urtlmntnnntWTmimHi amaBBmWM 



LINCOLN ROOM 



UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
LIBRARY 




MEMORIAL 

the Class of 1901 

founded by 

HARLAN HOYT HORNER 

and 

HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 



i 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



j 




BUST OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

BY GUTZEN BORGLUM, WASHINGTON 



ABRAHAM 
LINCOLN 



BY 

ROSE STRUNSKY 



WITH FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS AND A MAP 






NEW YORK 

THE MAGMILLAN COMPANY 

1914 












TO 

RUTH and REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN 



PREFACE 

I HAVE tried to give to the reader the picture 
of the man who has so firm a hold on the 
imagination of his people. To the average 
American the name of Abraham Lincoln is one to 
be conjured up in all the exigencies of political life, 
and his social ideals are to be applied in all the in- 
tricacies of modern adjustment. It is impossible to 
understand this hero-worship without a knowledge of 
the social and economic forces of America, which 
created the problems that confronted Abraham Lincoln 
when he became President of the United States, and 
of the way in which his solution of these problems 
epitomized the dominant forces of the country. These 
forces had been existent from the moment of the 
country's birth to the day when the last free lands 
were opened. So exactly did he express the gaunt, 
crude, virile America of the free lands, that it is only 
now, when that day is over and America sees itself 
confronted by a complex society of propertied and 
unpropertied classes, that he is being glorified as the 
apostle of true democracy. 

In writing this book, I have not tried to find an 
unopened letter or an unpublished anecdote of the 
hero. If this book has any value it is in the new 
historical perspective which it throws upon the man 
and his time. The social and industrial development 
of to-day shows Lincoln to be neither a demi-god 



viii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

nor merely a sentimental figure thrown out against 
a political background. He stands as the representa- 
tive of a certain stage in American political history, 
and his importance lies in the fact that it was from 
this stage that the great present grew. 

It is time his name conjured up a truer picture 
than that of a tall, gaunt man, looking out into 
space, in his hand the Emancipation Proclamation, 
and at his feet newly freed and grateful slaves. He 
is not " The Great Liberator " merely, he is part and 
parcel of his class, the small home-steader who claimed 
an equal opportunity in the virgin forests. As such 
he is not a hero, he is a people. 

R. S. 



May 19 14. 



CONTENTS 













PAGE 


Introduction xiii 


CHAP. 
I. 


Lincoln's Boyhood and Youth 






I 


II. 


Romance and Marriage 






26 


III. 


Congress 








57 


IV. 


On the Circuit . 








70 


V. 


" Anti-Nebraska " 








81 


VI. 


The Debates 








96 


VII. 


The Republican Victory 








115 


VIII. 


Secession 








129 


IX. 


Civil War 








150 


X. 


Emancipation 








165 


XI. 


The New Reckoning . 








186 


XII. 


Re-election . 








211 


XIII. 


The End 








232 


XIV. 


Lincoln and the Union 








252 


XV. 


Lincoln and the Negro 








270 


XVI. 
XVII. 


Lincoln, the Man 
Fifty Years After 
Index 








291 
308 

325 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Bust of Abraham Lincoln . . . Frontispiece 

By GuTZEN BORGLUM, Washington 

Facing Page 

Map of the United States of America, i86t xxviii 

Abraham Lincoln in i860 38 

By permission of The Macmillan Co., New York. 

Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln, 186 i . . . 104 

Abraham Lincoln in 1864 246 

From a Portrait by M. B. Brady. 

Abraham Lincoln and His Son, Tad . . . 300 
By permission of The Macmillan Co., New York. 



INTRODUCTION 

DEMOCRACY has brought with it its own hero. 
He is as new to the world as democracy is new, 
and we have not yet learned what to say about 
him. The older hero type was simple. Moreover, we 
had been trained to know what to expect. Trumpets 
blew when he entered, he strode across the stage, wilful, 
marshalling men and forces at the beckon of his finger 
and turning all into puppets before his masterful desire. 
He destroyed or built as he went his way, and we said 
So-and-So, Great Man that he was, passed along our 
road and was able to accomplish all this. We told his 
life step by step, and showed the monuments he created 
— simple things after all, built in wood and stone. 
He was clear to the eye, this hero of our past sagas. 

But how are we to speak of the new hero? There is 
no flourish of trumpets at his entrance, he is no Man on 
Horseback, marshalling legions behind him, he has not 
built in wood and stone ; in fact, he is no general and 
no builder, but good helmsman, great administrator. 
His deeds are wrought in social institutions and his works 
are part of civilization. They make the story of the 
slow coming of age of the people. 

So we say we have had no life written of Abraham 
Lincoln worthy of that great man. Here is a people's 
hero, dead now fifty years, and the generations stand 
mystified before his gentle figure. 



xiv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The truth is we have not been taught how to tell of 
his life. We say over and over again he was a good 
man; he was a great man; he died a martyr. What 
of it? Not knowing what he did we have crowned 
him with epithets which, fit or not, bespeak only our 
emotions. We called him the Emancipator, the Great 
Liberator, the Saviour of his Country. We were looking 
for our old-time hero of the sagas, and here came along 
one who made the people hero. We cannot tell his life 
by speaking of his life alone. We say he was bom a 
poor boy, of Western pioneer stock, taught himself law, 
entered politics, and attained to the Presidency of the 
United States. 

But all this does not tell his story. 

While he was President, a four years' civil war 
broke out, and the nation was on the verge of ruin. 
He weathered the war, came forth victorious, and 
wiped out forever the cause of disunion, the 
institution of slavery which had existed from the 
country's beginning. Thus he became the Great 
Liberator and the Saviour. At the first flush of 
victory he was assassinated, and he became the Great 
Martyr. 

Still, that does not tell the story of his life. 

For once, the plain facts become meaningless. There 
was a reason for his election to the Presidency which 
lay apart from himself. He did not ride into the 
Capitol with fire and sword and capture it. He did not 
create the war. The Hberation of the slaves, the over- 
throw of chattel slavery and the preservation of the 
Union of the United States on republican principles 
cannot be told as his deeds. They are greater than 



INTRODUCTION xv 

he and he was more than a mere individual. We 
speak of one who was no more or less than the ex- 
ecutive and administrator of the will of the people. 
Whatever were the ideals and desires and faults of the 
common people of his day were the ideals and desires 
and faults of Abraham Lincoln. 

It matters not that with the onrushing change of 
time a new common people has arisen which perhaps 
would call that other people of Lincoln's day false and 
of a different calibre from itself. For such in truth were 
the peculiar conditions of America of the sixties that 
Lincoln's every act was an act in the name of the 
common people of the United States ; and the ideals he 
strove for were their ideals. In the light of the present 
day we can quarrel with their ideal, or, accepting their 
ideal, we can quarrel with the manner of approach to it, 
but we cannot quarrel with the new hero of the people. 
His deeds are knit in the brawn and sinews of the nation. 
Upon the foundation he helped to lay stands the 
social order, good or bad, which we enjoy at present. 
To know him we must know the nation. No, we 
must go farther back and see how it was, why it 
was, when so great a crisis in the nation's life broke 
forth, that the strong and firm hand of Abraham 
Lincoln was needed to direct its course. 

We are usually told that the nation went to war 
over the question of slavery. True, on the surface. 
But, when one begins to analyse that slavery, to which 
one-half the nation objected to so strongly, and for 
which the other half went to the length of declaring war, 
one finds, beneath the phrases of the time, that not 
slavery but property in land was the real cause of 



xvi ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Civil War. It was not the three million Negroes 
in chains, not the tortures of the Uncle Toms 
at the whipping-posts, or the thought of the EHzas 
running over the broken ice with the blood-hounds 
behind them, that set the non-slave-holding whites 
so resolutely against the institution, but the fact 
that slavery meant large plantations and that they 
drove the small homesteader from the land. Even 
then the large landlord of the South might have 
travelled along peaceably towards the south-west and 
the small homesteader towards the north-west had not 
the sudden rise of railways brought the frontier close 
to civilization and thrust upon the people the problem 
as to whether the large or small property-owner was to 
be the first to rush into these newly-opened Eldorados 
and claim them for his own. 

Slavery, from the point of view of the slave, had very 
Uttle to do with the American Civil War. The freed 
Negro was not welcomed to the North as a competitor 
with free labour nor as a fellow property owner with 
his white neighbour. Slavery was objected to by the 
small homesteader only because he objected to the 
large landlord. True, the unskilled workers opposed 
slavery, on the ground that it degraded their labour 
and prevented their employment. But the unskilled 
worker was in a fair way in the fifties and sixties to 
becoming a small homesteader himself. He was not 
a labourer " fixed in that condition of life," to quote 
Lincoln. The skilled who worked in the cities and were 
" fixed in that condition " were in no way touched by 
the problem and remained, if anything, hostile to an 
agitation of abolition. " We too are slaves," they said, 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

" and we have not time to see to the liberation of 
others." Besides the alignment of forces between the 
large landlord and the small landlord there was an 
antagonism between the merchants of the east who 
desired a high tariff and the planters of the south who 
were free traders. But the more serious division lay in 
the west, and was fought over the control of the new 
territories that were about to be opened. 

It was property then, and not liberty which ani- 
mated the American people in their struggle against the 
southern slave power. Yet it is typical of American 
democracy that the words liberty and property should 
have been interchangeable. The fact has a distinct 
potent significance in American history. With the riches 
of nature lying open and unexploited, the liberty to go 
out and acquire property was the main factor in 
American democracy, so that all through the country's 
history we see these successive risings of the many to 
power. Abstract French ideas of the rights of man 
were not lacking to sustain the people in what they 
called " the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of 
happiness," but these ideas translated meant for the 
American only the right of an equal economic oppor- 
tunity to the bounties of nature. 

The historic details which lead up to the crisis 
of i860 have behind them the same significance 
— the struggle over property and the winning of the 
rights to property by the people — that is, by the 
many. 

From the very beginning the approach of the Old 
World towards the New was only for exploitation 
and profit. Private monopolies were formed to hold 
b 



xviii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

her, which were followed by the monopolies of govern- 
ments, but the onrush of numbers into the New 
World kept hammering down the most impregnable 
of special privileges. In the first years of explora- 
tion and colonization monopoly of the land was easy, 
but labour was difficult to find. The wild backlands 
gave ready room for the labourer to escape and slavery 
was resorted to as a means of tpng him down to the 
soil. In those days slavery took no account of 
race or colour. Native Indians, Negroes, indentured 
servants, company immigrants, all who could be im- 
pressed to work had to work. But the natives revenged 
themselves by massacres, the indentured servants 
and company immigrants escaped into the woods to 
acquire property of their own, and it was only the 
bewildered Negro who could be brought into this 
strange land and be kept in bondage forever by the 
brand of colour. 

^ The discovery of the black race in the same era which 
produced the discovery of the New World helped to 
free the white man and the Indian from a serfdom 
which existed all over Europe at this time. If one 
could forget that slavery in America was based on 
colour, the history of American slavery would become 
simple and readily understood. It was not at all 
an institution peculiar or indigenous to America, but 
was part of the problem of large landlordism which 
existed in Europe even long after the Napoleonic 

.. period. 

Slavery, it is true, was intensified in America by the 
home governments in the interests of the home slavers, 
so that there was often an over-importation of slaves 



INTRODUCTION xix 

against which the large landlord in the colonies him- 
self protested. " He has prostituted his negative," 
wrote Jefferson, indicting George III., " by suppress- 
ing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this 
execrable commerce." He had indeed! But the legis- 
lative attempts on the part of the colonies were made 
much more to restrain than to prohibit the trade, for as 
long as tobacco brought S12 a pound in the London 
market slaves would be called for. It was the fear of 
servile insurrection and the fact that in the hundred 
years of colonization there were already enough slaves 
in Maryland and Virginia to build up an inter-colonial 
slave trade that caused the various attempts to place 
taxes on the importation of slaves — often enough 
disallowed by the Crown. However, so little were the 
colonists themselves against slavery that a prohibition 
against it in Georgia lasted hardly fourteen years. The 
colony was founded for military purposes, and therefore 
large landlordism and slavery were prohibited in the 
hope that a sufficient population of small landowners 
would settle and form an effective outpost against a 
Spanish invasion. But from the first the regulation 
against slavery was violated by " hiring " Negroes " for 
life," and finally by 1749 the restriction against slavery 
and large estates had to be annulled by the Board of 
Governors of the colony. 

And yet at the very same time patriot parties were 
forming, and ideas of freedom were running riot. They 
were directed against old-world traditions of hereditary 
aristocracy and class privilege, and not against the 
monopoly of wealth. The large manorial estates of 



XX ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Maryland never attained any higher distinction than 
plantations, the theocracy of Massachusetts was early 
overthrown, primogeniture did not last many genera- 
tions, and the wrenching of Home Rule from the Crown 
began long before the Revolution. " Liberty and 
Property " was the slogan of the American patriot. 
" Liberty to property " would have been more ac- 
curate. Nowhere in the world was property so general 
as it was in the New World, and consequently nowhere 
was there so much liberty. 

Who could keep the people back? There lay the 
treasure very much as it did in Ali Baba's cave. One 
had but to say " Open Sesame " and the treasure was 
one's own. How then begrudge one's neighbour. No 
wonder then that, in spite of the idealistic theories of 
freedom, the actual practice in government and in pro- 
perty control as laid down by the colonial governments 
and by the new Republic itself held contradictions and 
gaps which, from the point of view of statesmanship, 
are difficult to reconcile. No safeguard was thought 
of to prevent a collapse of the free society of the Ameri- 
can patriot. To Ali Baba's supposedly inexhaustible 
cave was left the fortunes of that eternal freedom that 
was to reign in the New World. 

Having successfully gained for himself the special 
privileges of land and trade which the English Crown 
had tried to hold, the American launched his new 
Republic on a system of compromise and bargains 
which were out of harmony with the ideals he 
advocated. In the fundamental and all-important 
problems of representation and taxation he made 
bargains with the easy conscience of a king who can do 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

no wrong. In spite of his theories of the rights of man 
he feared a democratic representation in Congress 
according to population, and he made a compromise by 
which the states and not the people were to be equally 
represented in the Senate, and though representation in 
the Lower House was given according to population the 
demands of the people were thought to be effectively 
blocked by high property qualifications for the suf- 
frage. The answer of the American to any objection to 
these restrictions was — You have the liberty to acquire 
property. 

As to the matter of slavery, the Constitutional Con- 
vention politely and discreetly refrained from mention- 
ing so painful a subject frankly. Slavery was not 
popular at the time. Louisiana had not yet been pur- 
chased, nor had the machine revolution begun, so that 
the institution seemed to be on the verge of extinction 
for want of space and use. In the legislature of 
Virginia itself, only a few years before the revolution, 
slavery had failed of abolishment by only two votes. 

As early as 1774, in the first flare-up of revolution, 
three states in the association that was formed to boy- 
cott English goods — Rhode Island, North Carolina and 
Virginia — mentioned slaves especially. It happened, 
however, that the slave markets were overstocked and 
it was to the interest of the planter to have an interim 
in which to extricate himself from debt to the merchants. 
As the boycott succeeded in the good work of causing 
the slave merchants in Liverpool to fail to the sum 
of £710,000, slaves became scarce in America and 
smugglers made fortunes. It is difficult to divide 
idealism from practicahty. 



xxii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

However, the First Continental Congress, following 
along the ideas of the Association, went so far as to 
resolve to " wholly discontinue the slave trade." But 
the virtuous resolution meant nothing, for the strain 
of the war, which soon brought with it the problem of 
getting bread for the people, was too great for pure 
idealism to last long. In the second year Congress began 
permitting the importation of certain British goods, 
but held out against the slaves, this time in a temporary 
resolution, not in a promise as in the year before. By the 
end of the war the country was in such need of food and 
money that the Constitutional Convention was ready 
to make any agreement as long as it seemed to put the 
new nation on a working basis. Thus, on the question 
of slavery, though South Carolina and Georgia were 
the only two states which still held a strong brief for it, 
the Convention consented to formulate its plans of 
taxation and representation with the institution as an 
a priori condition. The North accepted the fact that 
slaves were property and even haggled over the tax on 
them. The South would have liked to consider them 
men as far as votes were concerned. A compromise was 
agreed upon by which the South paid a three-fifth tax 
on the slaves provided they had a three-fifth representa- 
tion in Congress. The compromise was not at all as 
even as it sounds, for neither the North nor the South 
meant that the negroes were to have the suffrage or were 
to represent themselves. The South gained a reduction 
of their taxes on slaves and the power to count them as 
electoral material. Thus a man with a thousand adult 
male slaves might consider his plantation six hundred 
votes for Congressmen. Of course the planters with a 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

thousand slaves were few. Even as late as 1850 there 
were only two whose slaves amounted to a thousand 
or more. The total number of slaves in the South at 
the time of the revolution was half a million. The 
North, in making the bargain, was not very much 
aroused over the existence of slaves — it was over the 
subject of the slave-trade that the tug came. Here, 
they thought, lay the cause of slavery, never having 
known one without the other. 

It was over the third bargain then that the country 
was stirred. Besides philanthropic reasons, there were 
practical ones for its hostility to the slave-trade. The 
commercial interests of the east were very anxious to 
gain Navigation Acts and the privilege of enacting im- 
port duties. The steady increase in slaves might give 
the South, with its privilege of a three-fifth vote on its 
slave population, the preponderance of political power. 
The South, on the other hand, was bent upon denying 
to Congress any power to pass Navigation Acts 
except by a three-fifths vote, and refusing it the right 
to tax exports. It was finally agreed upon that the 
slave-trade should be prosecuted for another twenty 
years, and that Q)ngress be empowered to pass Navi- 
gation Acts. Thus in the name of freedom to property 
and economic opportunity for all was the New RepubHc 
hastily put together and launched. 

Yet the constitutional contradictions which bound 
the nation together were not of such an insurmount- 
able nature after all. Lying inherent in this new land 
were factors which actually made possible the ideals of 
freedom and democracy despite the hesitation of the 
Congressmen who sat behind closed doors and made 



xxiv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

their bargains in secret. As a guarantee of life and 
freedom to the New Nation the original thirteen colonies 
gave over to the Federal Government the keeping 
of the vast stretches of land to the West which had 
been theirs by the original charters. To this new 
Western world the people surged and built for them- 
selves a free society. They had looked upon this land 
as theirs, even before the Revolution. One of the griev- 
ances against the king had been the attempt to hold a 
monopoly of these Western lands and to prevent emigra- 
tion. But the valleys of the Mohawk and the Monon- 
gahela were being peopled by the mass of pioneers, and 
before a plan of government could be made for the 
nation at large, this West came demanding that some 
plan for its own organization be agreed upon. It had 
to live and grow and could not wait for bargains. The 
North-west Ordinance had to be passed quickly, and 
when, in the parlance of the American, it was " dedi- 
cated to freedom," the immigrant and the Continental 
soldier, and the already disappointed farmer from the 
rocky New England soil, could, by pushing along the 
borders of Lake Champlain and by going down the 
Mohawk and Genesee rivers come upon rich land open 
to all. Though the land speculator was there ahead 
he could not disinherit them to the same degree as 
could the large landlord with his slaves. 

True, the older states, watchful of their privileges, 
took advantage of their constitutional rights. Quickly 
South Carolina and North Carolina ceded strips of land 
to Congress, so that a South-west territory that was 
slave-soil might be formed to preserve the southern 
equilibrium in the New Republic. But the westward 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

march of men kept increasing year by year, and the 
great converging highways led always to the North, 
from Kentucky, from Tennessee, along the Cumberland 
and the Ohio. Very early the population of the free 
North outnumbered the slave South. To maintain its 
power the South needed only land, not men. Tobacco, 
rice, indigo, cotton, these made new lands continually 
profitable. Besides a need for territorial expansion 
for its economic growth, it needed land for its poUtical 
growth. Here came in for the South the value 
of the work which the framers of the Constitution 
had accomplished. The slave South kept creating 
as many states as the free North, so that despite 
the disparity in population a pohtical equality could be 
maintained. So earnest was the South in its deshre to 
enlarge itself that the slave-states were almost invari- 
ably brought up for admission before the free, the latter 
generally following a year later. Before the year 1808 
came, when the slave-trade was actually abolished by 
law, Louisiana had been bought, the cotton gin had been 
invented, and the slave-holding emigrant of the south- 
west found land and opportunity for his institution. By 
1820 he had pushed himself towards the Gulf, had so 
intrigued and fought in Florida, that it was sold to him 
for a song by Spain, and was about to cross over the 
Mississippi and establish himself there. But there the 
dangerous rivalry began to be felt, and when Missouri 
was ready for admission into the Union a two-years' 
struggle ensued in which were heard the threats of 
secession and the arguments for strict Hmitations 
of Congress which were to be the motifs of the great 
drama of i860. 



xxvi ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Though the North-west and the South-west were 
friends, the products of one going to the markets of the 
other down the great artery of the Mississippi, and though 
both were ahke in a spirit of aggressive democracy, in a 
suspicion of central power and of class rule, their friend- 
ship could only last as long as there was no encroach- 
ment of the one upon the territories of the other. Already 
the plantation system in the South had extended from 
the tide-water to the uplands. The non slave-holding 
white was pushed into the barren sand-hills and pine 
regions of the South, or, to extricate himself, was forced to 
migrate into the free lands of Indiana and Illinois. To 
permit slavery to cross the Mississippi was to permit it 
to exclude him from his right to the land for which he 
had defied the regulations of the central government 
and all the titles of the Indians. But with the character- 
istic constitutional mind of the American he made a 
bargain which, as bargains go, and with the future still 
undisclosed to him, must have seemed pretty well done 
after all. " There," he said to the slave-holder, " we 
win put a line (very far down, if you please) below 
which shall be slave-land, and above which shall be free." 
The line was 36°3o', which would have been the southern 
boundary of Missouri, and would have left very httle 
which was not already slave territory to be considered 
as such. The Northerner lost somewhat in the bargain 
by permitting Missouri, which had the institution 
already weU established within it, to be admitted as 
a slave state. To preclude an overbalance in the 
nation, Massachusetts ceded her western lands, and 
Maine was created, free of course. Thus in the Union, 
in 1820, there were eleven free states, and eleven slave 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

states, and, west of these, what is known as the Missouri 
Compromise Line, which seemingly left very little more 
to slavery towards the south and gave a vast tract of 
land leading up to the Canadian border to freedom. 

This would not have been so bad a bargain between 
brothers who understood one another and were really 
friends at bottom, had not the miracles of the future come 
in such numbers and in such quick succession. The 
Compromise of 1820 came when the transition era was 
hardly a decade old and its import was not yet felt. 
Steam appeared upon the Northern waters in 181 1 and 
by 1820 there were already two and a half million souls 
in the trans- Alleghany States, while the older sections 
remained almost stationary. The rush westward kept 
increasing. In 1820 land could be bought in lots of 
eighty acres at $1.25 an acre instead of as heretofore, 
in one hundred and sixty acre lots at $2.00 an acre. 

The constantly-improving transportation not only 
sent the emigrant westward in increasing numbers, but 
created an internal commerce of a wide radius. The 
surplus production was sent down the Mississippi and 
along the roads of the East. Pork, flour, tobacco, 
whisky, the raw materials of primitive agriculture, but 
to the value of many millions, were the products of this 
vast colonial society. It needed money and it took to 
itself the right of banking, destroying the National 
Bank through its first emissary into the National 
Government, President Jackson; it needed internal 
improvements and it took the revenues of the 
Government, supplemented them with the paper 
currency and promissory notes of its own states, and 
went into the business of better transportation; it 



xxviii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

needed home markets and it created for itself the 
" American system " of tariff protection, under which 
the young industries of the East joined with the infant 
cities of the West. 

Had there been no possibility of land expansion in 
the very noonday of their power, the democracy of the 
North-west and the democracy of the South-west could 
have travelled along side by side, growing towards an 
adjustment to each other without much regard to 
the problem of negro slavery. But the very factors 
which drew the North-west and South-west together 
for a score of years separated them in the succeed- 
ing score. By 1840 a new South and a new North were 
in existence. The marvellous inventions in cotton 
machinery and the improved transportation had turned 
the South into a homogeneous whole. Though the 
plantations shifted towards the Gulf states, the tide- 
water states became the slave-breeders for them, and a 
strong feeling of solidarity resting on a mutual interest 
existed in this section. 

What is known as the Cotton Kingdom arose, which, 
alert and self-conscious, no longer apologized for its 
" peculiar institution," but justified it economically, 
politically and morally. Its whole social order was 
arranged and specialized to feed its one great industry — 
cotton. The slave-holders did not compose more than 
one-sixth of the population of the South, but they knew 
the art of class-rule and successfully dominated their 
section. While the society of the North was coming 
more and more to rest on manhood suffrage and the free 
homestead, suffrage in the South was extended only with 
the extension of the slave-holders, and power in the legis- 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

latures were given only to those sections that resembled 
the original landed aristocracies of the seaboard. Thus it 
had a united oligarchy which stood ready and on guard 
to further its interests or prevent attack from opposing 
forces. " The South " became a term in politics to 
denote an almost separate national entity, and so while 
development in the North was manifold, development 
in the South was single. Even the railways, which pro- 
duced so extraordinary a growth in the North, and were 
a factor in its unification, were made use of in the South 
only as a means to bring cotton to the rivers. By i860 
three parallel lines of railways were running, though 
intermittently, from the coast to the Mississippi. But 
it was not until late in the 'fifties that the lines had begun 
to be laid, and the through line from Charleston to the 
river was not completed until two years before the war. 

In the North they crossed and recrossed themselves, 
forming a network which lay spread from the Great 
Lakes to the Ohio, and reached to the edge of the 
Atlantic. By i860 they looked very much Uke a 
spider's web, whose threads were joined to rivers and 
towns and farmlands. As they developed the land 
intensively they kept continually pushing the frontier 
Hne farther away. Development for the North 
meant land and citizens, for the South land and 
slaves. 

The friendship that had existed between the two 
sections and had enabled the Missouri Compromise Line 
of 1820 to be passed was now over. The South began to 
make its moves for new land, the North accepted the 
lands won, only to send down its people and defeat the 
purposes of the South. These manoeuvres began with 



XXX ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the fomenting of an insurrection in Texas in 1830 by 
American slave-holders, and wresting that province from 
Mexico. After almost eight years of controversy Texas 
was annexed and admitted in the Union, but though 
seventy-five thousand slaves were added not the many 
slave states were carved from it as had been hoped and 
planned. It was admitted as one territory, and later as 
one state, and Oregon, a land free-soil by nature, was 
quickly admitted at the same time as Texas to uphold 
the political balance. 

From the annexation of Texas there followed the 
war with Mexico, also undertaken for the purposes of 
slavery, but ultimately to accrue to the advantage of the 
stronger force — the free states. The North supported the 
war with men and money, and with a goodly sprinkling 
of crocodile tears — (for land after all was land, and not 
to be despised!). It tried to keep the lands to be w^on 
by the war with Mexico for itself by a proviso which 
sought to apply the North-west Ordinance of 1787 to 
them and thus keep them free-soil. 

But the South became wary and shrewd. It evolved 
two policies, one for the administration which was 
frankly pro-slavery, the other for the people which 
hedged. " Slavery," it said to the people, " was not 
the issue before the nation, but the right of the indi- 
vidual settler to the choice of any institution he saw fit 
to estabhsh." It played to the inherent distrust of 
central government felt by the Westerner. State rights 
and limitations of Congress were again urged despite the 
fact that it was the Democracy of the South which used 
the powers of State, the Supreme Court and the Admin- 
istration to further its ends. This theory of popular 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

sovereignty, as it was called saved the Democratic Party 
for another ten years, for with the persistent alignment 
of new forces the old political parties of the country had 
soon to go. 

The Whigs, the party of Conservative business 
interests and commerce, of tariff and protection, the 
inheritors of Hamilton and Adams, could find no such 
happy solution as " popular sovereignty," and were soon 
to be wrecked before the great obstacle of slavery. A 
new party entirely was being born in the 'forties, based 
frankly and squarely upon the true issues before the 
growing country. This was the Radical Free-soil party 
of the West, whose one cry was, " A free soil for a free 
people." It offered no theories of abolition of slavery, 
and w^as not concerned with it as was the philanthropic 
Liberty Party of the East. It was concerned only 
with the problem of holding the new land for itself. 
Its ranks were made up of disaffected Whigs and 
Democrats. The Free-Soilers were ultimately to join 
\\dth the Liberty Party and create the party of the 
Republicans, whose conservative but practical platform 
of the non-extension of slavery into the territories was 
to sweep the North in i860. 

But before this event could take place, the American 
spirit of Compromise was again to be invoked. WTien 
the question of organization of the new territories 
acquired by the Mexican War actually came up before 
Congress — territories equal in size to all of Eastern 
Europe put together — the new Democratic theory of 
popular sovereignty was incorporated. New Mexico was 
organized without any restriction to slavery, and with- 
out the Compromise of 1820 being applied to it. On the 



xxxii ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

other hand the democratic policy of administrative 
control was far from being abandoned, and a new 
stringent Fugitive Slave Law was passed which almost 
forced the recognition of the institution by the free 
states. 

But popular sovereignty, even when manipulated by 
administrative control, could not be forced to act in 
favour of a class and against the interests of the people 
to whom sovereignty is given. Already by 1849 C^-^i" 
fornia was sufficiently peopled by the rush to the gold- 
diggings to form a state and to demand admission into 
the Union on an absolutely free basis, rejecting the 
Compromise Line of 1820. The territories of New Mexico 
and Utah were also permitted to form constitutions of 
their own, with the result that they voted for freedom. 

