The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Arnold)/Chapter VII

The 33d Congress convened December 5th, 1853. The election of 1852 had resulted in the choice of Franklin Pierce as President, General Scott, the whig candidate, receiving the votes of only four states. The celebrated compromise measures of 1850, already described, were, it was claimed, endorsed by the election of Pierce, and the leaders of the slavery party boasted that the slavery question was settled, and that the abolitionists and agitators were crushed to rise no more. The territory out of which the great states of Kansas and Nebraska were to grow, was then becoming settled, and the people were asking for the organization of territorial governments. Throughout all this territory, slavery had been prohibited by the time-honored Missouri Compromise.

The great senatorial leaders, Webster, Clay, Calhoun, and Benton, had left the theatre of their renown. In the Senate there were three only, who were distinctly anti-slavery men, or "free soilers," as they were called--Charles Sumner, Salmon P. Chase and John P. Hale. Edward Everett occupied the seat of Webster, William H. Seward was the leader of the anti-slavery whigs, but perhaps the most prominent figure then in the Senate was the young and ambitious member from Illinois, Stephen Arnold Douglas.

Douglas was then not quite forty years old, but had already become the idol of his party, and was then in the zenith of his popularity. He had had a brilliant career in Illinois in the House of Representatives, and since his election to the Senate in 1847, had been constantly rising in influence and power. He was especially the favorite of the young democracy, who looked upon him as certain, and at no distant day, of the presidency. He had a frank, open, cordial, familiar manner; at the same time he was bold, decided, and magnetic, possessing the qualities which made a popular leader in a degree hardly surpassed by any other man in American history.

Possessed of a retentive memory, without being a scholar and without much study, by conversation and otherwise, his mind had become well stored with practical knowledge, and he was well informed in regard to the history and politics of the country. He did not forget anything he had ever read or seen or heard, and he had the happy faculty, so useful to the politician, of always remembering faces and names. His resources were fully at his command, so that he was always ready. Although he lacked humor and wit, yet as a speaker he had few equals, either in the Senate or on the stump. He had great fluency; he seized the strong points of his case, and enforced them with much vigor. His denunciation and invective were extremely powerful.

He was chairman of the Committee on Territories, and now had the audacity to introduce, in his bill organizing the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, a provision respecting the prohibition of slavery. The proposition started the people of the free states like the fire-bell at midnight, and opened again the question of slavery, with a violence and bitterness never before equalled. The motives which led Douglas to introduce this measure were denounced with the greatest severity. He was accused of being bribed by the promise of the presidency to break down this barrier against the extension of slavery. It was charged that the leaders of the slavery party dazzled his eyes and bewildered his judgment by holding up to his eager ambition the White House. But whatever his motives, the act was political suicide to him and to slavery itself; it was the beginning of the end. From that time on, the conflict raged with ever increasing force, until slavery was destroyed in the flames which itself had kindled. It must be conceded that Douglas carried on the conflict with a nerve and vigor, a courage and ability, worthy of a nobler cause.

Senators Seward, Chase, Sumner, and Hale led the opposition to the bill. The speech of Mr. Seward against it was able, calm, and philosophic. After an historical review of the whole question, he spoke of the uselessness of all efforts to stifle the love of liberty and hatred of slavery. "You may," said he, "drive the slavery question out of these halls to-day, but it will revisit them to-morrow. You buried the Wilmot proviso here in 1850, and here it is again to-day, stalking through these halls in complete armor... Slavery," he continued, "is an eternal struggle between truth and error, right and wrong... You may sooner, by act of Congress, compel the sea to suppress its upheavings, and the earth to extinguish its internal fires, than oblige the human mind to cease its inquiries, and the human heart to desist from its throbbings." In its last maddened throes, this early, able champion of liberty was struck down by the hand of slavery, the same hand which assassinated Lincoln, but not until he had lived as Secretary of State, officially to proclaim, that "slavery no longer exists" in the republic.

