Lincoln, the Politician Part 15

[272] Herndon, 2, 32.

At first, he began in his office in plain speech to comment upon the virulent contest between freedom and slavery, contending that delay was intensifying the ultimate clash, that like two wild beasts in sight of each other, but chained and held apart, the deadly antagonists would some day break their bonds, and then the question would be settled.[273]

[273] _Ibid._, 35.

He spoke bitterly of the att.i.tude of the judiciary, the men who should have been in the very front of the fight; who seemed more zealous of the right of property than that of personal liberty. He said that it was singular that the Courts would hold that a man never lost his right to his property that has been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost his right to himself if he was stolen.[274] Thus his mind moved faster than public sentiment, and thus he became prepared for decisive action before the culminating Kansas and Nebraska affair threw the North into commotion. He seemed the barometer of the national conscience, and though his slow progress appeared painful to the radical yet it was genuine and far more remorseless than immature reform. When the conservative mind of Lincoln was stirred to action, it was a definite sign of progress. He saw that the steady march of slavery was slowly perverting the very principles of democracy, that it was a challenge to the integrity of the republic, that sooner or later it would subvert the government or be subverted by the government.

[274] _Ibid._, 36.

He noted that there were about six hundred thousand men non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand slave holders; that when a convention recently a.s.sembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding cla.s.s. He told a friend that the thing was spreading like wildfire over the country and that in a few years Illinois would be ready to accept the inst.i.tution. When asked to what he attributed the change that was going on in public opinion, he said that he had put that question to a Kentuckian shortly before, who answered by saying that one might have any amount of land, money or bank-stock, and while travelling around, n.o.body would be wiser; but, if one had a darky trudging at his heels, everybody would see him, and know that he owned a slave; that if a young man went courting, the only inquiry was, how many negroes he or she owned. He added, that the love for slave property was swallowing up every other mercenary possession; that its ownership betokened, not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure, who was above and scorned labor.[275]

[275] Lamon, 347.

It has been a historical fashion to brand Douglas as the author of all the ills that came in the course of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation. He has suffered more than any other northern leader for partic.i.p.ation therein. He did not inaugurate; he reluctantly adopted radical action to maintain his leadership in the Democratic party. The abolitionists were growing more resolute and exacting in their demands, startling the northern conscience. No compromise could still their protests; they would not tolerate const.i.tutional obligations that stood in the way of immediate emanc.i.p.ation. At the South, the slave dynasty was daily growing more restless under the real or a.s.sumed danger from northern agitation. New enactments were deemed indispensable, as if legislation could stay the rising tide of sentiment against the return of fugitive slaves. The South was, under the educational tutelage of Calhoun, prepared to demand the right to carry slaves throughout every inch of the national territory without restraint from Congress.

Compromise could delay but not settle such a contest. When moral instincts were aroused on one side and fear on the other, the inevitable clash could not be permanently avoided. Dixon of Kentucky, through his far-reaching statement upon the question of slavery he knew no "Whiggery" and no Democracy,[276] decisively noted the new era in American politics, and showed the desperate chasm that daily grew more divisive, not to be covered over until the blood of a million men was offered up as a sacrifice to the most momentous martyrdom in history.

Atchison of Missouri, who declared he would sacrifice everything but his hope of heaven for slavery,[277] was anxious for the place of Douglas that he might champion the legislation that would secure the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. To gain this position, he would relinquish his distinction as Acting President pro tem of the Senate.

[276] Greeley, 1, 229.

[277] Nicolay & Hay, 1, 346.

For twenty years, Douglas had fought in the party ranks until he stood fair to become its leader. He had either to become champion of the new policy, or as he saw it, to sacrifice the work of a lifetime. In the party councils he contested the wisdom of the policy and eloquently portrayed its far-reaching consequences. He loved his country but not all of his kind. Patriot but not humanitarian, he would not peer behind the curtain of a clashing North and South. The nature of the bitter conflict through which Douglas pa.s.sed before he submitted to the southern policy, appears from his counsel to a young student and friend never to go into politics; that if he did, no matter how clear it might be to him that the present was an inheritance from the past, no matter how conscientiously he might feel that his hands were tied, with loyalty to ancient inst.i.tutions rather than what he might prefer to do if free to choose, still he would be vilified, traduced, and finally sacrificed to some local interest or unreasoning pa.s.sion like Adams, Webster and Clay. He continued that he was surprised that the proposal to repeal came from the South and dreaded the effect, and said so; still for nearly twenty years he had fought for a place among the leaders of the party which seemed to him most likely to promote the prosperity of his country, and had won it.... If he retained his leadership, he argued that he might help to guide the party aright in some graver crisis, and if he threw it away, he not only destroyed himself, but he became powerless for good forever after.