For the doctrine of " popular sovereignty " to accrue 
to the benefit of its promoters it was necessary that the 
sovereign people themselves be slave-holders, or at least 
that the new lands to be acquired be suitable for slavery, 
so that the institution could be easily planted and 
would take root quickly. Here too the alert and eager 
Cotton Kingdom developed two policies : one was the ac- 
quiring of lands to the south, the other was the peopling, 
with slave-holders, of the territory next to be admitted 
into the Union. The Democracy cried loud that the 
" Manifest destiny of America " needed Cuba, Central 
America and Mexico. But much as the Administration 
helped with its Ostend Manifesto, with the fomenting of 
insurrections, and with Walker's filibustering expedi- 
tions, the day for territorial aggrandisement towards 
the south in the interest of slavery was over. The North 
and North- West stood watchful. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

The last expedient before the final breaking away 
was then attempted. The Missouri Compromise Line 
of 1820, which had been placed across the Louisiana 
purchase, was repealed (annulled, the Democrats said, by 
the Compromise measures of 1850, which had failed to 
apply the Line), and the test of " popular sovereignty " 
with the attempt to supervise the type of settler to 
be given sovereignty was inaugurated in Kansas and 
Nebraska — the regions thus opened. Civic-minded 
Southern gentlemen funded societies for the emigration 
of slave-holders and settlers in general who would pro- 
mise to hold Kansas, the immediate territory in question, 
for slavery. But it was a precarious matter, bringing 
slave-property to a region unstable in its protection of 
it. The best that could be done was the pouring in of 
transients for a day who would do their duty at the 
polling booths and then return to their homes. 

Here the North obviously had the advantage. On 
its part emigrant aid societies were formed which 
sent in hona-fide settlers by the thousands, whose pro- 
perty lay secure in their own labour and who came to 
claim the land for themselves and not for a class. The 
test of " popular sovereignty " was a test between the 
classes, and the people won. For two years civil war 
reigned in Kansas. Troops were sent in by the Adminis- 
tration to take the side of the Southern democracy, 
blood was spilled, but Kansas came forth from the 
clash of interests a free state. 

The South felt itself too strong and vital to be 
beaten. It snapped its Democratic Party in two with 
its hedging theories of " popular sovereignty," and 
came out boldly for the recognition of slavery in the 



xxxiv ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

territories and the protection of it by the Federal 
Government. Upon the sea of this divided Democracy 
the Republican Party rode into power, and Abraham 
Lincoln, its candidate for president, was elected as the 
executive of the people's will. The course of the Re- 
pubHc was again to flow along the ideals and doctrines 
which first animated it. The meaning of the framers of 
the Constitution was studied. The principle of eco- 
nomic opportunity for all was again asserted and in the 
name of the fundamental laws of the country the new 
President entered upon his duties. 

But the South, unable to control the government 
constitutionally, made a desperate attempt to control 
it by force. A imion of fifteen slave states was formed, 
secession proclaimed and a new Republic based on land- 
lord and slave estabhshed. " The irrepressible con- 
flict " had begun, for by virtue of the territories won, 
and the development of industries and transportation 
the United States of America by i860 was a nation. 
For four bitter years the conflict raged over a battle- 
field colossal in size. It was a revolution, a struggle of 
the people for the maintenance of their rights against 
vested interests. And, strange as it may sound to 
history, it was the vested interests that hard-pressed on 
the defensive turned and proved aggressor. To such 
menacing strength had the people waxed in the New 
World! And this people sent forth their own hero, 
created in their own image, and stand now abashed 
before his greatness. " How was it that we found an 
Abraham Lincoln? " they ask. Out of their great will 
they created him and out of their great need they sent 
him forth. They wrought better than they knew, for it 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

was an hour when their onward march was to lead them 
farther than they knew. 

For four " years of battle-days " he served them. 
Unswerving and clear-headed he directed his forces and 
let himself be directed with that masterful genius which 
can only come to a hero of the New Order. In his life 
is wi^itten all of America. Through a vision of the 
people can be seen the figure of him who like that 
Someone " walks fast on the white, to calm all things 
back again." 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

CHAPTER I 
LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD AND YOUTH 

IT was the year 1809. In Europe one man, short of 
stature and rather wide of girdle, was overthrowing 
age-old dynasties and creating new coalitions of 
peoples, new institutions and new orders, where serf 
and lord were to be no more, and property was to 
receive the special privilege heretofore given to blood. 
In America, a republic, based on the rights of man to 
the goods of nature, had already been established for 
twenty-two years. The questions of government and 
of world-policy which troubled the men at her head, 
and the problems as to whose lead in the Old World she 
should follow, were being now brushed aside by a stream 
of backwoodsmen, fiercely self-centred and democratic. 
They were the creators of the real America, the true 
builders of the nation. At this time they had already 
broken through the mountains of the Alleghenies, and 
were winning to themselves Kentucky, Ohio and Tennes- 
see. Men of the Western Waters, or men of the Western 
World, they called themselves, who in another decade 
were to wrench the nation entirely away from the 
Mother World and build an America unique and self- 
reliant, patterned after their own desire. 

In that year 1809, when America was being created 



2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

in the sweat of the backwoodsman and the slave, and 
Europe was being regenerated by a nation of soldiers, 
Abraham Lincoln was bom in a little log cabin in Ken- 
tucky, thirteen miles from Elizabethtown, a son of these 
" first Americans " and a native of this New West. 
The settler, following fast on the feet of the trapper and 
the pioneer, had already turned Kentucky into a State 
of the Union, and the Virginian, with his retinue of slaves, 
had already pre-empted institutions. The poor white, 
the small farmer and the artisan, unable to compete 
with slavery, found himself at this date in Kentucky 
pushed to the " barrens," or was making his way north 
to the new and free lands. 

Abraham Lincoln was bom on the I2th February to 
just such a poor white family, living in just such con- 
ditions of misery which the already stratified state of 
Kentucky forced upon the free white artisan. The 
father, Thomas Lincoln, a wandering labourer, had been 
taught the trade of carpentering, but he seems to have 
been able to accomplish very little with it except marry 
Nancy Hanks, the niece of his employer. He was 
brought to the State of Kentucky as a child of two. His 
father, Abraham Lincoln, a man apparently of wealth, 
for he bought four hundred acres of farm land in that 
region of Virginia later to become Kentucky, and had 
paid for it in currency. Thither he migrated with his 
wife and five children in the year 1780. The fortunes of 
the Abraham Lincoln to come might have been different 
had death not come early to this first Abraham Lincoln 
in Kentucky; but the toll of the New World was taken 
from the family of the Lincolns as it was being taken from 
the whole intrepid band of pioneers. A marauding Indian 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 3 

fell upon the father as he was working in the fields with 
his young boys, and killed him. The older children ran 
to the fort and to the farmhouse for guns and help, while 
Thomas, the youngest, a lad of six, was left alone with the 
dead body. The Indian was stooping down to kidnap the 
child when he, in turn, was shot by one of the young 
brothers who had reached the house and found his gun. 
Thus on the slight hazard of a correct aim was the future 
father of Abraham Lincoln saved and history not tricked. 

By the laws of primogeniture, which still existed in 
Virginia, the estate of Abraham Lincoln went to his 
eldest son, Mordecai. The rest of the family scattered 
to the new lands ; only the mother and the little Thomas 
remained in Kentucky. The boy was let grow as he 
listed, but without means for an education and without 
property to establish himself, he reached the age of 
twenty-seven, the year of his marriage, a brawny, 
wandering labourer, a poor white, unlettered and un- 
taught, except for his trade of carpentering. It was his 
wife Nancy who first taught him how to sign his name. 

In the story of the wanderings of Thomas Lincoln 
and that of his whole family hes part of the history of 
America. They had come from the West of England 
to Massachusetts in 1638, and had followed the general 
course of westward migration from Massachusetts to 
Pennsylvania, from Pennsylvania to Virginia, from 
Virginia to Kentucky, and now, having become a 
family of poor whites, they were to linger in Kentucky 
a few years longer, pushed into the " barrens," and then 
begin their wanderings again from Kentucky to Indiana, 
and from Indiana to Illinois. It was by this course 
that pioneer America was built. 



4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

At the time of his marriage Thomas Lincoln lived 
in EHzabethtown and tried to eke out a Hving by his 
trade. With the birth of a daughter in the following 
year came a fresh impulse to better his condition, and 
he tried farming, which was the most hopeful experi- 
ment that the poor white could make in the South. But 
as cheapness and easy pajnnents had to be considered 
more than the quality of the land, he found himself on 
an arid and sterile strip on the Big South Fork of Nolin 
Creek in La Rue County. Its most valuable asset was 
a clear spring of water, and the place was named Rock 
Spring Farm. On this thankless bit of land the boy 
Abraham was born. 

For five years the family struggled against the 
cruelty of arid land. Finally Thomas Lincoln made 
another attempt to better himself. Six miles from 
Hodgensville, on Knob Creek, he bought a larger and 
better farm containing two miles and thirty-eight acres. 
Neither on the first farm nor on the second were there 
any records of payments made, transactions in those 
days flourishing very well under the system of promissory 
notes. Whether it was because this land did not prove 
any more satisfactory than the first, or because pay- 
ments were insisted upon, we find him four years later, 
in 1816, making the migration into the newer lands of 
Indiana. He left his family in Kentucky, built a raft, 
put on it his kit of tools and four hundred gallons of 
whisky, and went into the unknown. The whisky was 
his wherewithal to pay for the new land. After ex- 
ploring the neighbouring country for about a day, he 
chose a spot in the wilderness which pleased him, and 
walked back into Kentucky for his wife and children. 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 5 

All their worldly possessions they placed on the backs 
of two borrowed horses, and the little cavalcade cut 
its way into the forest, where Thomas Lincoln had 
decided to start life anew. The place was called Little 
Pigeon Creek, and was a mile and a half east of 
Gentry ville. 

They built themselves a shelter called a " half -faced 
camp," in the language of the frontiersman. It was a 
shed of poles, protected only on three sides. Here the 
family lived a whole year, while the father cleared a patch 
of ground for the corn and laid the foundations of a more 
permanent home, a log cabin. Before this was finished, 
without floors or doors or windows, they moved in, for 
the Sparrows, relatives of Mrs Lincoln, had followed 
them to this new region of Indiana, and the half-faced 
camp was given over to them. 

The cabin was of one room, with a loft to which the 
boy Abraham climbed to his bed of leaves at night by a 
ladder made of wooden pins driven into the logs. The 
room had a table made of a hewn log, and a bed built 
of poles stuck into the corner of the room, the outside 
corner supported by a crotched stick. 

Under such conditions, man lost in the fight with 
nature. In the fall an epidemic called the " milk sick " 
fell upon them, no doubt caused by the cows drinking 
from some miasmic spring. The Sparrow family died, 
and a few days later Nancy Hanks, the mother, suc- 
cumbed. There were left a young lad, Dennis Hanks, 
Thomas Lincoln, the father, and the sister and brother, 
Sarah and Abraham, aged ten and nine. The dead were 
buried in a little clearing of the forest, laid in coiBns 
cut by the whip-saw of the sole head of the family. 



6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Then the little orphaned group remained huddled to- 
gether in this outermost solitude all winter. 

The boy Abraham had his standards of life. There 
were things of too much meaning to let pass without 
some gesture. And the unceremonious burial in the 
forest haunted him. WTien he heard that a wandering 
preacher had reached the neighbourhood, he tramped 
many miles in the snow to bring him to the spot where 
the dead lay, so that a funeral sermon might be delivered 
over the now white grave. 

It was not to be his only acquaintance with death 
before he reached manhood. But in the meantime a 
more comfortable change came to him. In the autumn 
the father left the children in the lonely cabin and 
tramped through the wilderness to Elizabethtown in 
Kentucky, and there wooed and married on the same 
day Sarah Busch, whom he brought back to the little 
lonely group in Gentryville to be the new mother to 
them. The story goes that he had known her as a girl, 
that he loved her then, but was refused for the more pros- 
perous jailer of the town. Now, as a widow with three 
children, she accepted this good-natured, unsuccessful 
carpenter-farmer. She was far above him in life as to 
the matter of worldly goods, she had enough to pile 
high on a four-horse waggon, all of which she took 
with her on her venture into the wilderness. From 
this time on the children had warmer clothes to cover 
them, and softer beds to sleep on. A door was put in 
the cabin, and a floor was laid. In later years, when 
the boy, grown to manhood, spoke of his sainted and 
hallowed mother, it was difficult to know which mother 
he meant. The biographers say it was the woman 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 7 

who came to mother him in his tenth year. The other 
was as one set apart, too bound up with intimate suffer- 
ing, too unreasonably and wantonly snatched away to 
be spoken of to outsiders. This other mother, of whom 
he could speak and whom the world knew, created a 
larger home for him. With her came three children 
and a young pioneer — the son of the master carpenter 
from whom the father had learned his trade. 

The boy Abraham helped his father until his fifteenth 
year, and then was set to work to earn his bread on 
neighbouring farms. Somehow he knew how to read 
and write and count. There were schools now and then, 
but in all his life he could not count up a year of school- 
ing. Yet native intelligence was his. Moreover, the 
community, despite its fight against savage conditions, 
carried with it the traditions and thoughts of civilization. 
The idea of the school was fixed, as the idea of law and 
order, of the court-house, of the jail and the town meet- 
ing-house. Books could be had for the quest. The 
boy found the Bible, Msop's Fables, Robinson Crusoe, 
The Pilgrim's Progress, a History of the United States 
and a Life of Washington. If the worst came to the 
worst, he read the revised statutes of Indiana at the 
town constable's, or the dictionary, over which he would 
pore by the hour. The farmers about say he did not 
like to work much, that he cared for his pay and his 
dinner more, and his book most of all. It was to the 
book that his thoughts wandered as he impatiently 
split the rails or broke the ground. " When he came 
home from work," said John Hanks, the young 
pioneer who came to live with them, " he would go to a 
cupboard, snatch a piece of currant bread, sit down. 



8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

cock his legs up as high as his head, and read." So 
he sat on his shoulder-blades, Western fashion, even 
towards the very end of his life, when hard at work. He 
had no paper for his tasks, and he used the wooden 
shovel to write on, scraping it off and beginning again 
when he had reached the bottom. They say he was 
tenderer than the rest of the boys, that the wanton 
murder of the tortoises and other creatures hurt him, 
that he loved the solitude, and that he liked to lie under 
a tree and dream. Unfortunately we cannot put our 
finger on this school or that method which had its 
greatest influence on his formative period. His was an 
intelligent, sensitive nature, battling hard with the 
difficulties of uncontrolled phenomena. That he was 
not swamped by them, but came out stronger, we know. 
At the age of nineteen he emerged from the forest, 
six feet four inches and strong as a young ox. His 
prowess in lifting chicken-houses of six hundred pounds 
and shouldering posts of great weight make the tradi- 
tional stories of Spencer County. At this age he was to 
have his first glimpse of the outside world. A certain 
Mr Gentry, the founder of Gentryville, hired him to 
accompany his son, who was to bring produce down the 
Mississippi River to New Orleans in a flat-boat. This 
contact with the world made the narrow primitive life 
of the backwoods insufficient and he determined to leave 
his father and forge ahead alone. But before setting out 
he helped him to make his last migration to new lands. 
John Hanks went to Macon County, Indiana, and liked 
the prairies and the woods of the new country so well that 
he persuaded the little household in Gentryville to move 
to this Eldorado. The old place had never paid ; besides, 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 9 

it had grown too sorrowful with death, for now it was 
the boy Abraham's only sister who was taken from them. 

The whole family, the stepmother and the half- 
sisters and their husbands, with Dennis Hanks, Thomas 
Lincoln and the young Abraham, with all their combined 
wealth, which was placed on a single waggon, drawn 
by two yoke of oxen, travelled for two weeks over the 
forest roads and prairies, and arrived at the little spot 
which John Hanks had chosen for them on the north 
fork of the Sangamon River in Illinois. The boy's 
last service was to help clear fifteen acres of land and 
split enough rails to put a fence around them. Then 
he wandered off to seek his fortune. 

Already the State of Illinois, where the young Lin- 
coln sought to gain a foothold in life, was ending its 
pioneer stage. It was a territory of settlements with a 
population of over 157,000. Here Lincoln met an 
optimistic and speculative business man, called Offutt, 
who engaged him, together with Hanks and the half- 
brother, John Johnston, to take again a flat-boat with 
cargo to New Orleans. They were to have fifty cents 
a day and a contingent dividend of twenty dollars 
apiece. They paddled down the Sangamon, walked 
five miles to the tavern where they were to hold their 
rendezvous, and found that Offutt had not even the 
flat-boat ready. Nothing daunted, they built the boat 
themselves, hewing the timber " taken innocently from 
Congressland," and put on the cargo. They got as far as 
New Salem, where the flat-boat stuck on the mill-dam, to 
the excitement of the entire population, which came out 
upon the water's edge to watch the mishap. The bow oar, 
who was no other than Lincohi, described as a gigantic 



lo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

youth, with his trousers rolled up some five feet, was the 
only one who seemed to know what to do. He arranged 
a contrivance by which the cargo was unloaded, the boat 
tilted, and the water ingeniously let out by boring a 
hole through the bottom. The exploit gained the 
enthusiastic admiration of his employer, and even caused 
Lincoln's mind to turn to an invention which he called 
Lifting Vessels over Shoals. Many years later he 
whittled his Uttle contrivance and took a patent 
on it. But the only use it seems to have is as an 
exhibit to the curious visitors at the Department of 
the Interior. 

John Hanks says that it was on this trip that Lin- 
coln first saw negroes chained, maltreated, whipped and 
scourged. No doubt he saw the same thing on the 
other trip to New Orleans, for it was the great slave 
mart of the South. Twenty-five years later, writing 
to his friend, Joshua Speed, of Kentucky, of a trip they 
took together from Louisville to St Louis, he says: 
" You may remember as well as I will that from Louis- 
ville to the mouth of the Ohio there were ten or a dozen 
slaves shackled together in 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 is, and continually exercises the power of 
making me miserable." The sight of the slaves chained 
and shackled made him miserable, as did the wTetched 
poverty and death-dealing conditions of his pioneer 
home. But it did not make him revolt either against 
slavery or against his home conditions. It made him 
melancholy, but not angry. He learned how to get one 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH ii 

degree the better of them, but he never repudiated 
them entirely. To his mind they were the inevi- 
table materials which formed the basis of the life 
about him, and unlike the Abolitionists and other 
idealists of the time he never took a definite stand 
against them. 

When he returned from his second trip to New 
Orleans he went to New Salem again, to help Offutt, who 
was a man of many schemes. Unfortunately, so many 
were they that none were ready, and Lincoln, who had 
been prompt, was forced to wait until Offutt under- 
took at least one of them. " He seemed to be loaf- 
ing," the people of Salem said afterwards. However, 
the forced idleness went against his grain, and he was 
glad to find a day's work as clerk in a local election. 
When asked if he could write, he answered, " Yes, I 
can make a few rabbit tracks." When that job was 
over he took another as pilot down the Sangamon 
River, for a Dr Nelson who was going to Texas. Finally 
Offutt and his merchandise arrived. The first scheme 
was to open a general country " store," which was to 
sell everything from pins to tea. Lincoln soon had the 
doors of the shop opened, while Offutt, for whom this 
form of money-making was too slow, bought a mill up 
the river, and showed his appreciation of his young 
employe by placing the burden of this second venture 
also on his shoulders. 

His neighbours were not much impressed with Offutt 's 
stability of character. " He talked too much with his 
mouth," they said. He talked very much with his 
mouth (a fatal way of speaking in those parts) not only 
about his business, but about young Lincoln, whom he 



12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

truly admired. Not only did Abe know more than any 
other man in the United States, but he could beat any 
man in the county running, jumping or " wrastling." 
This latter assertion had to be proved, Lincoln was 
challenged by a gang of young bullies called the Clary 
Grove Boys, and the challenge was accepted. He 
would have liked to lie peaceably under a tree with 
his legs stuck up against the trunk reading a book, 
but Offutt's boast had to be made good. He nearly 
strangled the leader. Jack Armstrong, for which, as is 
the way with frontier honour, the Clary Grove Boys 
became his devoted admirers. Lincoln made amends 
for his treatment of Jack Armstrong in after years 
by saving his son from the gallows in a famous murder 
trial. 

In Offutt's store he sold groceries to the women, and 
had the duty of thro\ving disturbing ruffians out upon 
the street. Without knowing it, he was gaining a 
position in his little world. His scuffle with Jack Arm- 
strong brought him fame. A fellow as strong as that 
must be a good arbiter of right and wrong, they said. 
Besides, he knew books. He even knew grammar, 
for which he was wondered at and looked up to as a 
young scholar. He gained this knowledge by tramping 
several miles for a grammar and studying it with the 
aid of the village schoolmaster. But after this accom- 
plishment was gained he was a little surprised and 
disappointed that " after all, there was not much 
to it." 

And so he sat master of the village store, which was 
ever the clearing-house of ideas for the countryside. 
Though delicate questions of ethics might be broached. 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 13 

the main topics discussed were politics and the im- 
mediate needs of the time. The driving idea then 
animating the new and virgin regions was the quick 
improvement of them so that they might speedily attain 
to their " manifest destiny." The history of America is 
made up of the history of speculation in land and trans- 
portation enterprises. The virgin country fired the im- 
agination of the early settlers. A great city might be 
built in the wilderness ! Had they the railways, were the 
rivers made navigable, were they to build canals, then 
streams of people would come. " Improvements " be- 
came the mystic word of the time. They were to attract 
" people " and help the West towards its great future. 

Andrew Jackson was President and Jackson Demo- 
crats ruled the day, through whom for the first time the 
West made itself felt in the national polity. The question 
arose in Congress what was to be done with the surplus 
that lay in the Treasury, the money received from the 
land sales. The States cried, " Give it to us, so that we 
can make ' improvements,' or make the ' improvements ' 
for us. " Because democracy ruled, the States were given 
the money, and thus over $37,000,000 was divided 
among them. With this encouragement a mad frenzy 
of speculation took hold of the State legislatures. Rail- 
roads and canals were laid out at almost every crossing, 
and money was borrowed from where no one knew, to 
be paid when no one knew. In harmony with this 
" democratic " legislation, the National Bank was de- 
stroyed by Jackson, and nearly six hundred State banks 
were chartered, which began generously to lend paper 
money. A period of legislation and banking, known in 
American history as "wild-cat," ensued. Fortunately 



14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

most of the plans for " improvements " went no further 
than paper orders. Nevertheless, the general indebted- 
ness of the States and the banks was a matter of many 
millions before the experiment was over. 

To be a clerk in the grocery store was to be as deeply 
engrossed in political thought as to be a member of the 
legislature. In fact the road from the store led straight 
thither. So we find Lincoln issuing in March 1832 an 
address to the people of Sangamon County, in which he 
offers himself as candidate for the next General Assembly, 
andif elected promises to carry out veryimportant radical 
changes. It sounds very much Hke a recapitulation of the 
arguments around the stove in the store . The fertile dis- 
trict of Sangamon County needed better means of com- 
munication. A railroad would be serviceable, but too 
costly, probably $290,000. A much cheaper plan, and 
almost as good, was to make the Sangamon River navi- 
gable. Lincoln stood, therefore, he said, for the improve- 
ment of the Sangamon River, knowing from experience 
that it could be made navigable " for at least one-half of 
all common years." Did he not last year, in the month 
of March, build a flat-boat and take her out successfully 
in the course of the spring? And since that time he had 
been concerned in the mill at New Salem. He knew the 
river could be made navigable. At present there was 
too much drifted timber in it. His plan was to change 
the course of the river entirely, build a dam, and send it 
over the prairie land, where it would not only meet no 
timber at all, " but its length would be shortened by 
half to the neighbouring city, Beardstown." Surely 
that would be cheaper than building railroads. There 
were also other needs which this young Solon thought 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 15 

necessary to the welfare of the community ; for instance, 
a law fixing the limits of usury, which, in the case of 
necessity, could be evaded, which showed he had the true 
Westerner's conception of his wealth, which, if it could 
not be turned into immediate cash, nevertheless was of 
such promise that great jugglings could be done with it. 
Also, he favoured the spread of education, and that 
subject, though not presuming to dictate any plan or 
system respecting it, he considered after all the most 
important subject of all before the community. On 
the whole, not bad sentiments for a youth of twenty- 
two, and to be able to put, unschooled in letters as he 
was, this last sentence, " But if the good people in their 
wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I 
have been too familiar with disappointments to be 
very much chagrined," showed a feeling for phrases 
which does not come from the study of Kirkland's 
Grammar alone . The young pioneer was finding himself. 
That the Sangamon River was navigable was soon to 
be proved. An enterprising pillar of society built a 
splendid " up-cabin steamer," which he called the 
Talisman, and which he promised to send up the river 
with produce as soon as the ice was broken. He asked 
for a group of young men to stand with long-handled 
axes as a reception committee, to cut away the over- 
hanging branches from the bank, and so make place for 
the anchoring of the steamer. It was the great coming- 
of-age of New Salem. Reception committees were 
formed, meetings were held, and the poets wrote odes 
to the event. The towns along the Sangamon could no 
longer be called inland. They were ports! 

Lincoln was not only a member of these committees, 



i6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

but he was given the honour of piloting the Talisman 
up the river at a salary of forty dollars a month. What 
he did for Offutt in the meantime we do not know. 
The boat made four miles a day up the navigable San- 
gamon. Lincoln in after years described it as the boat 
" with a five-foot boiler and a nine-foot whistle, and 
every time the whistle blew the boat stopped." The 
boat in a few weeks went up in smoke at the docks in 
St Louis, and Lincoln returned to Offutt. 

This man's stores were " winking out," to use 
Lincoln's phrase. He gave up his business in New 
Salem entirely, and Lincoln was thrown out upon 
the world again, his canvass for his elections not 
taking place until the early fall. In the meantime 
Illinois declared war against the Indian tribes on its 
Western border. It was a war with the Sac Indians, 
but called in American history the Black Hawk War, 
because of the chieftain, Black Hawk, who refused to 
abide by the so-called treaties with the whites by which 
he had ceded his land to them. The giving up of the 
land rankled. His daughter, Oquawka, lay buried in 
the very domain he had ceded; moreover, prophet 
and seer as the old man was, he was firmly convinced 
that land could not be sold. The treaties were frauds 
and forgeries, he said, and he crossed the line and tried 
to arouse the Sacs and the Foxes and the Winnebagoes 
and the Pottawatomies. He came back to the Rock 
River, which he had ceded away, to plant com. This 
movement aroused the State, and an order for volunteers 
was given to drive the Indians back across the Missis- 
sippi. The response was general, for the live Indian 
was not looked upon with kindness on the frontier. 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 17 

and Lincoln was among those who enHsted. To his 
gratification and honour the volunteers, who had the 
privilege of choosing their own captains, chose him 
as theirs. 

The war was short and swift, the enHstment only for 
a few weeks. They went to discover the enemy, found 
him, and then let themselves be discovered in turn by 
him, much to the enemy's advantage, for several days. 
The volunteers ran and left the country to the pillage of 
the Indians. More volunteers were assembled, re-enlist- 
ments were taken, among which was Lincoln again, 
who this time went as a private in a peculiarly unmili- 
tary organization called the Spy Battalion, which 
seemed to have all the privileges of a body of young 
schoolboys out on a picnic. This time the army, plus 
the Spy Battalion, left no chance for the red men at all. 
They found Black Hawk's camp on the Wisconsin 
River, and inflicted a signal defeat on the whole army, 
pursued its broken remnants, and brought on another 
battle called the battle of the Bad Axe, which in reality 
was a slaughter of the few remaining and discouraged 
Indians who were fighting an army in front and a great 
river behind. 

Of this war, and the part Lincoln played in it, he 
himself has left a famous memorandum in a speech in 
Congress, which destroyed forever all attempts to throw 
military glory upon his head. It was the call of youth 
that sent him out into the war. It was also a young, 
zealous patriotism, a crude form of centring the welfare 
of the community around its immediate needs; but of 
militancy and of military discipline this Western youth 
was delightfully free. Let him describe it for himself: 



i8 ABRAHAM IJNCOLN 

" Did you know, Mr Speaker, I am a military hero? In 
the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled and came 
away, I was not at Stillman's defeat, but I was about 
as near it as General Cass was to Hull's surrender; and, 
like him, I saw the place very soon afterwards. It is 
quite certain I did not break my sword, for I had none 
to break, but I bent my musket pretty badly on one 
occasion. If General Cass went in advance of me pick- 
ing whortleberries, I guess I surpassed him in charges 
on the wild onions. If he saw any live fighting Indians 
it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody 
struggles with the mosquitoes; and though I never 
fainted from loss of blood, I can truly say I was often 
very hungry. If ever I should conclude to doff what- 
ever our Democratic friends may suppose there is of 
black-cockade Federalism about me, and thereupon they 
shall take me up as their candidate for the Presidency, 
I protest that they shall not make fun of me, as they 
have of General Cass, by attempting to write me into 
a military hero." 

The new world lay open before the youth of twenty- 
two returned from the war. He had no position, no 
calling, no post. He had his brawny arms, and before 
him lay the primitive frontier town of New Salem, 
where he had been grocery clerk and mill overseer and 
pilot a few months before. Only one shred was left to him 
of that past. This was his candidature for the State 
Legislature. He had made his way back slowly from 
the scene of war, tramping on foot, for his horse was 
stolen, or paddling up the Ilhnois River, There was a 
serious practicality about him. He knew the value of 
money and economy. The comrades bought a little 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 19 

canoe \\ith which they paddled home, and carefully 
sold it again when its service was no longer needed. 
In this way, slowly, as if half fearing the sudden 
plunge into the world which he was about to take, 
he came back to New Salem, just ten days before the 
August elections. 