At five o'clock, on the 3d of March, 1854, the Nebraska bill passed the Senate. On its passage, Senator Seward said: "The shifting sands of compromise are passing from under my feet." With characteristic hopefulness, he exclaimed: "Through all the darkness and gloom of the present hour, bright stars are breaking that inspire me with hope, and excite me to persevere." Sam Houston, of Texas, was one of the two senators from the slave states, who voted against the bill. In concluding his speech against it, Houston said: "Yon proud symbol" (pointing to the eagle), "above your head remains enshrouded in black, as if deploring the misfortune that has fallen upon us, or as a fearful omen of the future calamities which await our nation in the event that this bill becomes a law."

In the House of Representatives, the struggle over the passage of the bill was renewed with still greater violence. During the struggle the House remained in continuous session for more than thirty-four hours. Colonel Benton, then a member of the House, and representing St. Louis, vigorously opposed the bill. Having gone out for refreshments, he was, on a call of the House, arrested and brought to the bar by the sergeant-at-arms, to offer an excuse for his absence. The venerable old man said: "It was neither on account of age nor infirmity that I was absent... I went away animus revertandi, intending to return, refreshed and invigorated, and take my share and sit it out; to tell the exact truth, to husband some strength for a pinch when it should come, for I did not think we had got to the tightest place."

Benton was indignant at the violation of the compact; he saw the danger which would follow, and resisted with all the ability and pluck of his best days.

On the 8th of May, 1854, the bill finally passed the House. Salvos of artillery from Capitol Hill announced the triumph of the slave power, but the boom of these cannon awakened echoes and aroused the people, filling them with indignation, in every valley and on every hillside in the free states. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise shocked the moral sense, and was everywhere regarded in the free states, not only as a humiliation, but as a gross violation of faith. Thoughtful men realized that the days of concession, of mutual compromise and forbearance had passed, and that the struggle between freedom and slavery was irresistible and at hand.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise removed the barrier against the extension of slavery over an area equal in extent to that of the entire thirteen original states. This territory was now open, and the leaders of the slaveholders determined to occupy and control it, and especially the southern portion, called Kansas. The people of the free states, betrayed and defeated at Washington, determined to prevent this. Douglas and a large portion of the democratic party defended the repeal, on the ground that the people of each territory should determine for themselves whether they would exclude or protect slavery. This doctrine, known as "popular sovereignty," or "squatter sovereignty," became a watchword of that party. Each section resolved to colonize and settle Kansas; the one to make it a free, and the other a slave state. The slave states had the immense advantage of proximity. Kansas was directly west of Missouri, and the only direct route to it was across Missouri, and up her great river to its border. Western Missouri was full of slaves, and their masters could not tolerate the idea of a free state just west of them.

Under the lead of General Atchison, then a senator, and formerly Vice-President of the United States, the slaveholders organized secret societies, known as "Blue Lodges," and by force of arms endeavored to seize and hold Kansas. With arms in their hands, their organized bands marched in military array into that territory, marked out their claims, and, taking their negroes with them, declared that slavery already existed there, and proclaimed "Lynch law" for all abolitionists. In New England and in the Northwest, and elsewhere in the free states, "Emigrant aid societies" were organized, with a view of aiding to settle Kansas with free labor. Settlers were furnished with mills, farming implements, domestic animals, seed, and cheap dwelling houses; school houses and churches were also supplied to the emigrants. This property soon began to be seized by the slave party in its passage up the Missouri river. Settlers and their families were arrested, maltreated, and their property plundered or destroyed, and they were compelled by force to turn back. But with pluck and persistence they turned aside, and with horses and ox teams, made the long, weary, overland journey through Iowa to the disputed territory. Each party was striving to found a state. The slaveholders had, as has been stated, the great advantage of close proximity, and, under the lead of Atchison and Stringfellow, sent their organized bands, armed with revolvers and bowie knives, to build up the new commonwealth with slaves and whiskey. In the long run it was found to be bad material.

The free state emigrant, starting often from a distance of hundreds of miles, took with him his family, his farming tools, school books for his children, his Bible, and often the farm house, school house, and little church framed at home, and by and by, he took also his Sharp's rifle, which he quickly learned to use with skill. Under the lead of John Brown, known in Kansas as Ossawatomie Brown, Charles Robinson, Generals Pomeroy and Lane, and others, farms were opened, and villages and settlements were located and built up. The negro in Kansas did not long remain a slave. The grogshop, the bowie knife and the revolver could not permanently compete with the school house, free labor, order, and thrift. But the struggle was long, and for a time doubtful. On the side of slavery was all the influence of the United States officials, the state government of Missouri, its border militia, ever ready to make a raid into Kansas for plunder, violence, and destruction. The free state party had the aid of the northern press, Yankee enterprise and persistence, and the rough and rude sense of justice, which characterizes the pioneer of the West. The slave party, by the aid of votes imported from Missouri, the Missouri militia, and the Federal officers, held for a time the nominal government, and perpetrated a series of outrages, frauds, and ballot stuffings to secure a constitution establishing slavery. But the free state men soon outnumbered their wandering, plundering, whiskey drinking adversaries. The slaves ran away, and found security in the free state settlements or beyond the border.

Territorial governor after governor was appointed by Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, and resigned or was removed, finding the task of imposing slavery on Kansas too difficult. Governor Geary, one of these, became disgusted and indignant at the outrages of the slave party, and gives this picture of the situation. He says:

"'I reached Kansas and entered upon the discharge of my official duties in the most gloomy hour of her history. Desolation and ruin reigned on every hand; homes and firesides were deserted; the smoke of burning dwellings darkened the atmosphere; women and children, driven from their habitations, wandered over the prairies, and among the woodlands, or sought refuge and protection from the Indian tribes. The highways were infested with predatory bands, while the towns were fortified and garrisoned by armies of conflicting partisans, excited almost to frenzy, and determined on mutual extermination.'"

Such was the struggle in Kansas upon the slavery question. It was like the great civil war, of which it was the type and prophetic prelude, a contest between barbarism and civilization. Whenever anything like a fair vote of the actual settlers could be obtained, the free state men had large majorities. The story of this struggle between freedom and slavery; between fraud, violence, and outrage on the one side, and heroic firmness, energy, and determination on the other, was carried all over the land, and made a profound impression upon the American people. It was amidst these scenes that John Brown of Ossawatomie was prepared, by the murder of his son, for his wild crusade against slavery in Virginia. It was here that the heroic Lyon and Hunter learned to hate that institution. The plains of Kansas were red with the blood of her martyrs to liberty; her hills and valleys were black with the charred remains of her burned and devastated towns, villages, and cities, attesting alike the heroic constancy of her people to freedom, and the savage barbarity of the slave power. When the convulsions of the great national conflict began to shake the land, Kansas was the rock which rolled back the tide of the slave conspirators. All honor to Kansas. She successfully withstood the slave power, backed by the Federal Government. The struggle was watched by the people everywhere, with the most intense solicitude, and it nerved them to a still firmer determination to resist the encroachment of the slaveholders.

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise roused Lincoln from retirement, and stimulated him to the utmost exertion of his powers. He now prepared to enter the arena as the great champion of freedom. He had bided his time. He had waited until the harvest was ripe. With unerring sagacity he realized that the day for the triumph of freedom was at hand. He entered upon the conflict with the deepest conviction that the perpetuity of the republic required the extinction of slavery. So adopting as his motto, "A house divided against itself cannot stand," he girded himself for the contest. He sought to take with him, bodily, the old whig party of Illinois, into the new organization called the republican party. He was to build up and consolidate the heterogeneous mass which composed the new party. The years from 1854 to 1860, were, on his part, years of constant, active, and unwearied effort. He had, in 1850, declared to his old partner, Stuart, that the slavery question could not be compromised. He was now to become the recognized leader of the anti-slavery party in the Northwest, and in all the valley of the Mississippi. His position in the state of Illinois was central and commanding. He who could lead the republican party of that state and the surrounding states, would be pretty sure to lead that party in the Union.

