For four or five years after his return from Congress, Lincoln remained
in Springfield, working industriously at his profession. He was offered
a law partnership in Chicago, but declined on the ground that his health
would not stand the confinement of a great city. His business increased
in volume and importance as the months went by; and it was during this
time that he engaged in what is perhaps the most dramatic as well as the
best known of all his law cases--his defense of Jack Armstrong's son on
a charge of murder. A knot of young men had quarreled one night on
the outskirts of a camp-meeting, one was killed, and suspicion pointed
strongly toward young Armstrong as the murderer. Lincoln, for old
friendship's sake, offered to defend him--an offer most gratefully
accepted by his family. The principal witness swore that he had seen
young Armstrong strike the fatal blow--had seen him distinctly by the
light of a bright moon. Lincoln made him repeat the statement until it
seemed as if he were sealing the death-warrant of the prisoner. Then
Lincoln began his address to the jury. He was not there as a hired
attorney, he told them, but because of friendship. He told of his old
relations with Jack Armstrong, of the kindness the prisoner's mother had
shown him in New Salem, how he had himself rocked the prisoner to sleep
when the latter was a little child. Then he reviewed the testimony,
pointing out how completely everything depended on the statements
of this one witness; and ended by proving beyond question that his
testimony was false, since, according to the almanac, which he produced
in court and showed to judge and jury, THERE WAS NO MOON IN THE SKY
THAT NIGHT at the hour the murder was committed. The jury brought in a
verdict of "Not guilty," and the prisoner was discharged.
Lincoln was always strong with a jury. He knew how to handle men, and
he had a direct way of going to the heart of things. He had, moreover,
unusual powers of mental discipline. It was after his return from
Congress, when he had long been acknowledged one of the foremost lawyers
of the State, that he made up his mind he lacked the power of close and
sustained reasoning, and set himself like a schoolboy to study works of
logic and mathematics to remedy the defect. At this time he committed to
memory six books of the propositions of Euclid; and, as always, he was
an eager reader on many subjects, striving in this way to make up for
the lack of education he had had as a boy. He was always interested in
mechanical principles and their workings, and in May, 1849, patented a
device for lifting vessels over shoals, which had evidently been dormant
in his mind since the days of his early Mississippi River experiences.
The little model of a boat, whittled out with his own hand, that he sent
to the Patent Office when he filed his application, is still shown to
visitors, though the invention itself failed to bring about any change
in steamboat architecture.
In work and study time slipped away. He was the same cheery companion as
of old, much sought after by his friends, but now more often to be found
in his office surrounded by law-books and papers than had been the case
before his term in Congress. His interest in politics seemed almost
to have ceased when, in 1854, something happened to rouse that and his
sense of right and justice as they had never been roused before. This
was the repeal of the "Missouri Compromise," a law passed by Congress
in the year 1820, allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave State,
but positively forbidding slavery in all other territory of the United
States lying north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes, which was the
southern boundary-line of Missouri.
Up to that time the Southern States, where slavery was lawful, had been
as wealthy and quite as powerful in politics as the Northern or free
States. The great unoccupied territory lying to the west, which, in
years to come, was sure to be filled with people and made into new
States, lay, however, mostly north of 36 degrees 30 minutes; and it was
easy to see that as new free States came one after the other into the
Union the importance of the South must grow less and less, because there
was little or no territory left out of which slave States could be
made to offset them. The South therefore had been anxious to have the
Missouri Compromise repealed.
The people of the North, on the other hand, were not all wise or
disinterested in their way of attacking slavery. As always happens,
self-interest and moral purpose mingled on both sides; but, as a whole,
it may be said that they wished to get rid of slavery because they felt
it to be wrong, and totally out of place in a country devoted to freedom
and liberty. The quarrel between them was as old as the nation, and it
had been gaining steadily in intensity. At first only a few persons in
each section had been really interested. By the year 1850 it had come
to be a question of much greater moment, and during the ten years that
followed was to increase in bitterness until it absorbed the thoughts of
the entire people, and plunged the country into a terrible civil war.