His candidature had been almost forgotten ; only a 
local newspaper, in giving the hst of the candidates, re- 
marked that Captain Lincoln " was now risking his life at 
the front . ' ' The gallant captain returne d and threw him- 
self into politics. Strange to say, the canvass did not 
daunt this youth of the backwoods. He had argued often 
enough when keeping store for Offutt, and stump-speak- 
ing was his forte even in the old days on the farm, where 
he would drop his plough in the cornfield to imitate a 
wandering preacher's sermon, or harangue in not too 
polite terms on any subject that the other hands called 
for. He knew how to speak, and he knew how to main- 
tain his attitude as a speaker in this frontier canvass. 
The audience around the platform were not always docile. 
Sometimes they came because of the beer given, and not a 
few would show their disposition in true Clary Grove Boy 
fashion. At one time it was said that the young candi- 
date saw in the midst of his argument a friend who was 
not being well handled by the crowd with whom 
he was holding a discussion aside, whereat Lincoln, 
descending from his rostrum, threw the enemy some ten 
feet, and returned, picking up his thread at the point 
where he had left off. 

The youth had independence of thought as well as of 
action. The whole State was controlled by the Demo- 
crats — "whole-hog Jackson men " they called themselves 



20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

arrogantly. No one who was not true to the last letter 
of the Jackson policy, who did not " go the whole hog," 
could hope for election or office. Yet he announced 
himself as a Whig, an avowed Clay man. His principles 
were not national or broad, yet, local as they were, they 
rested upon a basis capable of expansion. He stood 
for what was then called the " American system," 
which meant the national bank, a high productive tariff 
and internal improvements. In all this there was a germ 
of nationalism, new in the West. 

He was defeated, not because his principles were too 
radical for Democrat or Whig, for both Democrat and 
Whig were shouting the same slogan of internal improve- 
ments, for which Lincoln also came forward. That he 
preferred the improvement of the Sangamon River to 
the laying of railroads was not held up against him as 
advocating unorthodox policies. He was defeated 
because he was unknown, young, inexperienced, and 
because he had only ten days with which to canvass in a 
district of about one thousand miles. Where he was 
known, in New Salem, he received an almost unanimous 
vote, all but thirteen voting for him, and of the thirteen 
only three were directly against him, the other ten were 
abstainers. Gratifying results to a youth of twenty- 
two. 

But it did not give him emplojnnent. He thought 
for a while of blacksmithing. He did not want to go 
back to the farm, and this was a trade which would 
keep him in the city, and for which his great strength 
seemed to fit him. But his experience with Offutt made 
it easier for him to turn to shopkeeping again. There 
was a grocery store owned by two brothers called Rowan 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 21 

and James Hemdon. They were selling out, and a 
man called Berry bought James's half, and Lin- 
coln bought the other, though neither Lincoln nor 
Berry had money with which to buy anything. The 
exchange was made in the easy-going frontier fashion, 
with promissory notes. Neither Berry nor Lincoln 
were interested in the work. Berry preferring to drink 
and Lincoln to read. Affairs did not go well from the 
beginning, and to the minds of the firm it seemed neces- 
sary to recoup themselves by an extension of business. 
They bought another grocery store. This opportunity 
came when the Clary Grove Boys broke the windows 
and wrecked the store owned by a man called Radford. 
Radford, as he was gazing at the ruins, was hailed by a 
passer-by called Green, who, after the usual greeting, 
offered to buy him out for $400. The hasty bargain 
completed, Green went to Lincoln, who, being in pos- 
session of a similar store, was in a position to know 
whether he had overpaid or done well. Lincoln assessed 
the goods and offered to buy it for $600. All these 
transactions went on without any money being passed 
through the hands of any of the parties. Lincoln went 
off with a bill of sale and Green with a promissory note. 
An almost complete monopoly of the grocery business 
in New Salem did not help them to prosper, the one 
remaining store competing too skilfully. After a few 
months, in March, they took out a licence to sell liquor. 
That was the undoing of the business, for it placed 
temptation too close to Berry. He remained indoors 
and tippled. They hired a clerk to sell the liquor, who 
said that when he came there were very little groceries, 
but whisky was sold over the counter at six cents a»glass 



22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

or even charged. Lincoln, to whom a passing immi- 
grant had sold a barrel of rubbish in which he found a 
Blackstone, lay under a tree all day long, " grinding 
around with the shade," and studied law. 

As the extension of business and the specialization in 
hquor did not help matters, Lincoln, in May, accepted 
an opportunity to increase his income. He was ap- 
pointed postmaster. His duties were slight, for he 
carried the post in his hat, but no postmaster made 
better use of his opportunities. Not a newspaper came 
in but was faithfully read by him. It was a serious 
waking-up period in his life. He was studying the 
world, and he was delving into fundamental ideas. He 
read Volney and Paine. He became anti-religious, 
better to say, anti-creed. 

It was the year 1833, and the age of reason was send- 
ing its last ripples into the uttermost end of the earth. 
Lincoln, who was born free of thought, free of conven- 
tion and creed, as the young saplings that grew in the 
virgin forest, clung to reason and to what he could see 
and feel with his own senses. He had what the Yankee 
calls hard common sense. He had to see things for 
himself, as he had to do things for himself, for, unlike his 
old patron Offutt, he did not " talk with his mouth alone." 
No one waited upon anyone in this rude democracy of 
an undeveloped country. There was the right of private 
property, which might buy service. But such were the 
changing conditions that the new country made each one 
both master and workman combined. Lincoln would 
have been the practical reasoner had he never read 
Volney or Paine. But the influence of the writers was 
strong in the country which boasted of its democracy. 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 23 

By the very nature of democracy it permits of no fixed 
church. 

Lincoln, in those days of simple reasoning and study, 
always had upon himself the burden of making a living. 
The stores which were " winking out " only increased 
his need of money. The postmastership helped very 
little, and in May he was offered the position of Deputy 
Surveyor. He eagerly accepted it, walking ten miles 
to have an interview \\dth Calhoun, v/ho was Surveyor 
of the County, and through whom the position was 
received. Lincoln told him frankly that he knew 
nothing of surveying, but Calhoun, who needed men to 
help him, and who could get no better man, gave him six 
weeks in which to acquaint himself with the subject, 
lending him the books he needed. Lincoln went to 
his old friend, Menton Graham, the schoolmaster who 
had helped him once before in the study of grammar, 
and who now worked over the problems with him in 
Flint and Gibson's Treatise on Surveying. These two 
years would have been most profitable for him, with 
their many changes, were it not for the stores, which 
bound him each day tighter in the coil of an over- 
whelming debt. 

Finally, early in the year 1834, the firm of Berry & 
Lincoln was sold to two brothers named Trent. The 
men proved irresponsible, and failing before their notes 
were due, disclaimed any intention of paying. Berry 
died, breaking the camel's back by drinking a little too 
much, and the whole debt fell upon Lincoln's shoulders. 
It seemed so voluminous to him that he always referred 
to it as the national debt. He "sed his salary as post- 
master and surveyor to pay it off. Fourteen years 



24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

later, as Congressman, he was still sending part of his 
salary for this national debt of his. 

The political venture of two years before encouraged 
him to make another effort. He was sure of the united 
support of the Whigs, and his personal influence, which 
had carried New Salem before, would now, better known 
as he was, bring him the support of many Democrats, 
and so he again ran for the State Legislature. This time, 
of the four men elected, Lincoln stood second. Some- 
how there was a personality to that tall, ungainly youth 
which seemed especially attractive to his own com- 
munity. He fitted them; he seemed their most apt 
expression. 

To the degree that the community loved him and 
had faith in him, there were to be found individuals 
who had the same love and faith. It seemed he could 
always turn to someone who would trust and help him 
in the material necessities of life. As he found the 
Herndon brothers to sell him all their stock on a promis- 
sory note, so he found a 3^oung friend called Smoot who 
gave him S200, whereby he could buy himself a new 
suit of clothes and enter Vandalia, the capitol of Illinois, 
attired more in harmony with the dignity of his new 
office. His first session in the Legislature is more im- 
portant as to the effect it had on his own development 
than on the mark he made in it himself. He was elected 
on the policies of internal improvement. The whole 
Legislature was pledged to that policy, and Lincoln 
joined with the rest in voting vast sums which they did 
not possess for improvements for imaginary cities and 
townships not yet laid out. He came back to New 
Salem in the spring of 1835, having laid the foundation 



LINCOLN'S BOYHOOD & YOUTH 25 

of friendships with men who were to bear an important 
part in the poHtical history of the country, and with a 
broadened and enhghtened outlook upon hfe. He was 
deahng truly with the facts of civilization. The split 
rails and the axe were now definitely laid aside. 



CHAPTER II 
ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 

IT was at this period, after having reached out into 
the world, that romance entered his Hfe. There 
were days when, as a lad in Gentry ville, he had sat 
on the bank of a river with his schoolmate, Kate Roby, 
and told her how the earth revolved around the sun and 
the moon around the earth. But the hard pioneer life 
did not permit of tender scenes to come often. There 
was no time for it. On the other hand, his own nature 
and self-respect did not permit of frontier carousals. 
Intense as he was, his life was peculiarly free of romance, 
and of what is more commonly termed women. It was 
only at twenty-four that he had his first love; some 
say his one and only great love. His wife's relations, 
speaking after the death of both Lincoln and his wife, 
resent the talk of another romance than that which 
culminated in the marriage. So much is true for their 
side that there was no other definite engagement to 
marry than that one. But it seems indisputable that 
his soul went through the fire of some crisis at this 
period, that the man who came back from Vandalia 
was somehow different from the man who discussed 
politics around the stove in the country store, or umpired 
cock-fights or had tests of strength in moving chicken- 
houses or lifting barrels of whisky. That beauty of 
melancholy which characterized his later years, and 

which is so innately bound up with the portrait of the 

26 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 27 

man given to posterity, came to the surface at this 
time. 

We have very few documents to guide us in this 
" saddest chapter in Mr Lincoln's life," to quote Hern- 
don. Even the descriptions of the young lady differ 
with the personal predilection of the writers. Some- 
times she has blue eyes and golden hair, at other times 
her hair is auburn, and then again raven black tresses 
crown her head. Her name was Ann Rutledge and 
she was the daughter of the tavern-keeper with whom 
Lincoln boarded when he came back to New Salem. 
It seems she did not return his affection, being 
herself in love and about to be married to a young 
man named M'Namar. He had come to New Salem 
to make his fortune, and to help his parents, who 
had failed in business in New York. In New Salem 
he had taken the name of O'Neil, and thus disguised, 
he hoped to work quietly until that time when he could 
reclaim his family name. This he told Ann as he started 
back to New York when his plans for his family were 
about to be consummated. On the way to New York 
he feU ill and was detained a month. When he recovered 
he let his long silence be construed as a lack of interest in 
the girl, and instead of offering an explanation, he him- 
self became more formal. When he arrived in New 
York he found his father dying. The long separation, 
and the stress of circumstances, caused a coldness be- 
tween the lovers. Soon letters stopped entirely. In the 
meantime, Ann at home pined for the vanished O'Neil, 
whose story no one believed in New Salem, where it 
seemed patent to all that his was a plain case of deser- 
tion. He had loved and he had gone away. Lincoln 



28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

saw this tragedy played in the tavern where he lived, 
and pitied and comforted the girl, and fell in love in 
turn. Months passed, and as M'Namar did not return, 
Ann leaned more and more towards this new love which 
had come to her, untU she half-promised Lincoln to be 
his wife when a year should have elapsed. But in 
August she died, whether of malaria or of a broken 
heart, haunted by her old love, it is impossible to tell. 
In the last hour of her life she called for Lincoln and 
sang to him. 

The tragic end of his love affected him so much that 
his friends grew to fear for his reason. He himself said 
that at times his melancholy was so great that he did not 
dare carry a pocket-knife with him. " Here my heart lies 
buried," he said years later when passing her grave. 
Whether, had Ann Rutledge lived, she would have be- 
come the wife of Lincoln is a matter of great doubt, for 
not many weeks after her death M'Namar did return, 
bringing with him, as a vindication of his story, his 
widowed mother and his brothers and sisters. The im- 
pression that the death of Ann made upon Lincoln lasted 
all through his life. Her memory caused in him a 
melancholia and moodiness to which he gave vent in 
poetry. " O why should the spirit of mortal be proud," 
was a poem he quoted whenever he thought of her, as it 
was indissolubly mixed with his sentiments of renuncia- 
tion and sadness which recurred often in his life. 

Lincoln remained in New Salem studying law and 
acting as Deputy Surveyor. His one session in the 
State Legislature encouraged him to try for that office 
again, and accordingly, in the spring of 1836, he an- 
nounced his candidature. It was before the day of 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 29 

party conventions, and the aspirant did his own nomi- 
nating, generally coming forth with a profession of faith. 
Lincoln came forward with the following letter: 

" New Salem, June 13, 1836. 

" To THE Editor of The Journal, — In your paper of 
last Saturday I see a communication over the signature of 
' Many Voters,' in which the candidates who are announced 
in The Journal are called upon to ' show their hands.' 
Agreed. Here's mine: 

" I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government 
who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go 
for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay 
taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females). 

" If elected I shall consider the whole people of Sanga- 
mon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those 
that support me. 

" While acting as their representative I shall be 
governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have 
the means of knowing what their will is; and upon all 
others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me will 
best advance their interest. Whether elected or not, I go 
for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public lands to 
the several States to enable our State, in common with 
others, to dig canals and construct railroads without borrow- 
ing money and paying the interest on it. 

" If alive on the first Monday in November I shall vote 
for Hugh L. White for President. — Very respectfully, 

" A. Lincoln " 



It was a frank, straightfoi-ward avowal of principles, 
democratic but not revolutionary. His upholding of 
Hugh L. White for President was merely a Whig protest 
against Jackson. The plan for universal suffrage, in 



so ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

which he includes women, was never again repeated, 
perhaps for pohtical reasons. There is no evidence that 
he recanted his conviction, but he seemed to find no occa- 
sion to use it again. We must deal with Lincoln always 
as a successful follower of thought rather than a leader. 

The representation from Sangamon County had been 
increased from four to seven, and the canvass that year 
was doubly exciting. In Springfield the candidates 
had a joint debate, which lasted all day. The con- 
testants often became angry and vituperant. Lincoln, 
who closed the debate, handled his subject so fairly 
that the day ended in peace and equanimity. In his 
encounters with his opponents he generally came off the 
better, because of his quiet manner, which helped his 
ready words to cut the deeper. An old man named 
Forquer, who had been a Whig but who had recently 
joined the Democratic party, and then had been appointed 
Registrar of the Land Offtce, made a strong attack upon 
Lincoln, He commenced by saying that the young man 
would have to " be taken down," and that he regretted 
that the task had devolved upon him. He thereupon 
went at him unmercifully, and Lincoln retaliated in a 
homely but telling fashion, using the fact that Forquer 
had built himself a frame house, one of the best in Spring- 
field, and had erected a lightning-rod, which was the 
only one there as a weapon against him, 

" The gentleman has seen fit to allude to my being a 
young man," he said, " but he forgets I am older in years 
than I am in the tricks of the politicians. I desire to live, 
and I desire place and distinction, but I would rather die 
now than, like the gentleman, hve to see the day that I 
would change my politics for an office worth I3000 a year 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 31 

and then feel compelled to erect a lightning-rod to protect 
a guilty conscience from an offended God." The blow 
told. 

Lincoln was elected in this campaign with a good 
majority over the rest. The Democrats were defeated 
for the first time, and the Whigs were in control, with a 
majority of over four hundred. The nine Whigs elected 
were all over six feet tall, and they were at once dubbed 
the " Long Nine." " We were not only noted," said one 
of them, " for our number and length, but for our com- 
bined influence." All the bad and objectionable laws 
passed at that session of the Legislature, and for many 
years afterwards, were charged to the management and 
influence of the " Long Nine." They almost became 
what is termed in American pohtics " a machine," by 
the introduction of the convention system, which the 
Democrats, with their strict party methods, had already 
adopted, but which were first used by the Whigs with 
the advent of the Long Nine. Lincoln served on the 
Committee on Finance, and he helped to further the mad 
internal improvement schemes in which Illinois indulged 
for several sessions more to come. The representa- 
tives from Sangamon County had been specially in- 
structed by a mass convention of their constituents to 
vote for " a general system of internal improvements." 
Another convention of delegates from all the counties 
met at Vandalia and gave similar instructions to the 
members, specifying that " the system should be com- 
mensurate to the wants of the people . ' ' The Legislature, 
in compliance with the suggestion, laid plans to connect 
the extreme points of the State by 1200 miles of rail- 
road. Rivers and streams of importance were to be 



32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

widened, deepened and made navigable. The Illinois 
River and Lake Michigan were to be connected by a 
canal, and thus the improvements made " commensurate 
with the wants of the people." A loan of $12,000,000 
was authorized. It was hoped that Illinois would soon 
become the " Empire State of the New World." 

Lincoln, as member of the Long Nine and member 
of the Committee of Finance, had his share in this form 
of legislation. A more successful and astute piece of 
legislating was performed by the Long Nine in removing 
the capitol of Illinois from Vandalia to Springfield. 
Many other cities contested for the honour, but the bill 
for the removal to Springfield was entrusted to the 
management of Lincoln, and with his level-headed 
practicaUty he succeeded. The session closed with an 
interesting document from the pen of Lincoln, which was 
hardly noticed at that time. 

It was a period of bargainings as far as the anti- 
slavery movement was concerned, and the Legislature 
had passed such stringent pro-slavery laws that it 
almost turned Illinois into a slave state. The latest 
resolutions were as follows: 

" Resolved by the General Assembly of the State of 
Illinois: That we highly disapprove of the formation of 
AboUtion Societies and of the doctrines promulgated by 
them. 

" That the right of property in slaves is sacred to the 
slave-holding States by the Federal Constitution, and that 
they cannot be deprived of that right without their consent. 

" That the General Government cannot abolish slavery 
in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens 
of said District without a manifest breach of good faith." 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE ^2> 

Lincoln and another member of the Long Nine, Dan 
Stone, presented the following protest to the resolutions : 

" Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery 
having passed both branches of the General Assembly at 
its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against 
the passage of the same. 

" They beUeve that the institution of slavery is founded 
on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation 
of abohtion doctrines tends rather to increase than abate 
its evils. 

" They believe that the Congress of the United States 
has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the 
institution of slavery in the different States. 

" They beheve that the Congress of the United States 
has the power under the Constitution to aboUsh slavery in 
the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be 
exercised unless at the request of the people of the District. 

" The difference between these opinions and those con- 
tained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering 
this protest. 

" Dan Stone. 
" A. Lincoln. 

" Representatives from the County of Sangatnon." 

The protest was not very bold, but unfortunately 
that was all that Lincoln himself could feel at the time. 
Slavery was founded on both injustice and bad policy, 
and yet the doctrine of abolition tended to increase the 
evil, an argument in which many indulged. In fact it 
is difficult at first glance to see the difference between 
the resolutions of the Legislature and the sentiments of 
Lincoln and Stone. It seems to be merely that of shad- 
ing. The Long Nine returned to Springfield and were 
received with manifestations of joy. Since it was owing 
to their efforts that Springfield became a capitol, public 



34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

dinners and toasts were given to the returning 
legislators, and speeches were made on the subject of: 

"Abraham Lincoln: he has fulfilled the expecta- 
tions of his friends and disappointed the hopes of 
his enemies " ; and " A. Lincoln, one of Nature's 
noblemen." 

Lincoln decided to move to the city which so early 
recognized him. Whereat he put his belongings, which 
consisted mostly of law books and a few pieces of cloth- 
ing, in his saddle-bags, and borrowing a horse, rode into 
the city, which he was not to leave except as President 
of the United States. He had engaged a bedstead from 
the only cabinet-maker in the village, and with his saddle- 
bags in hand walked into Joshua F. Speed's store to ask 
the price of the necessaries for a single bed. Speed 
took a slate and pencil, and counting up, said it would 
be seventeen dollars. Lincoln answered in a melan- 
choly voice, " It is probably cheap enough, but I want 
to save that, cheap as it is. I have not the money to 
pay. But if you will credit me till Christmas, and my 
experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you 
then; if I fail in that, 1 will probably never pay you 
at all." 

Speed said as he looked at him, he thought he 
never had seen so gloomy and melancholy a face in all 
his life. However, he liked the face, and he offered to 
share with him his large double bed which stood in a 
room above the store. " Where is the room? " " Up- 
stairs," was the answer. Lincoln took the saddle-bags 
on his arm, and without saying a word went upstairs, 
put them down on the floor, came down again, and with 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 35 

his face beaming with pleasure and smiles, exclaimed, 
" Well, Speed, I've moved." 

He was a " poor white " in a community where 
the " best families " with their priests and their dogs 
and their servants had already moved in. Springfield 
was taking on the splendours of its new social position. 
Nevertheless, the democracy of the frontier brought 
this poor young white in close friendship with one of the 
so-called " better families," and Stuart, whom he met 
in the Black Hawk War, and who was a cousin of the 
Mary Todd he was to marry five years later, now took 
him in as a partner in his law office. Lincoln acted as 
the junior member and kept the entries and accounts 
of the firm, a thing which he disliked doing very much, 
and which in later life he always left to his junior partner. 
Stuart was deeply absorbed in politics, and to Lincoln 
was left the responsibility of conducting the cases and 
managing most of the business. 

Lincoln ate at the house of William Butler, who 
also had been a member of Congress but made Speed's 
store his headquarters. Here, as usual, politics, religion 
and other kindred subjects were discussed. It was here 
that men who afterwards figured so intimately in his 
political life — Stephen Douglas, Browning, Calhoun — 
assembled around the fireplace, and held long debates. 
Young Herndon, then fresh from college, was clerk there. 

Lovejoy, the Abolitionist, was lynched in Alton, only 
a few miles away. The subject of slavery and abolition 
was again hot upon everyone's tongue. Herndon, nine 
years the junior of Lincoln, went over in the fire of his 
youth to the ranks of the Abolitionists . Later he became 
Lincoln's law partner, and for all the twenty years of 



36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

their partnership kept in close communication with 
Theodore Parker and the Abohtionists of New England. 
However seemingly conservative and practical Lin- 
coln was on the negro question, his close friendship 
with an out-and-out Abolitionist makes it certain that 
his sentiments were for freedom, whatever he thought 
as to the means of attaining it. 

The young men who met in the store formed a 
private club of their o\vn, but a more public one, called 
the Young Men's Lyceum, was also frequented by the 
same group. It was before this Lyceum that Lincoln 
delivered an address called " The Perpetuation of 
our Free Institutions." The address was published in 
the Sangamon Journal and created quite a reputation 
for the young orator. 

Meanwhile, Lincoln attended a special session of the 
Legislature in July 1837. I^ was called to save the 
Illinois banks from impending dissolution. The finances 
of the State were in a ruinous condition, and the Bank 
of the United States and the New York and Philadelphia 
banks had suspended specie payment. The Legislature, 
instead of abridging its finances, only extended the 
already colossal system. It was not until 1838, when 
Lincoln was again elected for the Legislature, that 
enthusiasm and zeal for internal improvements began 
to flag. They tried to bolster up the system, but 
soon the fact became apparent that they could get no 
more money, and the Legislature was close to the verge 
of repudiation. 

With all Lincoln's seeming success m poHtics 
these first years in Springfield were years of suffering 
and maladjustment. Somehow he could not find peace 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE zi 

within himself, and he was in a continual quest for 
something that would bring him peace. Part of this 
restless searching took him into the field of love. But 
he had no overwhelming passion or any definite ideal 
for which to strive. As with everything else in life, 
he was experimenting and letting outside forces direct 
him. The result was that his questings in the field of 
love gave him no satisfaction. About a year after the 
death of Ann Rutledge it seems there was another lady 
whom circumstances threw into his life, or better, whom 
he permitted circumstance to throw into his life. She 
was a Miss Mary Owens. She was born in the same year 
as Lincoln himself, and he met her for the first time in 1833 
when she had come from Kentucky to visit for a few 
weeks a sister in New Salem. Three years later Lincoln 
suggested to the sister, who was returning to Kentucky 
to pay her family a visit, that if she brought her sister 
Mary back with her he would marry her. The two 
sisters returned together, and Lincoln felt himself 
bound by this vague arrangement to live up to his 
promise of marriage. His own version of the matter, 
written in a letter to Mrs Browning after the close of 
the affair, gave a certain side-light to the part he played 
in this strange drama. However, this one letter, which 
the biographers display to show his exact feelings, could 
not possibly portray the many-sided emotions which 
must have come to him during the whole year in which 
this story unfolded. His letters to her are perhaps more 
of an index to his feelings than the last letter written to 
a friend after the pain of separation was well over, and 
peace had set in. It was because of the still lingering 
pain, perhaps, that he gave his humour so wide a range. 



38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

In his first letter to Miss Owens, from Vandalia, he 
speaks of going daily to the post-office for her letters, 
which seem never to arrive. " You see," he says, " I 
am mad about that old letter yet ; I do not like to risk 
you again; I will try you once more anyhow." "You 
recollect," he says farther on, " I mentioned at the out- 
set of this letter that I had been unwell; that is the 
fact, though I believe I am about well now. But that, 
with other things I cannot account for, have conspired 
and have gotten my spirit so low that I feel I would 
rather' be in any place in the world than here, I really 
cannot endure the thought of staying here ten weeks. 
Write back as soon as you get this, and if possible say 
something that will please me. For really I have not 
been pleased since I left you." 

At the adjournment of the Legislature he went back 
to Springfield, and it was here that unhappiness and 
doubt assailed him. It was an easy drive from Spring- 
field to New Salem, and he could see Miss Owens often. 
However, when it came to the crucial task of proposing 
marriage, he did not seem to trust himself, and we find 
two strange letters of the lover, arguing his case against 
himself. The one is dated Springfield, 7th May 1837: 

" Friend Mary, — I have commenced two letters to send 
you before this, both of which displeased me before I got 
hah done, and so I tore them up. The first I thought 
wasn't serious enough, and the second was on the other 
extreme. I shall send this, turn out as it may. 

" This thing of hving in Springfield is rather a dull 
business after all — at least, it is so to me. I am quite as 
lonesome here as (I) ever was anywhere in my life. I have 
been spoken to by but one woman since I've been here, and 




AHKAHAM LINCOLN IN IsiiU 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 39 

should not have been by her if she could have avoided it. 
I've never been to church yet, and probably shall not be 
soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not 
know how to behave myself. I am often thinking of what 
we said of your coming to Hve at Springfield. I am afraid 
you would not be satisfied. There is a great deal of flourish- 
ing about in carriages here, which it would be your doom 
to see without sharing in it. You would have to be poor 
without the means of hiding your poverty. Do you believe 
you could bear that patiently? Whatever woman may cast 
her lot with mine, should anyone ever do so, it is my inten- 
tion to do all in my power to make her happy and contented, 
and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me 
more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should 
be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I 
saw no signs of discontent in you. 

" What you have said to me may have been in jest, or I 
may have misunderstood it. If so, then let it be forgotten ; 
if otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before 
you decide. For my part I have already decided. What 
I have said I will most positively abide by, provided you 
wish it. My opinion is you had better not do it. You 
have not been accustomed to hardship, and it may be more 
severe than you imagine. I know you are capable of think- 
ing correctly on any subject, and if you dehberate maturely 
upon this before you decide, then I am wiUing to abide by 
your decision. 

" You must write me a good long letter after you get this. 
You have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem 
interesting to you after you have written it, it would be a 
good deal of company in this busy wilderness. Tell your 
sister I don't want to hear any more about selhng out and 
moving. That gives me the hypo whenever I think of it. — 
Yours, etc., Lincoln " 



He evidently succeeded in bringing the lady around 



40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to his own view in the matter, for on i6th August we 
have again a strange letter which must have been an 
afterthought to a definite parting. He wants to let her 
go, and yet he cannot. The result is another half 
extension of the hand. 

" Friend Mary, — You will no doubt think it rather 
strange that I should write you a letter on the same day on 
which we parted, and I can only account for it by supposing 
that seeing you lately makes me think of you more than 
usual, while at our late meeting we had but few expressions 
of thoughts. You must know that I cannot see you or think 
of you with entire indifference ; and yet it may be that you 
are mistaken in regard to what my real feelings towards you 
are. If I knew you were not I should not trouble you with 
this letter. Perhaps any other man would know enough 
without further information, but I consider it my peculiar 
right to plead ignorance and your bounden duty to aUow 
the plea. 

" I want in all cases to do right; and most particularly 
so in all cases with women. I want, at this particular time, 
more than anything else, to do right with you, and if I 
knew it would be doing right, as I rather suspect it would, 
to let you alone, I would do it. And for the purpose of 
making the matter as plain as possible, I now say that you 
can now drop the subject, dismiss your thoughts (if you 
ever had any) from me forever, and leave this letter un- 
answered without calling forth one accusing murmur from 
me. And I will even go farther and say, that if it will add 
anything to your comfort or peace of mind to do so, it is my 
sincere wish that you should. Do not understand by this 
that I wish to cut your acquaintance. I mean no such 
thing. What I do wish is that our further acquaintance 
shall depend upon yourself. If such further acquaintance 
would contribute nothing to your happiness I am sure it 
would not to mine. If you feel yourself in any degree 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 41 

bound to me, I am now willing to release you, provided you 
wish it; while, on the other hand, I am willing and even 
anxious to bind you faster if I can be convinced that it will 
in any considerable degree add to your happiness. This, 
indeed, is the whole question with me. Nothing would 
make me more miserable, nothing more unhappy, than to 
know you were so. 

