The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XI
The legitimate fruit of the Kansas-Nebraska bill had already begun to manifest itself in Kansas. Emigrants from the eastern states and from the north-west began to pour into the territory; and those who had intended that it should become a slave state saw that their scheme was in danger. Mr. Douglas may not have cared whether slavery was "voted up or voted down" in Kansas, but slaveholders themselves showed a strong preference for voting it up, and not only for voting it up, but of backing up their votes by any requisite amount of violence. An organization in Platte County, Missouri, declared its readiness, when called upon by the citizens of Kansas, to assist in removing any and all emigrants who go there under the auspices of any of the "Emigrant Aid Societies;" which societies, by the way, were supposed to be organizations operating in the free state interest. This was in July, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill having been passed during the previous May. One B.F. Stringfellow was the secretary of the organization, and a fortnight later he introduced, at a meeting of the society, resolutions declaring in favor of extending slavery into Kansas. Almon H. Reeder was appointed Governor, and arrived in the territory during the following October. At two elections, held within the succeeding six months, the polls were entirely controlled by ruffians from the Missouri side of the border, and those disturbances were fully inaugurated which illustrated the desperate desire of slavery to extend its territory and its power, the hypocrisy of Mr. Douglas and his friends in the declaration that the people of the territory should be perfectly free to choose and form their institutions, and the shameful subserviency of the government at Washington to the interests of the barbarous institution.
This much of the history of Kansas, in order to a perfect appreciation of a private letter of Mr. Lincoln to his Kentucky friend, Mr. Speed:
Springfield, August 24, 1855.
"Dear Speed:--You know what a poor correspondent I am. Ever since I received your very agreeable letter of the twenty-second of May, I have been intending to write you in answer to it. You suggest that in political action now, you and I would differ. You know I dislike slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far, there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you yield that right--very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the Constitution, in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down, and caught and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lip, and keep quiet. In 1841, you and I had together a tedious, low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on board ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the people of the North do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union.
"I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so prompt me; and I am under no obligations to the contrary. It, for this, you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were President you would send an army, and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave state, she must be admitted, or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave state unfairly--that is, by the very means for which you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practical one.[1]
"In your assumption that there may be a fair decision on the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about the Nebraska law. I look upon that enactment not as a law, but as a violence, from the beginning. It was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise under the Constitution was nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violent disregard of the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence, because the elections since clearly demand its repeal, and the demand is openly disregarded.
"You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing that law; and I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first, else, why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder has been the only man who has been silly enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely undeceived.
"That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it, will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be an already settled question, and so settled by the very means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle of law ever held by any court, North or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; and in utter disregard of this--in the spirit of violence merely--that beautiful legislature gravely passes a law to hang men who shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights. This is the substance and real object of the law. If, like Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the mourners for their fate.
"In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a territory; and when, by all these foul means it seeks to come into the Union as a slave state, I shall oppose it. I am very loth, in any case, to withhold my assent to the enjoyment of property acquired or located in good faith; but I do not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas, to be held in slavery, is a possibility with any man. Any man who has sense enough to be the controller of his own property, has too much sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business.
"But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas, I shall have some company; but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not, on that account, attempt to dissolve the Union. I think it probable, however, that we shall be beaten. Standing as a unit among yourselves, you can, directly, and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day--as you could on an open proposition to establish monarchy. Get hold of some man in the North whose position and ability are such that he can make the support of your measure--whatever it may be--a democratic party necessity, and the thing is done.
"Apropos of this, let me tell you an anecdote. Douglas introduced the Nebraska bill in January. In February, afterwards, there was a called session of the Illinois legislature. Of the one hundred members comprising the two branches of that body, about seventy were democrats. The latter held a caucus in which the Nebraska bill was talked of, if not formally discussed. It was thereby discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the measure. In a day or two, Douglas' orders came on to have resolutions passed, approving the bill, and they were passed by large majorities!!! The truth of this is vouched for by a bolting democratic member. The masses, too, democratic as well as whig, were even more unanimous against it, but as soon as the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way the democracy began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly astonishing.
"You say if Kansas fairly votes herself a free state, as a Christian you will rather rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I do not doubt their candor. But they never vote that way. Although, in a private letter or conversation you will express your preference that Kansas shall be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected, from any district, or any slave state. You think Stringfellow & Co. ought to be hung; and yet you will vote for the exact type and representation of Stringfellow. The slave-breeders and slave-traders are a small and detested class among you, and yet in politics they dictate the course of all or you, and are as completely your masters as you are the masters of your own negroes.