Lincoln was a practical statesman, never attempting the impossible--but seeking to do the best practicable under surrounding circumstances. If he was sagacious in selecting the time, he was also skillful in the single issue he made. He took his stand with the fathers of the republic, against the extension of slavery. He knew that prohibition in the territories would result in no more slave states, and no slave territory. And now, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise shattered all parties into fragments, and he came forward to build up the free soil party, he threw into the conflict all his strength and vigor, and devoted his life to the struggle. From this time, Lincoln was to guide the whirlwind and direct the storm. He realized that the conflict was unavoidable and inevitable. The conviction of his duty was deep and sincere. Hence he plead the cause of liberty with an energy, ability, and power, which rapidly gained for him a national reputation. Conscious of the greatness of his cause, inspired by a genuine love of liberty, and animated and made strong by the moral sublimity of the conflict, he solemnly announced his determination to speak for freedom and against slavery, until, in his own words, wherever the Federal Government has power, "the sun shall shine, the rain shall fall, and the wind shall blow, upon no man who goes forth to unrequited toil."

It is difficult fully to realize or describe the gravity of the situation or the dignity of his topics. We can do so only by comparing them with great efforts of the orators of the past, and who, even of them, had a theme so grand? When Demosthenes sought to rouse the Athenians against Philip, the fate of his country hung on the issue, and the result was that great series of orations which are read with admiration to this day. When Cicero exposed and denounced the treason of Catiline, the Roman orator uttered words which yet echo through the Roman forum. When Edmund Burke and Sheridan plead the cause of the millions of India before the House of Lords, on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, the people of the world were spectators, and it taxed the graphic power of Macaulay to the utmost to picture the scene; but when Lincoln plead the cause of liberty, not only the freedom of four millions of slaves, but the fate and perpetuity of the Union and the republic hung on the result. His speeches were great battles fought and won. Whole counties were sometimes revolutionized by one of his great arguments.

From 1854 to 1860 the conflict raged, and then the defeated party, beaten at the ballot-box, appealed from the forum of debate to the battlefield of arms. Let us try to tell the story of this prolonged debate. When, late in September, 1854, Douglas, after the passage of the Kansas and Nebraska bill, returned to Illinois, he was received with a storm of indignation which would have crushed a man of less power and will. A bold and courageous leader, conscious of his personal power over his party, he bravely met the storm and sought to allay it. In October, 1854, the State Fair being then in session at Springfield, and there being a great crowd of people from all parts of the state, Douglas went there and made an elaborate and able speech in defense of the repeal. Mr. Lincoln was called upon by all the opponents of this repeal to reply, and he did so with a power which he never surpassed, and which he had never before equalled. All other issues which had divided the people were as chaff, and were scattered to the winds by the intense agitation which arose, on the question of extending slavery, not merely into free territory, but into territory which had been declared free by solemn compact.

Douglas had a hard and difficult task in attempting to defend his action in the repeal of this compact. But he spoke with his usual great ability. He had lately come from the discussions of the Senate Chamber, where he had carried the measure against the utmost efforts of Chase, Seward, Sumner, and others, and he was somewhat arrogant and overbearing. Lincoln was present and listened to this speech, and at its close it was announced that he would on the following day reply. This reply occupied more than three hours in delivery, and during all that time Lincoln held the vast crowd in the deepest attention. No report of this speech was made, but the arguments and topics were substantially the same as in the speech he delivered at Peoria on Monday, the 16th of October thereafter, and which Lincoln wrote out afterwards, it being published in the "Sangamon Journal." As printed it lacks the fire and vehemence of the extemporaneous speech, but as an argument against the extension of slavery it has no equal in the anti-slavery literature of the country. The effect of the Springfield speech upon his hearers was wonderful. Herndon, his partner, says: "The house (it was spoken in the State House) was as still as death. Lincoln's whole heart was in the subject. He quivered with feeling and emotion." Sometimes his emotions "came near stifling his utterance." Loud and long continued applause greeted his telling points. At the conclusion, every person who had heard Lincoln felt that the speech was unanswerable. The reader who peruses the Peoria speech to-day will so declare. Douglas himself felt that he was crushed. At the close of Lincoln's speech he attempted a reply, but he was excited, angry, loud, and furious, and after a short time closed by saying that he would continue his reply in the evening, but he did not return to the State House, and left the city without resuming his discourse.

