Birth of the Republican Party--Lincoln One of Its Fathers--Takes
His Stand with the Abolitionists--The Bloomington
Convention--Lincoln's Great Anti-Slavery Speech--A Ratification
Meeting of Three--The First National Republican
Convention--Lincoln's Name Presented for the
Vice-Presidency--Nomination of Fremont and Dayton--Lincoln in the
Campaign of 1856--His Appearance and Influence on the
Stump--Regarded as a Dangerous Man--His Views on the Politics of
the Future--First Visit to Cincinnati--Meeting with Edwin M.
Stanton--Stanton's First Impressions of Lincoln--Regards Him as a
"Giraffe"--A Visit to Cincinnati.
The year 1856 saw the dissolution of the old Whig party. It had become
too narrow and restricted to answer the needs of the hour. A new
platform was demanded, one that would admit the great principles and
issues growing out of the slavery agitation. A convention of the Whig
leaders throughout the country met at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the
22d of February of that year, to consider the necessity of a new
organization. A little later, Mr. Herndon, in the office of Lincoln,
prepared a call for a convention at Bloomington, Illinois, "summoning
together all those who wished to see the government conducted on the
principles of Washington and Jefferson." This call was signed by the
most prominent Abolitionists of Illinois, with the name of A. LINCOLN at
the head. The morning after its publication, Major Stuart entered Mr.
Herndon's office in a state of extreme excitement, and, as the latter
relates, demanded: "'Sir, did Mr. Lincoln sign that Abolition call which
is published this morning?' I answered, 'Mr. Lincoln did not sign that
call.' 'Did Lincoln authorize you to sign it?' 'No, he never authorized
me to sign it.' 'Then do you know that you have ruined Mr. Lincoln?' 'I
did not know that I had ruined Mr. Lincoln; did not intend to do so;
thought he was a made man by it; that the time had come when
conservatism was a crime and a blunder.' 'You, then, take the
responsibility of your acts, do you?' 'I do, most emphatically.'
However, I instantly sat down and wrote to Mr. Lincoln, who was then in
Pekin or Tremont--possibly at court. He received my letter, and
instantly replied, either by letter or telegraph--most likely by
letter--that he adopted _in toto_ what I had done, and promised to meet
the radicals--Lovejoy and such like men--among us." Mr. Herndon adds:
"Never did a man change as Lincoln did from that hour. No sooner had he
planted himself right on the slavery question than his whole soul seemed
burning. _He blossomed right out._ Then, too, other spiritual things
grew more real to him."
Mr. Herndon had been an Abolitionist from birth. It was an inheritance
with him; but Lincoln's conversion was a gradual process, stimulated and
confirmed by the influence of his companion. "From 1854 to 1860," says
Mr. Herndon, "I kept putting into Lincoln's hands the speeches and
sermons of Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and Henry Ward Beecher. I
took 'The Anti-Slavery Standard' for years before 1856, 'The Chicago
Tribune,' and 'The New York Tribune'; kept them in my office, kept them
purposely on my table, and would read to Lincoln the good, sharp, solid
things, well put. Lincoln was a natural anti-slavery man, as I think,
and yet he needed watching,--needed hope, faith, energy; and I think I
_warmed him_."
It is stated that "when Herndon was very young--probably before Mr.
Lincoln made his first protest in the Legislature of the State in behalf
of liberty--Lincoln once said to him: 'I cannot see what makes your
convictions so decided as regards the future of slavery. What tells you
the thing must be rooted out?' 'I feel it in my bones,' was Herndon's
emphatic answer. 'This continent is not broad enough to endure the
contest between freedom and slavery!' It was almost in these very words
that Lincoln afterwards opened the great contest with Douglas. From this
time forward he submitted all public questions to what he called 'the
test of Bill Herndon's _bone philosophy_'; and their arguments were
close and protracted."
