Lincoln, the Politician Part 12

[215] Herndon, 1, 259.

A Democrat who loathed the canva.s.s of Cartwright still deemed it a hard thing to vote against his party. So Lincoln told him that he would give him a candid opinion as to whether the vote was needed or not. On the day of election, Lincoln told the Democrat that he had got the preacher,--and didn't want his vote.[216] With this power to foretell results, Lincoln was more richly dowered than any modern leader. It was this gift that enabled him to do and speak things that to other men seemed ruinous.

[216] Lamon, 278.

The victory of Polk in its immediate results hardly surprised friend or foe. His election was the signal gun of the Mexican war. Events were rapidly hurried forward under the fostering guidance of the Tyler administration and in its last gasp a messenger was dispatched to Texas to mature the annexation.[217] In weighty words Greeley uttered the protest of the aroused North, declaring that the annexation of Texas challenged the regard of mankind and defied the consciences of our own citizens; that for the first time our Union stood before the nations, not merely as an upholder, but as a zealous, unscrupulous propagandist of human slavery.[218] It required no special genius to provoke martial hostilities and anxiety soon found ammunition to drive even a reluctant opponent to the chance of battle. So Mexico was almost dared into the inevitable combat.

[217] Nicolay & Hay, 1, 236.

[218] Greeley, 1, 178.

Until this time the nation was little stirred by political unrest and strife. The battles in Congress that form so vast an a.s.set of the historian, hardly disturbed the daily life of the inventor, farmer, mechanic and student. Lincoln entered the national Legislature at a momentous period. For more than a third of a century, "grim visaged war had smoothed her wrinkled front." The nation was lost in industrial pursuits, the hero of the community was the business man. Patriotism slumbered, national impulses seemed dead. Then the wild pa.s.sion for war awakened the people from apathy, they rejoiced that the spirit of the fathers was still strong in them, that they had not forgotten Bunker Hill and New Orleans. Commerce for the time forewent its eminence, the soldier stepped to the front. In a moment the standard of the nation shifted from the dollar to the deed. Men did not stop to debate the righteousness of the war or what the end would be. They did not reason as to its effect on the status of slavery. Emotion, not judgment, was their guide. They knew only the pulsation of a subtle and subduing patriotism. Many marched to the front, while others hurried on supplies and ammunition to the seat of trouble. The present alone absorbed their interest, busied every impulse.

Lincoln did not willingly come into conflict with this public sentiment.

He, too, was moved by the heroism of the hour, he too saw with pride the flag unfurled and heard the throbbing drum. When Hardin and Baker and Shields hastened from Springfield for the field of glory and danger, he was one of the speakers at the parting public meeting. The Congressman-elect urged a st.u.r.dy, vigorous prosecution of hostilities, admonished all to permit no shame to the government and to stand by the flag till peace came with honor.[219] This was not a reluctant politic approbation, as Lamon intimates,[220] but a benediction upon the cause of his country that came deep from the heart.

[219] Herndon, 1, 260.

[220] Lamon, 281.

The att.i.tude of Lincoln toward the annexation of Texas is of importance, not alone for its own intrinsic interest but as ill.u.s.trating the opinion of thousands of sober, patriotic citizens throughout the land. These had no kinship with the radicals who regarded the conduct of the war, as well as its inception, with bitter hostility; who feared the visitation of Divine Power upon a conflict conceived in aggression. They were not akin to the Democrats who looked neither to the right nor left but marched over cherished principles of the Republic for the sake of extending the territory and enlarging the activity of a sectional inst.i.tution.

Lincoln entered Congress with no thought of opposition to any phase of the war. Like Grant, he doubtless knew that the man who criticized a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history, and that he might better advocate "war, pestilence and famine," than to act as an obstructionist to a war already begun.[221]

[221] Grant, 45.

The President and his advisors would not allow the Whigs to vote alone for supplies. They sought to interpolate resolutions expressing the original justice of the war. Lincoln's interesting commentary on this uncalled for procedure is worth quoting. "Upon these resolutions when they shall be put on their pa.s.sage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I cannot be silent if I would. Seeing this, I went about preparing myself to give the vote understandingly when it should come. I carefully examined the President's message, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him. Under the impression thus made I gave the vote before mentioned."[222]

[222] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 101.

The issue once made, Lincoln and other Whigs did not hesitate; he did not even hide in silence. He took up the challenge of the President that war existed by the act of Mexico. He followed with probing resolutions, with a series of penetrating questions that precluded quibbling. The first one well ill.u.s.trates the series.

"RESOLVED, By the House of Representatives, that the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform the House--

"First, whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution."[E]

[E] _Ibid._, 97.

The President never heeded them, nor does it appear that any friend of the administration soberly attempted the sore task of facing their keen, sabre-like stroke. They allowed little room for shifting, and demanded a logical response. Three weeks later, came the speech which was responsive to the desire of his Springfield friends to distinguish himself.[223] It was sober and restrained in expression; curbed in statement, concise in logic and comprehensive in treatment. He spoke more like a distinguished jurist than a partisan pleader.

[223] _Ibid._, 96.

"Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion--no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed,--then I am with him for his justification."[224] Then a sentence follows, painful and remorseless in its treatment of the vacillating policy of the President stating that his mind, taxed beyond its power, was running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it could settle down and be at ease.[225]

[224] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 105.

[225] _Ibid._, 107.