Abraham Lincoln had grown to manhood while the question was gaining in
importance. As a youth, during his flatboat voyages to New Orleans he
had seen negroes chained and beaten, and the injustice of slavery had
been stamped upon his soul. The uprightness of his mind abhorred a
system that kept men in bondage merely because they happened to be
black. The intensity of his feeling on the subject had made him a Whig
when, as a friendless boy, he lived in a town where Whig ideas were much
in disfavor. The same feeling, growing stronger as he grew older, had
inspired the Lincoln-Stone protest and the bill to free the slaves in
the District of Columbia, and had caused him to vote at least forty
times against slavery in one form or another during his short term in
Congress. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, throwing open once more
to slavery a vast amount of territory from which it had been shut out,
could not fail to move him deeply. His sense of justice and his strong
powers of reasoning were equally stirred, and from that time until
slavery came to its end through his own act, he gave his time and all
his energies to the cause of freedom.
Two points served to make the repeal of the Missouri Compromise of
special interest to Lincoln. The first was personal, in that the man who
championed the measure, and whose influence in Congress alone made it
possible, was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had been his neighbor in
Illinois for many years.
The second was deeper. He realized that the struggle meant much more
than the freedom or bondage of a few million black men: that it was in
reality a struggle for the central idea of our American republic--the
statement in our Declaration of Independence that "all men are created
equal." He made no public speeches until autumn, but in the meantime
studied the question with great care, both as to its past history and
present state. When he did speak it was with a force and power that
startled Douglas and, it is said, brought him privately to Lincoln with
the proposition that neither of them should address a public meeting
again until after the next election.
Douglas was a man of great ambition as well as of unusual political
skill. Until recently he had been heartily in favor of keeping slavery
out of the Northwest Territory; but he had set his heart upon being
President of the United States, and he thought that he saw a chance of
this if he helped the South to repeal the Missouri Compromise, and thus
gained its gratitude and its votes. Without hesitation he plunged into
the work and labored successfully to overthrow this law of more than
thirty years' standing.
Lincoln's speech against the repeal had made a deep impression in
Illinois, where he was at once recognized as the people's spokesman
in the cause of freedom. His statements were so clear, his language so
eloquent, the stand he took so just, that all had to acknowledge his
power. He did not then, nor for many years afterward, say that the
slaves ought to be immediately set free. What he did insist upon was
that slavery was wrong, and that it must not be allowed to spread into
territory already free; but that, gradually, in ways lawful and just to
masters and slaves alike, the country should strive to get rid of it in
places where it already existed. He never let his hearers lose sight of
the great underlying moral fact. "Slavery," he said, "is founded in the
selfishness of man's nature; opposition to it in his love of justice."
Even Senator Douglas was not prepared to admit that slavery was right.
He knew that if he said that he could never be President, for the whole
North would rise against him. He wished to please both sides, so he
argued that it was not a question for him or for the Federal Government
to decide, but one which each State and Territory must settle for
itself. In answer to this plea of his that it was not a matter
of morals, but of "State rights"--a mere matter of local
self-government--Mr. Lincoln replied, "When the white man governs
himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself and
also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that is
despotism."
It was on these opposing grounds that the two men took their stand for
the battle of argument and principle that was to continue for years,
to outgrow the bounds of the State, to focus the attention of the whole
country upon them, and, in the end, to have far-reaching consequences
of which neither at that time dreamed. At first the field appeared
much narrower, though even then the reward was a large one. Lincoln had
entered the contest with no thought of political gain; but it happened
that a new United States senator from Illinois had to be chosen
about that time. Senators are not voted for by the people, but by the
legislatures of their respective States and as a first result of all
this discussion about the right or wrong of slavery it was found that
the Illinois legislature, instead of having its usual large Democratic
majority, was almost evenly divided. Lincoln seemed the most likely
candidate; and he would have undoubtedly been chosen senator, had not
five men, whose votes were absolutely necessary, stoutly refused to
vote for a Whig, no matter what his views upon slavery might be. Keeping
stubbornly aloof, they cast their ballots time after time for Lyman
Trumbull, who was a Democrat, although as strongly opposed to slavery as
Lincoln himself.
A term of six years in the United States Senate must have seemed a large
prize to Lincoln just then--possibly the largest he might ever hope to
gain; and it must have been a hard trial to feel it so near and then
see it slipping away from him. He did what few men would have had
the courage or the unselfishness to do. Putting aside all personal
considerations, and intent only on making sure of an added vote against
slavery in the Senate, he begged his friends to cease voting for him and
to unite with those five Democrats to elect Trumbull.
"I regret my defeat moderately," he wrote to a sympathizing friend, "but
I am not nervous about it." Yet it must have been particularly trying to
know that with forty-five votes in his favor, and only five men standing
between him and success, he had been forced to give up his own chances
and help elect the very man who had defeated him.
