The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XII
One of the most remarkable passages in Mr. Lincoln's history was his contest with Senator Douglas, in 1858, for the seat in the United States Senate which was soon to be vacated by the expiration of the term for which the latter was elected. Frequent allusion has been made to this already; but before proceeding to its description something further should be said of Mr. Douglas himself.
Mr. Douglas was but little more than twenty years of age when, in 1833, he entered Illinois. He was poor--penniless, indeed. The first money he earned in the state was as the clerk of an auction sale. His next essay was in teaching school. He began to practice law during the second year, and at the age of twenty-two was elected Attorney General of the state. He resigned this office in 1835, and was elected a member of the legislature. It was here that he and Abraham Lincoln met for the first time. In 1837, before he was twenty-five years old, he received the democratic nomination for Congress, and was only beaten by a majority of five votes. In 1840, he was appointed secretary of the state of Illinois, and in 1843 he was elected to Congress, and re-elected in 1844 and 1846. Before he took his seat under the last election, he was elected to the United States Senate; and his second term of service in this august body was about expiring at the present point of this history.
The career of Mr. Douglas had been one of almost uninterrupted political success. He was the recognized leader of the democratic party of Illinois, and had been known and felt as a positive power in national legislation. He had very decided opinions upon all the great questions passed upon by Congress, and, though not unfrequently at variance with the administrations he had himself assisted to place in power, his influence was great in whatever direction he might choose to exert it. He accomplished much in establishing and nourishing the prosperity of Illinois. No man did so much as Mr. Douglas for securing those magnificent grants of land which contributed to the development of his adopted state. To the material interests of Illinois, and the preservation of the power of the democratic party in that state, he was thoroughly devoted; and that party honored him with its entire confidence and almost unquestioning support. He was their first man; and they bestowed upon him, during his life, more honor than they ever gave to any other man living on their territory.
Mr. Lincoln had watched this man, with admiration for his tact and respect for his power with the people. He had seen him winning the highest honors in their gift, and, if he did not envy him, it was not because he was not ambitious. It was because nothing so mean as envy could have place in him. That he regarded Mr. Douglas as an unscrupulous man in the use of means for securing his ambitious ends, there is no doubt; and although he would have refused honor and office on the terms on which Mr. Douglas received them, he was much impressed by the dignities with which the Senator was invested, and felt that the power he held was a precious, aye, a priceless, possession.
From the original manuscript of one of Mr. Lincoln's speeches, these words are transferred to this biography: "Twenty-two years ago, Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then--he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious,--I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him, it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached. So reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation, I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow."
This extract touches the points of similarity between the two men, and their points of difference. Mr. Lincoln was far from insensible to the honors of Mr. Douglas' position; but he would not have them at the price Mr. Douglas had paid for them. The oppressed of his species had not shared with Mr. Douglas in his elevation. The slave had had none of his consideration; and he was in league with the slave's oppressor. It would not have been pleasant to Mr. Lincoln to wear the honors of Mr. Douglas, if, with them, he had been obliged to carry the responsibility of extending or giving latitude and lease to an institution which made chattels of men. Mr. Douglas looked upon slavery either with indifference or approval. He had publicly said that he did not care whether slavery was "voted up or voted down" in the territories. Mr. Lincoln regarded slavery as a great moral, social and political wrong. Here was the vital difference between the two, recognized as such by Mr. Lincoln himself.
After the adoption of the Lecompton Constitution in Kansas, Mr. Douglas having foreseen its character, and having virtually committed himself to it in advance--having, indeed, undertaken to make the republican party morally responsible for its existence and adoption, a change seems to have come over his opinions. Before he departed for Washington, to attend the session of 1857 and 1858, it was whispered that he was about to break with the administration on the Lecompton business. It is always pleasant to give men credit for the best motives; and those under which he acted may have been the best. To oppose that constitution was certainly not inconsistent with his pet doctrine "popular sovereignty" when taken by itself, for nothing was more easily demonstrable than the fact that that constitution was not the act and deed of the people of Kansas--that it was in no sense an expression of their will. While this is true, it is proper to remember that Mr. Douglas was shrewd enough to see that he could not carry the burden of the Lecompton Constitution through the canvass for the senatorial prize, then imminent. The outrage was too flagrant to be ignored, and the facts too notorious to be disputed. He was also shrewd enough to see that his opposition to the Lecompton fraud would take from the republican party some of its best capital, and greatly distract the opposition in their efforts to defeat him.