He then impetuously contended that an individual ought not to oppose his judgment to that of a great party, and besides though surprised at its source, he believed that the repeal would work to the advancement of freedom rather than otherwise, as his vilifiers charged. He finally pleaded that he was politically right in keeping within the pale of the Const.i.tution; and right as to the moral effect, and right as a party leader anxious to help in keeping his party true to the whole country.[278] Thus Douglas made his way to the sons of the South and became the father of the Nebraska controversy and of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

[278] Illinois State Historical Society, IV. 49.

Douglas had not trained himself in the school of political defeat and hesitated to forego his prestige of leadership. To gain the South, he risked his hold on the North. Had he had the courage to dare, the wisdom to know, the moral heroism to do, he might have become the foremost personality in American politics, honoring instead of shadowing the history of his time. In a solemn moment he took counsel of his fears rather than his integrity, and doubted the triumph of the one cause that has revolutionized history. With all his political sagacity, he lacked the supreme instinct that transcends the shrewdness of the day and links itself to the final triumphing movement.

During the spring and summer of 1854 when the whole North quivered with the hurrying march of events following the Nebraska agitation, and thundered its protests into Washington, Lincoln grew to the demands of the hour with his wonted sureness. He turned over and over the whole issue. He did not halt at the injustice of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but went beyond its consideration to the problems of the age, of which that act was only a grave symptom.

Now and then in small meetings, he spoke out of the fullness of his feelings. His friends scanned a strange change. Coming to listen to his quaint stories, they returned, exalted by hearing a speaker who raised the controversy above the shifting events of the hour to the broad tableland where right and wrong meet on the field of battle. They beheld a man who lifted the discussion into the pure realms of eternal justice, above all questions of policy, into the arena of the higher humanity. Prejudices of a lifetime trembled in the balance. Men were baptised with a new political faith. They instinctively turned to the master and yielded, to the power of a personality speaking in the name of immortal righteousness. He was no longer in his former haunts, the tavern or the grocery. He was seen "mousing" around libraries. He was communing with the Fathers of the Republic, seeking wisdom from them.

These five years following his Congressional experience are noteworthy in his life, though scantily known. Now and then a chance remark, the eulogy on Clay, a letter to a friend, reveal a strong man struggling with a giant problem. During all this time, he was thinking out the portentous question that was agitating a tempest. The greatest contests of the world are not fought on the battlefield, in the presence of vast armies, when the drum beats or the bugle calls to action. The sublimest battles in history are waged in the lonely soul. There, the destiny of nations is determined before its formal expression in legislative discussion, judicial decision or national controversy.

The grasping disposition of slavery convinced Lincoln that the encounter was inevitable. Before the formation of the Republican party, he sanctioned the statement that the time was approaching when it would be necessary to take a determined stand either for or against slavery.

During this period, he waited and bided his time; all these years he saw with joy, clouded with occasional despair, the day approaching when another blow could be struck for freedom, for the principles of the fathers and for the spreading of democratic influence. These were splendid years of preparation.

CHAPTER XI

AN EMANc.i.p.aTED POLITICIAN

The indignation that rushed through Illinois when the first news from the Capitol forecast the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had not yet abated, when Douglas dauntlessly sought to explain his course of conduct in Chicago. He was howled down and denied liberty of speech. This naturally brought on a reaction. The contention that the distinguished senator had been struck before being heard, added martyrdom to his bold conduct.

As he wandered down the State closer to the home of ardent democracy, he was met with growing enthusiasm. His ingenious sophistry turned popular sovereignty into a seeming contest for a principle and Illinois was being carried away by his triumphant oratory and logic. There is little wonder that the man who breasted the storm of debate in the Senate should make headway in the land of his friends where office holders and supporters gloried in his fame and were elated when he chanted forth his alluring doctrine as a solution to political conditions.