The voters of Illinois were quick to realize the sacrifice he had made.
The five stubborn men became his most devoted personal followers; and
his action at this time did much to bring about a great political change
in the State. All over the country old party lines were beginning to
break up and re-form themselves on this one question of slavery. Keeping
its old name, the Democratic party became the party in favor of slavery,
while the Northern Whigs and all those Democrats who objected to slavery
joined in what became known as the Republican party. It was at a great
mass convention held in Bloomington in May, 1856, that the Republican
party of Illinois took final shape; and it was here that Lincoln made
the wonderful address which has become famous in party history as his
"lost speech." There had been much enthusiasm. Favorite speakers had
already made stirring addresses that had been listened to with eagerness
and heartily applauded; but hardly a man moved from his seat until
Lincoln should be heard. It was he who had given up the chance of being
senator to help on the cause of freedom. He alone had successfully
answered Douglas. Every one felt the fitness of his making the closing
speech--and right nobly did he honor the demand. The spell of the hour
was visibly upon him. Standing upon the platform before the members of
the convention, his tall figure drawn up to its full height, his head
thrown back, and his voice ringing with earnestness, he denounced the
evil they had to fight in a speech whose force and power carried his
hearers by storm, ending with a brilliant appeal to all who loved
liberty and justice to
Come as the winds come when forests are rended;
Come as the waves come when navies are stranded;
and unite with the Republican party against this great wrong.
The audience rose and answered him with cheer upon cheer. Then, after
the excitement had died down, it was found that neither a full report
nor even trustworthy notes of his speech had been taken. The sweep and
magnetism of his oratory had carried everything before it--even the
reporters had forgotten their duty, and their pencils had fallen idle.
So it happened that the speech as a whole was lost. Mr. Lincoln himself
could never recall what he had said; but the hundreds who heard him
never forgot the scene or the lifting inspiration of his words.
Three weeks later the first national convention of the Republican party
was held. John C. Fremont was nominated for President, and Lincoln
received over a hundred votes for Vice-President, but fortunately, as it
proved, was not selected, the honor falling to William L. Dayton of
New Jersey. The Democratic candidate for President that year was James
Buchanan, "a Northern man with Southern principles," very strongly in
favor of slavery. Lincoln took an active part in the campaign against
him, making more than fifty speeches in Illinois and the adjoining
States. The Democrats triumphed, and Buchanan was elected President;
but Lincoln was not discouraged, for the new Republican party had shown
unexpected strength throughout the North. Indeed, Lincoln was seldom
discouraged. He had an abiding faith that the people would in the long
run vote wisely; and the cheerful hope he was able to inspire in his
followers was always a strong point in his leadership.
In 1858, two years after this, another election took place in Illinois,
on which the choice of a United States senator depended. This time
it was the term of Stephen A. Douglas that was drawing to a close. He
greatly desired reelection. There was but one man in the State who could
hope to rival him, and with a single voice the Republicans of Illinois
called upon Lincoln to oppose him. Douglas was indeed an opponent not to
be despised. His friends and followers called him the "Little Giant."
He was plausible, popular, quick-witted, had winning manners, was most
skilful in the use of words, both to convince his hearers and, at times,
to hide his real meaning. He and Lincoln were old antagonists. They had
first met in the far-away Vandalia days of the Illinois legislature. In
Springfield, Douglas had been the leader of the young Democrats, while
Lincoln had been leader of the younger Whigs. Their rivalry had not
always been confined to politics, for gossip asserted that Douglas had
been one of Miss Todd's more favored suitors. Douglas in those days had
no great opinion of the tall young lawyer; while Lincoln is said to have
described Douglas as "the least man I ever saw"--although that referred
to his rival's small stature and boyish figure, not to his mental
qualities. Douglas was not only ambitious to be President: he had staked
everything on the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and his statement
that this question of slavery was one that every State and Territory
must settle for itself, but with which the Federal Government had
nothing to do. Unfortunately, his own party no longer agreed with him.
Since Buchanan had become President the Democrats had advanced their
ground. They now claimed that while a State might properly say whether
or not it would tolerate slavery, slavery ought to be lawful in all the
Territories, no matter whether their people liked it or not.
