of the Lincoln family in America; W. P.
Pickett, _The Negro Problem: Abraham Lincoln's Solution_ (New York,
1909); James H. Lea and J. R. Hutchinson, _The Ancestry of Abraham
Lincoln_ (Boston, 1909), a careful genealogical monograph; and C. H.
McCarthy, _Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction_ (New York, 1901). For an
excellent account of Lincoln as president see J. F. Rhodes, _History
of the United States from the Compromise of 1850_ (7 vols.,
1893-1906). (J. G. N.; C. C. W.)