" In what I have now said, I think I cannot be mis- 
understood; and to make myself understood is the sole 
object of this letter. 

"If it suits you best not to answer this — farewell — a 
long life and a merry one attend you. But if you conclude 
to write back, speak as plainly as I do. There can be 
neither harm nor danger in saying to me anything you 
think, just in the manner you think it. My respects to 
your sister. — Your friend, Lincoln " 

Neither one of them is a love-letter. Yet Lincoln ad- 
mitted that he was disappointed, and that he suffered 
at the outcome as if he were disappointed in love. At 
the same time he called it a scrape. He was in a scrape, 
and he got out of it. In his love, as in his politics, and 
in all his other walks of life, he seemed to have no de- 
finite ideal, no bright star to which youth so eagerly 
hitches his waggon. He early tempered and com- 
promised with the realities about him. But his own 
personal conduct in all these fortuitous paths of his 
are somehow noble, and ended always as if he had begun 
idealistically. His letter to Mrs Browning at the close 
of this " scrape," as he calls it, with Miss Owens, maligns 
himself, and at the same time there is a hint here and 
there of the real feeling that lay behind it. He himself 
said about the letter, when asked if she should make it 
public twenty-five years later, that it had too much 
4 



42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

truth for publication. The letter is dated Springfield, 
1st April 1838 : 

" Dear Madam, — ^Without apologizing for being egotis- 
tical, I shall make the history of so much of my life as has 
elapsed since I saw you the subject of this letter. And, 
by the way, I now discover that, in order to give a full 
and intelligible account of the things I have done and 
suffered since I saw you, I shall necessarily have to relate 
some that happened before. 

" It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married 
lady of my acquaintance and who was a great friend of mine, 
being about to pay a visit to her father and other relatives 
residing in Kentucky, proposed to me that on her return 
she would bring a sister of hers with her on condition that I 
would engage to become her brother-in-law with all con- 
venient dispatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal, for 
you know I could not have done otherwise, had I really 
been averse to it ; but privately, between you and me, I was 
most confoundedly well pleased with the project. I had 
seen the said sister some three years before, thought her 
intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to 
plodding through life hand-in-hand with her. Time passed 
on, the lady took the journey, and in due time returned, 
sister in company sure enough. This astonished me a little ; 
for it appeared to me that her coming so readily showed 
that she was a trifle too wilhng; but, on reflection, it oc- 
curred to me that she might have been prevailed on by her 
married sister to come, without anything concerning me 
ever having been mentioned to her; and so I concluded 
that, if no other objection presented itself, I would consent 
to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her 
arrival in the neighbourhood ; for, be it remembered, I had 
not yet seen her, except about three years previous, as above 
mentioned. In a few days we had an interview; and, 
although I had seen her before, she did not look as my 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 43 

imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, 
but she now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew 
she was called an ' old maid,' and I felt no doubt of the 
truth of at least half of the appellation ; but now, when I 
beheld her, I could not fo my hfe avoid thinking of my 
mother; and this, not from ^\^thered features, for her skin 
was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles, 
but from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in 
general, and from a kind of notion that ran in my head that 
nothing could have commenced at the size of infancy and 
reached her present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty 
years; and, in short, I was not at all pleased with her. But 
what could I do? I had told her sister that I would take 
her for better or for worse; and I made a point of honour 
and conscience in all things to stick to my word, especially 
if others had been induced to act on it, which in this case 
I had no doubt they had; for I was now fairly convinced 
that no other man on earth would have her, and hence the 
conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bar- 
gain. ' Well,' thought I, ' I have said it, and, be the conse- 
quences what they may, it shall not be my fault if I fail 
to do it.' At once I determined to consider her my wife; 
and, this done, all my powers of discovery were put to work 
in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off 
against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, 
but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. 
Exclusive of this, no woman that I have ever seen has a 
finer face. I also tried to convince myself that the mind 
was much more to be valued than the person ; and in this she 
was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I 
had been acquainted. 

"Shortly after this, without coming to any positive under- 
standing with her, I set out for Vandaha, when and where 
you first saw me. During my stay there I had letters from 
her which did not change my opinion of either her intellect 
or her intention, but on the contrary confirmed it in both. 



44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" All this while, although I was fixed, ' firm as the surge- 
compelling rock,' in my resolution, I found I was continually 
repenting the rashness which had led me to make it. 
Through life I have been in no bondage, either real or 
imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired 
to be free. After my return home I saw nothing to change 
my opinions of her in any particular. She was the same, 
and so was I. I now spent my time in planning how I 
might get along through life after my contemplated change 
of circumstances should have taken place, and how I might 
procrastinate the evil day for a time, which I really dreaded 
as much, perhaps more, than an Irishman does the halter. 

" After all my suffering upon this deeply interesting 
subject, here I am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely out 
of the ' scrape ' ; and now I want to know if you can guess 
how I got out of it — out, clear, in every sense of the term; 
no violation of word, honour, conscience. I don't beheve 
you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As 
the lawyer says, it was done in the manner following, to 
wit: After I had delayed the matter as long as I thought 
I could in honour do (which, by the way, had brought me 
round into the last fall), I concluded I might as well bring 
it to a consummation without further delay; and so I 
mustered my resolution, and made the proposal to her direct ; 
but shocking to relate, she answered 'No.' At first I sup- 
posed she did it through an affectation of modesty, which I 
thought but ill became her under the pecuUar circumstances 
of her case ; but, on my renewal of the charge, I found that 
she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I tried 
it again and again, but with the same success, or rather with 
the same want of success. 

" I finally was forced to give it up; at which I very 
unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond endur- 
ance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hundred differ- 
ent ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the reflection 
that I had been too stupid to discover her intentions, and at 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 45 

the same time never doubting that I understood them per- 
fectly; and also, that she, whom I had taught myself to 
beheve nobody else would have, had actually rejected me 
with all my fancied greatness. And, to cap the whole, I 
then for the first time began to suspect that I was really a 
httle in love with her. But let it all go. I'll try to outHve 
it. Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this 
can never with truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in 
this instance, made a fool of myself. I have now come to 
the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this 
reason: I can never be satisfied with anyone who would 
be blockhead enough to have me. 

" When you receive this, write me a long yarn about 
something to amuse me. Give my respects to Mr Browning. 
— Your sincere friend, A. Lincoln " 

However, the last phrase in the letter, " I have 
come to the conclusion never again to think of marry- 
ing," was in no way seriously meant by Lincoln. He 
was thinking very much of marrying. It seemed to 
him a way out of his loneliness, and he went about 
trying to overcome it in a deliberate manner, not seem- 
ing to understand that the result would likely be to 
augment it for the rest of his life. And so he delibe- 
rately sought to lose himself in marriage. He found 
many objects of his affection, but to fix upon someone 
to marry, there his courage failed him. He wanted 
the abandonment of love, but could not abandon him- 
self to it. Poor and homely as he was, brought up in 
sordidness, he sought beauty. He who had had so 
little culture, wanted culture. He thought his years 
were going from him, and he wanted youth. At the 
age of thirty-two we find him proposing to a young 
girl of sixteen. 



46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Not much is known about this quest, for at this time 
the other principal in the drama of his Hfe appeared. 
She was Mary Todd, a Kentucky belle of twenty-one, 
and a member of one of the " better families." Her 
sister was married to Ninian Edwards, who had been 
Lincoln's colleague in the Long Nine. She came to 
visit this sister in Springfield, and Lincoln met her and 
was attracted to her, Mrs Edwards said she often 
watched the courtship go on, he seated silent, gazing 
at her as if irresistibly drawn by some superior and 
unseen power, while she carried on the conversation. 
No doubt he was attracted to her for the position he had 
not ; she had family behind her, she had traditions, she 
had education. She spoke French as fluently as English. 
She was a woman of the social world and he wanted to 
be in it. They became engaged to be married ; but the 
old doubts assailed him, and at one point he wrote a 
letter definitely breaking his engagement. 

She, in the meantime, was being courted by 
Stephen Douglas, who had already shown himself 
to be Lincoln's rival in another field — politics, 
which was to culminate in a rivalry that was 
to last through many years, and carry them into 
the very highest fields of political warfare. In these 
early days Douglas, the little giant, brilliant and 
self-assured, walked arm-in-arm with Mary Todd, 
passing Lincoln on the street, as he ostensibly paid 
his court to her. Here again there were conflicting 
versions: one, that Mary Todd encouraged Douglas 
only to spur on the attentions of Lincoln, whose ardour 
was flagging. Others, that she really loved Douglas, 
who, to all appearances, was truly better suited to her, 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 47 

but that she did not feel free to accept him because 
of her engagement to Lincoln. 

The effect of this play on Lincoln was not to spur him 
on in his attentions at all, but to make him think more 
seriously whether marriage between them was advisable, 
and whether he really loved her well enough. He came 
tc the conclusion that he did not, and he wrote her a 
letter, setting her free. He took it to Speed's store and 
asked Speed to deliver it for him. Speed says he threw 
the letter into the fire and told him that if he had the 
courage of manhood to go and see the lady himself. It 
was not that Speed wanted Lincohi to marry, but he 
thought the personal visit would be better policy. 
" For words put in writing stand a living and eternal 
monument against you, while in a private conversation 
they are forgotten, misunderstood or unnoticed." Speed 
gave him advice as to his conduct. " Tell her, if you do 
not love her, the facts, and that you will not marry her," 
he said. " Be careful not to say too much, and then 
leave at your earliest opportunity." 

Lincoln buttoned up his coat and went forth with a 
determined air to carry out his friend's advice. Speed 
waited for his return. Ten o'clock came, and still 
Lincoln had not returned. Finally, after eleven, Lincoln 
entered, and reported the result of his visit. He did as 
he was told, he said, but when he told her he did not 
love her she burst into tears, and almost springing from 
her chair and wringing her hands as if in agony said 
something about the deceiver himself being deceived. 
This was too much for him ; he, too, began to cry, and 
he caught her in his arms and kissed her. And so, instead 
of breaking the engagement, Lincoln was " in again," 



48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

as he expressed it. Douglas had now dropped out of 
the race, by the advice of her people, and the mar- 
riage of Lincoln and Mary Todd was fixed for the ist 
of January 1841. 

Again doubts assailed him and he was unable to carry 
out the contract. The wedding-day arrived, the pre- 
parations were made, the guests were assembled, t\e 
bride was dressed in her gown and veil, but the groom 
did not appear. What she felt, high-spirited and proud, 
can be imagined. WTiat he felt is told by his friends. 
They found him at daybreak, wandering about, miser- 
able, desperate, on the verge of suicide. They watched 
him in their rooms, day and night. Mrs Edwards and 
Mary gave the verdict that he was insane. He was 
sufficiently balanced mentally to attend the Legisla- 
ture next day, but then depression seized him, and 
he absented himself for several weeks. On the 19th, 
Harden announced his illness in the House. Four days 
later he wrote to his partner, Stuart: " I am now the 
most miserable man living. If what I feel were distri- 
buted to the whole human family there would not be 
one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be 
better I cannot tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To 
remain as I am is impossible. I must die, or be better, 
as it appears to me. ... I fear I shall be unable to 
attend to any business here, and a change of scene 
might hurt me. If I could be myself I would rather re- 
main at home with Judge Logan. I can write no more." 

Towards the end of the session he resumed his seat, 
but took no interest in the proceedings and only 
answered the roll calls. As soon as the session closed 
he went with his friend Speed on a visit to his family in 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 49 

Kentucky, where Speed's mother, who seemed to be 
impressed with the tall, melancholy-looking friend her 
son brought, gave him a Bible to read and tried to com- 
fort him. He was much depressed, says Speed, and at 
first contemplated suicide. He certainly wrote some 
lines to the Sangamon Journal under the title of 
" Suicide." When hunting through the files for these 
lines, after Lincoln's death, Herndon says he found they 
had been cut out, and he supposed that it was done by 
Lincoln, or by someone at his instigation. 

In the Fall he returned to Springfield with Speed, 
who was going through the same experience that Lin- 
coln had gone through six months earlier. He was to 
be married, and doubt and hesitancy overcame him. 
Lincoln, who evidently regretted his own lack of cour- 
age, now stepped in to try to prevent his friend from com- 
mitting the blunders he had himself made. He argued 
with him, advised him, bore with him, and, what is most 
significant, always urged the point that he should marry 
and not run away. It was a telling conclusion. 

A letter, dated ist January 1842, showed his argu- 
ment with himself as well as his argument with Speed. 
" I know," he says, " what the painful point with you 
at all times is when you are honest. It is an apprehen- 
sion that you do not love her as you should. What 
nonsense. How came you to court her? Did you court 
her for her wealth? You say she had none. But you 
say you reasoned yourself into it. What do you mean 
by that? Was it not that you found yourself unable to 
reason yourself out of it? Did you not think and partly 
form the purpose of courting her the first time you ever 
saw her or heard of her? What had reason to do with 



50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it at that early stage? There was nothing at that time 
for reason to work upon — whether she was merely able, 
sensible, or even of good character, you did not nor 
could then know, except perhaps you might infer the 
least from the company you found her in. . . . Say 
candidly, were not those heavenly black eyes the whole 
basis of all your reasoning on the subject? After you 
and I had once been at the residence, did you not go 
and take me all the way to Lexington and back for no 
other purpose but to get to see her again on your return 
on that evening and take a trip for that express object? 
What earthly consideration would you take to find 
her scouting and despising you and giving herself to 
another? But of this you need have no apprehension, 
and therefore you cannot bring it home to your 
feelings." 

Herndon says Lincoln was bringing home his own 
feelings at the time of Mary Todd's flirtation with 
Douglas, and so he continued to admonish and encour- 
age Speed. He culled proof from every instance that 
fell in his path. Speed's betrothed had been ill, which 
was a cause of still greater depression to him. Lincoln 
wrote: 

" I hope and believe that your present anxiety about 
her health and her life must and will forever banish those 
horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to truth 
of your affection for her. If they can once and forever be 
removed (and I almost feel a presentiment that the Almighty 
has sent your present affliction expressly for that object) 
surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their immeasur- 
able measure of misery. . . . 

" It really appears to me that you yourself ought to re- 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 51 

joice and not sorrow at this indubitable evidence of your 
undying affection for her. Why, Speed, if you did not love 
her, although you might not wish her death, you would most 
certainly be resigned to it. Perhaps this point is no longer 
a question with you, and my pertinacious dwelHng upon it 
is a rude intrusion upon your feelings. If so you must pardon 
me. You know the hell I have suffered on that point and 
how tender I am upon it. You know I do not mean wrong. 
I have been quite clear of hypo since you left, even better 
than I was along in the Fall." 

In February Speed was married, and Lincoln offered 
him his last counsel, for after that, as he himself put it, 
" you will be on ground that I have never occupied," 
and consequently might advise wrongly. His letter 
was still in the vein of encouragement for the plunge 
he himself had not dared to take : 

" I do fondly hope, however, that you will never again 
need any comfort from abroad. ... I incline to think it 
probable that your nerves will occasionally fail you for 
awhile; but once you get them firmly graded now, that 
trouble is over forever. If you went through the ceremony 
calmly, or even with sufficient composure not to excite alarm 
in any present, you are safe beyond question, and in two or 
three months, to say the most, will be the happiest of 
men." 

After Speed's marriage Lincoln seemed very much 
relieved that the ordeal was over. Then a slight 
anxiety came to him lest Speed might ^fter all be un- 
happy. He wTote him two letters in one day. The 
first was an acknowledgment of his marriage, the 
second was a little more intimate. Marriage, he said, 






52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was a consummation, and could not see why there should 
be any unhappiness in it. "I feel somewhat jealous 
of both of you now," he says. " You will be so exclu- 
sively concerned for one another that I shall be entirely 
forgotten. ... If you could but contemplate her 
(Speed's wife) through my imagination, it would appear 
ridiculous to me that anyone should for a moment be 
unhappy with her. My old father used to have a say- 
ing that if you made a bad bargain hug it all the tighter, 
and it occurs to me that if the bargain just closed can 
possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most 
pleasant one for applying that maxim to which my 
fancy can by any effort picture." 

Having seen his friend safely across the rubicon, 
Lincoln fell back again into his old isolation. He 
suffered that he should have made Mary Todd suffer. 
He suffered also that he did not have abandon enough 
to throw himself into new happiness. Several weeks 
after Speed's marriage he writes : 



" It cannot be told how it thriUs me with joy to hear 
you say you are ' far happier than you ever expected to be.' 
That much I know is enough. I know you too well to 
suppose your expectations were not at least sometimes 
extravagant, and if the reahty exceeds them all, I say, 
' Enough, dear Lord.' I am not going beyond the truth 
when I tell you that the short space it took me to read your 
last letter gave me more pleasure than the total sum of all 
I have enjoyed since that fatal first of January 1841. Since 
then it seems to me I should have been entirely happy 
but for the never-absent idea that there is one still un- 
happy whom I have contributed to make so. That 
kills my soul. I cannot but reproach myself for even 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 53 

wishing to be happy while she is otherwise. She ac- 
companied a large party on the railroad cars to Jack- 
sonville last Monday, and on her return spoke, so that 
I heard it, of having enjoyed the trip exceedingly. God 
be praised for that! " 



Through the medium of friends Mary Todd and 
Lincoln were brought together again. Somehow the 
past held them, and the year of misery and strain seemed 
to drop out at the pull of it. The human need held them 
too, and they were again drifting into marriage with 
each other, though this time a little secretively, as if 
mistrusting the event. In July Lincoln wrote to Speed : 
" I must gain confidence in my own ability to keep my 
resolves when they are made. In that ability I once 
prided myself as the only chief gem of my character; 
that gem I lost, how and where you know too well. I 
have not regained it, and until I do I cannot trust myself 
in any matter of much importance. I believe now that 
had you understood my case at the time as well as I 
understood yours afterwards, by the aid you would have 
given me I should have sailed clear through. But that 
does not now afford me sufficient confidence to begin 
that or the like of that again." 

It was evident, drift as he would into marriage, that 
he was on the horns of the dilemma of suffering without 
her and yet being unsatisfied with her. In October, a 
month before his own marriage, he wrote the last and 
most significant letter to Speed: 

" But I began this letter not for what I have been writing, 
but to say something on that subject which you know to be 



54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of such infinite solicitude to me . The immense sufferings you 
endured from the first days of September till the middle of 
February you never tried to conceal from me, and I well 
understood. You have now been the husband of a lovely 
woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now 
than the day you married her I well know, for without 
you could not be living. But I have your word for it, too, 
and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested 
in your letters. But I want to ask a close question: ' Are 
you in feeling as well as judgment glad you are married as 
you are? ' From anybody but me this would be an im- 
pudent question, not to be tolerated, but I know you will 
pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly, as I am im- 
patient to know." 



That the answer was satisfactory, that Speed felt 
glad as well as judged himself to be, was manifest by the 
fact that Lincoln himself took heart, and appeared at 
the little quiet ceremony of his own marriage on 4th 
November 1842. The licence and the minister were 
procured on the same day as the marriage. The aris- 
tocratic tone to the wedding was given by the bride, 
who saw to it that the ceremony should be Episcopal. 
Marriages in Springfield at this time were simple, 
civil affairs, usually performed by a magistrate. 

One of the guests, Thomas C. Brown, an old-timer of 
the Supreme Court, was heard to whisper, when Lincoln 
placed the ring on the bride's finger, repeating, " With 
this ring I thee endow with all my goods and chattels, 
lands and tenements," — " God Almighty, Lincoln, the 
statute fixes all that! " This lack of reverence was 
perhaps better manifested by the groom himself, who, 
when dressing for the occasion at his friend Butler's 



ROMANCE AND MARRIAGE 55 

house, was asked by Butler's little son, " Where are you 
going? " "To hell, I suppose," was Lincoln's reply. 

The reconciliation and marriage was interwoven 
with a romantic incident of a duel. Lincoln had 
written a satirical letter in the Sangamon Journal, 
dated from " Lost Townships," and signed " Rebecca," 
which lampooned the auditor, Shields, who was a 
Democrat, for demanding that the taxes be paid 
in silver instead of in State paper. Shields was out- 
raged at the personal invectives and the satire, and 
threatened to fight. Mary Todd and a young friend, 
Julia Jayne, finding the letter from " Rebecca " so 
successful, wrote another, under the same name, sug- 
gesting that Shields marry " Rebecca " instead of fight. 
The girls then ended the controversy by a poem, which 
celebrated the marriage. Shields, now trebly out- 
raged, asked who the author was, and when told it was 
Lincoln, challenged him to a duel. He accepted, and 
as duelling was forbidden by law in the State of Illinois, 
they went over into Missouri to fight it out. Lincoln, 
as the one challenged, had the right to choose the 
weapons, and he chose heavy broadswords and laid down 
the conditions. A plank of ten feet was to separate the 
combatants, which they were not to cross on pain of 
death. A line three feet wide was to be extended along- 
side of it, and in this oblong they were to fight. They 
met, the seconds were arranged, and then satisfactory 
explanations were offered, and the duel ended in a few 
written statements. Lincoln seems to have been rather 
in the wrong in this story, for his own letter was much 
more offensive than the young ladies', and he had 
initiated the attack. He never himself liked to refer to 



56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the duel, and begged his friends never to mention it. 
Fortunately it did not come back very often to bother 
him much in politics, and only almost eighteen years 
after, at the time of his election for President in i860, 
was it made to go the rounds with any effect. 



A 



CHAPTER III 

CONGRESS 

FTER his marriage Lincoln lived with his wife 
in the Globe Tavern, kept by a Mrs Beck, paying 
four dollars a week for board. There, in August, 
their son, Robert Todd, was born. With this increase in 
the family Lincoln bought a house owned by a preacher, 
in which they lived up to the day he left Springfield for 
the White House. He had dissolved his partnership 
with Stuart in 1841, and had formed a new one with 
Stephen T. Logan, a former judge of the Circuit Court. 
Judge Logan was " a little weazened man, with a high, 
shrill voice, a keen, shrewd face, and a shock of yellow- 
white hair, picturesque in his old cape, and admittedly 
the best trial lawyer in the state." He was very 
different from Lincoln, the former being punctilious and 
formal, and loving money very much, while the latter 
was careless and knew principle better than technicali- 
ties. As for wealth, Lincoln regarded it simply as " a 
superfluity of things we don't need." They were both 
good Whigs and both ambitious in politics. A year after 
Lincoln's marriage, in 1843, the partnership was dissolved 
because of money difficulties, for Lincoln was not getting 
enough now that his needs were greater, and because of 
differences in temperament. 

Hemdon, who was ten years his junior, and who had 
studied law in the office of Logan & Lincoln, was now 
invited by Lincoln to become his partner, and the firm 
5 57 



58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Lincoln & Hemdon hung out its shingle on 20th 
September 1843. Lincoln, though no longer running 
for the State Legislature, a post too insignificant for him, 
was nevertheless still active in politics. In 1842 he 
was very eager to be sent to Congress. But here, for 
the first time, he was beaten in Convention on the ground 
that must have sounded strange to him indeed — ^his 
high-born connections. His wife was an Episcopalian, 
a Todd, an aristocrat, and he himself had once talked 
of fighting a duel. Also, because he was a Deist, a 
sceptic, and though advocating temperance he was not 
over-strict in the matter. The result was that he was 
nominated as a delegate on behalf of Baker, which he 
wrote to Speed was " a good deal like a fellow who is 
made groomsman to a man that has cut him out and is 
marrying his own dear gal." Not Baker, but a man 
called Harden won the nomination, and as there seems to 
have been a tacit agreement that Harden, Baker, Lincoln 
and Logan should each be sent to Congress in turn, 
Lincoln reluctantly stood aside for Baker two years later, 
in 1844. It was not until 1846 that his own turn came. 
Early in 1842, before his marriage, he had taken part 
in the Washingtonian movement which was organized 
to suppress the evils of intemperance. Lincoln spoke 
all over the State, and in many churches, but good as 
were his intentions, the result was only to outrage the 
more ardent crusaders. " In my judgment," he said, 
" such of us who have never fallen victims have been 
spared more from the absence of appetite than from any 
mental or moral superiority over those who have. In- 
deed, I believe if we take habitual drunkards as a class, 
their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous 



CONGRESS 59 

comparison v^dth those of any other class." These senti- 
ments were remembered against him in his canvass for 
the Congressional election. At the time they were ex- 
pressed there were open comments of displeasure. " It 
is a shame," one man was heard to say, " that he should 
be permitted to abuse us so in the House of the 
Lord." 

In 1844, though stepping aside in the Congressional 
nomination for Baker, he was nominated on the elec- 
toral ticket for Clay, and he canvassed the state, 
making very florid political speeches. He even went 
into Indiana and spoke at Gentry ville, where he had 
spent his boyhood, and which he had not seen for 
twenty years. The new cry of " aristocrat " hurled 
against him worried him. He was in no way disposed 
to lose his friends of the type of the Clary Grove Boys. 
" As to my distinguished connections," he said, " that 
seems strange to me, for I do not remember of but one 
who ever came to see me, and while he was in town he 
was accused of stealing a Jew's harp." To his old friend 
Matheney he said: " Why, Jim, I am now and always 
shall be the same Abe Lincoln I was when you first saw 
me." 

The return to the scene of his childhood threw him 
into a melancholy mood, and he expressed himself in 
two poems of sad quality. " That part of the country," 
he wrote, "is as unpoetical as any spot on earth; but 
still, seeing it and its objects and its inhabitants aroused 
feelings in me which were certainly poetry; though 
whether my expression of these feelings is poetry is 
quite another matter." The following stanza is sufh- 
^ cient to show the strain of his muse: 



6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" The friends I left that parting day, 
How changed as time has sped; 
Young childhood grown, strong manhood grey. 
And half of all are dead." 



In 1840 the oligarchy of the South was coming into 
its own. Though Harrison, a Whig, had been elected 
as President, he died the month after his inauguration, 
and the Vice-President, Tyler, who took office in his 
stead, showed himself more Democrat than Whig. 
He was eager to mark his administration with an 
event which would strengthen the South. For a 
decade the Southern slave-holders had overrun Texas 
with a hope that they could join it some day to the 
Southern States of America. During Jackson's ad- 
ministrations, and many times during Tyler's, ways 
and means were considered as to the annexation of 
Texas, and resolutions to annex Texas were passed in the 
House and defeated in the Senate, or vice versa. The 
cry had always been that Great Britain was intriguing 
to defeat the annexation of Texas so as to accomplish 
the abolition of slavery first in that region, and after- 
wards through the United States, " a blow calamitous 
to this continent beyond description." A letter of 
Jackson's was published with great effect, which said: 
" Great Britain has already made treaties with Texas, 
and we know that far-seeing nation never omits a cir- 
cumstance in her extensive intercourse with the world 
which can be turned to account in increasing her mili- 
tary resources. May she not enter into an alliance with 
Texas? And, reserving, as she doubtless will, the 
north-western boundary question as the cause of war 



CONGRESS 6i 

with us whenever she chooses to declare it, let her sup- 
pose that as an ally with Texas we are to fight her. 
Preparatory to such a movement she sends her 20,000 
or 30,000 men to Texas, organizes them on the Sabine, 
where supplies and arms can be concentrated before we 
have even notice of her intentions, makes a lodgment 
on the Mississippi, excites the negroes to insurrection, 
the lower country falls, with it New Orleans, and a 
servile war rages through the whole South and West," 

Such arguments finally brought the House around to 
adopting an annexation resolution, and Texas played its 
part in the nomination and elections of the Presidential 
candidates of 1844. Van Buren, who was the popular 
Democratic candidate, lost in Convention, because he 
was not for immediate annexation, and a " dark horse " 
candidate, Mr Polk, was nominated, who promised 
willingly to follow the behests of the South. The Whigs 
nominated Henry Clay, who for thirty years had stood 
as the bulwark of compromise between the North and 
South in American politics. Clay, in a letter, proclaimed 
himself against annexation, which aroused so much 
opposition from the Southern WTiigs that a few weeks 
before election he wrote another, saying that, far from 
having any personal objection to the annexation of 
Texas, he would be glad to see it done. This lost him 
the Northern Whig vote. 

A new party was formed at the time, the Liberty 
Party, which stood absolutely opposed to the annexa- 
tion of Texas, on the ground that it would spread 
slavery in the United States. Their platform was 
radical as to property, and stood for equality in civic 
rights. The Northern Conscience-Whigs, so-called 



62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

because they were conscientiously opposed to slavery, 
went over to the Liberty Party. In the meantime 
Tyler consummated the annexation of Texas by im- 
mediately sending over a message to a Convention sitting 
in Austin, Texas, proposing to admit her into the United 
States. The Convention accepted the proposal, and a 
few weeks before Tyler's administration closed, Texas 
was admitted into the Union with all formal rights. 
The Presidential election, because of this split in the 
Northern ranks and the solidarity shown in the South, 
was a victory for Polk, who was pledged to carry on 
the principles begun by Tyler, 

Lincoln at this crisis appeared merely as a Pre- 
sidential elector for Clay, and showed himself to be 
a good partisan, but with no driving principle. The 
Liberty Party was outspoken, the Democratic was re- 
volutionary in its cry of the manifest destiny of the 
United States, but oblivious to all moral principles, 
the Whig Party, about to split up, was resting its weight 
on personalities and losing ground with the people. 
Mr Clay, they said, was a great man and ought to be 
President. His election would have been the election 
of a popular hero, not the expression of a political prin- 
ciple. However, what seemed merely partisanship 
had beneath it a statesmanlike attitude towards the 
politics of the country, since for all its vagueness it 
was anti-sectional. It would have been perhaps the 
best immediate expression of the majorit5^ It was this 
sense of Democratic majority rule which kept Lincoln a 
Whig, and was a clue to his public acts and thoughts. 
As a Democrat in principle Lincoln would work with 
the majority; as a moral entity he would first give him- 



CONGRESS 6 



o 



self the privilege of speaking his mind as to the morality 
of what this majority was doing. We can see this line 
of thinking carried out better two years later, when he 
was elected member of Congress. 