A famous law case, called the Dred Scott case, lately decided by the
Supreme Court of the United States, went far toward making this really
the law of the land. In its decision the court positively stated that
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power to keep slavery
out of any United States Territory. This decision placed Senator Douglas
in a most curious position. It justified him in repealing the Missouri
Compromise, but at the same time it absolutely denied his statement that
the people of a Territory had a right to settle the slavery question to
suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words, he explained away
the difference by saying that a master might have a perfect right to his
slave in a Territory, and yet that right could do him no good unless
it were protected by laws in force where his slave happened to be.
Such laws depended entirely on the will of the people living in
the Territory, and so, after all, they had the deciding voice. This
reasoning brought upon him the displeasure of President Buchanan and all
the Democrats who believed as he did, and Douglas found himself forced
either to deny what he had already told the voters of Illinois, or to
begin a quarrel with the President. He chose the latter, well knowing
that to lose his reelection to the Senate at this time would end his
political career. His fame as well as his quarrel with the President
served to draw immense crowds to his meetings when he returned to
Illinois and began speech-making, and his followers so inspired these
meetings with their enthusiasm that for a time it seemed as though all
real discussion would be swallowed up in noise and shouting.
Mr. Lincoln, acting on the advice of his leading friends, sent Douglas a
challenge to joint debate. Douglas accepted, though not very willingly;
and it was agreed that they should address the same meetings at seven
towns in the State, on dates extending through August, September, and
October. The terms were that one should speak an hour in opening, the
other an hour and a half in reply, and the first again have half an hour
to close. Douglas was to open the meeting at one place, Lincoln at the
next.
It was indeed a memorable contest. Douglas, the most skilled and
plausible speaker in the Democratic party, was battling for his
political life. He used every art, every resource, at his command.
Opposed to him was a veritable giant in stature--a man whose qualities
of mind and of body were as different from those of the "Little
Giant"--as could well be imagined. Lincoln was direct, forceful,
logical, and filled with a purpose as lofty as his sense of right and
justice was strong. He cared much for the senatorship, but he cared far
more to right the wrong of slavery, and to warn people of the peril
that menaced the land. Already in June he had made a speech that greatly
impressed his hearers. "A house divided against itself cannot stand,"
he told them. "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"; and he went on to say
that there was grave danger it might become all slave. He showed how,
little by little, slavery had been gaining ground, until all it lacked
now was another Supreme Court decision to make it alike lawful in all
the States, North as well as South. The warning came home to the people
of the North with startling force, and thereafter all eyes were fixed
upon the senatorial campaign in Illinois.
The battle continued for nearly three months. Besides the seven great
joint debates, each man spoke daily, sometimes two or three times a day,
at meetings of his own. Once before their audiences, Douglas's dignity
as a senator afforded him no advantage, Lincoln's popularity gave
him little help. Face to face with the followers of each, gathered
in immense numbers and alert with jealous watchfulness, there was no
escaping the rigid test of skill in argument and truth in principle. The
processions and banners, the music and fireworks, of both parties were
stilled and forgotten while the people listened to the three hours'
battle of mind against mind.
Northern Illinois had been peopled largely from the free States, and
southern Illinois from the slave States; thus the feeling about slavery
in the two parts was very different. To take advantage of this, Douglas,
in the very first debate, which took place at Ottawa, in northern
Illinois, asked Lincoln seven questions, hoping to make him answer in a
way that would be unpopular farther south. In the second debate Lincoln
replied to these very frankly, and in his turn asked Douglas four
questions, the second of which was whether, in Douglas's opinion, the
people of any Territory could, in any lawful way, against the wish of
any citizen of the United States, bar out slavery before that Territory
became a State. Mr. Lincoln had long and carefully studied the meaning
and effect of this question. If Douglas said, "No," he would please
Buchanan and the administration Democrats, but at the cost of denying
his own words. If he said, "Yes," he would make enemies of every
Democrat in the South. Lincoln's friends all advised against asking the
question. They felt sure that Douglas would answer, "Yes," and that this
would win him his election. "If you ask it, you can never be senator,"
they told Lincoln. "Gentlemen," he replied, "I am killing larger game.
If Douglas answers he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is
worth a hundred of this."
Both prophecies were fulfilled. Douglas answered as was expected; and
though, in actual numbers, the Republicans of Illinois cast more votes
than the Democrats, a legislature was chosen that rejected him to the
Senate. Two years later, Lincoln, who in 1858 had not the remotest
dream of such a thing, found himself the successful candidate of the
Republican party for President of the United States.
