34
��Abraham Lincoln.
��the world that we were a nation, and that a repub- lican foru-. of government couM be ra lintaiiifd uji'ler the irreatest strain to which it could be sub- jected—that "f civil war His great services end- ed with his life, and he will be ranked with Wash- ington ill the heirts of his countrymen, Mnd in his. to'-y as one ot the greatest benetautors of the hu- man race.
SPEECH OF CAPT. H. B. ATHERTON.
The address of Captain Atherton was well delivered and extremely interesting. It was as follows :
Mr. President and Gentlemen: I first saw Abraham Lincoln in the spring ot 18.i4. The news tliat Senator Douglass hal reported from his com- mittee a bill repealing the Missouri Compromise h^d runsr out through the country 'like a tire-bell ill the night." The state of Illinois wis ablaze with indignation. I was at Springfield at the meeting of the extra session of the legislature iu February, when that measure w is under discus- sion, and 1 well remember the intense excitement of the occasion. Shortly after, on the 22d of March, it became ray good fortune to listen to the trial of a cause in tlie Morgan county court in which Mr. Lincoln t'>ok part as couns 1. He was associated with Judge Brown of Springfield for Vo,f defence. A Mr. Smith and Murray McConnel of Jacksonville were the plaintiff's lawyers. The suit was brought by Silsby, editor of the Jackson- ville t/^wrz/a/, a free soil paper, gainst one Dun- lap, a pro-slavtTf Democrat, for a personal assault wiiich had been provoked by some politicil or per- sonal allusion ti> him in the paper. I remember that my sympathies were wholly wiih the plaintiff and against Mr. Lincoln's client, for the assault had been an aggravated one with a cane, and as a boy, with rather strong anti-slavery procliviiies, I was prejudiced against the defendant, his conduct, his politics, and very likely against his counsel also; and y^t I was delighted with the argument of Mr Lincoln, which made a lasting impression on my mind. I recall the expr-ctitiou I had that "Judge" Brown was to do something commensu- rate with his title, anil the surprise I felt t lat he was so much surpassed by his ftssociate. The jury gave the plaintiff .fSiiO, and ought probably to have given him more; but that night I put down in my not? book. "Mr. Lincoln is a very good speaker," and that was very true.
Thou J h then 45 years old, he was but little known outside his own state. He had been in the practice of the law seventeen years. He had served two or three terms in the state legislature and one in Con- gress, and, as candidate for presidenti il electo'-, had stumped the state both in 1840 and 1844 for the Whig party.
Before he began to study law he had begun to advo'iate those principles which later made him a representative Republican. In 18 <2, when he an- nounced liraself at the age of twenty-three a can- didate for the legislature, he sdd, in whit must have been about his first political speech, "I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high protective tariff." i wenty-three years later, when his most intimate friend, Speed, inquired of him how he stood, he wroe, "I ihink I am a Whig. * * « I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know Nothing : that is certain. How could I be? How could any one who abhors the oppression of negr.ies be in favor of d gi ading classes of white people ?"
Sprung from the ranks of the "plain people" himself, nis sympathies were always with tlie poor. Born among the poor wliites of a border slave state, where labor wis degraded, good schools made impossible, and the door to advancement closed by the b'ight of hiimm slavery, he had, through hi-i own experience and that of hin parents before him, become cons ious of the great wrong and injustice to the wliites, and the great misery and wretche Iness to the negroes caused by slavery. His kind heart could not witness unmoved the dis-
��tress of a dumb anitnal, and much less could he bear to see the oppressed slaves at their unrequited toil. Poverty, weakness, distress, or misfortune never appealed to him in vain.
He sought distinction wit lout diszuise or hypoc- risy. He covete I the good will of his fellow-men, but always sought to merit it. He was intellectual- ly as Well as morally honest, and as he never de- ceived others so, he neper deluded himself. Of such material were the men who originated the Republican party, and Mr. Lincoln was a fair rep- resentative of that party, .i vast majority of its voters were working men, intelligent, conscien- tious, and patriotic.
Within the uast few years men have protested against being compelled to compete with the labor of a few hundreil unpaid convicts in the prisons, or of a few thousand economical Chinese on the Pa- cifi ; coast, who with no families or c'urches to su|)port, are able to underbid in the labor market the honest Christian, who lives like a man, sup- ports his wife a'ld chddren, sustains schools and churches, and performs his whole duty as a citizen: and I believrt there is some ground for an open and manly protest in that direction. But the grievance from tuese sources is the merest trifle compared with the intolerable competi ion of three millions of "chattels real," — African slaves fed on the coarsest of food, clothed with the cheapest of gar- ments, and working for no pay whatever. That WIS the substantial grievance which the white workingmen of t'le country, uniting under the name ot the R-^publican party, openly combined to meet. It cheapened the wiges of the white man. It cast odium on honest labor — that blessing in dis- guise without which no race ever emerged from bar- barism, and no individual ever attained to a whole- some and healthy growth. It retarded civilization, denied the rights of man, and was at war with our free institutions. It grew strong, aggressive, and detiant. It proclaimad "('otton is knig!" and cap- italists at the North timidly bowed before His Maj- esty.
Making use '"f the Democratic party as its agent and instrument, slavery began an advance along the whole line. The oiijective points of this con- certed movement were to nationalize slavery and ultimately to reopen the African slave trade, and thereby still further to cheapen labor. Men brought cargoes of slaves from the Congo coast and landed them on the shores of the Southern states ■w itli no apparent fear or danger of punisument. The area for slavery was enlarged by waging a war of doubtful justice upon a sister republic ami de- spoiling her of a large portion of her territory. The fugitive slave law was passed which compelled free men in the North at the will of a United States marshal to take the place of blood-hounds in the South in hunting down the fugitive flying from an intolerable thralldom. Iu the U. S su- preme court the Dre<l Scott decision was obtained, in which it was ainiounced that noslaveor descend- ant of a slave cou'd be a person entitled to the right of habeas corpus, or trial by juiy, and that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature could exclude slavery from the territories. The court would not admit that even the state legislatures could exclude slavery from their respective states ; and it was believed tiiat their next step would be to declare that the st ites had not the power under the constitution. The Lemon slave case was al- ready going through the New Ym-k courts, where in the court of appe lis I heard Charles O'Connor argue a'jainst WilliaTu M. Evarts that a Southern slaveholder coulil voluntarily bring his "chattels" into New York, and they were not thereby nude free, but he might retain possession of them and take them back to the South. Robert Toombs pro- posed to call the roll of his slaves beneath the shadow of Bunker Hill monument. To this end the three de lartments of the general government were working in harmony.
The Missouri ('omproniise had dedicated to free- dom the territories north of 36 deg 30 min., and was thought by many to be as binding as the constitu- tion it -elf. The good f ith of both sections was pledged taits maintenance. The slaveholders had
�� �
