1858 The effect was to make him a strong anti-slavery man, and he is said to have declared that if ever opportunity offered he would deal it a blow with all the strength at his command.8 Just as Lincoln reached his majority his shiftless father decided to move again farther west in the hope of improving his poor fortune. So packing their possessions in big wagons which were drawn by oxen, they shuffled off the farm for which the elder Lincoln had never paid and started on a journey which lasted fourteen days and entailed no small measure of hardship. They finally stopped at a bluff on the north bank of the Sangamon River in Illinois. Here Lincoln again cleared new lands for his father and split rails with which to enclose them. For a short time he served as clerk in a country store and won notoriety as a good story teller and a first-class wrestler and boxer. In 1831 he was elected captain of a company of Illinois volunteers for service in the Black Hawk War, being sworn in it is said by Jefferson Davis, then a lieutenant in the regular army. After a few months of inactive service Lincoln formed a mercantile partnership with one of his neighbors, but the little store soon failed, leaving him badly in debt. His next venture was as deputy surveyor of the county and postmaster of New Salem, both of which positions he filled with success. In 1834 he was elected to the State legislature as a Whig and was reëlected in 1836. In his twenty-eighth year he moved to Springfield, which had just become the capital of the State, and began the practice of law, but could not resist the temptation of politics to serve another term in the legislature. In 1845 he was elected to Congress as a Whig. In that capacity he opposed the Mexican War as unjust, voted for the Wilmot Proviso forty-two times, and introduced his famous "spot resolutions," affirming that the first blood of the war was shed not upon American, but upon Mexican soil.10 After the expiration of his term he resumed his law practice and remained in retirement until the agitation over the Kansas-Nebraska Act called him again into the field of politics, this time as a candidate for the United States Senate. Being defeated by a small majority, he again resumed the practice of his profession at Springfield, where he remained until nominated by a State convention in June, 1858, to contest the senatorship with Douglas. 8 Herndon, "Life of Lincoln," p. 75. 9 Morse, "Life of Lincoln," vol. i. p. 15. 10 Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln," vol. i. p. 212. 1858 In a carefully prepared speech delivered before the convention which nominated him, Lincoln shocked some of the more conservative members of his party by what was then considered a radical protest against slavery. Speaking of the slavery agitation, he declared that "a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new North as well as South." 11 This was more advanced ground than any prominent Republican had yet taken, and some of Lincoln's personal friends, to whom he showed a copy of this speech, urged him not to embarrass the party by such radical utterances. But he remained firm, saying that he would rather be defeated with such opinions in his speech than be victorious without them. Referring to the suggestion of Eastern Republicans that the return of Douglas to the Senate be not contested, Lincoln said: "They remind us that he is a great man and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. . . How can he oppose the advance of slavery? He does not care anything about it. For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property. Our cause must be entrusted to its own undoubted friends who do care for the results. Clearly he [Douglas] is not with us - he does not pretend to be - he does not promise ever to be." Douglas at once attacked this doctrine of the house-dividedagainst-itself as dangerous and revolutionary. It was, he said, in strange contrast to his own doctrine of the right of the people of each locality concerned to decide the slavery question for themselves. Lincoln, conscious of his own strength as a popular debater, challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. The chal11 Nicolay and Hay, "Life of Lincoln," vol. ii. p. 137. 1858 lenge was accepted and seven meetings were arranged in different parts of the State. From the same platform the two candidates debated the question of slavery in the presence of popular outdoor audiences, which for numbers and enthusiasm have probably never been excelled in any political campaign in the history of the country. People came in covered wagons and on horseback from places fifty and even a hundred miles distant to hear the speeches. For months the campaign overshadowed everything and the people took little interest in anything else as long as it lasted. At first Douglas had the advantage. His great personal popularity, his social standing, his polished manners, his readiness and experience in debate, his flashing wit, his magnetism and handsome figure, made a favorable impression upon his hearers. He was tireless, alert, combative and ubiquitous. In the whole field of American politics no man has equaled Douglas in the expedients and strategy of debate. 12 Lincoln, on the other hand, possessed few of the graces and gifts of an orator. Tall, gaunt, awkward and ungainly in appearance, and with a shrill, piping voice, he made at first a rather unfavorable impression. But as he warmed up to his subject his voice improved and his gestures became more effective. What he lacked in grace he made up in dry humor, anecdotes, homely illustrations, imagination and a power of lucid statement which carried conviction to the hearts of his hearers. His unswerving logic, fairness of statement, originality, subtlety of definition and poetic fervor raised him to heights which his adversary was unable to attain. Douglas defended his position with ability, but he had the great disadvantage of advocating a bad cause. This afforded Lincoln the opportunity which enabled him to render his name immortal. No fair-minded person can read the speeches of the two candidates without reaching the conviction that Douglas's arguments were demolished at almost every point by the homely Springfield lawyer. Douglas denied that the equality clause of the Declaration of Independence was ever intended to include the negro race, and he charged his opponent with favoring the political and social equality of the two races. In answer to this Lincoln said, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two which, in my judgment, will probably forever 12 Nicolay and Hay, "Life of Lincoln," vol. ii. p. 147. 1858 forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality; and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary; but I hold that notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas that he is not my equal in many respects. Certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." Concerning Douglas's charge that Lincoln's doctrine about the fate of the divided house was revolutionary, Lincoln declared that his utterance was only a prophecy and that he had not even stated whether he preferred to see the country entirely free or entirely slave. But it was on the subject of popular sovereignty that Lincoln completely brought his opponent to bay and forced him into a dilemma from which he was unable to extricate himself. Douglas devoted a great part of his speeches to setting forth the merits of popular sovereignty as a peaceful and equitable way of settling the question of slavery in the Territories. During the progress of the debate at Freeport, Lincoln asked him the pointed question: whether the people of a Territory under the Dred Scott decision could, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State constitution? 13 Douglas replied that they could in effect hamper, if not destroy slavery, by failure to enact the necessary police regulations for its protection or by enacting unfriendly legislation against it. Lincoln demonstrated conclusively that slavery could exist without police regulations and had so existed in the early history of the country. As to the enactment of unfriendly legislation he demanded to know by what authority a territorial legislature could do that which the Supreme Court had decided that Congress was powerless to do.14 Although Lincoln showed remarkable knowledge of constitu 13 Tarbell, "Life of Lincoln," vol. i. p. 316. 14 Nicolay and Hay, "Life of Lincoln," vol. ii. p. 162. 1858 tional law, it was in the discussion of moral principles that he was most effective. Whether slavery was right or wrong was to him of infinitely more consequence than constitutional and legal technicalities. "This is the issue," said he, "that will continue in this country when these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. It is the eternal struggle between these two principles right and wrong- throughout the world. They are the two principles which have stood face to face from the beginning of time and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle." "15 The result of this unique and remarkable campaign was the defeat of Lincoln by a few votes, as some of the holdover senators were Douglas men, although the Republican State ticket was successful by a substantial majority. The main cause of his defeat, say his biographers, was the unfairness of the existing apportionment, which did not take into consideration the change of population which had occurred. 16 Lincoln of course was greatly disappointed, but he consoled himself with the thought that the campaign had given him, as he said, a hearing "on the great and durable question of the age" and had enabled him to deal “a few blows in the interest of liberty, which would live long after he was gone.' He expected, he said, to sink out of view and be forgotten; but this was not to be, for his speeches had attracted the attention of the entire North and made him a formidable candidate for the Presidency of the United States. 99 17 Elsewhere in the North where elections were held the Republicans made large gains at the expense of the administration. In Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa, the whole Northwest and New England the President's Kansas policy was distinctly condemned. In Pennsylvania, the President's own State, the Democrats elected but three members of Congress out of a total of twenty-five, whereas they had fifteen in the existing Congress. Taking the results as a whole the Republicans increased 15 Morse, "Life of Lincoln," vol. i. p. 146. 16 Nicolay and Hay, "Life of Lincoln,” vol. ii. p. 165. 17 Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln," vol. i. p. 323. |