"You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig: but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was in Washington, I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any attempt to unwhig me for that. 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 can any one who abhors the oppression of the negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal except negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, 'all men are created equal except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to that, I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.
"Your friend forever,
"A. Lincoln."
This letter, written with perfect freedom to an old personal friend attached to the interests of slavery in a slave state, gives with wonderful clearness the state of the slavery question at the time, and Mr. Lincoln's own views and feelings. Events justified the writer's judgment, and verified his predictions. Mr. Lincoln still considered himself a whig. The name was one he loved, and the old party associations were very precious to him. But he was passing through the weaning process, and was realizing more and more, with the passage of every month, that there could no resuscitation of the dead or dying organization. The interests of slavery had severed from it forever that portion that had made it a powerful national party. It could not extend itself an inch south of Mason's and Dixon's line. The slavery question was the great question. Opposition to the extension and encroachments of slavery was sectional, and any party which exercised this opposition, however broad its views might be, was necessarily sectional. Mr. Lincoln's logical mind soon discovered this, and accordingly we find him, May 29th, 1856, attending a convention at Bloomington, of those who were opposed to the democratic party. Here, and with Mr. Lincoln's powerful assistance, the republican party of Illinois was organized, a platform adopted, a state ticket nominated, and delegates were appointed to the National Republican Convention in Philadelphia, which was to be held on the seventeenth of the following month.
There is no doubt that, from the date of this meeting, he felt himself more a free man in politics than ever before. His hatred of slavery had been constantly growing, and now he was the member of a party whose avowed purpose it was to resist the extension of slavery, and to shut it up in the territory where it held its only rights under the Constitution. The speech which he made on this occasion was one of distinguished power and eloquence. Mr. Scripps, in the little sketch of his life to which an allusion has already been made in this volume, says: "Never was an audience more comp1etely electrified by human eloquence. Again and again during the progress of its delivery, they sprang to their feet and upon the benches, and testified by long continued shouts and the waving of hats, how deeply the speaker had wrought upon their minds and hearts. It fused the mass of hitherto incongruous elements into perfect homogeneity, and from that day to the present they have worked together in harmonious and fraternal Union."
Mr. Lincoln was now regarded, not only by the republicans of Illinois, but by all the western states, as their first man. Accordingly they presented his name to the national convention as their candidate for the vice-presidency. On the informal ballot, he received one hundred and ten votes to two hundred and fifty-nine for Mr. Dayton. This, of course, decided the matter against him, but the vote was a complimentary one, and was Mr. Lincoln's formal introduction to the nation. Mr. Lincoln labored with his accustomed zeal during the campaign for Fremont and Dayton, the republican nominees, and had the pleasure, at the end of the canvass, of finding the state revolutionized. Colonel William H. Bissell, the opposition candidate for Governor, was elected by a notable majority, although there were men enough who were not aware that the whig party was dead to give the electoral vote to Mr. Buchanan, through their support of Mr. Fillmore.
A little incident occurred during the campaign that illustrated Mr. Lincoln's readiness in turning a political point. He was making a speech at Charleston, Coles County, when a voice called out, "Mr. Lincoln, is it true that you entered this state barefoot, driving a yoke of oxen?" Mr. Lincoln paused for full half a minute, as if considering whether he should notice such cruel impertinence, and then said that he thought he could prove the fact by at least a dozen men in the crowd, any one of whom was more respectable than his questioner. But the question seemed to inspire him, and he went on to show what free institutions had done for himself; and to exhibit the evils of slavery to the white man wherever it existed, and asked if it was not natural that he should hate slavery, and agitate against it. "Yes," said he, "we will speak for freedom and against slavery, as long as the Constitution of our country guarantees free speech, until everywhere on this wide land, the sun shall shine and the rain shall fall and the wind shall blow upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil."
From this time to the close of his life, he was almost entirely absorbed by political affairs. He still took charge of important cases in court, and practiced his profession at intervals; but he was regarded as a political man, and had many responsibilities thrown upon him by the new organization. During the summer succeeding the presidential canvass, and after Mr. Buchanan had taken his seat, Mr. Douglas was invited by the grand jury of the United States District Court for Southern Illinois, to deliver a speech at Springfield when the court was in session. In that speech, the senator showed the progress he had made in his departure from the doctrines of the fathers, by announcing that the framers of the Declaration of Independence, when they asserted that "all men are created equal," only meant to say that "British subjects on this continent were equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain." Mr. Lincoln was invited by a large number of citizens to reply to this speech, and did so. After showing in his own quiet and ingenious way the absurdity of this assumption of Judge Douglas, telling his auditors that, as they were preparing to celebrate the Fourth of July, and would read the Declaration, he would like to have them read it in Judge Douglas' way, viz: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago, were created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain,"--he said: "And now I appeal to all--to democrats as well as others: are you really willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?--thus left no more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past?--thus shorn of its vitality and its practical value, and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the inalienable rights of man in it?" Then Mr. Lincoln added his opinion as to what the authors of the Declaration intended; and it has probably never been stated with a more catholic spirit, or in choicer terms:
"I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men; but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men equal--equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This they said and this they meant. They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere."
