Fifty Years of Public Service Part 2

In 1825, Governor Coles notified Lieutenant-Governor Hubbard that he had occasion to leave the State for a time and required the latter to take charge of affairs. Hubbard did so, and when Governor Coles returned Hubbard declined to give up the office, a.s.serting that the Governor had vacated it. He based his contention upon that clause of the Const.i.tution that provided that the Lieutenant- Governor should exercise all the power and authority appertaining to the office of Governor, in case of the latter's absence from the State, until the time provided by the Const.i.tution for the election of Governor should arrive. He claimed that the Governor had vacated the office until the time of the election of a new Governor, and declined to surrender. The result was, the Governor had to get a decision of the Supreme Court, which was to the effect that there was no ground on which to award the writ. Coles was obliged to submit, but not until he had appealed to the Legislature, where his contention was equally unsuccessful.

At one time, after repeated and annoying application, Hubbard obtained from Governor Edwards what he had reason to believe was a recommendation for a certain office. He became a little suspicious that the letter was not very strong in his behalf, and in speaking of it afterwards, in his lisping manner, said: "Contrary to the uthage amongst gentlemen, he thealed it up; and contrary to the uthage amongst gentlemen, I broke it open; and what do you think I found? Instead of recommending me, the old rathcal abuthed me like a pickpocket."

( 1) Moses, page 334.

( 2) Ford, page 61.

CHAPTER III ELECTION TO THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE: LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 1856 to 1858

In the year 1856 I had rather unusual experiences of both victory and defeat in one and the same political campaign. As candidate for the Legislature I won out, being elected; as the chosen elector on the Fillmore ticket, I went down in the party's defeat. The Whig party was in its expiring days, and what was called the "Know- Nothing" party was apparently a temporary subst.i.tute for it.

Fillmore carried one solitary state--Maryland. Buchanan was elected by quite a large majority over both Fremont and Fillmore combined.

The administration of President Buchanan has been so frequently and fully described that there is little, if anything, new to say about it; but such were the fearful responsibilities incurred by it for the subsequent bloodshed, that its shortcomings cannot be entirely ignored in the intelligible presentation of the course of events which gave direction to my observations and activities.

The campaign of 1856 had been one of the most exiting and hotly contested ever fought in the State. The only hope the Democrats had of success was in the division of their opponents and in preventing their fusion. Their denunciations of abolitionists and "Black Republicans," as they termed their antagonists, were without bounds. But here and there some one would be called to account, as in the case of the late John M. Palmer, since distinguished in war and peace, and some years ago candidate of the Gold Democrats for the Presidency.

Between him and Major Harris, then running for Congress in his district, there had been considerable ill-feeling. The major had written a letter to be read at a Democratic meeting at which Palmer was present. It was very abusive of the Republicans, and Palmer rising, remarked the fact that the author would not dare make such charges to the face of any honest man. Harris, as related by the historian Moses, hearing of this, announced that he would resent it at the first opportunity. This Palmer soon gave him by attending one of his meetings. The major in the course of his remarks indulged in the most vituperative language against abolitionists, calling them disturbers of the peace, incendiaries, and falsifiers; and at length, turning to Palmer and pointing his finger at him, said, "I mean you, sir!" Palmer rising to his feet, instantly replied, "Well, sir, if you apply that language to me you are a dastardly liar!" And drawing a pistol, he started toward the speaker's stand.

"Now, sir," he continued, "when you get through, I propose to reply to you." The major had not antic.i.p.ated this turn of affairs, but prudently kept his temper and finished his speech. Then Palmer arose and, laying his weapon before him, c.o.c.ked, proceeded to give the Democratic party such a castigation as none of those present had ever heard before.

It was in the campaign of 1856 that I first began to make political speeches. James H. Matheny, who was then our circuit clerk, accompanied me to several meetings where we both delivered addresses.

He was an old Whig inclined toward Democracy, and I was a Whig inclined toward Republicanism. The result was I made Republican speeches, while Judge Matheny made Democratic speeches.

Our first meeting away from home was at Petersburg, Menard County.

Being a candidate for elector on the Fillmore ticket, I made my first away-from-home speech, which I thought was a pretty good Republican speech. Matheny followed me with a hot Democratic speech, attacking especially Judge Trumbull, then our United States Senator. I remained pretty steadily in the campaign of that year, making about the same character of speech wherever I went.

Fillmore was very popular in Central Illinois, where the Whig party also had quite a large following during its palmy days, but he did not receive votes enough to come anywhere near carrying the State.

Sangamon, my home county, and Tazewell County, where I was brought up, both gave their majority votes for Fillmore.