Lincoln's attitude on slavery aroused formidable opposition among his
friends, and even in his own family. Mrs. Lincoln was decidedly
pro-slavery in her views. Once while riding with a friend she said: "If
my husband dies, his spirit will never find me residing outside the
limits of a slave State." But opposition, whether from without or
within, could never swerve him from a course to which conscience and
reason clearly impelled him. Long before Mr. Herndon published the call
for the Bloomington convention, he had said to a deputation of men from
Chicago, in answer to the inquiry whether Lincoln could be trusted for
freedom: "Can you trust yourselves? If you can, you can trust Lincoln
forever."
The convention met at Bloomington, May 29, 1856. One of its chief
incidents was a speech by Lincoln. This speech was one of the great
efforts of his life, and had a powerful influence on the convention.
"Never," says one of the delegates, "was an audience more completely
electrified by human eloquence. Again and again his hearers sprang to
their feet, and by long continued cheers expressed how deeply the
speaker had aroused them." "It was there," says Mr. Herndon in one of
his lectures, "that Lincoln was baptized and joined our church. He made
a speech to us. I have heard or read all of Mr. Lincoln's great
speeches; and I give it as my opinion that the Bloomington speech was
the grand effort of his life. Heretofore, and up to this moment, he had
simply argued the slavery question on grounds of policy,--on what are
called the _statesman's_ grounds,--never reaching the question of the
radical and eternal right. Now he was newly baptized and freshly born;
he had the fervor of a new convert; the smothered flame broke out;
enthusiasm unusual to him blazed up; his eyes were aglow with
inspiration; he felt a new and more vital justice; his heart was alive
to the right; his sympathies burst forth; and he stood before the throne
of the eternal Right, in presence of his God, and then and there
unburdened his penitential and fired soul. This speech was fresh, new,
genuine, odd, original; filled with fervor not unmixed with a divine
enthusiasm; his head breathing out through his tender heart its truths,
its sense of right, and its feeling of the good and for the good. This
speech was full of fire and energy and force; it was logic; it was
pathos; it was enthusiasm; it was justice, equity, truth, right, and
good, set ablaze by the divine fires of a soul maddened by wrong; it was
hard, heavy, knotty, gnarly, edged, and heated. I attempted for about
fifteen minutes, as was usual with me then, to take notes; but at the
end of that time I threw pen and paper to the dogs, and lived only in
the inspiration of the hour. If Mr. Lincoln was six feet four inches
high usually, _at Bloomington he was seven feet_, and inspired at that.
From that day to the day of his death, he stood firm on the right. He
felt his great cross, had his great idea, nursed it, kept it, taught it
to others, and in his fidelity bore witness of it to his death, and
finally sealed it with his precious blood."
The committee on resolutions at the convention found themselves, after
hours of discussion, unable to agree; and at last they sent for Lincoln.
He suggested that all could unite on the principles of the Declaration
of Independence and hostility to the extension of slavery. "Let us,"
said he, "in building our new party make our cornerstone the
Declaration of Independence; let us build on this rock, and the gates of
hell shall not prevail against us." The problem was mastered, and the
convention adopted the following:
_Resolved_, That we hold, in accordance with the opinions and
practices of all the great statesmen of all parties for the first
sixty years of the administration of the government, that under the
Constitution Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in
the territories; and that while we will maintain all constitutional
rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the
principles of freedom, as expressed in our Declaration of
Independence and our National Constitution, and the purity and
perpetuity of our government, require that that power should be
exerted to prevent the extension of slavery into territories
heretofore free.
The Bloomington convention concluded its work by choosing delegates to
the National Republican convention to be held at Philadelphia the
following month, for the nomination of candidates for the Presidency and
Vice-presidency of the United States. And thus was organized the
Republican party in Illinois, which revolutionized the politics of the
State and elected Lincoln to the Presidency.