During that session of Congress Mr. Douglas fought a gallant and manly fight against the administration on the Lecompton question, and, on that question, voted and labored with the republicans. It was a bold step. Without Mr. Douglas, it is easy to see that the Lecompton Constitution would have been impossible. He voluntarily threw open the territory to this outrage. Then he tried to kill his own legitimate child. He forsook the men whom he had led into the great iniquity. The republicans were grateful for his aid, and were naturally drawn to him in sympathy because, for his efforts on behalf of justice in Kansas, he had incurred the enmity of Mr. Buchanan, who was regarded as a most willing tool in the hands of the slave power.
The democratic state convention of Illinois assembled on the 21st of April, 1858, and endorsed Mr. Douglas in his position as an anti-Lecompton man. They placed a state ticket in the field, and engineered the canvass with such skill and vigor that the administration, through its office-holders, could make no headway against them. The power of Mr. Douglas over the politicians and masses in his own state, was never better illustrated than during this campaign, when all the patronage of the federal government could do nothing to defeat him. Before the close of the session, Mr. Douglas went home to look after his interests, and to prepare for the great campaign of his life.
A large number of republicans in the eastern states who had not known Mr. Douglas at home, and who had witnessed his bold and gallant fight with the administration and the slave-power in the senate, expressed the wish that their friends in Illinois might find it in the line of their duty to aid in returning him to the senate. The republicans of Illinois, however, felt that they knew the man better, and that their duty did not lie in that direction at all. They urged that Mr. Douglas did not agree with them in a single point of doctrine--that he had differed with the administration merely on a question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was the act and deed of the people of Kansas. They averred that he adhered to the outrageous decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case--that a negro cannot sue in a United States court, and that Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the territories--and that they dared not trust Mr. Douglas. To this it was replied that Mr. Douglas was coming over to the republican party as fast as he could carry his followers with him, and that his extraordinary hold upon the masses of the democratic party at the North would enable him to bring to the republican ranks a reinforcement which would prove irresistible at the approaching presidential election. The rejoinder of the Illinois republicans was that the probability of any sincere change of faith in Mr. Douglas was too remote and uncertain to warrant them in abandoning an organization which had been formed to advance a great and just cause, and Which, once dissolved, could not be re-formed in time to render efficient service in the election of 1860. Quite a controversy grew out of the differences between the Illinois republicans and their eastern advisers, and no small degree of bitterness was engendered. The party in Illinois was nearly a unit in its views, but the controversy had undoubtedly the influence to loosen the hold of the organization upon some of its members. The effect was temporary, however, for the issues of the campaign were so thoroughly discussed, and the discussions themselves were so generally listened to, or read in the journals of the day, that it is doubtful whether Mr. Douglas gained any appreciable advantage from the controversy, or the sympathy of republicans in other states.
The republican state convention met at Springfield on the sixteenth of June, nearly two months after the assembling of the democratic convention. Aside from the senatorial question, there was but little interest in the proceedings. For state officers, only a treasurer and a superintendent of public instruction were to be nominated, and, besides these officers, only the members of a legislature were to be elected. Nearly six hundred delegates were present in the convention, and they, with their alternates, completed a round thousand of earnest men, gathered from all parts of the state. The fifth resolution adopted on this occasion covers the grand issue made with Judge Douglas.
"That while we deprecate all interference on the part of political organizations with the judiciary, if such action is limited to its appropriate sphere, yet we cannot refrain from expressing our condemnation of the principles and tendencies of the extra-judicial opinions of a majority of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the matter of Dred Scott, wherein the political heresy is put forth that the federal constitution extends slavery into all the territories of the Republic, and so maintains it that neither Congress nor the people through the territorial legislature can by law abolish it. We hold that Congress possesses sovereign power over the territories, and has the right to govern and control them whilst they remain in a territorial condition, and that it is the duty of the general government to protect the territories from the curse of slavery, and to preserve the public domain for the occupation of free men and free labor; and we declare that no power on earth can carry and maintain slavery in the states against the will of their people and the provisions of their constitutions and laws; and we fully indorse the recent decision of the Supreme Court of our own state, which declares that property in persons is repugnant to the Constitution and laws of Illinois, and that all persons within its jurisdiction are presumed to be free, and that slavery, where it exists, is a municipal regulation, without any extra-territorial operation."