Incidental to his own election to Congress he had 
as an opponent on the Democratic ticket the famous 
Methodist preacher, Peter Cartwright, who for seventy 
years had been a circuit preacher, very well known and 
popular in the West. He was a Protestant Friar Tuck, 
around whom had grown many bar-room and news- 
paper legends. Here again the cry of " aristocrat and 
atheist " was hurled against Lincoln, as it had been 
two years before when he tried to get the nomination 
for Congress. However, he laid his campaign plans 
shrewdly and well, and towards the end of the canvass, 
when a Democrat offered to give him a vote, he was 
able to say, " I have got the preacher and I don't want 
your vote." 

Lincoln was elected by an overwhelming majority, 
one of the largest given in that district to a Congres- 
sional candidate between the years 1832 and 1852. He 
was the only Whig elected, and was called by them the 
" lone star of Illinois." The Lone Star, once in Con- 
gress, took a more radical position than his friends at 
home wished him to. The result of the annexation of 
Texas, as everyone had foreseen, was war. The re- 
solutions committing the Government to annexation 
had with them clauses that were evidently a declaration 
of war against Mexico. No definite boundary line was 
stated, and the Government immediately acted upon the 
principle that the boundary was the Rio Grande, and 
that all the territory east of it was the rightful property 



64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

of Texas, which the United States was bound to defend 
by its military power. On the other hand, the annexa- 
tion was especially irritating to the anti-slavery elements 
of the North, for the resolutions provided that four 
States could be formed out of the territory of Texas 
Ijdng south of 36° 30', with or without slavery, while 
all territory lying north, which touched the Missouri 
Compromise line, should be admitted without slavery. 
As Texas comprised no territory north of that line, 
the clause was considered insulting and derisive. 
The Polk Administration immediately sent troops to 
the frontier and actually ordered an attack upon 
Mexico. 

In the first session of Congress in which Lincoln 
sat little went on but a discussion of the war. Lincoln 
voted to continue the supplies for it, since it had been 
begun, but prefaced his vote with a strong censure 
upon the Administration for having begun it by a 
speech called the " Spot resolutions," in which he 
demanded that Polk name the exact spot where he 
alleged the Mexicans had invaded American soil and 
shed American blood. For this he brought upon him- 
self the censure of his own party and that of his friends. 
It seemed to them unpatriotic and impolitic. He 
tried to explain to them the difference between approv- 
ing the war and voting supplies to the soldiers. The 
latter he thought was indispensable after the fact, but he 
could not help censuring the fact of the war. In writing 
to his friends in defence of his action he said : " I will stake 
my life that if you had been in my place you would have 
voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you 
felt and knew to be a He? I know you would not. 



CONGRESS 65 

Would you have gone out of the House, skulked the 
vote? I expect not. . . . Richardson's resolutions, 
introduced before I made any move or gave any vote 
upon the subject, made the direct question of the justice 
of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would. 
You are compelled to speak, and your only alternative 
is to tell the truth or tell a lie." 

He was against the war as unconstitutional; but 
twenty years later he emancipated the slaves with as 
little regard for the Constitution as did Polk in com- 
mencing this Mexican war. " The provision of the Con- 
stitution giving the war-making power to Congress," he 
insists, " was dictated, as I understand it, by the follow- 
ing reasons: kings had always been involving and im- 
poverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, 
if not always, that the good of the people was the object. 
This our convention understood to be the most oppres- 
sive of all kingly oppressions; and they resolved so to 
frame the Constitution that no man should hold the 
power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your 
view destroys the whole matter and places our Pre- 
sident where kings have always stood." 

Before the close of the war, when the probability of 
acquiring a large tract of land from Mexico became 
certain, the wrangle over the cause of the war ceased, 
and the question arose as to the form in which the new 
territory was to be admitted. Here the question of 
slavery jumped to the foreground again. As the whole 
war was prosecuted only for the extension of slavery, 
the North feared that the acquisition of new territory 
meant a still greater extension of slavery, and a proviso 
was brought in by Wilmot of Pennsylvania, which 



66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

said that an express and fundamental condition to the 
acquisition of any territory from the repubhc of Mexico 
to the United States was that " neither slavery nor 
voluntary servitude shall exist in any part of the said 
territory." The amendment was adopted and the Bill 
reported to the House. The Southern members, of 
course, made desperate efforts to kill the Bill, but they 
failed. However, it was sent to the Senate a few hours 
before the close of the session, and it lapsed without a 
vote. 

When the war was really ended and the treaty of 
peace sent to the Senate, the subject took on new import- 
ance, and the Wilmot Proviso brought up again before 
the House no longer had the same success of the session 
before. The fight was kept up in the House in many 
forms during the entire session, and Lincoln used to say 
that he voted for the Wilmot Proviso about forty-two 
times. But if it ever gained any advantage in the House 
it was usually lost in the Senate, and no progress was 
made with the Proviso. The South was vigilant in 
regard to its institution of slavery. One man rose to 
censure the House because someone spoke of the in- 
stitution of slavery as ' ' peculiar . " " Ours is the general 
system of the world," he said, " and the free system is 
the pecuUar one." Another gentleman remarked that 
slavery was natural just as barbarism was natural, just 
as fig leaves and bear skins were a natural dress. It 
was the beginning of the new aggressive policy of the 
pro-slavery advocates. 

Lincoln, before the close of the first session, made 
a peculiar stump-speech in Congress in favour of General 
Taylor, who was a member of the WTiig Party, for the 



CONGRESS 67 

Presidential election of 1848. Besides making this 
speech in Congress for Tayloi^ he canvassed New England 
for him. Here, for the first time, the Lone Star of Illi- 
nois met the New England statesmen and politicians. 
He seems to have been very well received by the Whigs, 
but as again the Whigs had no platform, but based their 
campaign on personalities, his speeches were not very 
interesting. He attacked the newly-formed Free-Soil 
Party, the outgrowth of the Liberal Party. He did 
not see its significance, he could not see that before a 
generation should have waned it would blaze the way 
before him, and that in the Republican campaign of 
i860 this party and not the Whigs, with whom he con- 
sorted now, would be his staff of support. In that 
future hour it was the New England Whigs who failed 
him, and it was the Free-Soil Party who gave their 
great vote to the Republican candidate of that year, 
who was to be no other than himself. 

Lincoln's cautious, conservative friends had a more 
subduing effect on him than he knew. Except for his 
young law partner, Herndon, who was an ardent Aboli- 
tionist, he was surrounded by a conservative pro-slavery 
element, his wife and all her friends being Southern. 
He himself had the Southerner's distrust of the negro, 
though it was coupled with the Westerner's conception 
of democracy and justice. There was to be justice and 
democracy for the white man, and as for the negro, 
he was sorely puzzled about him. This much he 
knew, that slavery was unjust, and he went back 
to his second term of Congress and indulged in a 
little determined play of his own. He made no 
speeches on the popular questions of the hour, but 



68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

spent his time preparing a Bill for the gradual aboHtion 
of slavery in the district of Columbia. This was a 
measure which he Imew would never have any im- 
mediate effect — in discussion it was generally laid on 
the table — and was really brought in by members who 
had nothing better to say. In his case, it might have 
been more as an answer to Herndon than as a hope 
that he was saying something which would distinguish 
him in Congress. The Bill was not very radical, pro- 
viding as it did for a temporary system of apprentice- 
ship and eventual emancipation of children born of 
slave mothers after ist January 1850. Moreover, the 
Bill endorsed the return of fugitive slaves. It met 
with the usual results. It was blocked by the South 
and never came to a vote. 

Lincoln, who had gone to Congress with his wife 
and two children, returned from his poHtical ex- 
ploits depressed and sad. He had not made his mark 
with his own party, and his hope lay in getting some 
honourable position in the Government as a reward for 
his faithful service in the Whig campaign for General 
Taylor. Taylor was elected, and Lincoln made a 
journey to Washington in the hope of getting the post 
of Commissioner-General of the Land Ofhce, which he 
heard would be given to a citizen of his state. He was 
not successful, but the position of Governor or Secre- 
tary of Oregon was offered him instead. He himself 
considered it favourably, but Mrs Lincoln was opposed 
to going out to such far territory, and he dechned the 
offer. He came back to Springfield with a conscious- 
ness of failure. He had not won the glory in pohtics 
he had hoped for, he was without money and without a 



CONGRESS 69 < 

definite post. He fell back, at forty, to the profession of 1 

a country lawyer, retreating into himself from his own I 

immediate circle as he retreated from the world at large. ■ 

They were crisis years, years of wandering in the desert, ] 

of bitterness and maladjustment, and yet withal of ' 

growth and regeneration. ■ 



CHAPTER IV 
ON THE CIRCUIT 

WE come now to one of the strangest and most 
vital periods in Lincoln's life. It was a 
period of " crisis years," when, as Herndon 
put it, " the iron entered his soul." He had attained 
all that in the glamour of youth seemed worth struggling 
for. Learning, culture, position, all had come to him, 
forced to him by his own indomitable wiU from the 
most uncouth beginnings. At thirty-five he found him- 
self no longer the pioneer farm-hand, but a leading 
member of one of the leading professions of the time, 
a returned member from Congress, and married into 
one of the most aristocratic families of the South. And 
having acquired family and worldly honour, satisfaction 
in them ceased, and a period of introspection and dis- 
pusionment set in. His career in Congress was not 
brilHant, and it left no mark on his future reputation, 
nor was it a help to any immediate step in his political 
career. 

In the two years that he had been away in Washing- 
ton his law practice had dropped from him, and when 
he came back he was diffident about accepting the same 
place he had held before with Herndon, who had in the 
meantime carried on the business of the firm. Herndon 
insisted that he resume his work as if he had not been 
away, and the two men worked together with a quiet 

understanding of each other. Lincoln was philosophical 

70 



ON THE CIRCUIT 71 

and given to see both sides of a question. Herndon 
was strongly opinionated and on the slavery question 
stood for absolute abolition. They kept all the leading 
Abolition papers then printed, from Garrison's Eman- 
cipator to the latest speech of Wendell Phillips or 
Theodore Parker. Herndon 's close communication 
with the Abolitionists of New England had a very 
marked effect upon Lincoln. It made him intellectu- 
ally convinced against the further extension of slavery, 
and helped him later to make the break more definite 
with his Whig connections. 

His life during these years was divided between a 
half year in Springfield, where he spent his day from 
early morning till late at night in his law office, and a 
half year on the Circuit, following what was called 
the eighth Judicial Court of Illinois, which comprised 
twenty counties. On these journeys, even when near 
Springfield, he did not go home for the week-end, 
preferring to stay around in the country inns reading 
and telling his stories for which legend has made him 
famous. 

His office in Springfield was on the second floor of a 
brick building. It was a large room, which was after- 
wards divided into two, and it had wdndows overlooking 
stable roofs and dingy back-yards. It held two baize- 
covered tables, a few chairs, a cot, an old-fashioned 
secretary, and a bookcase containing about two hundred 
books. There was absolutely no method of book-keep- 
ing in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. Lincoln carried 
his memoranda in his hat, as he did his letters when he 
was post-master. On one bundle of documents which 
littered his desk he had written : " When you can't find 



72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

it anjAvhere else, look in this." Now and then order 
came into this office, when a young clerk would take 
it upon himself to clean it up. One of the clerks, John 
H. Littlefield, said that once in cleaning up he found that 
a quantity of seed which Congress sends out for dis- 
tribution to the farmers, had been left among a pile of 
Whig speeches and Abolition papers, and the seed had 
taken root and sprouted in the dirt. 

As a lawyer it was said that he was excellent in 
grasping the basic principle of a case. But he was as 
faulty in technicalities as he was faulty in the mechani- 
cal work in his office. As to the latter, Herndon says he 
perhaps did less than any lawyer at the bar, leaving 
nearly all of it for him to do. Later they made use 
of the young students who came to study law with 
them. 

In letter-writing he was as informal as in all 
things else, and even his business letters blossomed 
with his own personality. Writing about a matter of 
business to a friend in 1839, he said: " A damned hook- 
billed Yankee is here besetting me at every turn I take, 
saying that Robert Kenzie never received the $80 to 
which he was entitled." In 1851 he wrote to one of his 
clients : " I have news from Ottawa that we win our case. 
As the Dutch justice said when he married folks, 
'Now, where ish my hundred tollars!'" In apolo- 
gizing for not answering a letter, he said: " First, 
I have been very busy in the United States Court. 
Second, when I received the letter I put it in my 
old hat, and buying a new one the next day, the old 
one was set aside, and so the letter was lost sight of for 
a time." 



ON THE CIRCUIT n 

This same informality pervaded all his dealings in 
life. He ushered in a new law student in his ofhce 
with this admonition: " I hope you will not become so 
enthusiastic in your studies of Blackstone and Kent as 
did two young men whom we had here. Do you see 
that spot over there? " he asked, pointing to a large 
ink-stain on the wall. " Well, one of these young men 
got so enthusiastic in his pursuit of legal lore that he 
fired an ink-stand at the other one's head, and that is 
the mark he made." 

Another young student who was in his office 
was much more interested in military matters than 
in his law. But that did not disturb Lincoln at 
all. On the contrary, he was impressed with the fact 
that he was interested in something. " That young 
man has a real genius for war," he would say 
appreciatively. 

Judge S. H. Treat described Lincoln's first appear- 
ance before him in court thus: " A case being called for 
hearing, Mr Lincoln stated that he appeared for the 
appellant, and was ready to proceed with the argu- 
ment. He then said: ' This is the first case I have ever 
had in this court, and I have therefore examined it with 
great care. As the court will perceive by looking at the 
abstract of the record, the only question in the case is 
one of authority. I have not been able to find any 
authority to sustain my side of the case, but I have 
found several cases directly in point on the other side. 
I will now give these authorities to the court, and then 
submit the case.' " 

Judge David Davis said of him that in all the ele- 
ments that constituted a lawyer he had few equals. 



74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

He was great at nisi prius and before an appellate tri- 
bunal. His mind was logical and direct, and he did not 
indulge in extraneous discussion. When convinced of 
the right, whether the cause was great or small, he was 
usually successful. In 1866 the same Judge Davis had 
said: " Mr Lincoln had no managing faculty or organiz- 
ing power. Hence a child could conform to the simple 
and technical rules, the means and the modes of getting 
at justice better than he. The law has its own rules, 
and a student could get at them or keep with them better 
than Lincoln." This seeming contradiction between 
the two statements was, however, true of Lincoln's 
nature. 

He had a quiet familiarity in the court. " I reckon 
this will go in," he would say. Or, if ruled out, " I 
reckon I was wrong then." " However," said a fellow- 
lawyer, " if anyone thought Lincoln was simple, he 
would soon find himself on his back in a ditch. For 
Lincoln would only give in to six points for the sake of 
a seventh, upon which the whole case might rest." 
Davis said of him also that " when in a lawsuit he be- 
lieved his client oppressed, as in the Wright case, he 
was hurtful in denunciation. When he attacked mean- 
ness, fraud or vice he was powerful, merciless in his 
castigation." The Wright case was a suit to compel 
a pension agent to refund a portion of the fee which he 
had withheld from the widow of a revolutionary soldier. 
Lincoln conducted the case free of charge, and even 
paid for the lodging and the fare of the widow. His 
notes for the case were as follows: " No contract; not 
professional services. Unreasonable charge. Money 
retained by Deft not given by Pl'ff. Revolutionary 



J 



ON THE CIRCUIT 75 

war — describe Valley Forge privations — ice — soldiers' 
bleeding feet — Pl'ff's husband — Soldier leaving home 
for army — Skin Deft. — Close." 

After describing in vivid figures the sufferings of the 
revolutionary soldiers at Valley Forge, as barefoot and 
bleeding they crept over the ice, he turned upon the de- 
fendant for fleecing the old woman, and literally did 
" skin him," sitting there, writhing under Lincoln's 
fire, a method still in use among country lawyers 
when desiring to impress a jury. Lincoln won the 
case. 

On the Circuit Herndon says he drove an open 
buggy drawn by a horse, raw-boned and weird- 
looking like himself. He was dressed like an ordinary 
farmer or stock - raiser. His hat was brown and 
faded, with the nap rubbed off. He wore a grey 
shawl or a short loose cloak, which was the style 
prevalent during the Mexican War, and which he had 
bought in Washington in 1849. His trousers were in- 
variably too short, and his coat and vest hung loosely 
on his gaunt frame. He carried a carpet bag, in which 
he kept his books and his change of linen, and an old 
faded green umbrella, with the knob gone from the 
handle, and tied together in the middle with a cord to 
keep it from flying open. Inside he had " A. Lincoln " 
sewn in large white cotton letters. He slept in a long, 
coarse yellow flannel shirt, which reached half-way 
between his knees and ankles. Attired thus, one of the 
young lawyers who first saw him said afterwards that 
he was the ungodliest figure he ever saw. Judge Davis 
said he never complained of his food or of his bed or 
lodging. 



76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

At one time he was presiding as judge in the 
absence of Davis, for whom he did that service often. 
The case brought before him was a sum of $28 on a 
suit of clothes which a minor son had bought without 
the authority of his father. The suit was against the 
father, who was wealthy, and the argument rested upon 
whether the clothes were necessary and suited the con- 
dition of the son's life. Lincoln ruled against the plea 
of necessity. " I have rarely in my life," he said, " worn 
a suit of clothes costing $28." 

Of this life on the Circuit many vivid pictures have 
been left by his colleagues. The freedom and the 
isolation suited his temperament. Like all sad people, 
he could be gay and hilarious with his companions. 
There are pictures of his long gaunt figure stretched 
upon beds too short, his legs dangling over the foot- 
board, studying Euclid, or of his sitting up in bed 
talking to himself wild and incoherent nonsense, or 
sitting moodily half the night through before the fire, 
gazing into it as if in some sombre and gloomy spell. 
On the other hand, there are pictures of story-telling 
jousts of not too delicate a flavour, which continued 
half the night amidst roars of laughter. 

His home life was even more isolated than his life 
on the Circuit. He could be seen occasionally walking 
to and fro on the sidewalk with a child in his arms, 
or pulling one in a little go-cart. Sometimes he would 
come furtively from the house very early in the morning, 
walking as if in deep thought, or in the evening go to a 
store to entertain the populace crowded around the 
stove. In the late afternoon he would go home to milk 
his cow, feed the horse, clean out the very humble stable 



ON THE CIRCUIT ^^ 

and chop wood. He was his own stable-boy, even 
beyond the time he was President-elect. There is a 
story of a neighbour hearing the blows of an axe very 
late in the night, and looking out he saw Lincoln, who 
had come home from a Circuit, chopping wood for his 
sohtary supper. 

In the rising values of land he never bought any and 
never speculated with it. His fees were modest, more 
modest than if he had practised in the town. He was 
invited to join a firm in Chicago, but refused, saying 
that he had a tendency to consumption, and that Cir- 
cuit riding suited his health better than the confinement 
in a city ofhce. But his fees on the Circuit were even 
smaller than the other lawyers demanded, and he was 
urged by his partner and by Judge Davis to raise them. 
This he would never do, and more than once he sent 
back a fee which his partner took, on the ground that 
it was exorbitant. There was only one large fee which 
he received. This was $5000 from the Illinois Railroad, 
which to-day to a modem corporation lawyer would seem 
ludicrously small. After winning a case in the railway's 
favour the firm of Lincoln & Herndon asked for a fee 
of $2000. A railway official, supposed to be the same 
M'Clellan who afterwards became Commander-in-Chief 
of the army of the Potomac, handed it back, saying that 
it was as much as Daniel Webster himself would have 
charged. Lincoln, stung by the retort, and egged on 
by his fellow-lawyers, brought in a suit for $5000 and 
won it. 

In another important case, in which he was paid 
well, he was hurt and offended by Edwin M. Stanton, 
later to become his Secretary of War. In 1857 Lincoln 



78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

was invited to Cincinnati by a Mr Manny, to defend him 
in an action brought by M'Cormick for infringement of 
the patent on his reaping-machine. The case was im- 
portant, and several well-known lawyers were brought 
together. Lincoln was also sent for, and he had pre- 
pared himself to speak in the case, for his ambition was 
aroused. It was understood that he was to make the 
plea. Later, to his surprise, Edwin M. Stanton was also 
sent for, and Stanton immediately over-rode him. He 
practically took the case from his hands and made the 
coveted speech. To add to this injury, Stanton in- 
sulted him. Some say that he called Lincoln within 
his hearing " a gorilla from Illinois." At any rate, he 
told Herndon that he had been roughly handled by 
" that man Stanton," and that he had overheard the 
latter from an adjoining room, while the door was 
slightly ajar, ask of someone, " Where did that long- 
armed creature come from, and what can he expect to 
do in this case? " Stanton described him as " a long, 
lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster 
for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had 
splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the 
Continent." This incident did not prevent Lincoln 
from making Stanton his Secretary of War when he 
thought the cause needed him. 

There are stories upon stories of little intimate 
services which connect him with the " plain people," 
as he called them. His life upon the Circuit made him 
one of them, and he had so far shaken the home-life 
from his shoulders that he was gradually tending to 
that absolute break with conservatism which had tied 
him down in the early days. He made a return to his 



ON THE CIRCUIT 79 

own kind in middle life. It was this coming down to 
fundamentals which gave him the courage to join the new 
progressive party of 1854, which meant breaking with 
his friends and connections as well as with his party. 
The Clary Grove Boys became more important to him 
than his wife's lady friends. After saving from the 
gallows the son of his old friend, Jack Armstrong, who 
was being tried for murder, he could go back to his 
home and lie down on the floor in the passage-way, and 
if her friends called could go to the door and promise 
" to trot them out." Life was too serious for formalities. 
The horse-hair sofa, the six stiff horse-hair chairs, and 
the httle centre table, with the gilded books, did not 
mean anything to him. He was no longer a poor 
white of Southern Illinois, hungering for the vain 
flourishes of social life. The pseudo-formalities of con- 
vention did not impress him. He was able to stand 
detached and aloof, and to generahze on the facts 
around him. Only once in these years did he come out 
before the public, and that was in 1852, to give a eulogy 
upon the life of Henry Clay, who had died. His bio- 
graphers, Nicolay and Hay, refuse to mention the fact, 
for it was a signal failure. He could no longer do it. 
There was something wrong in the successes of Clay. 
Lincoln mentioned a long list of them, but he returned 
ever to the analysis of the social make-up around him. 
The South's insistence that the negro had " no right in 
the white man's charter of rights," that is in the Decla- 
ration of Independence, he called false and ludicrous. 
Even Lincoln, so anxious to speak for the will of the ^ 
people, found that there was a moral right even above 
this will which had to be taken into account. It was 



8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a fighting principle. Henceforward " right " and 
" wrong " are the words he uses with the monotonous 
beat of a sledge-hammer, but fortunately for his 
political life he saw little in the demands of those 
whom he called the " plain people " which clashed with 
that which he considered to be right and wrong. 



CHAPTER V 
" ANTI-NEBRASKA " 

WHILE Lincoln was riding on the Circuit and 
drinking deeply of the inner wells of life, 
the country was passing through a crisis 
which was to culminate in a life-and-death struggle for 
its national integrity. They were years for the nation 
and for him of growing self -consciousness and knowledge, 
years also of strength. The Mexican War had brought 
with it a vast territory reaching from Texas to the 
Pacific Ocean, and the organization of that territory 
was to be the touchstone of the opposing forces in the 
Union, WTiose was the power that would control? 

The Wilmot Proviso, which had been before Con- 
gress even before the close of the war, had lost before 
the House. For two years the country wrangled over 
the subject of the organization of the new territories, 
and finally the great Compromise measures of 1850 
were passed. California, which, as Mexican territory, 
was already free under the laws of the Mexican Re- 
public, became fully populated in a few months by the 
gold rush of 1849, ^^^ ^^ time was given to the United 
States to direct the policy of its settlement. In 1850 
it became large enough to apply for admission into the 
Union as a state, and the inhabitants voted themselves 
in as free. They rejected the extension of the Missouri 

Compromise line, which would divide the state in half, 

81 



82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

making the district north of 30° 36' free, and the district 
south of that hne slave ; and Congress, voting on Clay's 
Compromise measures, accepted California with its free 
constitution. The Compromise measures acted as all 
compromises do. They served to gird both sides for the 
battle to come. Though California was admitted as a 
free state, New Mexico and Utah were organized with 
no mention of slavery. Popular sovereignty held the 
day, and Congress was denied the right to legislate on 
the slavery question in the territories. The third clause, 
saying that the slave-trade should be abolished in the 
district of Columbia, was mitigated by giving ten 
million dollars to Texas, a slave state, and the passing 
of a stringent fugitive slave law. The North protested 
against this last law by various attempts at forcible 
rescuing of slaves, but on the whole it settled back, 
waiting for the next move from the aggressive South. 
It had won a victory in California, it had not lost posi- 
tively in the rest of the Mexican territory. 

The South, strong and virile as it was, had to act 
quickly to win here. The war, which had been begun 
in the hope of acquiring slave territory, ended perilously 
near for it in the acquisition of free territory, and 
raised the prestige of the Whig Party to such a degree 
that it won for itself the next Presidential election 
(1848). Whig generals displayed their valour in the 
battles of the war, and General Taylor, by his suc- 
cesses, won his way into office. 

By 1852 the South had recouped its forces, and 
that year the election was a Democratic victory. For 
fear that the scheme for slavery in Mexican territory 
might fail entirely, the new President pledged himself 



' ANTI-NEBRASKA " 83 

to follow the line of the " manifest destiny of America," 
and strenuous efforts were made to acquire Nicaragua 
and Cuba. The great hope was to force the administra- 
tion to expand towards the South and thus outbalance 
Northern influence. 

Inevitable as the coming war seemed to be, never- 
theless the personal interests and actions of its leaders 
were great factors in shaping the course of its develop- 
ment. Stephen Douglas, the Democratic rival of Lin- 
coln, was to have had the Democratic nomination for 
President in 1852 had his partisans been a Uttle more 
tactful. Their attack on the " Old Fogey " element of 
the party, which was represented by Buchanan, was so 
bitter, that though it displaced Buchanan from the can- 
didacy, his faction could not bring itself to give their 
votes to Douglas. For thirty ballots the Convention 
had stood for him as against the largest number of 
votes for the other candidates, and it took forty-nine 
ballots to agree upon a compromise candidate. Finally 
Franklin Pierce was nominated. Douglas, looking to 
the Presidential nomination of 1856, thought to ensure 
himself the South by a form of legislation which would 
be distinctly beneficial to it, and yet which on the 
face of it might also be pleasing to the West. He was 
Chairman of the Senatorial Committee on Territories, 
and his friend, Richardson, also of Illinois, was Chair- 
man of the same Committee in the House. The time 
had come for organizing a section of the territory lying 
north of the Missouri Compromise line, that it might 
facilitate a passage-way to the Far West. On 2nd 
February 1853 Richardson brought in " a Bill to organize 
the territory of Nebraska. " The only objection to it came 



84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

from some Southern members, on the ground that it en- 
trenched upon Indian titles, and the suggestion was made 
that the Southern boundary be 39° 30' instead of 36° 30'. 

One member asked why the Ordinance of 1787 
which had dedicated the North-West territory to 
freedom, was not incorporated in the Bill. The answer 
was that this territory lay in the section designated 
by the Missouri Compromise as free, and that it was 
therefore understood to be free, and thus the Bill was 
passed. In the Senate, however, the Bill was laid 
on the table, the reasons against it being that it en- 
croached on Indian titles. 

When Congress met again in December 1853 a great 
change seemed to have taken place on the question 
of territorial organization. It was obvious that the 
Democratic caucuses in the meantime had come upon a 
distinct understanding on the question. The Southern 
Democrats insisted that the Constitution recognize 
the right in slaves, while the Northern Democrats, 
headed by Douglas, said that slavery was meant to be 
subject to local law, and that the people of a territory, 
like that of a state, could establish or prohibit it. They 
hoped to overcome this difference in the party by pro- 
posing that the territories be organized by a delegation 
of Congress, furnished with all the rights that Congress 
could give it. What these rights were should be deter- 
mined by the courts. This was the first call to be made 
upon the courts for determining the meaning of the 
Constitution of the United States. It was the fore- 
shadowing of the radical step that was taken for this 
very purpose by the courts in 1856, when it went out of 
its way in the Dred Scott decision to announce that the 



"ANTI-NEBRASKA" 85 

theory of property in slaves was maintained by the 
Constitution. 

As a result of these party deliberations Douglas 
brought in a second Nebraska Bill, which, though show- 
ing a more careful study of the subject than the first, 
was not materially different in purport. Suddenly a 
member from Kentucky, Dixon, a pro-slavery Whig, 
offered what was practically the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. His resolution seemed to fall like a 
thunderbolt in the House. The South was pleased, 
and in a few days the air became full with the 
word " repeal." Douglas, to gain Southern favour, 
for the time was drawing near for another Presidential 
Convention, took it upon himself to bring this Bill 
before the House. Before taking this step he received 
an endorsement of it in writing from President Pierce, 
and thus fortified he passed the measure successfully 
through the House, and it was signed on 30th May 
1854. The Repeal was gained on the ground that the 
Missouri Compromise was made null and void by the 
legislation of 1850, and also that it had been inconsistent 
with the principle of non-intervention by Congress. 
The Bill held a phrase which Bentham called " a stump 
speech injected into the belly of the Nebraska Bill." 
This was that " it was the true intent and meaning of 
this Act not to legislate slavery into any territory 
or state, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the 
people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Con- 
stitution." 

While Congress made this gratuitous gift of the 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise to Southern interest, 



86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Administration itself was faithfully following its 
behests. Ten million dollars were paid to Mexico four 
or five months before the Repeal for 45,000 square 
miles of territory south of the Gila River of Arizona 
— territory most likely to be occupied by slavery. 

The virtual promise that Congress would no longer 
of itself dedicate any more territory to freedom gave 
an added impulse to the South to acquire new territory, 
where by virtue of climate and situation slavery could 
be maintained. For this purpose Cuba was almost 
wrested from Spain, and expeditions were organized 
against Central America and for new territory on the 
Texan border. President Pierce went so far as to 
direct the American Minister to Great Britain 
(Buchanan, who later was nominated and elected 
President), and the Ministers to France and Spain, 
Moore and Soule, to meet and discuss how far the 
United States could venture in its attack on Cuba. 
The result was the " Ostend Manifesto " of i8th October 
1854, which advised the United States to attempt 
to buy Cuba, and if Spain refused to sell, then to wrest 
it from her by force, on the ground that it would be 
disadvantageous to the United States to have it Afri- 
canized, as San Domingo had been. 

The sudden display of power on the part of the 
South, coupled with the bold and arrogant repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, alarmed the anti-slavery 
forces of the North. The battle was called needless 
in a territory unsuited for slavery by nature and dedi- 
cated to freedom by legislation lasting thirty years. 
The Free-Soil Party naturally led the agitation. They 
asked that all issues of the various parties be dropped 



' ANTI-NEBRASKA " 87 

and a reorganization take place on the question of 
the Nebraska Bill, as the repeal legislation was called. 
This was rather difficult to do, because, though the 
whole South was for it, the North was not so decidedly 
against it. The two Avings of the Democratic Party 
were kept together by the compromise that they would 
abide by the decision of the courts on the question of 
slavery, while the Whigs in the South were as distinctly 
pro-slavery as the Democrats, and the Whigs of the 
North did not like to associate themselves with a party 
which had the opprobrium of Abolitionist. They 
joined the Know-Nothings rather than go openly with 
the radical Free-Soilers. 

However, the year of the Repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise was a year of Congressional elections, 
and that the people of the North, despite party align- 
ments, did stand together on the Nebraska Bill can 
be shown by the organization of the House of 1853-54, 
which had a Democratic majority of eighty-four, while 
the House of 1855-56, the members of which were elected 
on the Nebraska question, had a majority of one hundred 
and eight anti-Nebraska men, who, within a year, drew 
together under the name of Republican. 

The apathy of the years fell from Lincoln as he saw 
the gauntlet thrown in the face of the North. It was 
fortuitous in his life that the sponsor of the Repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise, and the man who stood at 
the head of the Democratic forces and was recognized 
as the coming Presidential candidate, should be his 
old antagonist, Douglas, now senator from Illinois, 
and a party rival from his own district. It might 
have been his intimate knowledge of his opponent 



88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that made him rouse himself on the question of the 
Repeal and take up the fight. He became an outspoken 
anti-Nebraska man and Douglas's direct opponent in 
the field. 

The northern part of Illinois, which was peopled 
by the Yankees of New England, was anti-slavery, 
and when Douglas came to Chicago he was greeted 
with hoots and jeers, and was practically forced off the 
platform. But by the time he reached Southern Illi- 
nois he was greeted with open arms. In Springfield 
he received an ovation. Here the opposing forces, the 
few Whigs, waited for Lincoln to answer him. The 
State Agricultural Fair was going on, and Douglas 
spoke there on the 3rd of October. It was a laboured 
defence of his position, and he himself called upon 
Lincoln to reply. The next day Lincoln took the floor 
and spoke for four hours in the height and ardour of 
his spiritual regeneration. Douglas, who sat in the 
front row, often interrupted him, and there was a play 
of words between them and an acceptance on all sides 
of a Douglas-Lincoln equality. Herndon said that 
this anti-Nebraska speech of Lincoln's was the pro- 
foundest that he had made in his whole life. " He felt 
upon his soul the truths burn which he uttered, and all 
present felt that he was true to his own soul. He 
quivered with emotion, and the whole house was as still 
as death." 

Lincoln, despite his wishes, for he could ill afford 
public life, was put up as candidate for the State Legis- 
lature, and his friends urged him to follow Douglas and 
continue the form of debate which he had begun in the 
State Fair. Lincoln went to Peoria on the i6th of 



" ANTI-A^EBRASKA " 89 

October, and there answered Douglas in a speech which 
he himself considered as the truest statement of his own 
principles, for he wrote it out and had it published as 
a campaign pamphlet. But Lincoln went no further 
than Peoria, for Douglas had suggested that they both 
cease canvassing and return home. Lincoln kept true 
to the compact, but Douglas spoke again at Princeton, 
where, he said, Owen Love joy, the brother of the 
Love joy who had been shot at Alton, " heckled and 
nagged him into debate." Lincoln, for all Douglas's 
excuse, felt keenly that he had been tricked. 

After his speech at the State Fair the Abolitionists 
were anxious to hail Lincoln as one of their own, and 
Love joy tried to get him to address them the same 
evening. Lincoln was in a quandary, for to attach 
himself to the Abolitionists meant certain political 
death, and to refuse was also dangerous at this crisis. 
Hemdon, who was an Abolitionist, but who understood 
Lincoln's political position, hastened to Lincoln and 
advised him " to take his son Bob and drive somewhere 
into the country and stay there till the thing was over." 
This Lincoln did, and he was saved committing himself 
on the subject for two years. 

Meanwhile he was elected to the Legislature, but 
the Senatorial term of Shields, a Democrat, which was 
about to end, made him desirous of obtaining that place. 
As there was some legal doubt as to whether a member 
of the Legislature could run for the Senate, he resigned 
his position to make his canvass more sure. Unfor- 
tunately there was a change in the vote from Sangamon, 
and instead of a Whig victory the Senatorial electors 
were Democratic. Lincoln, though he held the highest 

7 



90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

votes, could not get an electoral majority, and he urged 
his friends to transfer the vote for him to Trumbull, 
who, though a Democrat, was nevertheless an anti- 
Nebraska man. 

The defeat threw him back again into Circuit riding 
and the practice of law, but it gave him two more years 
of reflection, in which, keenly interested in politics but 
not of them, he could watch the drift of events. The 
Repeal found him an anti-slavery Whig, as he was 
at the age of twenty-two; two years of the whirl- 
wind that it sowed placed him definitely with 
the new alignment against slavery, the Republican 
Party. 

Kansas, the southern territory opened by the 
Nebraska Bill, was giving proof of just how the people 
were to be left perfectly free to form and regulate their 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Con- 
stitution ! Organized movements were immediately set 
on foot from both sections of the country to gain control 
of it. The North rushed in Free-Soil settlers through its 
emigrant aid societies, and the South sent in hooligans 
from Missouri, and men who took the name of Border 
Ruffians, who, with pistol in hand, forced their ballots 
on the day of voting, or shot the Free-Soilers and de- 
stroyed their property in the hope that they would 
stop these elements from further emigration and settle- 
ment. Few hona-fide settlers entered from the South, 
for the state of affairs was too unstable for them to risk 
their valuable property in slaves. The result of these 
two movements was a civil war, the beginning of that 
greater Civil War which was to take place in five years ! 
Battles raged between the settlers, at their voting 



' ANTI NEBRASKA " 91 

booths, in their legislatures, and in the execution of 
their laws. 

By fraudulent voting a pro-slavery delegate was 
elected to Congress, and a pro-slavery Legislature and 
Council was formed, which, by adopting the whole 
revised statutes of Missouri, formed Kansas into a 
slave territory. Not satisfied with the black code of 
Missouri, they added one of their own, by a Bill entitled 
" An Act to punish offences against slave property." 
Death was the penalty for inciting the negroes to in- 
surrection or for assisting in escape, ten years of prison 
for harbouring a slave, and two years for refraining to 
help in recapture. Besides this, the rights of free speech 
were violated by drastic laws against the publication 
or utterance of anti-slavery sentiments. Practically 
it meant that the reading of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which begins with the statement that all men 
are created free and equal, would be considered a felony 
under the law. Finally, all officers of the State were 
required by oath to sustain the Kansas-Nebraska Act 
and the Fugitive Slave Law. These laws were prac- 
tically all put in through the manipulation of the 
citizens of Missouri. 

The real settlers, on the other hand, who were " Free 
State men," formed a counter agitation called the 
Topeka Movement. They held their own elections, 
formed their own council, and elected their own member 
to Congress, the former Governor Reeder, who had 
been dismissed by the Administration for following 
out the principle of popular sovereignty a little too 
sincerely. Of course the Topeka Constitution received 
no support from the Pierce Administration or the Senate, 



92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

but it helped to bring the state of affairs in Kansas 
before the people at large. The delegates of the Topeka 
Constitution, who were to meet in July 1856, were dis- 
persed by the Federal troops. The citizens of the Free 
State Party considered themselves in no way bound to 
what they called the " bogus legislature " of the pro- 
slavery minority, and for two years maintained a 
steady passive resistance to it and to its laws. They 
refused to take the oath, they paid no taxes, they did 
no voting. The city of Lawrence, which was formed by 
the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society, was naturally 
the centre of the Free State Party. Not content with 
dispersing the Topeka delegates by Federal troops, the 
Sheriff of Kansas, who was also a postmaster in Missouri, 
collected a posse of fifteen hundred men on the pretext of 
a resistance to arrest that had taken place in Lawrence, 
and surrounded the town for the purpose of demolishing 
it. The Lawrence settlers managed to procure for 
themselves a 12-inch gun, and besides were well armed 
with the dreaded Sharp rifles. In contradistinction 
to the bowie knife of the Border Ruffian, the Free 
State settler had brought with him a Yankee gun 
called a Sharp rifle, which shot ten times a minute at 
a distance of one thousand yards. The Pro-slavery 
Party had more respect for the Sharp rifle of the 
Free State man than for his principles of Hberty and 
equality. 

This Wakarausa War, as it was called, ended in a 
compromise, to the displeasure of both extreme pro- 
slavery partisans and Free State men. After this 
compromise most of the Free State leaders were put 
under arrest, and m May, U.S. Marshal Donaldson, 



" ANTI-NEBRASKA " 93 

again under the pretext that Lawrence was insurrec- 
tionary, called together the militia, and entering the 
city, placed two cannon in front of the Free State Hotel 
and destroyed it. The rest of the day was given up to 
pillage, while the officers sat on their horses and watched 
the destruction. Reprisals soon followed, wherein the 
pro-slavery men suffered as much as the Free State 
settlers, with the result that the governor became 
seriously bent upon the establishment of order. The 
first step was to dismiss the troops. Finally, by threats 
of execution, they were disbanded, and quiet reigned 
for a while. In the meantime. Northern anti-slavery 
men rushed to Kansas with their Sharp rifles to help 
carry on the fight, and in a few months the voting 
population sprang from about 2000 to 5000. Within a 
year it was clear that Kansas, if left to the principle of 
popular sovereignty, would vote itself Free State. The 
climate, as well as the settlers, proved hostile to slavery. 
The moderate Democrats in the country thought it 
best to maintain the equilibrium of power by acquiring 
some new slave state towards the South and permit 
Kansas to enter as free-soil. A new governor from 
Pennsylvania was sent to Kansas, who, acting upon that 
principle, concentrated his energies in keeping Kansas, 
not slave-son, but Democratic. On his arrival the ex- 
treme pro-slavery men showed their disapproval of his 
policy by renewed violence, and the whole state was 
thrown into open warfare again. After several months 
he succeeded in disarming and disbanding the militia 
and the guerillas. In the year's fighting, as far as can 
be estimated, about two million dollars' worth of pro- 
perty was destroyed and two hundred lives lost. 



94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It was this war in Kansas which at last caused Lin- 
coln to break with his old opportunistic affiliations and 
come out boldly with the new party of principle. By 
1856 he was ready to take his stand. The new party, 
called the Republican Party, in honour of Thomas 
Jefferson, who also had called himself republican, de- 
cided to organize all factions which were against the 
extension of slavery in the territories, or, in other 
words, all " anti-Nebraska men." Herndon drew up 
a paper for " Friends of Freedom " to sign, which called 
a County Convention in Springfield to select delegates 
to the forthcoming Republican State Convention in 
Bloomington. Herndon himself signed Lincoln's name 
to it. His old friends and his wife's relations rushed 
in, alarmed and shocked, to ask whether Lincoln him- 
self could have taken so suicidal a stand. Herndon 
confessed that he alone had signed it, and he tele- 
graphed Lincoln, asking if he had done well. Lin- 
coln's answer was: "All right; go ahead; will meet 
you — radicals and all," And it was at the State Con- 
vention in Bloomington, which met on 29th May 1856, 
that Lincoln dedicated himself to the battle for which 
the new party had entered the Usts. The night before, 
Governor Reeder, dismissed and disgraced, had told the 
story of " bleeding Kansas." 

" Lincoln's speech in Bloomington," says Herndon, 
" was the grand effort of his life. Heretofore he had 
simply argued the slavery question on grounds of 
policy — the statesman's grounds, never reaching the 
question of the radical and the eternal right. Now 
he was newly baptized and freshly bom. He had the 
fervour of a new convert, the smothered flame broke 



I 



" ANTI-NEBRASKA " 95 

out; enthusiasm unusual to him blazed up. His eyes 
were aglow with an inspiration. He felt justice. His 
heart was aUve to the right. His sympathies, remark- 
ably deep for him, burst forth, and he stood before the 
throne of the eternal right." 

Unfortunately, Lincoln's speech was never written 
out or printed. A mass meeting in Springfield, called 
by Lincoln and Herndon to ratify the Bloomington 
Convention, was attended by one other man, for the 
home-town of the future " Saviour of his Country " 
was far from seeking the " eternal right." 

The new convert took his old position of Presidential 
elector, this time for the most radical candidate in the 
field, Fremont, the first Presidential candidate of the 
Republican Party. The nominating Convention had 
taken place in Philadelphia, where Lincoln himself 
received no votes for Vice-President, an evidence 
that he was already considered a strong card politically. 
In his canvass for the new candidate he spoke not only 
in the State of Illinois, but in most of the states of the 
North-West. 

The maelstrom of events was soon to carry him 
quick and far. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE DEBATES 

WHILE Lincoln had quietly and unassumingly 
joined the one group which stood united 
to fight politically against the further ex- 
tension of slavery, the practical politician in him re- 
volted against the strengthening of the forces of an 
enemy because of divided opposition in his owti ranks. 
The Know-Nothings had nominated Fillmore, and the 
remnants of the fast disintegrating Whig Party had 
endorsed him. " All of us who did not vote for Mr 
Buchanan, taken together," he said at a Republican 
banquet of that year, 1856, in Chicago, " are a majority 
of four hundred thousand. But in the late contest we 
were divided between Fremont and Fillmore. Can we 
not come together for the future? " 

He had promised himself that "in his humble 
sphere " he would " advocate the restoration of the 
]\Iissouri Compromise so long as Kansas remained a 
territory, and when by all these foul means it seeks 
to come into the Union as a slave state," he would 
oppose it. Limited as this battleground seemed, he 
was soon to execute one of the most astute manoeuvres 
which, in the election of i860, was to unite his own 
forces and divide the enemy, instead of presenting a 
divided opposition as they did in 1856. 

Douglas, who had fought the " Old Fogey " element 

in his own party, to his detriment in the nominations 

96 



THE DEBATES 97 

of 1852, had hoped to retrieve himself before the united 
Democracy in 1856 by his free gift to the South of the 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. But the " Old 
Fogey " elements were not to be bribed, and the 
Southern extremists accepted the gift, but went to allies 
who did not mince words with vague theories of popular 
sovereignty. The very " Old Fogeys " he had scorned 
four years earlier were nominated in the Democratic 
Convention of 1856. Douglas again lost in Convention, 
and James Buchanan, one of the authors of the Ostend 
Manifesto, and who spoke plainly of " State equaUty " 
instead of the old republican ideas of popular equality, 
was nominated in his stead. 

The South had chosen well. Buchanan's inaugura- 
tion brought with it the Dred Scott decision of the 
Supreme Court, which confirmed by the highest tribunal 
in the land the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
Dred Scott was a negro belonging to an army surgeon, 
who had taken him from Missouri to Illinois, and 
thence to Minnesota. When he was brought back to 
Missouri he sued for his freedom on the ground that his 
residence in a free state had operated to make him free. 
The lower courts of Missouri had denied the plea, and 
in the course of appeal it reached the Supreme Court 
of the United States. This Court sustained the other 
decision, which would have raised little opposition were 
it not accompanied by a majority report written by the 
Chief Justice himself, which said that though the Con- 
stitution spoke of slaves as persons held to service and 
labour, it did not really consider men of African race as 
persons, but as property, in view of the fact that they 
were already in bondage when the Republic was formed, 



98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and that the guarantees of property in the Constitu- 
tion itself prevented any legislation which might dis- 
turb them from that state, and that Congress had 
no more right to exclude property in slaves from the 
territories than it had a right to exclude any other form 
of property; that therefore the Missouri Legislation of 
1820 was unconstitutional, and in the opinion of the 
Court null and void. 

The outrage felt in the North at this virtual nation- 
alization of slavery was being augmented by the flagrant 
abuse of influence that the Administration was using 
to force Kansas into becoming a slave state. The 
struggle in Kansas was now spreading to the floor of 
Congress. Buchanan had sent out a new governor who 
was pledged to permit a ratification by a popular vote 
of the State Constitution to be written by a new Legisla- 
ture. Election frauds were again perpetrated at the 
polling of delegates for the Legislature, and the Gover- 
nor, Walker, refused to ratify delegates thus elected. 
From one district, Oxford, which contained six hundred 
houses, a Hst of over two thousand names was sent in, 
which was afterwards found to be copied from an old 
directory of Cincinnati. Nevertheless, in spite of 
Governor Walker's efforts for legality, the trick methods 
succeeded and a pro-slavery Legislature was convened in 
Lecompton. It issued a Constitution which affirmed the 
right of property in slaves. Instead of sending it to the 
people for ratification, they were only offered the vote 
of Constitution with slavery or the Constitution without 
slavery. In either case they had to vote for the Con- 
stitution which embodied slavery. The Free State 
men refused to be tricked and boycotted the elections. 



THE DEBATES 99 

The Governor upheld them, and a new election was 
held, in which they voted for or against this Lecompton 
Constitution, as he had promised. This time the pro- 
slavery elements abstained from voting, but the Free 
State men voted solidly against it, showing a strength 
of over ten thousand votes. Even had all the Missou- 
rians voted at this election they could not have forced 
the Constitution upon the State, for in their former 
ballots they only polled six thousand votes. 

The question now came up before the House and the 
Administration as to which ratification was to be recog- 
nized. Buchanan and the Senate supported the Le- 
compton Constitution; the House of Representatives 
rejected it. It became clear that the moment had come 
when the people at large as well as the people of Kansas 
would call a halt to the aggressive pohcy of the pro- 
slavery elements. The South then withdrew with the 
best grace it could under cover of the so-called English 
Bill. This Bill provided for a popular vote on the 
question of the Lecompton Constitution, but with the 
proviso that if it be accepted all the lands requested by 
that Constitution be granted and immediate statehood 
conferred. If not, Kansas was to remain a territory 
until her population reached the ratio of representation 
required for a member of the House. Though the Free 
State men of the time cried that they were being bribed 
and threatened, nevertheless it was understood by all 
that the Bill was a surrender to them, and at the polls 
Kansas again unanimously rejected the Lecompton 
Constitution and the proposition. However, barely 
four years later, amid the panic of a fast-consrunmating 
disunion, Kansas was quietly and without comment 



loo ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

admitted into the Union. The Q)ngress that accepted 
her in January 1861 was already republican — made 
so by the withdrawal of the members of the South. 

The Lecompton Constitution might have been 
forced upon the people of Kansas had the Democratic 
Party shown as much unity as it did in the Repeal 
Legislation of three years before. Douglas found that 
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill only played into the hands 
of the extreme South, and without gaining for him the 
Southern vote it was losing ground for him in the North. 
His constituency had already revoked their support 
from his Senatorial colleague in 1852, and from the 
Democratic governor in 1856. He decided to rehabili- 
tate himself with his Illinois constituents, and he openly 
broke with the Administration over the Lecompton 
Constitution. The rights of popular sovereignty were 
being violated by undue and fraudulent influence, and 
he denounced the Constitution before Buchanan and 
in the Senate. As a rebuke he was removed from the 
Chairmanship of the Territorial Committee, which he 
had held for eleven years. On the other hand, his 
action came perilously near winning for himself the 
sympathy and the alliance of the more opportimistic 
RepubHcans of the North. A Senatorial election was 
about to be held in Illinois, and there was a distinct 
feeling among the Republicans of the East that that 
party should support him. But the Republicans of 
IlUnois were wary of so shifty a candidate. They did 
not want fusion. Hemdon took a trip through the 
East to espouse the cause of Lincoln and to sound the 
pohticians on the Douglas question, and he found them 
pretty much agreed that it were wiser to accept him. 



THE DEBATES loi 

Greeley, who was editor of the New York Tribune, and 
whose poHtical influence was large, was very certain 
that the Illinois Republicans would make a mistake if 
they did not accept Douglas. 

However, Illinois was unanimous in its distrust of 
him, and at the State Convention in Springfield a banner 
appeared with the words, " Cook County for Abraham 
Lincoln as their one and only choice for Senator." 
The Convention with one accord voted that " Illinois 
should be nailed over the name of Cook County." This 
peculiar form of direct nomination was due to the fear 
of a later coalition with Douglas. 

Greeley looked on displeased at the action of the 
Republican wing in Illinois. He thought it foolish 
to oppose a man who would lead to certain victory. 
Lincoln was hurt by this. " Greeley is not treating 
me right," he said one day to Hemdon. He was wor- 
ried over this sudden shifting in politics. " How can 
Douglas oppose the advances of slavery? " he asked. 
" He does not care a thing about it." 

Douglas was nominated by the Democrats for Sena- 
tor from Illinois, and Lincoln in contesting that place 
with him shrewdly decided to place the issues in such 
a way as to make him an impossible candidate for the 
South, as well as an impossible candidate for the North 
two years later in the Presidential elections of i860. 
As he wrote after the race: " Douglas had the ingenuity 
to be supported in the late contest both as the best 
means to break down and to uphold the slave interest." 
Lincoln's memorable and significant task was so to 
hedge Douglas by direct open questions that he would 
of necessity force the Democratic Party in half. When 



I02 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

urged by his own friends not to press the points too hard, 
for lUinois was about equally divided on the real issue 
of slavery, and a too-outspoken attack might mean 
defeat, he answered: " I am killing a larger game. The 
battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this." He did not 
think then that he was preparing the ground for his own 
nomination, but that he was preparing the ground for 
the success of his own party, that is certain. To him 
must be given the credit and not to the Republican 
Party leaders of the East that the Republican Party had 
an uncompromising slate in i860, that the Democratic 
Party was shorn of a leader, and that, divided, it fell 
before the Republican cohorts. It was in these debates 
that took place in the Senatorial contest of 1858 in 
Illinois that Lincoln ploughed the ground for the 
political harvests that were to follow. 

Lincoln, in accepting his nomination as Senatorial 
candidate, read a carefully-prepared speech which he 
had written weeks before and had read to his friends. 
All but Herndon were displeased with it. They did not 
see the political value of being outspoken and uncom- 
promising with, an opponent whose great forte lay in 
straddling. They objected especially to the phrase 
which spoke of an irrepressible conflict between the 
North and the South, for it sounded to them like a 
Northern attack, an impression the politicians were 
especially anxious to avoid. Speaking upon the policy 
inaugurated by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 
he said that that policy, far from putting an end to the 
slavery agitation, only increased it. This agitation, 
in his opinion, " will not cease until a crisis shall have 
reached and passed. A house divided against itself 



THE DEBATES 103 

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 be all one thing or all the 
other." 

Lincoln's friends remarked that it was " a damn 
fool utterance," but he would not change a word of it. 
" I would rather be defeated with this expression in 
the speech," he said, " and uphold and discuss it before 
the people, than be victorious without it." Again, 
after more objections, he reiterated: " If it is decreed 
that I should go down because of this speech, then let 
me go down linked to the truth: let me die in the ad- 
vocacy of what is just and right." He might have 
added, as he did before, " It was good strategy as 
well." 

Lincoln's plan of campaign was to follow in the 
footsteps of Douglas, " the little giant," and attack his 
position. Thus, when Douglas spoke in Chicago on the 
9th of July, Lincoln, following him, replied the next 
evening from the balcony of the same hotel. Douglas, 
who had been received by a military escort, had 
entered the city amidst the booming of cannon and the 
fluttering of flags. Lincoln, though he entered more 
quietly, was received wdth as many lusty cheers as was 
Douglas, and by his manner of attack it was soon 
evident that Douglas, who had tried to defend popular 
sovereignty, coupled with the Dred Scott decision, 
would soon have to appeal from the Supreme Court to 
the voters of Illinois. 

" The Democrats," Lincoln said, " with their 



I04 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

thunderings of cannon, their marching and music, their 
fizzlegigs and fireworks," were trying to carry the State 
by brute force. Lincoln followed up with logic. The 
Illinois Central Railroad was on Douglas's side, and he 
was given a special train, to which was attached a plat- 
form car bearing a 12-lb. cannon to fire salutes. In 
this style he made his canvass, while Lincoln was side- 
tracked in freight cars, or was forced to sit up all night 
in stations, only to find the trains crowded and no seat 
for him. Nevertheless, Lincoln kept on following the 
hero of popular sovereignty, who, as was to be ex- 
pected, did not relish this kind of electioneering. 

On the 24th Lincoln went one step farther in his 
aggressions and sent him a challenge for a series of 
joint debates. Douglas, though loath to accept, for 
" I shall have my hands full," he said in private, finally 
consented to it. He declined to divide all his time with 
him, but agreed to hold seven debates, all but two to 
be in the central part of the state, where the real battle 
was to be fought. To Douglas was left the selection 
of the places, and he chose Ottawa, Freeport, Jones- 
borough, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy and Alton; 
two debates in August, two in September, and three in 
October. 

It was one of the most exciting canvasses in the 
history of Illinois, and by the time the first debate was 
to be held the whole state was aglow with mass meet- 
ings and stump speeches, which were not without their 
free fights and brawls. Ottawa, the scene of the first 
debate, looked like a midsummer fair. For two days 
men, women and children came pouring into the town 
in hay-carts, buggies and market waggons. Even the 




I.IFK-MASR OF Al'.RAHAM LINCOLN. IWil 



THE DEBATES 105 

prairie schooner came forward, for the Westerner, used 
to camp meetings and excursions and visits that take a 
week at a time, prepared in like fashion for the debate. 
By noon the special trains arrived with the two debaters, 
and the followers of each combatant held processions, 
the one for Douglas being a mile long. Lincoln was 
driven to the scene in a gaily-decorated carriage led by 
a band carrying banners, some with guileless inscrip- 
tions which read, " Abe, the Giant-Killer," or " Edgar 
County for the Tall Sucker." 

The debaters needed no introduction, and Douglas, 
who opened the debate, struck immediately at the 
vulnerable point of the Republican Party. He accused 
it of being revolutionary and sectional. The Westerner 
had no love for the Negro ; he was not opposed to slavery 
in the old states, he did not want what he called the 
sacred rights of property to be violated by Abolitionism, 
or to share his land with free Negroes ; he only wanted 
slavery to be excluded from the territories so that he 
could have the land himself. He wanted free home- 
steads and internal improvements. To say that the 
Republicans were black, meaning that they stood for 
political or social equality for the Negro, was a potent 
argument against it. Douglas used this manner of 
attack and Lincoln spent hours repudiating the charges. 
To an Abohtionist listening to the arguments of both 
men it was hard to choose between the two. Both 
denied that they would disturb slavery in the states, 
that they meant to attack the Southerners' rights to 
slaves, or that they would desire to see citizenship or 
social equality given to the Negro. But there was enough 
political difference between them to wreck the one party 



io6 ABRAHAxM LINCOLN 

and bring the other into power. No other documents 
or State papers are as important in giving the exact 
meaning of the issues involved at the time, and of 
Lincoln's position on the questions, as these speeches 
and debates. 

Douglas had declared that he cared not whether 
" slavery was voted up or voted down " as long as 
the principles of popular sovereignty were maintained. 
The Westerner and the Southerner cared very much 
whether slavery was voted ir^to the free territories 
or not, each seeking a diametrically-opposed result. 
Lincoln insisted that he considered slavery a moral 
wrong, and that " though there is a physical differ- 
ence between the two (the white and the black races) 
which, in my judgment, will probably forever forbid 
their Uving together upon the footing of perfect equality 
. . . notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the 
world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural 
rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence 
— the right to Ufe, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 
Lincoln reaffirmed his statement that a house 
divided against itself cannot stand. It did not mean 
a war upon the South, he said ; it meant only a return 
to the principle upon which this government was 
founded, that slavery was to be ultimately extinguished. 
This was the meaning of the framers of the Constitu- 
tion. This was their meaning in the prohibition of 
slavery in the new territories; this was the reason 
for the gradual abolition of the slave-trade. " Henry 
Clay," he said, " my beau-ideal of a statesman, the 
man for whom I fought all my humble life — Henry 
Clay once said of a class of men who would repress 



I 



THE DEBATES 107 

all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation, 
that they must, if they would do this, go back to the 
era of our independence and muzzle the cannon which 
thunders its annual joyous return; they must blow out 
the moral lights around us; they must penetrate the 
human soul and eradicate there the love of liberty ; and 
then and not till then could they perpetuate slavery in 
this country! " 

Lincoln, placing himself squarely on the position 
that he was opposed to slavery, that it was incon- 
sistent with the Declaration of Independence, that it 
was the purpose of the framers of the Constitution 
that it be extinguished, but that what he would most 
desire would be the separation of the white and black 
races, won for himself ultimately the West and most of 
the East. 