The people of Bloomington seem to have had but little sympathy with this
convention. A few days later, Herndon and Lincoln tried to hold a
ratification meeting; but only three persons were present--Lincoln,
Herndon, and John Pain. "When Lincoln came into the court-room where the
meeting was to be held," says Herndon, "there was an expression of
sadness and amusement on his face. He walked to the stand, mounted it in
a kind of mockery--mirth and sadness all combined--and said, 'Gentlemen,
this meeting is larger than I thought it would be. I knew that Herndon
and myself would come, but I did not know that anyone else would be
here; and yet another has come--you, John Pain. These are sad times,
and seem out of joint. All seems dead; but the age is not yet dead; it
liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life
and motion, the world does move nevertheless. Be hopeful. And now let us
adjourn and appeal to the people.'"
The National convention of the Republican party met at Philadelphia in
June, 1856, and adopted a declaration of principles substantially based
upon those of the Bloomington convention. John C. Fremont was nominated
as candidate for President. Among the names presented for Vice-president
was that of Abraham Lincoln, who received 110 votes. William L. Dayton
received 259 votes and was unanimously declared the nominee. Fremont and
Dayton thus became the standard-bearers of the new national party. When
the news reached Lincoln, in Illinois, that he had received 110 votes as
nominee for the Vice-presidency, he could not at first believe that he
was the man voted for, and said, "No, it could not be; it must have been
the great Lincoln of Massachusetts!" He was then in one of his
melancholy moods, full of depression and despondency.
In the stirring presidential campaign of 1856, Lincoln was particularly
active, and rendered most efficient service to the Republican party. He
spoke constantly, discussing the great question of "slavery in the
territories" in a manner at once original and masterly. A graphic
picture of one of these campaign gatherings is furnished by Hon. William
Bross, afterwards Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois. "I first met Mr.
Lincoln, to know him," says Governor Bross, "at Vandalia, the old
capital of the State, in October, 1856. There was to be a political
meeting in front of the old State House, in the center of the square, at
2 o'clock. Soon after that hour the sonorous voice of Dr. Curdy rang
through the town: 'O, yes! O, yes! All ye who want to hear public
speaking, draw near!' The crowd at once began to gather from all sides
of the square. The Doctor then introduced the first speaker, and he
proceeded to make the best presentation he could of the principles of
the newly-formed Republican party, and the reasons why Fremont, 'the
gallant pathfinder of the West,' should be elected President. About the
time the first speaker closed his remarks, Hon. Ebenezer Peck and
Abraham Lincoln arrived and took the stand; and both made able and
effective speeches. After that, Lincoln and I frequently met during the
canvass, and often afterwards I spoke with him from the same platform.
The probable result of an election was often canvassed, and a noticeable
fact was that in most cases he would mark the probable result below
rather than above the actual majority."
Some lively reminiscences of Lincoln's appearance and efforts in this
campaign are given by Mr. Noah Brooks, the well-known journalist and
author, who at that time lived in Northern Illinois and attended many of
the great Republican mass-meetings. "At one of these great assemblies in
Ogle County," says Mr. Brooks, "to which the country people came on
horseback, in farm wagons, or afoot, from far and near, there were
several speakers of local celebrity. Dr. Egan of Chicago, famous for his
racy stories, was one; and Joe Knox of Bureau County, a stump speaker of
renown, was another attraction. Several other orators were 'on the
bills' for this long-advertised 'Fremont and Dayton rally,' among them
being a Springfield lawyer who had won some reputation as a close
reasoner, and a capital speaker on the stump. This was Abraham Lincoln,
popularly known as 'Honest Abe Lincoln.' In those days he was not so
famous in our part of the State as the two speakers whom I have named.
Possibly he was not so popular among the masses of the people; but his
ready wit, his unfailing good humor, and the candor which gave him his
character for honesty, won for him the admiration and respect of all
who heard him. I remember once meeting a choleric old Democrat striding
away from an open-air meeting where Lincoln was speaking, striking the
earth with his cane as he stumped along, and exclaiming, 'He's a
dangerous man, sir! A d----d dangerous man! He makes you _believe_ what
he says, in spite of yourself!' It was Lincoln's manner. He admitted
away his whole case apparently--and yet, as his political opponents
complained, he usually carried conviction with him. As he reasoned with
his audience, he bent his long form over the railing of the platform,
stooping lower and lower as he pursued his argument, until, having
reached his point, he clinched it, usually with a question, and then
suddenly sprang upright, reminding one of the springing open of a
jack-knife blade. At the Ogle County meeting to which I refer, Lincoln
led off, the raciest speakers being reserved for the latter part of the
political entertainment. I am bound to say that Lincoln did not awaken
the boisterous applause which some of those who followed him did, but
his speech made a more lasting impression. It was talked about for weeks
afterward in the neighborhood, and it probably changed many votes; for
that was the time when Free-soil votes were being made in Northern
Illinois."