If there were men in the convention who had at first been affected by the representations of the republicans in the eastern states, the action of the democratic convention which met in April had restored their determination to stand by their party and its candidates. That convention had denounced the republicans, had indorsed the old democratic platform of the party adopted at Cincinnati in national convention, and, while it approved the course of Senator Douglas, failed to say one word in condemnation of the course and principles, or, rather, lack of principles, of Mr. Buchanan and his administration. The republican convention had hardly assembled before it was discovered that there was entire unanimity for Mr. Lincoln, as their nominee in opposition to Mr. Douglas. When a banner from Chicago was borne into the convention, inscribed with the words--"Cook County for Abraham Lincoln"--the whole convention rose to its feet, and gave three cheers for the candidate whom it was proposed to place in the field in opposition to the champion of "popular sovereignty." That the convention was embarrassed and doubtful as to results, there is no question. Mr. Douglas had the sympathy of many republicans abroad, he had attacked a hated administration with great vigor and persistence, he had the enmity of that administration, and, in the state, he had the advantage of an unjust apportionment of legislative districts, by which not less than ninety-three thousand people were virtually disfranchised.[1] Though it was not according to the wish of many of the members of the convention to make a formal nomination for the senate, yet, as Mr. Douglas had already declared that it was the intention to use Mr. Lincoln's name during the canvass, and to adopt another name in the legislature, the following resolution was brought forward, and unanimously adopted:
"That Hon. Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States Senator, to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas' term of office."
The anxiety of the convention to see and hear their chosen man and champion was intense; and frequent calls were made for him during the day. That Mr. Lincoln expected the nomination, and had prepared himself for it, is evident. It was announced at length that he would address the members of the convention at the State House in the evening. During the day, he was busy in giving the finishing touches to his speech, which had been prepared with unusual care, every sentence having been carefully weighed. He had put into it what he believed to be the real issues of the campaign, and had laid out in it the ground upon which he proposed to stand, and fight his battles. Before going to the hall, he entered his law office, where Mr. Herndon, his partner, was sitting, and turned the key against all intrusion. Taking out his manuscript, he read to Mr. Herndon the first paragraph of his speech, and asked him for his opinion of it. Mr. Herndon replied that it was all true, but he doubted whether it was good policy to give it utterance at that time. "That makes no difference," responded Mr. Lincoln. "It is the truth, and the nation is entitled to it." Then, alluding to a quotation which he had made from the Bible--"A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said that he wished to give an illustration familiar to all, "that he who reads may run." "The proposition is true," said Mr. Lincoln, "and has been true for six thousand years, and I will deliver it as it is written."
At eight o'clock, the hall of the House of Representatives was filled to its utmost capacity, and when Mr. Lincoln appeared he was received with the most tumultuous applause. The speech which he made on that occasion is so full of meaning, so fraught with prophecy, so keen in its analysis, so irresistible in its logic, so profoundly intelligent concerning the politics of the time, and, withal, so condensed in the expression of every part, that no proper idea can be given of it through any description or abbreviation. It must be given entire.
Mr. Lincoln said:
"If We could first know where we are, and whither we are tending. we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. '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.
"Have we no tendency to the latter condition?
"Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action among its chief architects, from the beginning.
"The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by State Constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later, commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
"But, so far, Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more.
"This necessity had not been overlooked; but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of 'squatter sovereignty,' otherwise called 'sacred right of self-government,' which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: 'It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.' Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of 'squatter sovereignty,' and 'sacred right of self-government.' 'But,' said opposition members, 'let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the territory may exclude slavery.' 'Not we,' said the friends of the measure; and down they voted the amendment.
"While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free state and then into a territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit Were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was 'Dred Scott,' which name now designates the decision finally made in the case. Before the then next presidential election, the law case came to, and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States: but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election. Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the latter answers, "That is a question for the Supreme Court.'
"The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps. was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but the incoming president in his inaugural address fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.
"The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this capital indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new president, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained!
"At length a squabble springs up between the president and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision squatter sovereignty squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding--like the mould at the foundry, served through one blast and fell back into loose sand--helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the republicans, against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the right of a people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the republicans have never differed.
"The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas' 'care not' policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:
"First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any state, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that 'The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.'
"Secondly, That 'subject to the Constitution of the United States,' neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.
"Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery in a free state, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free state.
"Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion, at least northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.