His main effort was made at the State Fair in October, 1854, an occasion that called together the intelligence of Illinois in days when few occasions permitted the satisfaction of social life. Enhancing its importance, this political gathering was to mark the opening of the campaign to determine the selection of a Senator. The speech of Douglas was to be almost a national event. Upon him the hopes of the State democracy centered in the conditions following the late political tempest. Douglas was equal to the occasion and his friends rejoiced.

Lincoln had made such a profound impression at the time among the Whig orators, that he was chosen to bear the brunt of the reply to the "State Fair Speech" of the wily leader of the Democratic party. Lincoln surpa.s.sed every expectation. Neither side was prepared for the terrible onslaught. A new and dauntless advocate appeared giving power to the gathering protesting elements against the aggressive championship of Douglas. Herndon, himself, was thoroughly amazed, and tells us that the speaker quivered with emotion, that he felt upon his soul the truths burn which he uttered, that crushing with his logic the Nebraska bill he rent it into shreds and held it up to the scorn and the mockery of the crowds, that he took the heart captive and broke like a sun over the understanding.[279] In his reply Douglas was excited, and his voice loud and shrill. Lamon relates that shaking his forefinger at the democratic malcontents, and declaiming rather than debating, he occupied to little purpose the brief interval remaining until the adjournment for supper; that then, promising to resume his address in the evening, he went his way, and evening came but not the orator.[280]

[279] Herndon, 2, 37-8.

[280] Lamon, 349-350.

While Lincoln was moving in the moral realm, still, at this very time, note must be taken of the politician in the valley. The enthusiasm that followed his baptismal oration had not calmed when Lovejoy announced a gathering that evening of the friends of freedom. The Nebraska movement fed the Abolitionists with abounding faith in a speedy triumph. With a rising sense of their strength, fairly "snuffing" the coming victory they looked for, Lovejoy and his a.s.sociates hastened to command Lincoln's attendance at their meeting. Herndon vividly describes the occasion, saying that their plan was to induce Lincoln to speak for them, yet he doubted the propriety of Lincoln's taking any stand yet.

Lincoln was ambitious to climb to the United States Senate, and on grounds of policy it would not do for him to occupy at that time such advance ground as they were taking. On the other hand, it was equally dangerous to refuse a speech for the Abolitionists. Herndon then hunted up Lincoln and urged him to avoid meeting the enthusiastic champion of Abolitionism. "Go home at once," he said. "Take Bob with you and drive somewhere into the country and stay till this thing is over." Lincoln under the pretense of having business in Tazewell County drove out of town in his buggy, and did not return until the apostles of Abolitionism had gone to their homes. Herndon believes that this arrangement saved Lincoln, for if he had endorsed the resolutions pa.s.sed at the meeting, or spoken simply in favor of freedom that night, he would have been identified with all the rancor and extremes of Abolitionism, and if, on the contrary, he refused to take a position as advanced as theirs, he would have lost their support.[281]

[281] Herndon, 2, 40-41.

Another incident told by the same writer makes it necessary ever to keep track of Lincoln, the wary politician: "One day I read in the _Richmond Enquirer_ an article endorsing slavery, and arguing that from principle the enslavement of either whites or blacks was justifiable and right. I showed it to Lincoln, who remarked that it was 'rather rank doctrine for northern Democrats to endorse. I should like to see,' he said, with emphasis 'some of these Illinois newspapers champion that.' I told him if he would only wait and keep his own counsel I would have a pro-slavery organ in Springfield publish that very article. He doubted it, but when I told him how it was to be done, he laughed and said, 'Go in.' I cut the slip out and succeeded in getting it in the paper named.

Of course it was a trick but it acted admirably. Its appearance in the new organ, although without comment, almost ruined that valuable journal, and my good natured friend the editor was nearly overcome by the denunciation of those who were responsible for the organ's existence. My connection and Lincoln's too,--for he endorsed the trick,--with the publication of the condemned article was eventually discovered, and we were thereafter effectually prevented from getting another line in the paper. The anti-slavery people quoted the article as having been endorsed by a democratic newspaper in Springfield and Lincoln himself used it with telling effect. He joined in the popular denunciation, expressing great astonishment that such a sentiment could find lodgment in any paper in Illinois, although he knew full well how the whole thing had been carried through."[282]

[282] Herndon, 2, 39-40.