Mr. Brooks had made Lincoln's acquaintance early in the day referred to;
and after Lincoln had spoken, and while some of the other orators were
entertaining the audience, the two drew a little off from the crowd and
fell into a discussion over the political situation and prospects. "We
crawled under the pendulous branches of a tree," says Mr. Brooks, "and
Lincoln, lying flat on the ground, with his chin in his hands, talked
on, rather gloomily as to the present but absolutely confident as to the
future. I was dismayed to find that he did not believe it possible that
Fremont could be elected. As if half pitying my youthful ignorance, but
admiring my enthusiasm, he said, 'Don't be discouraged if we don't
carry the day this year. We can't do it, that's certain. We can't carry
Pennsylvania; those old Whigs down there are too strong for us. But we
shall sooner or later elect our President. I feel confident of that.'
'Do you think we shall elect a Free-soil President in 1860?' I asked.
'Well, I don't know. Everything depends on the course of the Democracy.
There's a big anti-slavery element in the Democratic party, and if we
could get hold of that we might possibly elect our man in 1860. But it's
doubtful, very doubtful. Perhaps we shall be able to fetch it by 1864;
perhaps not. As I said before, the Free-soil party is bound to win in
the long run. It may not be in my day; but it will be in yours, I do
really believe.'" The defeat of Fremont soon verified Lincoln's
prediction on that score.
A peculiarly interesting episode of Lincoln's life belongs to this
period, though unrelated to political events. This was the meeting, in a
professional way, with Edwin M. Stanton, at that time a prominent lawyer
of Pittsburgh, afterwards the great War Secretary of President Lincoln's
cabinet. The circumstances were briefly these: Among Lincoln's law cases
was one connected with the patent of the McCormick Reaper; and in the
summer of 1857 he visited Cincinnati to argue the case before Judge
McLean of the United States Circuit Court. It was a case of great
importance, involving the foundation patent of the machine which was
destined to revolutionize the harvesting of grain. Reverdy Johnson was
on one side of the case, and E.M. Stanton and George Harding on the
other. It became necessary, in addition, to have a lawyer who was a
resident of Illinois; and inquiry was made of Hon. E.B. Washburne, then
in Congress, as to whether he knew a suitable man. The latter replied
that "there was a man named Lincoln at Springfield, who had considerable
reputation in the State." Lincoln was retained in the case, and came on
to Cincinnati with a brief. Stanton and Harding saw in their associate
counsel "a tall, dark, uncouth man, who did not strike them as of any
account, and, indeed, they gave him hardly any chance." An interesting
account of this visit, and of various incidents connected with it, has
been prepared by the Hon. W.M. Dickson of Cincinnati. "Mr. Lincoln came
to the city," says Mr. Dickson, "a few days before the argument took
place, and remained during his stay at the house of a friend. The case
was one of large importance pecuniarily, and in the law questions
involved. Reverdy Johnson represented the plaintiff. Mr. Lincoln had
prepared himself with the greatest care; his ambition was to speak in
the case, and to measure swords with the renowned lawyer from Baltimore.