To see how little Lincoln expected such an outcome it is only necessary
to glance at the letters he wrote to friends at the end of his campaign
against Douglas. Referring to the election to be held two years later,
he said, "In that day I shall fight in the ranks, but I shall be in no
one's way for any of the places." To another correspondent he expressed
himself even more frankly: "Of course I wished, but I did not much
expect, a better result... . I am glad I made the late race. It gave me
a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could
have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view and shall
be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the
cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."
But he was not to "sink out of view and be forgotten." Douglas himself
contributed not a little toward keeping his name before the public; for
shortly after their contest was ended the reelected senator started on
a trip through the South to set himself right again with the Southern
voters, and in every speech that he made he referred to Lincoln as the
champion of "abolitionism." In this way the people were not allowed to
forget the stand Lincoln had taken, and during the year 1859 they came
to look upon him as the one man who could be relied on at all times to
answer Douglas and Douglas's arguments.
In the autumn of that year Lincoln was asked to speak in Ohio, where
Douglas was again referring to him by name. In December he was invited
to address meetings in various towns in Kansas, and early in 1860 he
made a speech in New York that raised him suddenly and unquestionably to
the position of a national leader.
It was delivered in the hall of Cooper Institute, on the evening of
February 27, 1860, before an audience of men and women remarkable for
their culture, wealth and influence.
Mr. Lincoln's name and words had filled so large a space in the Eastern
newspapers of late, that his listeners were very eager to see and hear
this rising Western politician. The West, even at that late day, was
very imperfectly understood by the East. It was looked upon as a land
of bowie-knives and pistols, of steamboat explosions, of mobs, of wild
speculation and wilder adventure. What, then, would be the type, the
character, the language of this speaker? How would he impress the great
editor Horace Greeley, who sat among the invited guests; David Dudley
Field, the great lawyer, who escorted him to the platform; William
Cullen Bryant, the great poet, who presided over the meeting?
The audience quickly forgot these questioning doubts. They had but
time to note Mr. Lincoln's unusual height, his rugged, strongly marked
features, the clear ring of his high-pitched voice, the commanding
earnestness of his manner. Then they became completely absorbed in what
he was saying. He began quietly, soberly, almost as if he were arguing
a case before a court. In his entire address he uttered neither an
anecdote nor a jest. If any of his hearers came expecting the style or
manner of the Western stump-speaker, they met novelty of an unlooked-for
kind; for such was the apt choice of words, the simple strength of
his reasoning, the fairness of every point he made, the force of every
conclusion he drew, that his listeners followed him, spellbound. He
spoke on the subject that he had so thoroughly mastered and that was now
uppermost in men's minds--the right or wrong of slavery. He laid bare
the complaints and demands of the Southern leaders, pointed out the
injustice of their threat to break up the Union if their claims were not
granted, stated forcibly the stand taken by the Republican party, and
brought his speech to a close with the short and telling appeal:
"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us, to
the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."
The attention with which it was followed, the applause that greeted
its telling points, and the enthusiasm of the Republican journals next
morning showed that Lincoln's Cooper Institute speech had taken New York
by storm. It was printed in full in four of the leading daily papers of
the city, and immediately reprinted in pamphlet form. From New York Mr.
Lincoln made a tour of speech-making through several of the New England
States, where he was given a hearty welcome, and listened to with an
eagerness that showed a marked result at the spring elections. The
interest of the working-men who heard these addresses was equaled,
perhaps excelled, by the pleased surprise of college professors and men
of letters when they found that the style and method of this self-taught
popular Western orator would stand the test of their most searching
professional criticism.
One other audience he had during this trip, if we may trust report,
which, while neither as learned as the college professors, nor perhaps
as critical as the factory-men, was quite as hard to please, and
the winning of whose approval shows another side of this great and
many-sided man. A teacher in a Sunday-school in the Five Points district
of New York, at that time one of the worst parts of the city, has told
how, one morning, a tall, thin, unusual-looking man entered and sat
quietly listening to the exercises. His face showed such genuine
interest that he was asked if he would like to speak to the children.
Accepting the invitation with evident pleasure, he stepped forward and
began a simple address that quickly charmed the roomful of youngsters
into silence. His language was singularly beautiful, his voice musical
with deep feeling. The faces of his little listeners drooped into sad
earnestness at his words of warning, and brightened again when he spoke
of cheerful promises. "Go on! Oh, do go on!" they begged when at last
he tried to stop. As he left the room somebody asked his name. "Abraham
Lincoln, from Illinois," was the courteous reply.