Lincoln, the Politician Part 18

With superb step, with elated soul, with increasing intrepidity, he continued the championship of the same principles that took captive the delegates at Bloomington. He spoke like one in the wilderness.

Lamon tells the story of a ratification meeting five days after the Bloomington Convention:--"Mr. Herndon got out huge posters, announcing the event, and employed a band of musicians to parade the streets and 'drum up a crowd.' As the hour of meeting drew near, he 'lit up the Court House with many blazes,' rung the bells and blew a horn. At seven o'clock the meeting should have been called to order, but it turned out to be extremely slim. There was n.o.body present, with all those brilliant lights, but A. Lincoln, W. H. Herndon and W. H. Pain. 'When Lincoln came into the Court-room,' says the bill-poster and horn-blower of this great demonstration, 'he came with a sadness and a sense of the ludicrous 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 knew it would be. I knew that Herndon and myself would come, but I did not know that any one else would be here; and yet another has come,--you, John Pain. These are sad times, and seem out of joint. All seems dead, dead, 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. Now let us adjourn and appeal to the people.'"[321]

[321] Lamon, 377-378.

In June the first National Republican Convention met at Philadelphia.

Young, aggressive and flushed with enthusiasm, it put forth as the standard bearer, John C. Fremont, the daring, romantic pathfinder.

Lincoln received one hundred and ten votes for the vice-presidency. So little was this distinction antic.i.p.ated, that at first he refused to believe that he was the recipient of the flattering compliment, saying that it must have been the great Lincoln from Ma.s.sachusetts.

Like the Bloomington gathering the National Convention instinctively linked itself in strength to the impressing principles of the Declaration of Independence. It took a bolder and more advanced stand than the Illinois Convention, denying the authority of Congress to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory and that it was its right and duty to prohibit therein those "twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."[322]

[322] Nicolay & Hay, 2, 36-37.

In the ensuing campaign, Lincoln, as a presidential elector and orator towered in the State as strong in his invigorating championship of the Republican policies. He made fifty speeches. Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa sent for him. The impress of his personality was humbly, but pervasively winning the hearts and minds of men. One man wrote with sure faith, "Come to our place, because in you do our people place more confidence than in any other man. Men who do not read want the story told as you only can tell it. Others may make fine speeches but it would not be 'Lincoln said so in his speech.'"[323] A college president spoke of him with reverence, as, "one providentially raised up for a time like this, and even should defeat come in the contest, it would be some consolation to remember we had Hector for a leader."[324]

[323] Herndon, 2, 56.

[324] _Ibid._

He was most skillful in seeing the danger of Fillmore as a candidate in withholding strength from Fremont. He studied the problem as keenly as a legal proposition. No man in all of the United States saw the issues more plainly or could state it as precisely. To a Fillmore man he wrote that every vote withheld from Fremont and given to Fillmore in Illinois actually lessened Fillmore's chance of being President, for if Buchanan got all the slave states and Pennsylvania, and one other State, he would be elected, but if Fillmore got the slave states of Maryland and Kentucky, then Buchanan would not be elected and Fillmore would go into the House of Representatives, and might be made President by a compromise. Likewise he argued that if Fillmore's friends threw away a few thousand votes on him in Indiana, it would inevitably give those states to Buchanan, which would more than compensate him for the loss of Maryland and Kentucky; that it was as plain as adding up the weight of three small hogs for Fillmore who had no possible chance to carry Illinois for himself, to let Fremont take it, and thus keep it out of the hands of Buchanan. Lamon remarks that this letter was discovered by the Buchanan men, printed in their newspapers, and p.r.o.nounced, as its author antic.i.p.ated, "a mean trick," and that it was a dangerous doc.u.ment to them, and was calculated to undermine the very citadel of their strength.[325]

[325] Lamon, 382.

Lincoln's fear of Fillmore was justified by events. While Fremont was defeated, Bissel the Republican was elected Governor by a fair margin.

To Lincoln, the defeat of Fremont was prophetic of future triumph. With infinitely surer vision than President Pierce, he perceived the trend of events. Beyond seeming setback, he beheld the triumphing movement. He likened the President to a rejected lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, in felicitating himself hugely over the late presidential election, in considering the result a signal triumph of good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones. To the statement of Pierce that the people did it, Lincoln called attention to the fact that those who voted for Buchanan, were in a minority of the whole people by about four hundred thousand votes, and thus the "rebuke" might not be quite as durable as he seemed to think and that the majority might not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that minority.[326]

[326] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 225.

Strong in the belief that slavery was at war with the essential spirit of the Republic, he declared that the government rested on public opinion; that public opinion, on any subject, always had a "central idea," and that "central idea" in American political public opinion was until recently "the equality of man," and although it submitted patiently to some inequality as a matter of actual necessity, its constant working was a steady progress toward the practical equality of all men and the late Presidential election was a struggle by one party to discard that central idea and to subst.i.tute as a central idea the perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all countries and colors.[327]

[327] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 225.

This conviction vivified him with new hopes. The leader called to those in the valley of doubt and indifference to leave their low-vaulted chamber: "Then let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old 'central idea' of the republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us; G.o.d is with us. We shall again be able not to declare that 'all States as States are equal,' nor yet that 'all citizens as citizens are equal,' but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that 'all men are created equal.'"[328]

[328] _Ibid._, 226.

CHAPTER XIII

LINCOLN AND THE DRED SCOTT DECISION

With unfailing vision Lincoln was attracted to the larger issues under all professed and alleged reasons, both North and South, as to the cause of difference in att.i.tude on the slavery question. He believed it was largely an industrial and economical problem, a moral conflict in the North mainly through the absence of a controlling material interest.

With plain, blunt speech, he laid bare the national cancer in October, 1856, showing that there was no difference in the mental or moral structure of the people North and South, but that in the slavery question the people of the South had an immediate, immense, pecuniary interest, while with the people of the North it was merely an abstract question of moral right.

The slaves of the South, he continued, were worth a thousand millions of dollars, and that financial interest united the Southern people as one man; that moral principle was a looser bond than pecuniary interest.

Hence if a Southern man aspired to be President, they choked him down, that the glittering prize of the presidency might be held up on southern terms to Northern ambition. And their conventions in 1848, 1852 and 1856 had been struggles exclusively among Northern men, each vying to outbid the other, the South standing calmly by finally to cry "Going, going, gone" to the highest bidder.[329]

[329] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 223.

The Dred Scott decision throws a shadow over the judicial history of the United States. That in an hour of crisis the supreme judicial tribunal should ally itself with the potent inst.i.tution of injustice rather than with humanity, should interpret the principles of the Const.i.tution and the Declaration of Independence in a paltry and impoverished manner, should cringe before t.i.tle and power and grovel in gloom in the dawn of a new era of American citizenship, an era that was to hurl its thunderbolts with ever increasing daring against the further advance of the slave sovereignty, is baffling and astounding.

Lincoln realized that the Supreme Court to be venerated, must be in the van, and not a laggard in the world spirit and progress; a guide and not a pupil in the best kind of citizenship and sensitive to the rising tide of public conscience. The Dred Scott decision did more than any malice of foe to weaken the general regard for the august tribunal--the one supreme discovery of American politics.

It is of interest to study Lincoln's att.i.tude to this decision and to the tribunal responsible for it. Above most men, he had preached the gospel of sacred devotion to law and to the iniquity of mob rule. He was an enemy of all violence. Yet he rebelliously abided the adjudication that made the prospective emanc.i.p.ation of the black man more uncertain, that imprisoned the enlightened principles of the Fathers of the Republic, that manacled America in her t.i.tan march on the highway of humanity.

Lincoln maintained in 1857 that judicial decisions had two uses, to absolutely determine the case decided, and to indicate to the public how other similar cases would be decided. Lincoln then argued that if the decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, without partisan bias, in accordance with legal public expectation, and in no part based on a.s.sumed historical facts which were not really true; or if it had been before the court more than once, and had there been reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be even revolutionary not to acquiesce in it as a precedent.[330]

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

Still, by the side of the impa.s.sioned outbreaks of the abolitionists and radicals this criticism seems cold and measured. But Lincoln with his usual apprehension justified his opposition by democratic example. He confounded Douglas by recalling the action of his ideal Jackson on a Whig measure, the National Bank, with the statement that the same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be const.i.tutional; but President Jackson disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for the recharter, partly on const.i.tutional ground declaring that each public functionary must support the Const.i.tution as he understood it. And then to the further discomfiture of Douglas he declared that again and again he had heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank decision and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it; that it would be interesting for him to look over his recent speech, and see how exactly his fierce philippics against resisting Supreme Court decisions fell upon his own head.[331] Still Douglas might have retorted that in those days the Whigs were violent in their denunciation of General Jackson for that very opposition.