This speech should have won him a high place in the national arena of controversy and debate, were it not that the shifting standard of public judgment often exalts the thing of the hour for intrinsic value, ostentation for merit, popularity for worth. This speech may in itself command the interest of those who would know the motives that led the Whigs to their course of conduct. They did not seek hard duties, but still they would not shirk or retreat when they showed their front.

Lincoln soon learned that his resolutions and speech, however unanswerable, did not save him from the damaging charge of opposition to the war of his country. Dissatisfaction ran through the Whig ranks in Illinois. General discontent with the course of his partner even turned Herndon into one of the malcontents. A letter soon advised Lincoln of the condition, who sent a st.u.r.dy reply to the complaint on his vote on Ashmun's amendment,--"That vote affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconst.i.tutionally commenced by the President; and I will stake my life that if you had been in my place you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone out of the House--skulked the vote? I expect not.--You are compelled to speak, and your only alternative is to tell the truth or a lie. I cannot doubt which you would do."[226]

[226] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 110.

Later Herndon forwarded a const.i.tutional argument in favor of the policy of Polk ingeniously saying that it was the duty of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, in the absence of Congress, if the country was about to be invaded, to go, if necessary, into the very heart of Mexico and prevent the invasion; that it would be a crime in the executive to let the country be invaded in the least degree; that the action of the President was a necessity.[227]

[227] Herndon, 1, 266.

The reply that hurried to Springfield was a supreme answer. No judge of a high tribunal, no statesman of mature experience could have more thoroughly disposed of a specious contention.[228] In this letter of Lincoln there appears a might and an ability to grapple with a great issue, a sincerity of purpose, a soberness of thought that well betokens a student and patriot, whose heart was in unison with the inherent purposes of the Republic. He insisted that the imperial function of the Const.i.tution in leaving the declaration of war with Congress was that no one man should hold the power of bringing the oppression of war upon the people.[229] Through this letter there looms up the man, who above all men hated kingly power and domination, and the consequent impoverishment of the people. Herndon, the Abolitionist, would, for the sake of policy, sanction the inception of an unjust aggression, while the conservative Lincoln stood resolutely when the hour summoned uncompromising conduct; then his knees were as "unwedgeable as the gnarled oak." When principle was at stake he sent policy to the rear. At such times he was more aggressive than the radical.

[228] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 112.

[229] _Ibid._

A letter to the Editor of the _Tribune_ shows the deep hold that this subject had on Lincoln, his restlessness to be rightly understood on the theme. And the fact that he undertook to correct Horace Greeley in a familiar tone is an indication that he was coming to the front as a champion in the Whig ranks. He wrote the editor that he discovered a paragraph in the _Tribune_ in which it was said that all Whigs and many Democrats contended that the boundary of Texas stopped at the Nueces. He contended that such a statement was a mistake which he disliked to see go uncorrected in a leading Whig paper; that the large majority of Whigs in the House of Representatives had not taken that position and that as the position could not be maintained it gave the Democrats advantage of them. In conclusion Lincoln asked the editor to examine what he said in a printed speech that he was sending him.[230]

[230] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 133.

He earnestly wrote to a minister that he would be obliged for a reference to any law, human or divine, in which an authority could be found for saying that the action of the Government const.i.tuted "no aggression." He then asked, "Is the precept 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them' obsolete? of no force? of no application?"[231]

[231] _Ibid._, 122.

He was not so elated with patriotism that he lost his standard of righteousness. As he was an honest judge of his own conduct, so he was of that of his country. This rare ability became a force of moment in later years.

During the tumult of the debate on the Mexican war Lincoln wrote in his own rare way that Stephens, of Georgia, a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, had just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length he ever heard; that his old withered dry eyes were full of tears yet.[232]

[232] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 111.

His appreciation knew no sectional limits. His range of vision was not bounded by the Mason and Dixon line. He was as much at home with the sons of the South as of the North; he took the same interest in the speech of Stephens of Georgia as he would in that of Webster.

CHAPTER IX

LINCOLN'S ATTACK ON SLAVERY IN CONGRESS

Lincoln's main a.s.signment in congressional committee work was on Post-office and Post-roads. He plodded through the detail duties with industry. There was no more earnest worker in the ranks of Congress. On an important occasion, Lincoln stood by the Democratic Postmaster General, and opposed the policy of the Whig members of the Committee. He worked out a painstaking plan for certain postmasters receiving subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals. He declared it to be in accordance with republican inst.i.tutions, which could be best sustained by the diffusion of knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the medium of the public press.[233]

[233] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 113.

Lincoln prepared himself thoroughly in the logic of protection to American industries. He advanced considerably in a serious understanding of its fundamental importance. Not satisfied with old and common contention, he sounded the depths of discussion, by his quaint and original method.

He had intense sympathy for the toiler. He deemed a wise and just distribution of wealth a national duty. He p.r.o.nounced that rather than production the deeper object of government. "And inasmuch," he said, "as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. That is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government."[234]

[234] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 92.

He was in advance of the thought of his day in insisting that all transportation, commerce, distribution, not essential, was a heavy pensioner upon industry, depriving it of a large proportion of its just fruits. He advocated the remedy of driving useless toil and idleness out of existence. He announced that all work done directly or indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little effort at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, was useless labor.[235] These fragments show the intellectual power of a growing man of fine sympathies, the sound conviction of a benefactor of his kind.