Lincoln followed Douglas to Peoria. There Douglas spoke for three hours in the afternoon, and Lincoln again followed in the evening and spoke for three hours also. Here, as in Springfield, he carried the audience with him, and Douglas was more disconcerted by the vigor and ability of Lincoln's replies in these two great discussions than on any other occasion of his life. The consciousness of being in the wrong probably contributed to this result. There was something approaching the sublime in this intellectual conflict. Lincoln was then in the prime of life, of great physical and mental power, and perfectly master of his subject.

Douglas felt that he was beaten, and asked Lincoln not to follow or reply to him any more. He said: "Lincoln, you understand this question of prohibiting slavery in the territories better than all the opposition in the Senate of the United States. I cannot make anything by debating it with you. You, Lincoln, have here and at Springfield, given me more trouble than all the opposition in the Senate combined." Douglas then appealed to Lincoln's magnanimity and generosity, and proposed that each should go home, and that there should be no more joint discussions, to which Lincoln acceded. There were then no more joint discussions, although Lincoln had started out with the purpose of following and replying to Douglas whenever he spoke, and a joint discussion had been arranged for at Lacon. Both went to Lacon, and neither spoke.

Lincoln, in the Peoria speech, gave a full history of the slavery question from the organization of the government, tracing the policy of prohibiting it in the territories to the author of the Declaration of Independence.

"'Thus,' said he, 'with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back of the constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of the Revolution, the State of Virginia and the National Congress put that policy into practice. Thus, through sixty odd of the best years of the republic did that policy steadily work to its great and beneficent end. And thus in those five states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, with their five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before us the rich fruits of this policy...'"

The speech is distinguished above all others by its full, accurate, and exhaustive knowledge of the history of the legislation relating to slavery. He demonstrates that under the policy of prohibition there had been peace, while the repeal of prohibition had brought agitation. He sums up:

"Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal the Missouri Compromise--repeal all compromise--repeal the Declaration of Independence--repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It still will be out of the abundance of man's heart that he will declare slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his mouth he will continue to speak..."

"Some Yankees in the East are sending emigrants to exclude slavery from it, and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to be decided by voting in some way or other. But the Missourians are awake too. They are within a stone's throw of the contested ground. They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not the slightest allusion to voting is made. They resolve that slavery already exists in the territory; that more shall go there; that they remaining in Missouri will protect it, and that abolitionists shall be hung or driven away. Through all this, bowie-knives and six-shooters are seen plainly enough, but never a glimpse of the ballot-box, and really what is to be the result of this? Each party within having numerous and determined backers, without, is it not probable that the contest will come to blows and bloodshed? Could there be a more apt invention to bring about a collision and violence on the slavery question, than this Nebraska project?"

He urges the restoration of the Missouri Compromise. "But," says he, "restore the compromise, and what then? We thereby restore the national faith, the national confidence, the national feeling of brotherhood. We thereby re-instate the spirit of concession and compromise--that spirit which has never failed us in past perils, and which may be safely trusted for all the future. The South ought to join in doing this. The peace of the Nation is dear to them, as to us; in memories of the past, and hopes for the future, they share as largely as we."

But, says he, "they say if you do this you will be standing with the abolitionists. I say stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."

He contrasted the position of the founders of the republic towards slavery, with that now assumed, saying:

"Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit of that early age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and toleration only by necessity. But now it is to be transformed into a sacred right: Nebraska brings it forth, places it on the high road to extension and perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it: 'Go, and God speed you.' Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation, the very figure head of the ship of state. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving the old for the new faith. Nearly eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to that other declaration, 'that for some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self government.'"