"It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left 'perfectly free,' 'subject only to the Constitution.' What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the out-going president's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a re-argument? Why the incoming president's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the president and others?
"We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places and by different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James, for instance--and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few--not omitting even scaffolding--or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in--in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn up before the first blow was struck.
"It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a state as well as territory, were to be left 'perfectly free,' 'subject only to the Constitution.' Why mention a state? They were legislating for territories, and not for or about states. Certainly the people of a state are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a territory and the people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a state, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill;--I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a state over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion, his exact language is, 'except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the state is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction.' In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of the territories was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of 'care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up,' shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.
"Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the states. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their state free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?
"There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But 'a living dog is better than a dead lion.' Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the public heart to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas' superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist 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? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade--how can he refuse that trade in that 'property' shall be 'perfectly free'--unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.
"Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday--that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change of which he himself has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas' position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not now with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to be.
"Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work--who do care for the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot ire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come."
The members of the convention carried away with them something to think about. There had been in Mr. Lincoln's speech no appeals to their partisan prejudices, no tricks to catch applause. He had appeared before them as an earnest, patriotic man, intent only on discussing, in the gravest an most candid manner, the most interesting and momentous political questions.
On the ninth of July, Mr. Douglas made a speech in Chicago. The reception he received was a magnificent one--one which might well have filled him with the gratification which he did not attempt to conceal--which, indeed, he took repeated occasion to express. In this speech he alluded to his efforts to crush the Lecompton fraud, and claimed that the republicans who had fought by his side had indorsed his popular sovereignty doctrine--the right of the people of a territory to form their own institutions.
He then took up the action of the republican convention at Springfield, and spoke at length of Mr. Lincoln and his speech. Of Mr. Lincoln, he said: "I take great pleasure in saying that I have known, personally and intimately, for about a quarter of a century, the worthy gentleman who has been nominated for my place, and I will say that I regard him as a kind, amiable and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent; and whatever issue I may have with him will be of principle and not of personalities." He then read from the opening paragraph of Mr. Lincoln's speech the words: "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 to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." The unfairness of his comments upon this simple statement of a conviction may be gathered from the construction which he put upon it in the words--"Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free states against the slave states, a war of extermination, to be continued relentlessly, until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the states shall either become free or become slave."
Mr. Lincoln foresaw the approaching struggle between freedom and slavery and its inevitable result. He did not believe a dissolution of the Union possible, but he knew that freedom and slavery were irreconcilable enemies. He knew that slavery must die, or become national. He saw the determination of its friends to make it national, and he believed that this attempt would succeed, or that, failing of success, it would end in the universal abolition of slavery. Events have entirely justified his most philosophical view of the subject.
The next point that Mr. Douglas endeavored to make was as illegitimate as his previous one, viz: that Mr. Lincoln desired to reduce the states to a dead uniformity of interests and institutions, contrary to the theory and policy of the fathers of the republic. In order to do this, he was of course obliged to ignore the fact that Mr. Lincoln had alluded to but one institution, and that, in its nature antagonistic with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and to recognize slavery as having the same legitimate basis with the other institutions of the country. Having construed Mr. Lincoln's position unfairly, he logically drove to the unjust conclusion that when the uniformity should be attained which Mr. Lincoln desired, the government would have "converted these thirty-two sovereign, independent states, into one consolidated empire, with the uniformity of disposition reigning triumphant throughout the length and breadth of the land."
He next took up Mr. Lincoln's criticism of the Dred Scott decision, and, by his treatment of it, fully vindicated the action of the Illinois republicans in their refusal to support him in accordance with the wishes of their eastern friends. No republican could consistently support a man who supported that iniquitous and barbarous decision. If it is said that his course on this question would have been changed by their support, the case is still worse, for no man whose course could be changed by such considerations would be worthy of the support of any party. "I am opposed to this doctrine of Mr. Lincoln," said Mr. Douglas, "by which he proposes to take an appeal from the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon this high constitutional question, to a republican caucus sitting in the country... I respect the decisions of that august tribunal; I shall always bow in deference to them... I will sustain the judicial tribunals and constituted authorities, in all matters within the pale of their jurisdiction, as defined by the Constitution." Mr. Douglas did not see fit to allude in this speech to Mr. Lincoln's charge that the Dred Scott decision was a part of that building framed so cunningly by "Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James," in which was to be conserved the power of making slavery universal.
