Lincoln the “rail member,” and talked blasphemously about slavery as “an institution guarded by the records of the world, by the traditions of all mankind, by the logic of history, and the fitness of things.” The “divinely instituted” and patriarchal system of slavery was perpetually preached up; and “nigger worship” decried as mining the South, and dissolving the Union, and hurrying on all parties to the “great irrepressible conflict.”
Douglas “stumped” the States, and canvassed at every bar-room and liquor-store, let us remember. Lincoln remained quietly at home, abusing no one, and soliciting no popular applause. The Republicans—sanguine, high-spirited, and cool—exulted in “old honest Abe” and his long struggles when he lived in the old Kentucky cabin on the hills of Hardin county. “No robbing the treasury, now,” they cried. “They would make the Locos run to slavish Cuba. Every honest poor man now would get his prairie-farm; they would crack ‘the Soft Shells,’ and send 50,000 ‘Wide-awakes’ to guard Lincoln on his road to Washington.” The election songs played all sorts of fantasias on the rail-splitting experience of Abe, garnishing their verses with technical allusions to please the backwoodsmen and wood-clearers of the North-West; for instance:—
“Tom Ewing boil’d de brackish water,
He drove faster than he oughter;
But Abe’s de real ring-tail snorter.
A splittin’ ob de rail,
A splittin’ ob de rail,
De ten-foot, white-oak rail.
He drove his glut right through the cut
With maul of hickory tough.”
Torch-light processions now lit up the midnight of cities troubled in their sleep. Armies of the Republican Wide-awake clubs, in red oil-cloth caps, and carrying coloured lanthorns on poles, defiled down High-streets, making night hideous with noisy bands, discharge of cannon, fierce bonfires, and starry bursts of Roman candles.
In irritating violence, and readiness for bloodshed, there was not a pin to choose between either party. Lincoln objected to the Dred Scott decision, and declared the Missouri compromise unconstitutional. Mr. Somebody Wolf declared the negro was mere animated property, with triple-plated skull and a special strong smell. A quiet paper—“The Olive Branch”—writing on “Negro Equality,” said: “White men, voters, see to this in time, and, voters, keep this taint, this blot, this degradation from your households and firesides—out-vote this detestable proposition of equality of races!”
Nor were the Republicans a whit behind.
Helper wrote:—“It is for you to decide whether we are to have justice peaceably or by violence, for, whatever consequences may follow, we are determined to have it one way or the other.”
The religious “New York Tribune” calmly advised all Abolitionists to deal no more with pro-slavery merchants; not to enter slave-waiting hotels; not to give fees to pro-slavery lawyers; not to call in pro-slavery physicians; not to listen to pro-slavery clergymen.
Mr. Joshua Giddings spoke of a time when Southern slave-holders would turn pale, and when they would “strike off the shackles of the slave, and, let me tell you that that time hastens—it is rolling forward.”
The Hon. Erastus Hopkins said:—“If peaceful means fail us, and we are driven to the last extremity, when ballots are useless, then we will make bullets effective.” O! ghost of Penn, only hear Erastus!
The great Helper book, which became an election pamphlet, and was most powerful for the Abolitionists, spoke of the number of slave-holders, and added:—“Against this army . . . . we think it will be an easy matter, independent of the negroes, who, in nine cases out of ten, would be delighted with an opportunity to cut their masters’ throats.”
But most extreme and ferocious of all came that wolf Fenrir, the Hon. John S. Hale, of peaceful New Hampshire, who actually said, to the horror of the belligerent South:—“And if it comes to blood, let blood come. No, sir, if that come—must come—let it come, and it cannot come too soon, sir. Puritan blood has not always shrunk from such encounters; and when the war has been proclaimed with the knife—and the knife to the hilt, too—the steel has sometimes glistened in their hands.”
But enough of such ill-timed and mischievous speeches; and, though we have purposely quoted only the words of influential men, let us remember that these harangues were uttered, and these books written, during a time of feverish excitement, and that they were peppered highly to rouse the appetite of the populace.
But one thing is remarkable during all the violence of this paper war, that not even the most venomous democratic tongue dared revile Lincoln. Men called him “rail splitter,” and there was an end. They laughed at his age (only 51) and at his political defeats. They cried out that Dug was too “smart” for him. They said, “Let him split rails and split hairs, but not split the Union.” They even growlingly allowed that he was honest. They dreaded, they confessed, to see raised the “black piratical flag” of war between free and slave labour, ending in the enslavement of the North. “This fanatical horde,” they cried, “will goad the government to extreme measures. Give us Douglas, and down with Lincoln!”
In vain moderate men pointed out Lincoln’s calm equality, and the probability that, as President, Abe would set his face against all violent measures, and practically, after so much opposition, do no more real harm than the much vituperated Van Buren did formerly.
Lincoln’s speech upon his election confirms these philosophical opinions. “Let us,” said the good man, for such I am sure he is, “let us at all times remember that all American citizens are holders of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.”—Immense applause, and cheers for half an hour, I dare swear. Mr. Lincoln will not, we must remember, become working President till some time in March next, so there is time to consider our verdict.