Douglas maintained that there was no irrepressible 
conflict, and that the house was not divided against 
itself, for by local legislation the institution of slavery 
could be regulated for or against. To make him say 
openly that even a Dred Scott decision of the Supreme 
Court did not mean the establishment of slavery, and 
that by local legislation unfavourable to it, it could 
be practically abolished, was Lincoln's main purpose in 
the debates. He succeeded in doing this, and Douglas 
became a lost leader South as well as West and 
East. 

Lincoln harped so much on the Dred Scott decision 
that one Irishman called out, " Give us something 
besides Drid Scott! " But Lincoln drove the point 
home that there must be a " purpose strong as death 
and eternity for which he adheres to this decision, and 



io8 ABRAHAxM LINCOLN 

for which he will adhere to all other decisions of the 
same Court." 

Douglas dared not admit in the West that it was 
for the purpose of establishing slavery, and he lost the 
South when he was finally forced to say that the Dred 
Scott decision was immaterial to the establishment of 
slavery. 

Douglas opened the debates with great swagger 
and so much abuse of Lincoln on the score of his black 
Republicanism that the latter felt himself bound to 
explain over and over again that he did not consider 
the Negro his social equal, and that he was no black 
Republican. Douglas, stung by Lincoln's pressing 
home of the Dred Scott decision which he sustained, 
retaliated by a list of seven questions, which pinned 
Lincoln very closely down to the points at issue. He 
asked him whether he was opposed to the unconditional 
repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, and whether he stood 
pledged against the admission of any more slave states 
even if the people wanted them; whether he stood 
pledged against the admission of a new state with such 
a constitution as the people may see fit to make; whether 
he stood pledged to the abolition of slavery in the 
district of Columbia; whether he stood pledged to 
the prohibition of the slave trade between the states; 
whether he stood pledged to prohibit slavery in all 
the territories of the United States, north as well as 
south of the Missouri Compromise; and whether he 
was opposed to the acquisition of any new territory 
unless slavery is first prohibited therein. 

Here Lincoln squirmed in his turn. He answered the 
questions honestly enough, and the answers fitted the 



THE DEBATES 109 

West, and in no way discredited him with his own 
constituency, as Douglas's answer did to the question 
whether " the people of a United States territory 
(can) in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen 
of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits 
prior to the formation of a State constitution." 

Lincoln was not trying to straddle two sides at once, 
as was Douglas, and if his answers were that he never 
stood in favour of the unconditional repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, and that he was not pledged, nor 
was he on principle against the admission of any more 
slave states, or the admission of a new state into 
the Union with such a constitution as the people of 
that state may see fit to make, or for the abolition 
of slavery in the district of Columbia, or for the abo- 
lition of the slave trade between the different states 
— he offended only the extreme Abolitionist of the 
East, whose opinion politically was unimportant. 

Douglas's answer to Lincoln's one question wrecked 
him politically for all time. He became, as Lincoln 
had foretold, a " dead cock in the pit," and he lost 
" in the game of i860," for he answered him just as he 
hoped he would, that " it matters not what way the 
Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract 
question whether slavery may or may not go into a 
territory under the Constitution; the people have the 
lawful means to introduce or exclude it as they please, 
for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an 
hour an3r^vhere unless it is supported by local police 
regulations. Those police regulations can only be 
established by the local legislature, and if the people 
are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives 



no ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to that body who will by unfriendly legislation 
effectually prevent the introduction of it into their 
midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legis- 
lation will favour its extension. Hence, no matter 
what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on 
that abstract question, still the right of the people 
to make a slave territory or a free territory is perfect 
and complete under the Nebraska Bill." 

Lincoln in his later speeches did not dwell much 
on the point he scored, leaving Douglas's opponents 
in the South to dig the ditch for him. He continued 
defining his position concerning the Negro, denying 
that he wished social equality for them, or political 
equality, or in any way desired that this " peculiar 
institution " in the states should be subject to Congress 
or the national administration. 

Unfortunately, in studying the period, we find it 
smothered in a phraseology which makes it difficult to 
see clearly. The habit of calling slavery " the pecuUar in- 
stitution," in the sense that it was an institution peculiar 
to America, throws a cloak of nationality about it, and 
makes the issues appear unintelligible to an outsider. 
The whip of the slave-driver creates a moral repug- 
nance, and the habit of the men of the time of speaking 
of the " right " and " wrong " of slavery seems to place 
the issue on the question of slavery instead of on the 
true question whether the large landlord or the small 
landlord should control the new West suddenly opened 
by the miraculous railway. There is nothing peculiar 
to America alone in the struggle between large and 
small landlordism. It is known all over the world. 
The only thing peculiarly American was the fact that 



THE DEBATES iii j 

the cheap labour needed to make large estates pro- / 

fitable consisted of a race instead of a caste, as in most i 

other countries. The advent of the railway sent the 
unpropertied white of the South by the million into i 

this newly-opened land, and there, outnumbering the 1 

aristocrat, he made his stand against him. 

The question of the morality of slavery itself was • 

felt only by the few despised and persecuted Aboli- ih . \ 

tionists. In reading the closing debates, therefore,^^^ *fun*-^t-t>t^ 
it must be understood that when Lincoln says he con-, t.-w*.^-^ t^i-ui^ 
siders slavery a wrong, and that he is determined to^/^^^ J ^ 4«< ^'4 
fight it as a wrong, he does not mean the institution of ^^ f*r¥^ ^ .^^- 
slavery in the South but the institution of large land- ^ A ; 

lordism in the West. -- ^'^ -♦'^^^-•-^»^ 

He himself was very careful to define this. In •*-*< ••K-^y^ 
his sixth debate at Quincy, on 13th October, he gave *^%^1 '2t^uA. j 



his reasons for his opposition to the Dred Scott de- ^ J^,^^!^ ' 
cision, not because " Dred Scott had been decided ^ IT^ J 

to be a slave by a court." He would abide by the '^**^^ '^♦j 
decision when " any other one or one thousand shall '^ t*^^^ -**h»^^ 
be decided by that court to be slaves," but he opposed UfViZik^ ^tutn^ 
it "as a political rule, which shall be binding on the .zPt^it**s «ti%4««rk; 
voter to vote for nobody who thinks it wrong, which /) 1/ £*¥\*£ - 
shall be binding on the members of Congress or the v A y,... ^ 
President to favour no measure that does not actually jt a ** 

concur with the principles of that decision. We **^ ** *fn5*t, 
do not propose to be bound by it as a political ' '■'■■■ f>''iy 
rule in that way, because we think it lays the j 

foundation not merely of enlarging and spreading | 

out what we consider an evil, but it lays the founda- I 

tion for spreading that evil into the states themselves. 
We propose so resisting it as to have it reversed if 1 



112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

we can, and a new judicial rule established upon this 
subject. 

" I will add this, that if there is any man who does 
not beheve slavery is wrong in the three respects which 
I have mentioned (a moral, a social and a pohtical 
wrong) or in any one of them, that man is misplaced 
and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand, if 
there be any man in the RepubHcan Party who is im- 
patient over the necessity springing from its actual 
presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guaran- 
tees thrown around it, and would act in disregard 
of these, he, too, is misplaced, standing with us. He 
will find his place somewhere else, for we have a due 
regard, so far as we are capable of understanding them, 
for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I can 
give it, is a plain statement of our principles in all their 
enormity." 

He was not defending himself before Abolitionists, 
but before the poor whites of the South emigrated 
to this region because of the cheap labour (slavery) 
at home which competed with them to their disad- 
vantage. It is patent that were it really slavery that 
was a moral, social and political evil, he would have 
suggested fighting it in its stronghold — the South. 
The moral, social and pohtical evil was the absorp- 
rT^iy Mc ' "^^^ ;|.Jqj^ qJ |.j^g Yd,nd. into large estates, which the emigrant 
lAt^-^^^Urtut ^ ^rom Europe and the South fought to prevent. 
'VU' <t *rvt -H-* gy t'lese arguments Lincoln turned the popular 
Ht^rCi -A*-*^^**^ ^i^g against Douglas, and the easy victory which he 
i^^x -^^ '^y would have had, had the election been in July, was 
' ^ id A now hard fought. In fact, before the vote of the 
:C'*<.'^(*' people he^lost. It was only by a coaUtion of his votes 



THE DEBATES 113 

and those of the old-time Democrats that his place as 
Senator was sustained. As Douglas began to realize 
this change in sentiment he lost his splendid confi- 
dence and his manners. His one name for Lincoln 
became " Black Republican," so that more than one 
audience asked him to change the colour and " make 
it a little brown," for Lincoln was not at all willing to 
accept the epithet proudly. 

Douglas was being harassed on all sides by his 
Freeport Doctrine, the name given to his unfriendly 
legislation argument, and by the fact that he was 
spending more money than he could afford. His debt 
in that campaign amounted to §90,000. Besides, he 
was being unmercifully attacked by the Buchanan 
Administration and the other " Lecomptonites," who 
were trying to defeat him as much as Lincoln, sending 
out canards that he was a slave-holder and that he 
maltreated his slaves in a disgraceful manner. Douglas 
accused Lincoln of being in collusion with the " Lecomp- 
tonites " to accomplish his ruin, but although he dis- 
claimed any such connection, which on the face of it 
was an impossibility, he was not at all displeased at the 
bickering in the Democratic camp, and said, " Go it, 
husband — go it, bear! " 

At Alton, where the last debate was held, Lincoln was 
joined by his wife. Evidently she had not much faith 
in the success of his radicalism, for he asked his friend, 
Koemer, " to tell Mary what he thought of our chances. 
She is rather dispirited." The chances were pretty even. 
If Lincoln was sectional, Douglas, with his Freeport 
Doctrine, had no section at all left to him. As Lincoln 
said, " He would not pass as coin south of the Ohio." 



114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lincoln spoke in thirty-nine places besides the 
seven debates, carrying on the campaign in his simple 
way, finding rest as well as he could curled up on miser- 
able railway seats, wrapped in his grey shawl. Though 
he won the popular vote, he lost in the Senatorial 
contest, and he felt very much, he said, like the boy 
that stumped his toe. " It hurt too bad to laugh, 
and he was too big to cry." On the whole, he wrote, 
he was glad he had made the race, for it gave him 
a hearing " on the great and durable question of the 
age, which I would have had in no other way, and 
although I now sink out of view, and shall be for- 
gotten, I believe I have made some marks which will 
tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I have 
gone." 



k 






CHAPTER VII 
THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 

LINCOLN'S defeat in the Senatorial contest 
of 1858 left him for the moment rudderless. 
The financial strain of the campaign, though 
the actual expenses were only $1000, was embarrassing, 
for he had no outside income except what he made 
from the law, which Herndon said never amounted 
to more than $3000 a year. His only property was 
some wild lands in Indiana, which he had received 
from his services in the Black Hawk War. His law 
practice had been neglected, and he made one of his 
many pathetic attempts to escape from it by becoming 
a public lecturer. He wrote a paper on inventions, 
which he read several times, but which received very 
little notice. His forte lay in politics. 

The Senatorial contest in Ilhnois had made him a 
national figure, due more, perhaps at the time, to 
the importance of his opponent than to the doctrines 
he expressed. He became recognized as the rival of 
Douglas. When Douglas was called by the Demo- 
crats to canvass for the Gubernatorial election in Ohio, 
Lincoln was called for the same purpose by the Re- 
publicans. He used the arguments he made the year 
before in Illinois: that slavery was a moral wrong, 
and that it was not in the meaning of the framers of 
the Government that it should be extended. Douglas, 
tr>' as he would to change the theme from slavery to 

115 



ii6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the principles of popular sovereignty, was forced back 
into a discussion of slavery. To the emigrants from 
Ireland or Germany the abstract rights of the settler 
to form his own form of government was not as im- 
portant as the concrete right that it should already be 
free and open for themselves and their families coming 
later. In this campaign Ohio went Republican by a 
good majority. 

Lincoln was being asked to speak for the Repub- 
licans as far west as Kansas and Minnesota, and his 
friends in Illinois began planning to offer his name 
for the Presidential Convention of i860. The Illinois 
State Committee saw to it, through editorials in the 
daily papers, that the public opinion in his favour 
should be gathered and intensified. 

Lincoln was aware of these political manoeuvres 
and was not entirely averse to them. Reduced railway 
fares to the seat of the Convention were initiated and 
newspaper men were conciliated. To a politician Lincoln 
wrote: " As to your kind wishes for myself, allow me 
to say I cannot enter the ring on a money basis — 
first, because in the main it is wrong; and secondly, 
I have not and cannot get the money. I say in the 
main the use of money is wrong; but for certain objects 
in a political contest the use of same is both right and 
indispensable. With me, as with yourself, this long 
struggle has been one of great pecuniary loss. I now 
distinctly say this : If you should be appointed a dele- 
gate to Chicago, I will furnish $100 to bear the expenses 
of the trip." 

Lincoln's attitude towards his candidacy was ex- 
pressed in a letter to his friend : "I am not in a position 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 117 

where it would hurt much for me not to be nominated 
on the national ticket, but I am where it would hurt 
some for me not to get the Illinois delegates." 

The Republicans of the East, who had a candi- 
date of their own, Wm. H. Seward, upon whom they 
were all, with the exception of Greeley, pretty much 
agreed, invited Lincoln to speak in New York, to get 
a closer view of this new figure in American politics. 
It was taken for granted that the second place on the 
ticket was to go to the West. Seward, who had ex- 
pressed himself on the irrepressible conflict, even before 
Lincoln had made his " house divided against itself " 
speech, was considered much more radical on the 
slavery question than Lincoln. The South denounced 
him for intending to make war upon them not only 
because of his irrepressible conflict argument, but 
also because he had said that there was a "higher 
law " than the Constitution which dedicated the land 
to freedom. To counteract this "higher law" doc- 
trine they were planning to give the Vice-Presidential 
place to a man who would not be offensive to the more 
conservative elements, and Lincoln was the most likely 
man for the place. Time and again he had reiterated 
that he believed in the Constitution, that he would 
admit new slave states and that he would enforce a 
Fugitive Slave Law. 

Lincoln accepted the invitation to speak in New 
York, and Herndon says it was he who suggested that 
he speak on politics. Surely Lincoln was not planning 
to give his address on inventions ! At any rate he took 
Herndon's advice and spoke on the intentions of the 
framers of the Constitution on the matter of slavery. 



ii8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

It was a carefully-written exposition of the case, and 
he used for his text the words of Senator Douglas : " Our 
fathers, when they framed the Government under which 
we live, understood this question just as well and 
better than we do now." By arguments which would 
take much historical study to follow he demonstrated 
that the framers of the Constitution regarded slavery 
as a wrong, and that it was so placed in the Govern- 
ment as to be ultimately discarded. 

He spoke in Cooper Union, and never before had 
he such a distinguished audience. The culture of the 
East was on the platform, and the aged poet, Bryant, 
was in the chair. Lincoln's voice was high and thin 
when he first rose to speak, nervous as he was at this 
new ordeal and at the fact that his costume, kept in 
his bag from Springfield, had not been pressed for the 
occasion. But he soon forgot his own discomfort 
as he plunged into the theme which engrossed him. 
The address was earnest and profound, the racy collo- 
quialisms of the West were omitted, no quaint stories, not 
the usual summing up — " this is as plain as the weight 
of three small hogs " — yet the papers which printed his 
speech in full next day eulogised it, regretting they 
could not portray " the tones, the gestures, the kindling 
eye and the mirth-provoking look " with which it was 
read. Lincoln spoke in many other places in the East 
besides New York, but apart from impressing the Re- 
publicans in that section personally, he in no way caused 
them to consider him as a possible Presidential candidate. 
Even his debates with Douglas tended more as a dis- 
qualification of the Democratic leader for the Presidency 
than a qualification of himself for the Republicans. ' 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 119 

In the meantime, coupled with the fact that the 
country was nearing another Presidential election, it 
was thrown into ferment by continued slavery agita- 
tions coming from all sides. The Southern Merchants' 
Associations were clamouring against the personal 
Liberty Laws of the North, which were passed by some 
state to counteract the Fugitive Slave Law, and for 
the repeal of the Anti-Slave Trade Act. They went 
so far as to pass disunion resolutions, and Congress was 
again a scene of a bitter slavery discussion, caused by 
John Brown's raid. John Brown, with eighteen men, 
had hoped to capture the United States Arsenal at 
Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, and raise the flag of negro 
insurrection. On i6th October 1859 ^^^ attempt was 
made, but the slaves did not join him, and in three 
days he was captured. To the South, always in terror 
of servile insurrection, this was a most feared and 
dreaded event, and the impression took hold of it that 
the whole North was allied in this movement for the 
absolute abolition of slavery. The militia and the 
marines were poured out, and the little band at Harper's 
Ferry was surrounded. John Brown was captured, 
and on 2nd December he was hanged for treason. The 
case was brought up in Congress and became the cause 
for accusations of conspiracy against the North, Lin- 
coln spoke in Troy the day John Brown was hanged, 
but he did not draw from it the inspiration which 
the Abolitionists of the East did, who held religious 
services and tolled funeral bells. Lincoln used the 
execution only to serve as a threat against the South- 
erners, who were already saying that they would secede 
from the Union if a Republican President were elected. 



I20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

He would deal with the Southerners who would do 
so, he said, " as the state of Virginia dealt with old 
John Brown, who was hanged for treason. It availed 
him nothing before the law that he thought himself 
right . . . and we cannot object, though he agreed 
with us in calling slavery wrong. Now, if you under- 
take to destroy the Union contrary to law, if you 
commit treason against the United States, our duty 
will be to deal with you as John Brown has been dealt 
with. We shall try to do our duty." It was this 
different approach to the slavery question, one from 
the standpoint of the negro, the other from the stand- 
point of the white, that marked the difference between 
the Republicans and the Abolitionists. 

Fuel was added to the already rising flames by 
accusations against the Administration that fraud and 
bribes had been used to control Congress in its vote 
on the Kansas problem, and much corruption was 
brought to light. But the discredited Administra- 
tion went on boldly in its pro -slavery policy. Again 
and again Buchanan urged territorial expansion, the 
acquisition of Cuba, the protectorate of the dissolving 
Republic of Mexico, and the control of the Isthmus. 

In such a state of agitation, the country turned to 
watch the nominating conventions of the political 
parties. The Democratic Party was the first to meet. 
The Convention took place in Charleston, South Caro- 
Hna, 23rd April i860, only to be disrupted by the 
extreme demands of the Southern wing, who refused to 
discuss nominations before passing upon the principles of 
their platform. Upon those principles the anti-Lecomp- 
ton Democrats, as the Douglas wing was called, and 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 121 

the Southern " Fire-eaters " could not agree. Two 
reports of the Committee on platform were reported. 
The Majority report, representing seventeen states and 
127 electoral votes, based itself entirely on the theory 
of the right of property in slaves and the Congres- 
sional protection of it, that is upon the principle 
of popular sovereignty. The Minority report, repre- 
senting fifteen states and 176 electoral votes, said that 
the question of property in states and territories was 
judicial in character, and that the Democratic Party 
should abide by the past and future decisions of the 
Supreme Court, thus following up a strict interpre- 
tation of the Dred Scott decision. Upon other points 
they were agreed, such as the faithful execution of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, the acquisition of the island of 
Cuba, the building of a railroad to the Pacific and the 
resolution that the Personal Liberty laws of the Free 
State were hostile in their character, subversive of the 
Constitution and revolutionary in their effect. After 
much balloting both reports were refused, and it was 
voted to abide by the Democratic platform of 1856. 
At this the delegates of eight slave-holding states 
withdrew, amid the cheers of the citizens of Charleston. 
The remaining delegates to the Convention adjourned 
to fill the vacancies made by the seceding states, voting 
to meet in Baltimore, which was more neutral ground, 
within a month (i8th June). 

The Rump Convention held its own meeting and 
adopted the resolutions of the Minority report, which 
read: 

I. " That the Democracy of the United States hold 
these cardinal principles on the subject of slavery in 
9 



122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the territories. First, that Congress has no power to 
abolish slavery in the territories. Second, that the terri- 
torial legislature has no power to abolish slavery in any 
territory, nor to prohibit the introduction of slaves therein, 
nor any power to exclude slavery therefrom, nor any right 
to destroy or impair the right of property in slaves by any 
legislation whatever. 

2. " That the Federal Government must protect slavery 
on the high seas, in the territories and wherever else its 
Constitutional authority extends." 

The majority of the Convention met in Baltimore, 
but when it became apparent, through their success 
on the forms of organization, that the Douglas faction 
would win, more Southern members withdrew, carrying 
with them the Chairman of the Convention and several 
Northern delegates. The rest of the body proceeded 
to the nomination of Douglas for President. 

The second group of seceders adopted the resolution 
of the Charleston seceders and nominated John C. 
Breckenridge of Kentucky for President. 

To add to the confusion of parties a new one 
was organized, called the Constitutional Union Party, 
made up of the conservative element of the old Whigs 
and Know-Nothings, who were opposed to the extreme 
demands of both the Democrats and the Republicans. 
It met in Baltimore on gth May and nominated John 
Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, 
thus hoping to connect North and South, and declared 
with naive simplicity for " the Constitution of the 
country, the Union of the states and the enforcement 
of the laws." 

The Republican Party had not yet named its candi- 
date. With three parties already in the field, one 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 123 

outspokenly sectional and two semi-compromising, 
the contest lay between it and the opposing sectional 
party. Whichever side was numerically stronger 
would win. The old commercial WTiig elements had 
joined the Republican forces in the East even before 
the West, realizing their commercial antagonism to the 
South some years before the Western farmer came in 
direct conflict with slavery. The last fifteen years 
had seen a revolution in transportation and industries, 
cities had grown, a working-class had appeared. The 
famines and hard times of Ireland and Germany sent 
their hundreds of thousands yearly to America. 
Men no longer flocked to the wilderness, but settled 
close together to develop the internal resources of the 
land by the marvellous new machines that were in- 
vented, thousands a year; and the East, already com- 
mercial and industrial, waited for the West to with- 
draw its entire allegiance from the South. Its great 
carrier, the Mississippi, had made the South and West one 
for a period of two generations. They were united by their 
agricultural interests and were both suspicious of the com- 
mercial schemes of the East, and were jealous together 
of central power. But these were weak ties, beside the 
industrial changes which were turning the face of the 
West toward the East, whereby the labourer of one 
section could become the small capitalist of the other. 
Victory lay before the Republican Party if it could get 
within its fold but two of the Western States which had 
formerly been Democratic — Indiana and Illinois. Lin- 
coln had shown in the sectional contest that Illinois was 
equally divided between Republicanism and Democracy. 
A Western candidate might carry these doubtful states. 



124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

A great point was made in that direction when it was 
voted that Chicago be the seat of the Convention in June. 
Lincoln was in the mind of the RepubHcan State 
Convention of lUinois when it met in May. The ground 
was so well prepared for him that he seemed to enter 
upon the arena spontaneously, as if by a sudden popular 
demand. Lincoln was sitting on his heels in a hall 
among the onlookers when the presiding officer sug- 
gested that a distinguished citizen of Illinois should 
have a seat upon the platform. The audience knew 
whom he meant, and Lincoln was lifted upon their 
shoulders and brought to a seat of honour. Later it 
was voted by the House that an old Democrat, who was 
standing outside ready to present something to the 
Convention, be admitted. The door was opened, and 
John Hanks, the pioneer cousin of Lincoln, marched in, 
bearing two triangular rails and a banner on which 
were printed the words: 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 

The Rail Candidate 

For President in i860 

Two rails from a lot of three thousand made in 1830 by 
Thomas Hanks and Abe Lincoln — whose father was 
the first pioneer of Macon County. 

Lincoln rose and said that he was not sure whether he 
made those identical rails or not, but that he was quite 
sure he had made a great many just as good. This 
demonstration over, the Convention instructed its dele- 
gates to give their vote as a unit for Lincoln in the 
National Convention which was to meet a week later. 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 125 

To this Convention, the Eastern section came ready 
to vote for Governor Seward of New York. But though 
acceptable to the East, he appeared too radical for the 
West, and the delegates felt they were too close to 
victory to sacrifice it by a candidate who would not be 
voted for in the doubtful states. Lincoln then became 
the one possible candidate, not well enough known by 
the people at large for them to be against him, and 
known just well enough to appear safe and sound to the 
newly-turned West. 

To those present the nomination of Lincoln at 
Chicago seemed unlooked-for and accidental. Seward's 
men came in full force, and the papers of the East 
had " boomed " him for months. They were pre- 
pared for victory. But the Lincoln men knew that 
if in the first ballot in the Convention at Chicago 
Seward were to fail in getting the majority, he could 
not rise, for they came with their maximum amount 
of supporters. Lincoln was in home territory and 
could gather recruits. To define his position more 
clearly, he sent a dispatch, on the eve of the voting, 
saying he agreed with Seward in his irrepressible con- 
flict idea, and in negro equality, but he opposed his 
" higher law " doctrine. Underlined in this dispatch 
was the sentence, " Make no contracts that will bind 
me," to which his managers did not pay absolute 
attention, for they were more intent upon receiving 
the nomination than on being scrupulous. By bar- 
gaining and half-binding Lincoln they received the 
votes of Indiana, Pennsylvania (which was more 
interested in the Morill tariff than in the question of 
slavery), and New Jersey. 



126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

The Convention, which met in the Wigwam, a 
large pavilion holding ten thousand men, built especi- 
ally for the occasion, was crowded with Lincoln men. 
On the morning of the balloting, the Seward contingent 
paraded the streets of Chicago with much flj^ing of 
banners and music ; but the lusty Westerners filled all 
the seats and were there in full force to shout for their 
" favourite son." Such a series of yells went up at 
the mention of his name that all other " howlers " 
were discouraged. It was this incident which gave rise 
to the statements later that Lincoln was nominated 
because of the accidental crowding of the Wigwam 
with his friends. As a matter of fact, the voting was 
pretty well arranged before that. At the first ballot 
Seward received 173I votes: Lincoln, 102. At the 
second ballot Pennsylvania threw in her vote with 
Lincoln, and he stood 181 to Seward's 184I; and 
at the third ballot Lincoln began to gain from all 
directions, his vote rising to 231I, while Seward 
went back to 180. Before it was over Lincoln's total 
amounted to 354, and soon Seward's managers them- 
selves moved that his nomination be made unanimous. 
For second place, Hannibal Hamlin of Massachu- 
setts was nominated, to appease the more radical 
wing of the party. Cannon boomed, torch-light pro- 
cessions were organized, rails and axes became the 
symbols of the campaign, and " Honest Abe " and 
" the Rail SpHtter " common appellations. 

The Abolitionists of the East received the announce- 
ment of Lincoln's nomination with scorn. " "VMio 
is this huckster in politics? " asked Wendell Phillips. 
" Who is this coimtry court advocate? " It was 



THE REPUBLICAN VICTORY 127 

Phillips who called Abraham Lincoln " the slave 
hound of Illinois," because he did not favour the aboli- 
tion of the Fugitive Slave Laws. In fact, to most 
of the anti-slavery elements of the East this nomi- 
nation seemed a sad compromise. Seward's defeat 
meant to them that the party had not the courage to 
put forward a man who had been violent in the op- 
position of slavery. But the delegates in the Party 
Convention were seeking a practical result, and they 
chose a man who, without promising to lower the 
Republican standard, was able to get the most electoral 
votes. 

Lincoln did not go on his own canvass, but went 
back to Springfield to await the general elections in 
November, and this town became a miniature capitol, 
with lobbpsts and office-seekers and party delegates, 
and the usual crowd of reporters and photographers. 
He received everyone who came to him in a little room 
in the State House. He saw all but consulted none, 
and on the question of the impending crisis maintained 
a Sphinx-like silence, warding off all embarrassing 
questions with apt anecdotes. 

The Nationalists, who realized the danger of the 
extreme sectional elections going on in the South and 
in the North, tried fusion in many states with any 
faction that would unite with them. But the people 
of each section had girded themselves for the fight, and 
fusion only succeeded in New Jersey, where Lincoln 
lost three electoral votes. By the voting of Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey and Indiana — October states, so 
called because they voted in October instead of in 
November — it was seen that the Republican vote would 



128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

be victorious. In November Lincoln was elected, not 
by a majority of the people at large, but because he 
polled the largest vote of any of the other candidates. 
He received 1,866,452 votes; Douglas, 1,375.157 
votes; Breckenridge, the candidate of the extreme 
South, 847,953 votes; and Bell, the nominee of the 
hastily-got-together harmony convention, 590,631 votes. 
Thus, adding all the votes with the exception of 
those given to Lincoln, he would have lost by almost 
a million. Had there been some more apportionate 
system of representation besides the two party sys- 
tems still existent, this sectional vote might never 
have succeeded in almost foundering the country. As 
it was, Lincoln was duly elected President of the United 
States of America in November i860, and had to wait 
until 4th March 1861 before he could take hold of the 
reins of government to direct it towards the principles 
upon which he was chosen. 