Mr. Douglas went farther than simply to indorse the Dred Scott decision, and to declare his intention to sustain it. "I am equally free," said he, "to say that the reason assigned by Mr. Lincoln for resisting the decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case does not, in itself, meet my approbation... He says it is wrong, because it deprives the negro of the benefit of that clause of the Constitution which says that the citizens of one state shall enjoy all the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the several states; in other words, he thinks it wrong because it deprives the negro of the privileges, immunities and rights of citizenship which pertain, according to that decision, only to the white man. I am free to say to you that, in my opinion, this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made for the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine. It is also true that a negro, an indian, or any other man of inferior race to a white man should be permitted to enjoy, and humanity requires that he should have, all the rights, privileges and immunities which he is capable of exercising, consistent with the safety of society." What these rights should be, was only legitimately to be determined by the states themselves, in Mr. Douglas' opinion. Illinois had decided for herself what the black man's rights were in Illinois, and New York and Maine had decided for themselves. By inference, Kentucky had a right to say her negroes should be slaves, Illinois that her negroes should not vote, New York that her negroes might vote when qualified by property, and Maine that the negro was equal at the polls to the white man.
These were the main points that Mr. Douglas made in his Chicago speech. Mr. Lincoln sat near him, on the platform, and heard the whole of it. Here, as elsewhere during the campaign which succeeded, he manifested his wonderful good nature under misrepresentation. There were incidents of this campaign which no man cast in the common mould could have passed through without yielding to the severest passions of indignation and anger. He was belied, abused, misrepresented; but he never betrayed a moment's irritation. That he smarted with a sense of wrong, there is abundant evidence; but he was never moved to a single act of resentment.
Mr. Lincoln had taken the speech all in, and, on the following evening, it was announced that he would reply to it. The greeting which he received when he took the stand was quite as enthusiastic as that which Mr. Douglas had met on the previous evening. He was introduced to the audience by Mr. C.L. Wilson of Chicago, and when he came forward, there was such a storm of long-continued applause that he was obliged to extend his hand in deprecation, before he could secure the silence necessary for proceeding. After disposing of some minor matters, he took up the points of Mr. Douglas' speech and treated them fully. Touching the comments upon his own declaration--"a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free," &c., he said:
"I am not, in the first place, unaware that this Government has endured eighty-two years, half slave and half free. I know that. I am tolerably well acquainted with the history of the country, and I know that it has endured eighty-two years, half slave and half free. I believe--and that is what I meant to allude to there--I believe it has endured, because during all that time, until the introduction of the Nebraska bill, the public mind did rest all the time in the belief that slavery was in course of ultimate extinction. That was what gave us the rest that we had through that period of eighty-two years; at least, so I believe. I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist--I have been an old line whig--I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska bill began. I always believed that everybody was against it, and that it was in course of ultimate extinction.
"The adoption of the Constitution and its attendant history led the people to believe so; and such was the belief of the framers of the Constitution itself, else why did those old men, about the time of the adoption of the Constitution, decree that slavery should not go into the new territory, where it had not already gone? Why declare that within twenty years the African slave trade, by which slaves are supplied, might be cut off by Congress? Why were all these acts? I might enumerate more of these acts--but enough. What were they but a clear indication that the framers of the Constitution intended and expected the ultimate extinction of that institution? And now, when I say, as I said in my speech that Judge Douglas has quoted from--when I say that I think the opponents of slavery will resist the farther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest with the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, I only mean to say that they will place it where the founders of this Government originally placed it.
"I have said a hundred times, and I have now no inclination to take it back, that I believe there is no right, and ought to be no inclination in the people of the free states to enter into the slave states, and interfere with the question of slavery at all. I have said that always; Judge Douglas has heard me say it--if not quite a hundred times, at least as good as a hundred times; and when it is said that I am in favor of interfering with slavery where it exists, I know it is unwarranted by anything I have ever intended, and, as I believe, by anything I have ever said. If, by any means, I have ever used language which could fairly be so construed (as, however, I believe I never have), I now correct it."
The next point touched upon was Judge Douglas' charge that Mr. Lincoln was in favor of reducing the institutions of all the states to uniformity:
"Now in relation to his inference that I am in favor of a general consolidation of all the local institutions of the various states. I will attend to that for a little while, and try to inquire, if I can, how on earth it could be that any man could draw such an inference from anything I said. I have said, very many times, in Judge Douglas' hearing, that no man believed more than I in the principle of self-government; that it lies at the bottom of all my ideas of just government, from beginning to end. I have denied that his use of that term applies properly. But for the thing itself, I deny that any man has ever gone ahead of me in his devotion to the principle, whatever he may have done in efficiency in advocating it. I think that I have laid it in your hearing--that I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man's rights--that each community, as a state, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that state that interferes with the right of no other state, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole. I have said that at all times. I have said as illustrations, that I do not believe in the right of Illinois to interfere with the cranberry laws of Indiana, the oyster laws of Virginia, or the liquor laws of Maine. I have said these things over aud over again, and I repeat them here as my sentiments.
"How is it, then, that Judge Douglas infers, because I hope to see slavery put where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, that I am in favor of Illinois going over and interfering with the cranberry laws of Indiana? What can authorize him to draw any such inference? I suppose there might be one thing that at least enabled him to draw such an inference that would not be true with me or many others, that is, because he looks upon all this matter of slavery as an exceedingly little thing--this matter of keeping one-sixth of the population of the whole nation in a state of oppression and tyranny unequaled in the world. He looks upon it as being an exceedingly little thing--only equal to the question of the cranberry laws of Indiana--as something having no moral question in it--as something on a par with the question of whether a man shall pasture his land with cattle, or plant it with tobacco--so little and so small a thing, that he concludes, if I could desire that if anything should be done to bring about the ultimate extinction of that little thing, I must be in favor of bringing about an amalgamation of all the other little things in the Union. Now, it so happens--and there, I presume, is the foundation of this mistake--that the Judge thinks thus; and it so happens that there is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil; they can prove it such by the writings of those who gave us the blessings of liberty which we enjoy, and that they so looked upon it, not as an evil merely confining itself to the states where it is situated; and while we agree that, by the Constitution we assented to, in the states where it exists we have no right to interfere with it, because it is in the Constitution; we are by both duty and inclination to stick by that Constitution, in all its letter and spirit, from beginning to end.
"So much then as to my disposition--my wish--to have all the state legislatures blotted out, and to have one consolidated government, and a uniformity of domestic regulations in all the states by which I suppose it is meant, if we raise corn here, we must make sugar-cane grow here too, and we must make those which grow North grow in the South. All this I suppose he understands I am in favor of doing. Now, so much for all this nonsense--for I must call it so. The Judge can have no issue with me on a question of establishing uniformity in the domestic regulations of the states."
Concerning the Dred Scott decision he said:
"I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred Scott decision, but I should be allowed to state the nature of that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly implied by the term Judge Douglas has used, 'resistance to the decision?' I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty that Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property would arise. But I am doing no such thing as that, but all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.
"That is what I would do. Judge Douglas said last night, that before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by it until it was reversed. Just so! We let this property abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed. Somebody has to reverse that decision, since it is made, and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably.
"What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of property they have two uses. First--they decide upon the question before the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody resists that. Not only that, but they say to everybody else, that persons standing just as Dred Scott stands, is as he is. That is, they say that when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again, unless the court decides in another way, unless the court overrules its decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do.
"The sacredness that Judge Douglas throws around this decision, is a degree of sacredness that has never been before thrown around any other decision. I have never heard of such a thing. Why, decisions apparently contrary to that decision, or that good lawyers thought were contrary to that decision, have been made by that very court before. It is the first of its kind; it is an astonisher in legal history. It is a new wonder of the world. It is based upon falsehood in the main as to the facts--allegations of facts upon which it stands are not facts at all in many instances--and no decision made on any question--the first instance of a decision made under so many unfavorable circumstances--thus placed, has ever been held by the profession as law, and it has always needed confirmation before the lawyers regarded it as settled law. But Judge Douglas will have it that all hands must take this extraordinary decision, made under these extraordinary circumstances, and give their vote in Congress in accordance with it, yield to it and obey it in every possible sense. Circumstances alter cases. Do not gentlemen here remember the case of that same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that a national bank was constitutional? I ask, if somebody does not remember that a national bank was declared to be constitutional? Such is the truth, whether it be remembered or not. The bank charter ran out, and a re-charter was granted by Congress. That re-charter was laid before General Jackson. It was urged upon him, when he denied the constitutionality of the bank that the Supreme Court had decided was constitutional; and General Jackson then said that the Supreme Court had no right to lay down a rule to govern a co-ordinate branch of the Government, the members of which had sworn to support the Constitution--that each member had sworn to support that Constitution as he understood it. I will venture here to say, that I have heard Judge Douglas say that he approved of General Jackson for that act. What has now become of all his tirade about 'resistance to the Supreme Court?'"
There were some passages in this speech which illustrated Mr. Lincoln's readiness in "putting things" to the common apprehension. After having said that the much vaunted "popular sovereignty" which Mr. Douglas had put forth as his own invention was something which, when properly defined, the republicans had always accepted and acted upon, and that it came, not from Judge Douglas, but from the Declaration of Independence, which states that governments derive their just powers "from the consent of the governed," he alluded to the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution in Congress. He said that the republicans took ground against the Lecompton Constitution long before Judge Douglas did, and that he held in his hand a speech in which he urged the same reason against Douglas the year before that he (Douglas) was urging now. He went on:
"A little more, now, as to this matter of popular sovereignty and the Lecompton Constitution. The Lecompton Constitution, as the Judge tells us, was defeated. The defeat of it was a good thing, or it was not. He thinks the defeat of it was a good thing, and so do I, and we agree in that. Who defeated it?
"A voice--'Judge Douglas.'
"Mr. Lincoln--Yes, he furnished himself and, if you suppose he furnished the other democrats that went with him, he furnished three votes, while the republicans furnished twenty. That is what he did to defeat it. In the House of Representatives he and his friends furnished some twenty votes and the republicans ninety odd. Now who was it that did the work?
"A voice--'Douglas.'
"Mr. Lincoln--Why, yes, Douglas did it. To be sure he did. Let us, however, put that proposition another way. The republicans could not have done it without Judge Douglas. Could he have done it without them? Which could have come the nearest to doing it without the other?"
The following point was so neatly made that it drew from the house three hearty cheers:
"We were often--more than once at least--in the course of Judge Douglas' speech last night, reminded that this government was made for white men--that he believed it was made for white men. Well, that is putting it into a shape in which no one wants to deny it; but the Judge then goes into his passion for drawing inferences that are not warranted. I protest, now and forever, against that counterfeit logic which presumes that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave, I do necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I need not have her for either, but, as God made us separate, we can leave one another alone, and do one another much good thereby. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and enough black men to marry all the black women, and in God's name let them be so married. The Judge regales us with the terrible enormities that take place by the mixture of races; that the inferior race bears the superior down. Why, Judge, if we do not let them get together in the territories they won't mix there."
And thus was opened the grand senatorial campaign of 1858. Mr. Douglas had not been present at Mr. Lincoln's speech, a fact which Mr. Lincoln regretted, and he soon took measures to secure his attendance. In the meantime, the campaign went on. Mr. Douglas spoke a week later at Bloomington, making much, as usual, of his doctrine of popular sovereignty, and of his rebellion against the administration on the Lecompton question. Mr. Lincoln's original Springfield speech came in for comment, particularly the two points which he criticised at Chicago. Mr. Lincoln was present on this occasion also, determined to find out the exact ground of his antagonist, that he might be able to meet him in the struggle which he had determined upon. On the day following his Bloomington speech, Mr. Douglas spoke at Springfield, as did also Mr. Lincoln, though not at the same meeting. Mr. Lincoln, in opening his speech, alluded to the disadvantages which the republicans of the state labored under in the unjust apportionment of the legislative districts, and particularly in the disparity that existed between the reputation and prospects of the senatorial candidates of the two parties. All the anxious politicians of the party of Mr. Douglas had been looking upon him as certain, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. "They have seen," he said, "in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and cabinet appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out, in wonderful luxuriance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries and receptions, beyond what, even in the days of his highest prosperity, they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be president. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out." The main body of the speech was devoted to the questions at issue between him and Judge Douglas, and does not contain matter of special interest beyond what he had previously uttered upon the same points. He closed by reiterating the charge made in his speech of June seventeenth that Mr. Douglas was a party to the conspiracy for deceiving the people with the idea that the settlers of a territory could exclude slavery from their limits if they should choose to do so, and, at the same time, rendering it impossible for them to do so through the standing veto of the Dred Scott decision. The charge was a grave one, but Mr. Douglas had ignored it. Since it was made, he had not alluded to it at all. "On his own tacit admission," said Mr. Lincoln, "I renew the charge."
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ Scripps, p. 24.