[331] _Ibid._, 229.

In the same speech Lincoln burst into indignant eloquence at the policy that was a departure from the old ideas of justice and liberty and the still more radiant hope of the future indulged in by Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, that in time slavery would no longer darken or endanger the national life, for Lincoln said that in those days the Declaration was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but that at this time it was construed, hawked at and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it. He observed that all the powers of earth seemed rapidly combining against the negro; that Mammon, ambition, philosophy and theology of the day were fast joining the cry; that they had him in his prison-house, bolted in with a lock of a hundred keys, which could never be unlocked without the concurrence of every key--the keys in the hands of a hundred different men, and they scattered to a hundred and distant places; and they still stood musing as to what invention, in all the dominions of mind and matter, could be produced to make the impossibility of his escape more complete than it was.[332]

[332] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 231.

Less than a decade of history proved Lincoln wiser than those who framed the momentous majority opinion in the Dred Scott case. Lincoln was learned not alone in legal knowledge, but was also familiar with the mighty national movements that laugh laws and decisions to scorn; that ultimately and finally determine progress. These judges were students of the past, slaves of precedent, defenders of antiquity, while Lincoln was a student of the present and the future and the amba.s.sador of abiding justice. He had as deep and ultimate a knowledge of the national character and capacity as the statesman, and was a student of political and social progress in order to follow and wisely lead the deep public sentiment and conscience that alone measures true civilization.

CHAPTER XIV

LEADER OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN ILLINOIS

Few pages in our history present a darker picture than the ruffianism of the friends of slavery in Kansas, and the retaliating spirit of its opponents. Still, the gloom is illumined by patriotic politicians, democratic slave holders and sympathizers, who sternly put duty before party. There are few more glorious incidents in our political annals than the unwavering fidelity of Robert J. Walker of Mississippi. As Governor of Kansas he lived up to his public pledges, though the offer of the Presidency of the United States was dangled before him.[333] Like Washington, himself, Walker towered above temptation. If the Mississippi statesman had held the place of Buchanan, slavery, instead of being nursed by the palsied policy of the Northern statesman, would have been startled by another Jackson, and the nation might have owed its salvation to a Southern leader instead of to the prairie politician.

[333] Gilmore, 9-104.

In the fine language of Seward: "The ghosts on the banks of the Styx const.i.tute a cloud scarcely more dense than the spirits of the departed Governors of Kansas, wandering in exile and sorrow for having certified the truth against falsehood in regard to the elections between Freedom and Slavery in Kansas."[334] The strange fact above all is that the admission of Kansas as a slave state against the wishes of its people was not asked for by the South. It was freely tendered to the slave dynasty by a majority of northern democrats in the executive and legislative branches of the Government.[335] And so again the North shared with the South in the zeal for spreading slavery.

[334] Nicolay & Hay, 2, 118.

[335] Sheahan, 326.

The final scene in the drama was the Lecompton Const.i.tution. Douglas then saw the fatal result that Lincoln had foretold in his June speech of 1857, when he declared that Douglas, since the famous Nebraska Bill, saw himself superseded in a presidential nomination by one generally endorsing his measure, but standing clear of the odium of its untimely agitation and its violation of the national faith; that he saw his chief aids in his own State, politically speaking, successfully tried, convicted and executed for an offense not their own, but his, and that now he saw his own case standing next on the docket for trial.[336]

[336] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 231.

Northern Democrats refused to brook longer the crime in Kansas. To refuse submission of the Const.i.tution to that people made a mockery of the popular sovereignty of Douglas. With desperate constancy he had impressed that great principle, as he called it, on his const.i.tuency. It was now so shorn of all dignity that even a child might see it. He either had to lose Illinois or fight the policy of the administration.

Once having decided to differ he took a bold stand. No Abolitionist or Republican used plainer or more impelling language: "But if this Const.i.tution is to be forced down our throats, in violation of the fundamental principles of free government, under a mode of submission that is a mockery and insult, I will resist it to the last. I have no fear of any party a.s.sociations being severed. I should regret any social or political estrangement, even temporarily; but if it must be, if I cannot act with you and preserve my faith and my honor, I will stand on the great principle of popular sovereignty, which declares the right of all people to be left perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic inst.i.tutions in their own way. I will follow that principle wherever its logical consequences may take me, and I will endeavor to defend it against a.s.sault from any and all quarters. No mortal man shall be responsible for my action but myself."[337]

[337] Sheahan, 319.