It was understood between his client and himself, before his coming,
that Mr. Harding of Philadelphia was to be associated with him in the
case, and was to make the 'mechanical argument.' Mr. Lincoln was a
little surprised and annoyed after reaching Cincinnati, to learn that
his client had also associated with him Mr. Edwin M. Stanton, of
Pittsburgh, and a lawyer of our own bar; the reason assigned being that
the importance of the case required a man of the experience and power of
Mr. Stanton to meet Mr. Johnson. The reasons given did not remove the
slight conveyed in the employment, without consultation with Lincoln, of
this additional counsel. He keenly felt it, but acquiesced. The trial of
the case came on; the counsel for defense met each morning for
consultation. On one of these occasions one of the counsel moved that
only two of them should speak in the case. This motion was also
acquiesced in. It had always been understood that Mr. Harding was to
speak to explain the mechanism of the reapers. So this motion excluded
either Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Stanton. By the custom of the bar, as between
counsel of equal standing and in the absence of any action of the
client, the original counsel speaks. By this rule Mr. Lincoln had
precedence. Mr. Stanton suggested to Mr. Lincoln to make the speech. Mr.
Lincoln answered, 'No; you speak,' Mr. Stanton replied, 'I will,' and
taking up his hat, said he would go and make preparation. Mr. Lincoln
acquiesced in this, but was deeply grieved and mortified; he took but
little more interest in the case, though remaining until the conclusion
of the trial. He seemed to be greatly depressed, and gave evidence of
that tendency to melancholy which so marked his character. His parting
on leaving the city cannot be forgotten. Cordially shaking the hand of
his hostess, he said: 'You have made my stay here most agreeable, and I
am a thousand times obliged to you; but as for repeating my visit, I
must say to you I never expect to be in Cincinnati again. I have nothing
against the city, but things have so happened here as to make it
undesirable for me ever to return.' Thus untowardly met for the first
time, Lincoln and Stanton. Little did either then suspect that they were
to meet again on a larger theatre, to become the chief actors in a great
historical epoch."
If Lincoln was "surprised and annoyed" at the treatment he received from
Stanton, the latter was no less surprised, and a good deal more
disgusted, on seeing Lincoln and learning of his connection with the
case. He made no secret of his contempt for the "long, lank creature
from Illinois," as he afterwards described him, "wearing a dirty linen
duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched
wide stains that resembled a dirty map of the continent." He blurted out
his wrath and indignation to his associate counsel, declaring that if
"that giraffe" was permitted to appear in the case he would throw up his
brief and leave it. Lincoln keenly felt the affront, but his great
nature forgave it so entirely that, recognizing the singular abilities
of Stanton beneath his brusque exterior, he afterwards, for the public
good, appointed him to a seat in his cabinet.
Lincoln, says Mr. Dickson, "remained in Cincinnati about a week, moving
freely about. Yet not twenty men in the city knew him personally, or
knew he was here; not a hundred would have known who he was had his name
been given to them. He came with the fond hope of making fame in a
forensic contest with Reverdy Johnson. He was pushed aside, humiliated
and mortified. He attached to the innocent city the displeasure that
filled his bosom, and shook its dust from his feet."
In his Autobiography, Moncure D. Conway records a glimpse of Lincoln
during his Cincinnati visit that seems worth transcribing. "One warm
evening in 1859, passing through the market-place in Cincinnati, I found
there a crowd listening to a political speech in the open air. The
speaker stood on the balcony of a small brick house, some lamps
assisting the moonlight. Something about the speaker, and some words
that reached me, led me to press nearer. I asked the speaker's name, and
learned that it was Abraham Lincoln. Browning's description of the
German professor, 'Three parts sublime to one grotesque,' was applicable
to this man. The face had a battered and bronzed look, without being
hard. His nose was prominent, and buttressed a strong and high forehead.
His eyes were high-vaulted, and had an expression of sadness; his mouth
and chin were too close together, the cheeks hollow. On the whole,
Lincoln's appearance was not attractive until one heard his voice, which
possessed variety of expression, earnestness, and shrewdness in every
tone. The charm of his manner was that he had no manner; he was simple,
direct, humorous. He pleasantly repeated a mannerism of his
opponent,--'This is what Douglas calls his '_gur-reat per-rinciple.'_
But the next words I remember were these: '_Slavery is wrong_.'"