Lincoln was alive to the best methods of persuasion. He knew that men were the children of emotion and that while many would be calloused to the slavery of the black man, nothing would arouse the North quicker than this doctrine of the bondage of the white man. While slavery was making every effort to fasten its fangs on the nation, Lincoln was not averse to take advantage of a shrewd move to strike heavy blows at the potent inst.i.tution.

He entered deeply into the contest. Lincoln knew that it involved the painful rending of party allegiance. His letter to Palmer sheds light on the intensity of the struggle, the heroism of the democratic minority whose loyalty to country and righteousness surpa.s.sed a deep-seated partisanship: "You are," he said, "and always have been, honestly and sincerely a Democrat; and I know how painful it must be to an honest sincere man to be urged by his party to the support of a measure, which in his conscience he believes to be wrong. You have had a severe struggle with yourself, and you have determined not to swallow the wrong. Is it just to yourself that you should, in a few public speeches, state your reasons, and thus justify yourself? I wish you could; and yet I say, 'Don't do it if you think it will injure you.'"[283]

[283] Tarbell, 1, 275.

Lincoln recognized that political progress is not alone the result of intellectual supremacy; that it is a painful struggle; that policy must be mingled with principle; that the world does not welcome the unadulterated gospel; that through the centuries, humanity has groped its way to the far light with eyes blinded by the superst.i.tion of ages and selfishness.

The moral prophet is seldom the political leader of his time. He stands above his age. The politician is part of it. One sees things as they should be, the other as they are. One is splendidly indifferent to results, the other keenly appreciative of them. Lincoln made no false step. Had he walked too fast for his day he might have been the Garrison of the West, but not the party guide. With sure instinct he felt that the time was not ripe for companionship with the Abolitionists. Illinois was not ready. If he was to continue his hold on public sentiment, to guide it, he could not flash the truth before the gaze of humanity.

Despite the suffering of martyrs, the heroism of statesmen, the sacrifices of seekers of the truth, wrong was still "upon the throne,"

and "truth upon the scaffold," the world was not slow in crucifying its heroes of speech and deed. Lincoln recognized the weaknesses of men, the shortcomings of human nature, the superst.i.tion of centuries. He was content with slow progress, uncowed by disappointment, and realized that the grumbling world emanc.i.p.ated its heart and mind slowly.

Under the spell of the State Fair speech, Whig leaders earnestly besought Lincoln to follow Douglas up until election.[284] So again at Peoria, Lincoln broke forth in impa.s.sioned utterances that took captive the judgment. His logic throbbed with pa.s.sion for freedom, for liberty and emanc.i.p.ation. He lifted his hearers above the jangling of everyday life, above the mists of hate, of jealousy, of selfishness, into a region of the brotherhood of man. Unlike his speech at Springfield, this was written out. It demonstrates that his supremacy among the eminent leaders of Illinois was not a matter of the choice of the hour.

[284] Lamon, 354.

With marvelous power of directness, he plotted out the line of discussion. He made much of the fact that the Fathers of the Republic regarded slavery as an evil worthy of restriction and looked forward to the day of its ultimate abolition, saying that as the subject was no other than part of the larger question of domestic slavery, he wished to make the distinction between the existing inst.i.tution and the extension of it so clear that no honest man could misunderstand him, and no dishonest man could successfully misrepresent him.[285]

[285] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 181.

With telling effect he quoted the words of Douglas himself as to the sincere observance of the Missouri Compromise that put a barrier in the way of the progress of slavery: "It had its origin," said Douglas, "in the hearts of all patriotic men, who desired to preserve and perpetuate the blessings of our glorious Union--an origin akin to that of the Const.i.tution of the United States, conceived in the same spirit of fraternal affection, and calculated to remove forever the only danger which seemed to threaten, at some distant day, to sever the social bond of Union. All the evidences of public opinion of that day seemed to indicate that this Compromise had been canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb."[286] His comment on this unanswerable statement of Douglas is significant of the nature of Lincoln's peculiar fairness and consequent strength. Lincoln said that he did not read the extract to involve Judge Douglas in an inconsistency, for if he afterward thought he was wrong, it was right for him to change, but he brought it forward merely to show the high estimate placed on the Missouri Compromise by all parties up to so late as the year 1849.[287]

[286] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 184.

[287] _Ibid._

In the North and South pa.s.sion had unloosed its tongue and crimination and recrimination were daily becoming steady servants in debate and discussion on the slavery question. With it all, Lincoln calmly sat in judgment.

"Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudices against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation.