the "poor white:" they have no newspapers, no organization, no self-respect. The Know-Nothings enable them to meet and act together. By and by this Southern element will help us. I expect another violent slavery President with a strong opposition in the House and before long in the Senate. Mexico will fall into our hands even, I think, before 1860. Then in 1860 comes the real struggle between the North and South. Freedom and Slavery! I think not

before.

I have just got my defense out. It makes an 8vo volume of 250 pages. Yours hastily but truly,

THEO. PARKER.

By the time he replied Herndon had read the "Defense," which he pronounced a masterpiece, as he did nearly everything that Parker wrote. As usual his letter throbs with his hatred of slavery, but is touched with love for the people of the South, his kinsmen, many of whom he knew to be Abolitionists at heart, or at least opposed to slavery. He thinks it probable that the South will absorb Mexico after the Union is dissolved, not before. Both men are full of prophecies of distant calamity, while Lincoln and men of his type were looking at the nearer scene, content to take one step at a time. But many of their predictions were tragically fulfilled:

Mr. Parker.

Springfield, Ill., Feb. 16, 1856.

Dear Sir:-I received your favor some time since, and would have answered but was busy in our Supreme Court attending to business. I hardly think with you in respect to the action of the North. My opinion is, that the North will now endure no more of Southern insolence and wrong; and further, I think I know the Southern blood, and from that knowledge I know they will, when the fighting point comes, cringe and crawl away. They can bluster and swagger; but there is an unboastful, serene calmness in Northern bravery which paralyzes their heated and inflated courage. I have been a boy, and have often quailed before this spirit. This is universal to all men, and the South are no exceptions to the universals of humanity. I am proud of my adopted section, for her philosophical, mathematic courage, that knows no cold, no heat, but eternal justice. The North, thank the stars, is erect, that is, men of the North, showing

they have not forgotten principles, the only thing that is permanent or beautiful; all else rots in time.

I think the action and courage exhibited in the election of Banks show which way we may now look for the true moral courage. I think the charm is shivered "like thin glass. The prestige of the South is gone, and I pray God never to return. Her institutions are wrong - ridiculously unjust, Heaven-defying; and if the recent lesson can teach her only justice to the North, and the rights of man, I will be more than pleased. Another illustration is the men of Lawrence; their coolness, bravery, and a sense of justice, awed a drunken rabble incited by a drunken politician. The North are up.

I hate slavery: one word long years ago did it. My father was asked in my presence why he left Virginia, and then Kentucky. He answered: That "my labor should never be degraded by competition with slave-labor." I must, however, confess that it, the hate, grows develops as principles are understood, as duty and obligation to humanity are opened to me; as my soul expands to its responsibilities. I once said to you that I did not go so far as some did. I move, not backward. Is there any safe, great everlasting position this side of principle? Where is that point? Shall it stop with class? Shall it like truth sheet the universe of man? These are questions which stare a man in the face.

-

I love the South, and cannot help it; there is something open, manly, chivalrous to draw me. But I hope I can draw a line between an institution and men. From my own knowledge there are a great number of men in the South that silently pray for Northern success dare not say it aloud. Not only the poor whites, but many others who are rich but do not and will not own slaves, are with us in feeling. I know this. I have heard them curse us Northern men most heartily when we would "cave in," as they called it. Let me say here, that in so saying, they would look around the room to see if any spies were looking or if any hired negro heard it. Slavery is the most terrible thing in the world. I say that I love the South, and will never injure her. I love her men and cannot help it. I draw a line between her citizens and her institutions.

When I wrote you to come out here and lecture I did not know you were in Chicago, but learned so a few days after I wrote. I was really sorry when I received the news of your prior engagement. I hope you will come out in Octo

ber or November, 1856, and talk to us. We, the citizens, intend to try to engage some of the best men to lecture here this next fall and winter. The feat was tried on an orthodox scale. You may know how it ended.

Do you think that Mexico will fall into our hands about 1860? I think not. My reasons in short are the Northern courage showed this winter throughout the Free States has rather taken the Southern men back, and they will not move in the matter till we forget our triumphs in our lethar

The policy of the South will be for years fawning, flattering, corrupting, till her day comes again, and then "she will do her best." If this policy isn't pursued the Union will be dissolved, and a Southern Confederacy will be formed. Then the South may absorb Mexico, not this Union, so soon as 1860. However, our present energy and intensity may fuse away before 1860, and then you may be correct. I paid attention to what you said.

Henry Ward Beecher is decidedly a new man, a new species of man. He is strong, vigorous, original, brave. He will do the world good yet. He is a new rose, fresh from the garden of the almighty forces. This age was fortunate in having so beautiful a present. He is a man -"a fresh minister."

I received your "Defense" and have carefully read it; it is good; it is didactic, but powerful; it will live. It may say way down the ages, "I still live," when it is yet fresh not on a death-bed. Hope to see your work soon on "Religious Development," hope to see Emerson's "English Traits soon comes slowly. W. H. HERNDON.

At heart, both Parker and Herndon were of womanly gentleness. Their hatred of hurtful errors and practical wrongs was kept at white heat by a genuine love of mankind, and for all their arraignments and castigations they had no malice or bitterness of spirit. They did not look on oppression, fraud, and misery as abstractions, to be contemplated with philosophie calmness. They saw living men, women, and children exposed, suffering, and degraded, and their hearts quivered within them.

CHAPTER IV

Herndon and Parker

I

When great questions come in little questions are crowded out, but they are sometimes unnecessarily slow in making their exit. As the Slave Power became more daring and insolent, opposition to it grew steadily stronger every day, and the various orders of anti-slavery advocates were drawn ever closer together. Old party ties were still clinging; but the liberal spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of principle became daily more manifest, while the men of all parties— Whigs, Abolitionists, Liberty men, and even Democratsshowed themselves willing to surrender their old parties for one which should take the right kind of stand against the spread of slavery. Not otherwise could they hope for success in Illinois or for any great influence in the nation.

At length the time seemed ripe for such a movement, and the preliminary step was taken at a gathering of Anti-Nebraska editors, held at Decatur in February, 1856. Eleven delegates were present,' among whom were Charles H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune, Paul Selby of the Jacksonville Journal, W. J. Usrey of the Decatur Chronicle, and George Snyder of the Chicago Staats-Zeitung; and they proceeded at once to the discussion of the principles upon which such an organization should be built. All agreed that the Slave States should be sustained in all the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and in disclaiming any desire to interfere with slavery where it existed. With such admissions, they

1 For a complete list of the editors who took part in this conference, See Moses's Illinois, Historical and Statistical, Vol. II, p. 598 (18891892).

passed resolutions "in favor of the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, or in other words, that we will strive by all legal means to restore to Kansas and Nebraska a legal guarantee against slavery, of which they were deprived at the cost of the violation of the plighted faith of the nation; that we hold the settlement of the true relations of the general and State governments to slavery, and the restriction of slavery to its present authorized limits, as the paramount questions for consideration." They advocated, in addition, certain reforms in the administration of State affairs.

Upon such a basis the new party was to stand, and to perfect its organization a State convention was recommended, which should meet at Bloomington on May 29th, following. A State Central Committee of eleven was appointed to supervise the interests of the party, W. H. Herndon to represent the Springfield district, with two for the State at large, Ira O. Wilkinson and Gustave Koerner, then Lieutenant Governor. But Governor Koerner declined to serve, and in an open letter in the Belleville Advocate set forth his reasons, while declaring himself to be in harmony with the sentiment of the meeting regarding slavery and expressing the utmost abhorrence for the idea" that the Constitution of the freest country on earth carries slavery wherever its flag is unfurled." But, he continued:

A mere opposition-party may please those who have set their eyes upon political preferment; it does not satisfy me. Such a party loses its power the moment it attains it. It may share in the emoluments of office, but can do no good. A new party should meet all the important political issues clearly and distinctly, without mental reservation. I could not co-operate with any party, which, while asserting the principle that all soil heretofore free should remain free as long as it is a Territory, would not, at the same time affirmatively maintain that the Constitutional rights of the Southern States should never be interfered with; that all American citizens without distinction of birth and religion should be entitled "to rule America; that the present naturalization laws should not be modified in an illiberal spirit; that monopolies in every shape and form should be abolished; and that no wasteful ex