The Hon. John T. Stuart and his partner, the Hon. B. S. Edwards, with whom I studied law, besides being able lawyers and first-cla.s.s men, were both Whigs; Mr. Stuart especially took an active part in the campaign. The latter was invited to attend what was called a Fillmore meeting at Shelbyville, several counties away from Sangamon.

It so happened that he could not go, and the people of Shelbyville telegraphed for me. I went, and it turned out to be a combined Fremont, Buchanan, and Fillmore meeting--at least the three meetings there were held all on the same day.

The Fillmore camp gathered its forces out in the woods until about two o'clock in the afternoon. The Buchanan and Fremont crowds then marched in, informing the first-comers that they regarded their right to have the first meeting pre-eminent. An agreement was arrived at after some little wrangling, and old General Thornton was chosen to preside. He determined that, as I was not only a young man but the farthest from home, I should make the first speech --an arrangement that suited me very well.

I made my speech, as good a one as I could, and in closing, somewhat hurriedly announced that I was obliged to leave for home, much as I might wish to remain with them to the close of the meeting. The result was that most of the Fillmore people followed me away and came nearly breaking up the whole performance. I urged them to go back and listen to the other speakers; but they declined to do so until I had gotten off for home. It was my first venture at speech- making away from home on national issues.

I worked and voted for Fillmore because I had a very high opinion of him as a good man, and did not then think very much of Fremont as a proper candidate for the Presidency. Subsequently Fremont became better known, and occupied a high place in the estimation of the people of the United States, as a gallant soldier and a statesman, enjoying the unique honor of having been the first candidate of the Republican party for President.

I have taken an active part in every campaign since 1856, excepting when poor health prevented a regular speaking campaign.

The animosities of the campaign of 1856 were carried into the Legislature and kept alive in the House during the entire session.

Governor Bissell's inaugural address was a dignified State paper in which he referred to the administration of his predecessor in highly complimentary terms. He concurred in all his recommendations, but suggested no measures of his own. Although he had commented briefly upon the Kansas-Nebraska controversy, and in mild terms, his remarks stirred the ire of the Democrats. Upon the motion to print the address, a virulent attack was made upon him, led, strange to say, by John A. Logan, afterwards the foremost volunteer general of the Union, and a Republican of Republicans. The rancor of the Democrats against Governor Bissell, who at that time was a physical wreck from a stroke of paralysis, though mentally sound, was largely due to their recollection of the fearless manner in which he had responded, some years before, to a challenge given him by Jefferson Davis to a duel. That episode has long since become historic, and I need not enlarge upon it here.

As was the political temper in the State of Illinois, so was it, to a greater or less degree, throughout the entire Nation.

Buchanan's first message repeated the a.s.surance that the discussion of slavery had come to an end. The clergy were criticised for fomenting prevalent disturbances. The President declared in favor of the admission of Kansas, with a Const.i.tution agreeable to a majority of the settlers. He also referred to an impending decision of the Supreme Court, with which he had been made acquainted, and asked acquiescence in it. This was Judge Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, rendered two days after Buchanan's inauguration.

An action had been begun in the Circuit Court in Missouri by Scott, a negro, for the freedom of himself and children. He claimed that he had been removed by his master in 1834 to Illinois, a Free State, and afterwards taken into territory north of the compromise line.

Sanford, his master, replied that Scott was not a citizen of Missouri, and could not bring an action, and that he and his children were Sanford's slaves. The lower courts differed, and the case was twice argued. The decision nullified the Missouri restriction, or, indeed, any restriction by Congress on slavery in the Territories.

Chief-Justice Taney said:

"The question is whether the cla.s.s of persons (negroes) compose a portion of the people, and are const.i.tuent members of this sovereignty.

We think they are not included under the word 'citizen' in the Const.i.tution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges of that instrument."

Negroes, as a race, were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior cla.s.s who had been subjugated by the dominant whites, and had no rights or privileges except such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them. They had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior grade-- so far inferior that they possessed no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his (the white man's) benefit. The negro race by common consent had been excluded from civilized governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. The unhappy black race was separated from the whites by indelible marks long before established, and was never thought of or spoken of except as property.

The Chief-Justice further annulled the Missouri restriction, by a.s.serting that "the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding property of this kind north of the line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Const.i.tution, and is therefore void."

Benton said that it was "no longer the exception, with freedom the rule; but slavery was the rule, with freedom the exception."

It was a year of financial distress in America, which recalled the hard times of twenty years before. The United States treasury was empty.

Early in this year (1856) a Legislature had met at Topeka, Kansas, and was immediately dissolved by the United States marshals. A Territorial Legislature also met at Lecompton and provided for a State Const.i.tution. The people of Kansas utterly refused to recognize the latter body which had been chosen by the Missouri invaders, and both parties continued to hold their elections.