The project of making Kansas a slave state was in full progress. The event which Mr. Lincoln had so distinctly prophesied--the formation of a pro-slavery constitution by unfair means and alien agents--was in full view; and those who were interested in it did their best to prepare the minds of the people for it. Political morality seemed at its lowest ebb. A whole party was bowing to the behests of slavery, and those who were opposed to the institution and the power born of it had become stupefied in the presence of its bold assumptions and rapid advances. People had ceased to be surprised at any of its claims, and any exhibition of its spirit and policy. If Mr. Buchanan had any conscientious scruples, they were easily overborne, and he lent himself to the schemes of the plotters. A pro-slavery legislature was elected mainly by non-residents, at an election in which the free state men, who numbered three-fourths of the entire population, refused to participate, on account of illegality. This legislature, meeting at Lecompton, passed an act providing for the election of a convention to form a state constitution, preparatory to asking an admission into the Union. In the election of the convention, the free state men took no part, on the ground that the legislature which ordered it had no legal authority. About two thousand votes were cast, while the legal voters in the territory numbered more than ten thousand. The Lecompton Convention framed, of course, a pro-slavery constitution. It is not necessary to recount the means by which this constitution was subsequently overthrown, and one prohibiting slavery substituted in its place. It is sufficient for the present purpose to state that upon the promulgation of the constitution formed at Lecompton, Robert J. Walker, then Governor of Kansas, went immediately to Washington to remonstrate against its adoption by Congress, and that before he could reach the capitol it had received the approval of the President.
These facts have place here to give the basis of the political relations between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Douglas; for they were approaching their great struggle. The senatorial term of Mr. Douglas was drawing to a close, and he wished to be indorsed by the people of Illinois, and returned to the Senate. The events of the previous year had shown him that a great political revolution was in progress, and that his seat was actually in danger. He saw what was going on in Kansas, and knew that the iniquities in progress there would be laid at his door. It was he who, in a time of peace, had opened the flood-gates of agitation. It was he who had given to the slave-power what it had not asked for, but could not consistently refuse. It was he who had gratuitously offered the slave-power the privilege of making territory forever set apart to freedom its own, if it could. He had divided his own party in his own state, and was losing his confidence as to his own political future. That he knew just what was coming in Kansas, and knew what the effect would be upon himself, is evident in the speech he made at Springfield, from Mr. Lincoln's reply to which a passage has already been quoted. In this he undertook to shift to the shoulders of the republican party the burden he felt to be pressing upon his own. Speaking of Kansas, he said: "The law under which her delegates are about to be elected is believed to be just and fair in all its objects and provisions... If any portion of the inhabitants, acting under the advice of political leaders in distant states, shall choose to absent themselves from the polls, and withhold their votes with the view of leaving the free state democrats in the minority, and thus securing a pro-slavery constitution in opposition to the wishes of a majority of the people living under it, let the responsibility rest on those who, for partisan purposes, will sacrifice the principles they profess to cherish and promote. Upon them and upon the political party for whose benefit and under the direction of whose leaders they act, let the blame be visited of fastening upon the people of a new state institutions repugnant to their feelings and in violation of their wishes."
In a subsequent passage of this same speech, he amplifies these points, and both passages show that he knew the nature of the constitution that would be framed, knew that the free state men would not vote at all because they believed the movement was an illegal one, and knew that he and his party would be held responsible for the outrage. It is further to be said that, by his words on this occasion, he fully committed himself in advance, to whatever the Lecompton Convention might do. "The present election law in Kansas is acknowledged to be fair and just," he says. "Kansas is about to speak for herself," he declares. By these words alone, be was morally committed to whatever might be the conclusions of the convention. This is to be remembered, for Mr. Douglas soon found that he could not shift the burden of the Kansas iniquity upon the opposition, and that his only hope of a re-election to the senate depended upon his taking issue with the administration on this very case, and becoming the champion of the anti-Lecompton men.
Footnotes[edit]
- ↑ This confident prediction was made two years before the Lecompton Constitution was framed.