"In our greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we cancel and tear to pieces even the white man's charter of freedom."

On another occasion Mr. Lincoln said: "Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were drowned in the Red Sea, for striving to retain in bondage a captive people who had already served them more than five hundred years. May like disaster never befall us." How like in sentiment to the paragraph in his second inaugural address, in which he said: "If God wills that it (the war) continues until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether."

When Lincoln made this Peoria speech he was an obscure man. Scarcely heard of out of Illinois, his audience was far inland, and away from the great cities, where reputation and fame are acquired. There were present no reporters of any great metropolitan papers, to take down the speech and spread it the next morning by the thousand, broadcast, on the breakfast tables of the voters. There were no admiring scholars, with wealth and appreciation, to put it in pamphlet form, and scatter it by the hundred thousand. There is a single copy of this speech in an obscure newspaper, and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate. Had Charles Sumner made the speech in Faneuil Hall, all New England would, the next morning, have read and admired it. If it had been addressed to the United States Senate by Seward or Chase, it would have appeared the next day in the leading papers of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Chicago. Nevertheless, from this time on, the fame of the prairie orator spread, and could be no longer hemmed in by state lines.

The Congressional election of that year, in Illinois, resulted in the election of four democrats, and five opposition members of Congress, and the State Legislature would have been completely revolutionized had there not been a large number of democrats in the State Senate, whose terms of office had not expired. The opponents of the Nebraska bill had in the House of Assembly forty, and the democrats thirty-five. In the Senate there were seventeen elected as democrats, and eight elected as opponents of the Nebraska bill. However, three of those elected two years before as democrats, now repudiated Douglas and his policy, and were ready to act with the opposition, at least so far as to aid in the election to the United States Senate of an anti-Nebraska senator. These were Norman B. Judd, of Chicago, Burton C. Cook, of Ottawa, and John M. Palmer, afterwards Governor of Illinois. These were all able men, and skillful politicians, and with their votes there would be on joint ballot a majority of two against Douglas.

James Shields, the colleague of Douglas in the Senate, and who had been induced by Douglas's great personal influence to vote for the Kansas and Nebraska bill, was a candidate for re-election. Lincoln had led the opposition, and to his efforts the great revolution in the state was largely to be attributed, and he was naturally selected as the candidate for United States senator. It is known that he especially desired the office of senator. In a letter to N. B. Judd, written some years thereafter, he said: "I would rather have a full term in the United States Senate than the Presidency." When the Legislature came together, it was generally expected that Lincoln would be elected senator in place of Shields. On the 8th of February, 1855, the Legislature met in joint session, and Palmer nominated Lyman Trumbull. Judge Logan nominated Abraham Lincoln. On the first ballot Lincoln received forty-five, Shields forty-one, and Trumbull five votes, and there were some scattering votes. Judd, Cook and Palmer steadily voted for Trumbull, who received other votes, varying in number, until the tenth ballot, when Lincoln urged his friends to vote for Trumbull, who received fifty-one votes, to forty-seven for Joel A. Matteson, and one for Archy Williams.

This result was accomplished by the utmost personal efforts of Lincoln. When he saw that the friends of Trumbull were firm, and would not vote for anyone else, and that there was danger that Matteson would be elected, he made an appeal to his personal and political friends so earnest that he carried them all, with one exception, over to Trumbull, and elected him. It was a most magnanimous and generous act, and exhibited such an unselfish devotion to principle as to call forth the admiration of all. It strengthened and consolidated the opposition, and contributed to their success in the following year. It is said that Judge Stephen T. Logan actually shed tears when, at Lincoln's earnest request, he gave up his friend Lincoln and voted for his life-long political opponent. Owen Lovejoy was a member of this Legislature, and voted for Lincoln as long as there was a probability of his election.

Trumbull was a brilliant and able lawyer, then residing in Belleville, in St. Clair County. He had been Secretary of State, and Judge of the Supreme Court of Illinois, and made a most able and distinguished senator. He was, during Lincoln's administration, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, and a very prominent member of the Senate.