Thus it may be seen that these episodes were the culmination of a long series of events leading to a new alignment of the country's political forces. The Republican party was the child of this ferment of unrest. The formation of a new political party, or the regeneration of an old one, is always due to events, and not to the schemes and purposes of men except as events sometimes originate in such purposes and schemes. In this case the steps in the course of events which had rendered the formation of an anti-slavery party inevitable were: The pro-slavery provisions of the Const.i.tution, the foreign slave trade, the acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana, the invention of the cotton-gin and its effects, the Missouri Compromise, the nullification schemes of South Carolina, the colonization and annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the contest over the admission of California, the Compromise Measure of 1850, and finally the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.

The name of the party was an incident only, and not an essential or very important incident; its principles and purposes were the vital facts. When events demand a new party, or the reorganization of an old one, all resistance is usually borne down speedily. On the other hand, it is a wasteful exhibition of human power to attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and without mental reservation into the ranks of the Republican party.

Hence it was that I was present on that historic occasion when the Republican party of the State of Illinois held a convention at Springfield, June 17 of the year named, and nominated Lincoln for the seat in the United States Senate, then held by Stephen A.

Douglas, who at that time was usually affectionately referred to by his partisan followers as "The Little Giant." This nomination was antic.i.p.ated, and Mr. Lincoln had prepared a speech, which he then delivered, in which he set forth, in a manner now universally recognized as masterly, the doctrines of the Republican party. He arraigned the administration of Mr. Buchanan and denounced the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the lead of Senator Douglas.

In that speech he made the declaration, which I remember as clearly as though an event of yesterday, then characterized as extravagant but long since accepted as prophetic: "I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free."

That address inaugurated a discussion which has no exact parallel in history--certainly no equal in American political history. It introduced Mr. Lincoln to the country at large, and prepared the way for his nomination to the Presidency two years later. On the declaration above quoted Mr. Douglas based many arguments, in vain attempts to prove that Mr. Lincoln was a disunionist.

During this period Douglas addressed an enthusiastic a.s.semblage at Chicago, and in the course of his speech adverted to the arraignment of himself by Mr. Lincoln. He took direct issue with that gentleman on his proposition that, as to Freedom and Slavery, "the Union will become _all_ one thing or _all_ the other," and maintained strenuously that "it is neither desirable nor possible that there should be uniformity in the local inst.i.tutions and domestic regulations of the different States of this Union."

An announcement that Mr. Lincoln would reply to Mr. Douglas on the following evening brought out another a.s.semblage, July 10, which was awakened, before the speaker had concluded, to an enthusiasm at least equal to that which the eloquence of Douglas had aroused.

The issues involved in this famous series of debates are too familiar to all students of our Nation's political history to be considered at length in these pages. Mr. Lincoln a.n.a.lyzed and answered the various arguments advanced by Mr. Douglas the evening before; and the closing paragraphs of his reply to the insistent reminders "that this Government was made for white men," were memorable:

"Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their conditions will allow.

What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this cla.s.s; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says: 'You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of it.'"

Six days thereafter, July 16, Senator Douglas in a great speech again tried to break the force of his opponent's facts and logic.

This was at Bloomington, and Mr. Lincoln was again a careful listener. On the evening following, July 17, at Springfield, before an enthusiastic audience, he proceeded to dissect the matters so plausibly presented.

At the same hour Douglas was addressing a Springfield audience of his own, ridiculing especially Mr. Lincoln's alleged att.i.tude toward the Supreme Court.

Contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair apportionment of State Legislature representation and otherwise, the Republicans labored in that campaign, Mr. Lincoln on that occasion said in the course of his talk:

"Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, _charge_-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, n.o.body has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, n.o.body has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out."

He affirmed that Popular Sovereignty, "the great staple" of the Douglas campaign, was "the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community."

As a result of these preliminary speeches of the Congressional campaign it was generally conceded that, at last, the "Little Giant"

had met his match, and the intellectual and political appet.i.tes of the public called for more. In recognition of this demand, Mr.

Lincoln opened a correspondence which led to an agreement with Mr.

Douglas for a series of joint discussions, seven in number, on fixed dates in August, September, and October. Alternately they were, in succession, to open the discussion and speak for an hour, with another half-hour at the close after the other had spoken for an hour and a half continuously. My friend and schoolmate, the late Mr. R. R. Hitt, an efficient stenographer, was employed to report the whole series, and thus we have a full record of the most remarkable debate, viewed from all points, that has ever occurred in American history--possibly without a parallel in the world's history. Vast a.s.semblages gathered from far and near and listened with breathless attention to these absorbingly interesting discussions.