CHAPTER VIII 
SECESSION 

LINCOLN, suddenly brought forth from the 
obscurity of a middle-west town to the position 
of President-elect of the United States, at a 
time of utter mad excitement and panic, had to bear 
the usual amount of mud-flinging with which the op- 
position deluges the successful candidate. He was a 
" nigger," an ape, and his father an imported gorilla 
from Mozambique! The abuse knew no bounds. 
Even his own supporters looked askance at his uncouth 
appearance and mistook simplicity of manner for boor- 
ishness. Mistrust, lack of confidence, disrespect were 
on every side. But the problems that confronted 
the nation at this moment were too vast for him to 
stop to consider his own pain, brutal as were the blows. 
The situation looked disastrous. Four months must 
elapse before a President-elect can enter ofhce, and 
within these four months he had to watch a well- 
organized movement for secession grow and be con- 
summated, without any hindrance from the outgoing 
Administration. 

He was diametrically opposed to the position and 
tenets held by Buchanan, who, having been elected 
by a Southern vote, stood for principles which left 
him powerless to act in the face of the crisis. Lincoln 
was elected on a squarely-placed platform of restric- 
tion upon slavery, and with slight fears of offending 

129 



130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Southern desires; nevertheless, not only was he unable 
to effect anything, but he was without help from his 
own friends. Bom of the people, he knew instinc- 
tively that they would resent any ultimate breaking 
up of the Union or loss of territory for lack of firmness. 
But the expression of the leaders in the North almost 
coincided with that of the leaders of the South. If 
the South said, " We want eternal separation from 
a Black Republican Government," Republicans like 
Greeley, as well as the Abolitionists, advocated separa- 
tion from the " slave-drivers " or saw Constitutional 
reasons whereby each separate state, if it so desired, 
had as much right to secede as the original thirteen 
colonies had from the domination of England. At 
best, the threats of separation of the South were called 
election bimkum . Thus rebeUion brewed while Lincoln's 
hands were tied. 

It was not a new thing for the South to threaten 
secession. She had done so repeatedly in the eighty 
years of Union. Ten years before, in 1850, secession 
seemed near over the admission of California as a free 
state. The Compromise measures of 1850 prevented 
the break for a while, but at any suggestion of defeat 
for the slave-power the idea of secession rushed to the 
fore. So, in 1856, when it seemed for a moment that 
Fremont might be elected, letters from the Governor 
of Virginia were sent to various Southern governors 
" to protect the honour and interests of the slave- 
holding states," and there were letters from Southern 
Senators to Jefferson Davis, who was Secretary of War 
under Pierce, discussing the project of exchanging 
percussion for flint muskets, and the apportionment 



( 



SECESSION 131 

of arms to be divided among the Southern States. 
The election of Buchanan allayed that movement, 
but it burst forth again in the time of the Douglas- 
Lincoln debates, when the country was startled by 
the so-called "Scarlet Letter" of a Southerner 
named Yancey. This was a call for the organization 
of Committees of Safety over all the cotton states, for 
the purpose of " firing the Southern heart, instructing 
the Southern mind, giving courage to each other, and 
at the proper moment, by one organized concerted 
action, precipitating the cotton states into a revolu- 
tion." The excitement that this letter caused drew 
forth moderate disclaimers on the part of the South, 
but at heart they saw no value in the continued union 
with the North, and very eagerly forced the split in the 
Democratic Party, so that by the election of either one 
extreme or the other, the day of what they considered 
unbeneficial compromises should cease. The election 
of Lincoln was greeted with joy by many of the Southern 
leaders. At last there was good cause for action. 

Three agencies were employed to effect dissolution. 
The one to create public opinion was called the i860 
Association. This group gave the leading men of the 
South a medium of interchange of information and 
views upon the impending crisis, and was used for 
distributing tracts and pamphlets to inquire into the 
defences of the states and effect a military organiza- 
tion. It was organized in September i860, and by 
November 166,000 pamphlets were already published 
and being passed through second and third editions. 
The second agent was the control of the machinery of 
the states by the governors and other functionaries, 



132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

so that they could convene special sessions of the legis- 
latures, urge the meeting of delegates for conventions, 
and, most important of all, refuse to pay the customs 
to the United States, and hold the Federal arsenals and 
forts as State property. The third was even more 
powerful than the other two. It lay in the manipu- 
lations of Senators and Cabinet Ministers to extract 
a virtual promise from the administration not to coerce 
the South, It placed men in authority who fostered 
an attack upon the administration which they were 
supposed to support and forewarned their constitu- 
encies of any action the enemy was contemplating. 
They formed both the prime movers and the spies 
of the secession elements at home. Thus, Jefferson 
Davis, afterwards President of the Confederacy, called 
in to help shape Buchanan's last message to Congress, 
of 4th December i860, succeeded in making it vacillat- 
ing and a virtual admission that the Constitution had 
no power to prevent the states from seceding. This 
message, the London Times said a month later, was a 
" greater blow to the American people than all the 
rant of a Georgian governor or the ordinances of a 
Charleston Convention." It admitted that there were 
certain defects in a democratic form of government 
which make the enforcement of the laws upon the com- 
ponent parts impossible. For though it said no state 
had a right to secede from the Union, nevertheless the 
Union had no right to coerce the states. In the same 
way the Secretary of War, Floyd, when advised to send 
troops to the South to prevent secession, sent arms but 
no soldiers. 

Having gained immunity and arms, the secession 



SECESSION 133 

leaders hastened to consummate their plans. South 
Carolina, which had even in October, a month before 
the election of Lincoln, convened a Legislature in 
special session for the very purpose of ordering a 
State convention to consider secession in the advent 
of a Lincoln victory, now with these assured pro- 
mises of Buchanan, sent envoys to him on the ques- 
tion of non-coercion, and requested that the forts of 
Charleston, Sumter and Moultrie be left ungarrisoned. 
Buchanan received them, but such a storm of indigna- 
tion arose from the North that a Cabinet crisis ensued 
and three members resigned. Their places were taken 
by men who were firm in the conviction that the Federal 
Government had authority in every state, at least con- 
cerning its own arsenals. This Cabinet crisis on 14th 
December caused another crisis in Congress on the 
same day, in which most of the Southern Senators 
left their seats, sending letters to their constituencies 
that the " argument was over." Six days later South 
Carolina, by special Convention assembled, voted seces- 
sion from the Union. The Charleston Mercury issued 
an extra edition, bearing the headline in large black 
type: 

" THE UNION IS NO MORE." 

Though it was intrinsically true that the argu- 
ment was over, nevertheless in Congress itself it had 
just begun, and the South at this moment could have 
had anything it asked. Congress was on its knees. 
Both houses had a Democratic majority, and the central 
conservative faction was strong. A committee of thirty- 
three in the House and a committee of thirteen in the 



134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Senate were appointed to bring in Compromise resolu- 
tions. Over and over again committees in the House 
and in the Senate were formed to bring in such reso- 
lutions, but generally the Southerners refused to sit 
upon them. The final committees of thirty-three and 
thirteen seemed to have been more successful, and the 
so-called Crittenden resolutions were adopted. These 
proposed a Constitutional amendment which provided 
that: I. All territory of the United States north of 36° 
30' should be free; all south of it slave-soil. 2. Slaves 
should be protected as property by all the departments 
of the territorial Government. 3. That states should 
be admitted with or without slavery, as their Constitu- 
tions provided, whether the states were north or south 
of 36° 30'. 4. Congress should have no power to shut 
slavery out of the territories. 5. The United States 
should pay owners for rescued fugitive slaves. 

Cannon boomed to celebrate the success of this 
" Compromise," and Congress went one step further 
and actually passed an amendment to the Con- 
stitution which promised to permit slavery to rest 
forever undisturbed in the states. This was endorsed 
by Lincoln on the day of his inauguration, and by two 
states, Ohio and Maryland, and only failed because 
of the state of secession already in the country, which 
made the necessary three-fifths ratification of the states 
impossible. 

The Southern oligarchy, far from being deterred 
by these overtures of peace, went ahead in its plans 
for secession. The seceding Congressmen and the 
office-holders of each state brought in carefully-framed 
resolutions at their Legislatures for military appro- 



SECESSION 135 

priations, and called for Conventions to vote upon seces- 
sion. This movement came from the officials to the 
people and was in no way a popular one. The con- 
ception of state rights was one which permitted a state 
to leave the Union but not to remain in it. The plan 
of the oligarchy was to interchange representatives 
from each state, and by holding local elections so to 
frame public opinion that on the 4th of March, when 
the incoming Administration was to take office, there 
should appear simultaneously upon that day a new 
administration in the South, with its own rival form of 
government. The sudden change in the Cabinet of 
Buchanan caused a change of plan in January. Im- 
mediate secession was agreed upon, the Convention of 
the States to meet in Montgomery, Alabama, 15th 
February 1861; and the cotton states Senators were 
advised to remain in their seats, " to keep the hands of 
Mr Buchanan tied." 

With this change, Mississippi passed her ordinance 
of secession on 9th January; Florida, loth January; 
Alabama, nth January; Georgia, 19th January; Loui- 
siana, 26th January; and Texas, ist February. Thus 
only six states followed the seceding South Carolina. 
The governors of these states immediately took pos- 
session of all the Federal posts. The evacuations 
were generally peaceable, the posts being held by men 
influenced by Southern opinion. The occupants, as 
a military courtesy, were allowed to salute the flag and 
go home. 

In none of the states were the secession ordinances 
submitted to a vote of the people for ratification, so 
little dia they believe that the people were with them. 



136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Florida seceded quickly, but the white population of 
Florida was only large enough to furnish one Congres- 
sional representative. In Georgia the question was 
hotly contested, and American "machine methods" were 
used to rush the question through in Convention. While 
peace conferences were still being held in Washington, 
the Convention of the seven seceding states met in 
Montgomery on the 4th of February instead of the 15th. 
The body called itself a Provisional Congress, though 
the members were not sent by a direct vote of the 
people but were appointed by the secession Conven- 
tions. Votes were taken by states instead of numbers. 
On 8th February the name, The Confederate States of 
America, was adopted, and the provisional Congress re- 
tained legislative power for one year. On 9th February 
it elected Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander 
H. Stephens as its Vice-President. On the nth of 
March it prepared a permanent Constitution, which 
should come into effect a year later. In the permanent 
Constitution as in the provisional one it modelled itself 
upon the Constitution of the United States, except that 
instead of the phrase, " We, the people," establish so 
and so, it made the significant change, " Each state 
acting in its sovereign and independent character " do 
so and so. It provided for the protection of slavery 
" as it now exists in the Confederate States, to be pro- 
tected by Congress and by the territorial Government 
in any newly-acquired territory." It specifically pro- 
hibited protective tariffs and internal improvements 
at the general expense, and denied the granting of the 
franchise to persons not citizens under the general law 
of naturalization. 



SECESSION 137 

On the 1 8th of February, Jefferson Davis was duly 
inaugurated as President of the Confederate States 
of America. He organized his Cabinet, and a regular 
army of ten thousand men was ordered to be established, 
and a hundred thousand volunteers for twelve months 
to be enlisted. Agents were sent to Europe to obtain 
war materials, and, what was more important, to argue 
for foreign recognition of the states. A committee of 
three was appointed to proceed to Washington to 
negotiate for peaceful secession. When Lincoln 
arrived in Washington this form of government 
had not yet been consummated, and the concilia- 
tory measures of the Peace Committee were being duly 
voted upon. 

Lincoln, too, even before his arrival at Washing- 
ton, though unwilling to compromise upon the ex- 
tension of slavery, fell into the general plan of con- 
ciliation. After much hesitation he wrote an open 
letter, saying that the incoming Administration meant 
in no way to disturb local institutions in the states. 
But in his quiet, unobtrusive way he was writing letters 
begging the Republican leaders not to go further. 
On nth December he wrote: " Entertain no proposition 
for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. 
The instant you do they have us under again, all 
our labour is lost, and sooner or later must be done 
over again. . . . The tug is to come, and better now 
than later." 

The North, distrustful and suspicious, was watch- 
ing the new pilot, who was being " hurried to the 
helm in a tornado." The new pilot was discreet. His 
one aim at this time was to stand by the Chicago 

JO 



138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

platform, to say as little as possible, and neither com- 
mit himself nor offend anyone. 

He had great difficulties in drawing up the slate for 
his Cabinet, Seward, who was the recognized leade-r 
of the Republican Party, and who had been considered 
as a Presidential candidate, was looked upon as the 
man behind the throne. Lincoln shrewdly wanted 
to take in all the representative leaders of the country 
in his Cabinet, and thus not only have the ablest help, 
but have a broad Administration, national as far as 
possible. Seward was an old-time Whig and had 
enemies among the more extreme Republicans, repre- 
sented by Salmon P. Chase, who was twice Governor 
of Ohio and twice Senator from that state. Lincoln 
found difficulty in gaining the consent of these two to 
take portfolios, and it was these men he wanted above 
any other. Seward would not accept with Chase, and 
Chase would not accept a subordinate position, nor 
would he work with what he called the conglomerate 
nature of Lincoln's slate. Lincoln had wanted Seward 
as his Secretary of State ; Chase as the Secretary of the 
Treasury ; the post of Secretary of War, after much hesi- 
tation, he had given to Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, 
because of a pledge his managers had given to the dele- 
gates of that state in the Chicago Convention. But 
Cameron was a notoriously unprincipled politician, 
and Lincoln, whose only thought was for making an 
efficient Administration, did not like the placing of 
Cameron in his Cabinet. The four other members of 
the Cabinet were one-time Democrats : Gideon Wells 
of Connecticut was Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. 
Smith of Indiana, Secretary of the Interior; Edward 



SECESSION 139 

Bates of Missouri, Attorney-General; and Montgomery 
Black of Maryland, Postmaster-General. He was not 
at all anxious to be partisan at this moment, to which 
of course objection was made. He was accused of 
overbalancing his Cabinet with non-partisans, there 
being four Democrats to three Republicans. Lincoln's 
answer was characteristic. " Why," he said, " you 
forget me. I will count as at least one in this 
Administration . ' ' 

But the truth remained, that he was willing to 
embrace as many non-Republican Unionists as would 
come to him. It was true, too, that he was counted very 
little if at all in this time of panic. Seward was the 
recognized leader; he, too, recognizing himself in that 
light, making speeches and giving out pronunciamentos. 
As to his Cabinet, " Dr Lincoln succeeded in his great 
feat of balancing," as one satirical paper put it, but not 
until after his inauguration on 4th March. His success 
was mainly due to his own firmness, coupled with that 
gentleness which made each man think that he was 
gaining upon him. It took Seward several weeks, 
it took Chase several years, to appreciate that faculty 
in him. 

The President-elect, besides being busy at Cabinet- 
making and interviewing the sudden hosts of " original 
Lincoln men " who flocked to Springfield for appoint- 
ments, spent his time in a little back room in the State 
House writing his Inaugural Address, and reading for 
the occasion the speech of Henry Clay in 1850, the 
Proclamation of Jackson against Nullification, Webster's 
reply to Hayne, and the Constitution. 

Before emerging from his obscurity for his journey 



I40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to Washington he visited his father's grave, ordered a 
new tombstone for it, rode to Coles County to see his 
aged stepmother, said good-bye to New Salem friends, 
all with the air of a man who was going to a far land 
not to return. He was almost overpowered by the 
task before him, and though his bent towards super- 
stition prevented him from using the word " War," 
at this crisis he must have seen its approach clearly. 

He was so careful not to commit himself, that the 
impression he made upon the country when he finally 
did emerge was that of unseeming levity in the time 
of trouble and of being without any underlying prin- 
ciple for his new office. His last words from Spring- 
field were sad, and carried with them a foreboding of 
death. " No one can appreciate," he said to the neigh- 
bours at the railway station seeing him off, " my feeUng 
of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the 
kindness of this people, I owe everything. Here I have 
lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a 
young to an old man. Here my children have been 
born and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing 
when or whether ever I may return, with a task before 
me greater than that which rested upon Washington." 
The comparison with Washington was considered a 
little presumptuous. 

In Indianapolis he told them plainly that the pre- 
servation of the Union was their business more than 
his. At another place he likened the Southern concep- 
tion of Union to a free-love arrangement. This did 
not please the people. Their Puritanism was shocked 
that the President-elect should speak in such terms. 
A Httle girl asked him to grow a beard, saying that 



SECESSION 141 

she thought it more dignified for a President to have 
one. He wrote to her, asking if " the people would 
not call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin 
it now? " It was all too unserious. He did grow his 
beard, and when he met the little girl he liissed her. 
" A man without dignity," they said. In Uti _a he made 
one facetious remark and nothing more. It was: 
" I appear before you that I may see you, and that 
you may see me, and I am willing to admit that, so 
far as the ladies are concerned, I have the best of the 
bargain, though I wish it to be understood that I do 
not make the same acknowledgment concerning the 
men." 

But there was nothing else for him to say. He 
was eager to get down to Washington and begin to 
act. The government was slipping from his hands. 
Treason was around him, and he rose to speak only to 
let the people see him, which he thought was what they 
wanted. It was time to begin showing what he meant 
to do later, when he had the power. He made 
one definite statement at this time. It was: "To 
the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the 
Constitution expressly enjoins upon me, that the 
laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the 
states." 

That was interpreted as an attack on the South. 
His great emphasis lay on union; the slavery ques- 
tion, he argued, was only a potential disturber. " One 
section of our country believes slavery is right," he 
said, " and ought to be extended, and the other believes 
it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the 
only substantial dispute." His Inaugural Address was 



142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a plea to the Southerners that the accession of a Re- 
pubhcan Administration did not endanger the peace 
and personal security of their property. But he re- 
peated the statement that the Administration meant 
to collect its customs and protect its posts in the South, 
which again set it ablaze. Upon the question of dis- 
solution he was firm. " Physically speaking, we can- 
not separate, we cannot remove our respective sections 
from each other, nor build an impossible wall between 
them." He ended with an admonition to the South: 
" In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, 
and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. 
The Government will not assail you. You can have 
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the 
Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 
preserve, protect and defend it." 

His last paragraph, which is famous in history, 
was suggested by Seward, to whom he gave this paper 
to correct. Seward, thinking he ought not to close 
with the above argument, wrote two suggestions, both 
clumsy and cumbersome. The one which Lincoln 
modified read: " I close. We are not, we must not be, 
aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. 
Although passion has stained our bonds of affection 
too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be 
broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so 
many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass 
through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad 
continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in their 
ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian 
angel of the nation." 



SECESSION 143 

Lincoln wrote with the measured beat of an 
axe: " I am loath to close. We are not enemies 
but friends. We must not be enemies. Though 
passion may be strained, it must not break our bonds of 
affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching 
from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living 
heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will 
yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, 
as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our 
nature." 

The last ride to Washington was a hurried flight in 
the night. Rumours of assassination were rife, and 
in Harrisburg he was advised to cancel his engagement 
in Baltimore, . where they thought there was a well- 
developed plot to do away with him, and to go directly 
to Washington. He consented, but regretted it ever 
after, and his over-cautiousness in the beginning may 
have been the cause of his later recklessness, which 
ended in his assassination in 1865. 

At one moment he thought he had lost his Inaugural 
Address. He came to his friend Lamon and said: 
" Lamon, I guess I have lost my certificate of moral 
character, written by myself. Bob has lost my grip- 
sack containing my Inaugural Address. I want you 
to help me find it. I feel a good deal as the old member 
of the Methodist Church did when he lost his wife 
at the camp-meeting and went up to an old elder of 
the church and asked him whereabouts in hell his 
wife was. In fact, I am in a worse fix than my Metho- 
dist friend, for if it were nothing but a wife missing, 
mine would be sure to pop up serenely." Incidentally 
the Inaugural also popped up. 



144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

With the government now in the hands of the 
RepubHcans the first question was the pohcy to be 
assumed towards the seceded states. Secession was 
not to be permitted. The North, strong and victorious, 
felt itself in no way ready to concede to a shrinkage 
of territory, yet coercion was not to be used. But 
there was no way of maintaining authority in the 
South. Senators and Congressmen were resigning, the 
officers in the Army and Navy and the officials of the 
Civil Service were leaving their posts, and all but three 
of the forts were evacuated — Fort Pickens near Florida, 
and Forts Moultrie and Sumter in Charleston, South 
Carolina. Lincoln's idea was simple: if authority was 
to be maintained these three forts were to be held; 
but his Cabinet, Congress, the expressed opinion of the 
North, were against him. That would be coercion and 
force. Some other way must be found to hold the South, 
either by conceding their demands as the Peace Con- 
ference suggested, or a foreign war to rouse their pat- 
riotism, as Seward romantically proposed. Lincoln had 
his mind pretty well made up, and began giving secret 
orders to hold the forts, while Seward was virtually 
promising the envoys, through Chief Justice Campbell, 
that they would be given up. 

With these problems before him, Lincoln was beset 
and overwhelmed by office-seekers and lobbyists, for 
each new Administration brings with it the necessity 
of refilling most of the official posts of the country. 
He hardly had time to himself to grasp the details of 
the situation, and he felt very much, he said, " like a 
man letting rooms in one part of the house while the 
other part was on fire." 



SECESSION 145 

The matter of the forts became pressing, and Lincoln 
finally, on 2gth March, ordered the Secretary of War 
and the Secretary of the Navy to be ready for an ex- 
pedition by sea not later than 6th April. Seward, 
who was promising the opposite, and who considered 
himself much more skilled than Lincoln in politics and 
diplomacy through a greater experience in such matters, 
and as one upon whom the burden of the situation 
rested, became alarmed at this act", and on ist April sent 
Lincoln a document entitled " Some Thoughts for the 
President's Consideration ": 

" First. We are at the end of a month's administration 
and yet without a policy, either domestic or foreign. 

" Second. This, however, is not culpable, and it has 
even been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate, with 
the need to meet applications for patronage, have prevented 
attention to other and more grave matters. 

" Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute 
our policy for both domestic and foreign affairs would not 
only bring scandal upon the Administration but danger 
upon the country, 

" Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicant 
for office. But how? I suggest that we make a local 
appointment, forthwith leaving foreign or general ones for 
ulterior and occasional action. 

" Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my 
views are singular and perhaps not sufficiently explained. 
My system is built upon this idea as a ruling one, namely, 
that we must 

" Change the Question before the Public from 
ONE UPON Slavery, or about Slavery, for a Question 
UPON Union or Disunion. 

" In other words, from what would be regarded as a 
party question to one of Patriotism or Union. 



146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although 
not in fact a slavery or a party question, is so regarded. 
Witness the temper manifested by the Repubhcans in the 
free States and even by the Union men in the South. 

" I would, therefore, terminate it as a safe means for 
changing the issue. I deem it fortunate that the last 
Administration created the necessity. 

" For the rest I would simultaneously defend and rein- 
force all the forts in the Gulf, and have the Navy recalled 
from foreign stations to be prepared for a blockade. Put 
the island of Key West under martial law. This will raise 
distinctly the question of Union or Disunion. I would 
maintain every fort and possession in the South. 

"FOR FOREIGN NATIONS 

" I would demand explanations from Spain and France, 
categorically, at once. 

" I would seek explanations from Great Britain and 
Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico and Central 
America, to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of indepen- 
dence on this continent against European intervention. 

" And, if satisfactory explanations are not received 
from Spain and France, 

" Would convene Congress and declare war against 
them. 

" But whatever poHcy we adopt there must be an 
energetic prosecution of it. 

" For this purpose it must be somebody's business to 
pursue and direct it incessantly. 

" Either the President must do it himself, and be all 
the while active in it, or 

" Devolve it on some member of the Cabinet. Once 
adopted, debates on it must end and all agree and abide. 

" It is not in my especial province. 

" But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility." 



SECESSION 147 

Lincoln answered that letter the same night, mildly 
but firmly, as follows: 

" At the beginning of that month, in the Inaugural, I 
said, ' The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy 
and possess the property and places belonging to the 
Government, and to collect the duties and imposts! ' This 
had your distinct approval at the time; and taken in con- 
nection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, 
directing him to employ every means in his power to 
strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic 
pohcy you now urge, with the single exception that it does 
not propose to abandon Fort Sumter. 

" Again, I do not perceive how the reinforcement of 
Fort Sumter would be done on a party issue, while that of 
Fort Pickens would be on a more national and patriotic one. 

" The news received yesterday in regard to St Domingo 
certainly brings a new item within the range of our foreign 
pohcy ; but up to that time we have been preparing circulars 
and instructions to ministers and the hke, all in perfect 
harmony, without even a suggestion that we had no foreign 
pohcy. 

" I remark that if this must be done I must do it. 
When a general line of policy is adopted I apprehend there 
is no danger of its being changed without good reason or 
continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still, 
upon points arising in its progress I wish, and suppose I am 
entitled to have, the advice of all of the Cabinet." 

It is interesting to know that Lincoln never made 
poHtical capital of Seward's " Thoughts for the Pre- 
sident's Consideration," nor did he show it to anyone, 
the document being found in a drawer after his death. 
He understood the good faith in which it was sent. 
Seward's ideas were muddled with the traditional 



148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

thinking of the commercial East ; foreign wars, to seem 
not to hold a fort and yet to hold it, to evade issues. 
Lincoln, fortunately, had no traditions, and his mind 
was clearer. He spoke for the free homesteader who 
wanted the control of the land. He was to hold the 
forts quietly and wait for a protest from the enemy, 
the true method of the pioneer. Over-cautiousness, a 
habit of doing all the chores himself, made him send 
orders after the War Department had sent theirs, with 
the result that the rehef to be sent to Charleston went 
to Fort Pickens, and Sumter had no means of defence. 
Captain Anderson, who occupied Fort ^loultrie, which 
was nearer Charleston than Sumter, was ordered by the 
Governor of South Carolina not to leave Moultrie for 
Smnter. In the evening, by a ruse, he took his forty 
men and rowed over to Sumter. In revenge, the South 
Carolinians, without waiting for an order from their 
own Secretary of War, fired upon the fort. Sumter 
held out until it was on fire, and then was evacuated, 
15th April 1861. No one was killed. 

To the relief of Lincoln and the Republicans the 
attack came from the South. " The flag was fired 
upon ! " All the talk of conciliation and no-coercion, as 
Lincoln had surmised, lay in a consciousness of strength. 
Ultimately the North would follow up its " victory of 
the ballot by the bullet." Only the American's habit 
of compromise, which would sacrifice any principle if its 
material prosperity be not disturbed, made it appear 
vacillating on the question of secession. With the 
attack on Fort Sumter the North rushed to protect 
its territories. Chauvinism came to the fore. " The 
rebels were to be whipped for insulting the flag," and 



SECESSION 149 

Wendell Phillips and other Abolitionists who advocated 
separation from the " wa37ward sisters " were mobbed 
and forced to travel with a body-guard for protection. 
The North stood consolidated and ready for the 
fight. 



I 



CHAPTER IX 
CIVIL WAR 

THE day after the fall of Sumter, 15th April 
1861, found an excited and zealous North 
now ready to give its life's blood and its money 
to protect itself, where heretofore it could not be made 
to part with a cent to purchase the slaves and do away 
with the basic cause of the menace. For this the brunt 
of the expense would have fallen on the rich upper 
classes, and such measures, when proposed, never reached 
Committee reading. A war, where the life and money 
of the people themselves were to be offered as the sacri- 
fice, was the only means possible. Lincoln, whose in- 
terest lay with the West rather than the East, and who 
would have much preferred indemnity to war, was forced 
to bend to circumstances and issue a call for seventy-five 
thousand troops for three months. This was five times 
the number of the existing standing army, but the hope 
that the struggle would be brief is manifested in the fact 
that the enlistment was only for three months. This 
call was not published until the following day, to give 
the states time to hear of the fall of Sumter. 

As was expected, the North responded eagerly, 
but the border states showed quite a different spirit. 
The four lower border states — Virginia, North CaroHna, 
Tennessee and Arkansas — seceded immediately and 
joined the Confederacy, while the upper four — Delaware, 
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri — were with great 



CIVIL WAR 151 

difficulty kept in the Union. They were none of them 
plantation states, nevertheless slavery was held as 
valuable property, especially in Kentucky, which was 
an important breeding state for the south. The Con- 
federate Congress had hoped to lure the border states 
to them by prohibiting the foreign slave trade, and thus 
promising them an unimpaired trade in slaves; but 
railways and commerce had diversified their interests, 
and secession from the West and from the East offered 
no advantage. It was easy to retain Delaware, through 
its geographical position, which really placed it among 
the North-central States. Maryland remained faithful 
through its Unionist Governor. Missouri and Ken- 
tucky proved more difficult to hold. The line between 
the North and South was drawn for 1000 miles by 
the Ohio River, and from a point called Cairo, in 
Illinois, it ran along another thousand miles down the 
Mississippi to New Orleans. Kentucky and Missouri 
lay upon the line of this demarcation. Kentucky 
stretched from east to west for three-quarters of 
the Ohio, the opposite bank of which was divided by 
the states of Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, and Missouri 
lay along the Mississippi. They were crucial states from 
a military point of view as well as political. 

Lincoln kept his hold on them by two different 
policies. In Missouri the population was divided on 
the question of Union or Disunion. The great influx 
of German immigrants gave that state a decided anti- 
slavery element, and they formed bands of Union 
militiamen. The Governor, on the other hand, was 
for the South, and his answer to Lincoln's request 
for men showed Southern temper. " Your requisi- 



152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

tion," he wrote, " in my judgment is illegal, uncon- 
stitutional and revolutionary in its object, inhuman 
and diabolical, and cannot be compHed with." He was 
forming the state militia into tools for the South. Lin- 
coln arbitrarily destroyed the nucleus of secession by 
a forced disbanding of the state militia camps with 
the aid of the Federal troops. These elements of seces- 
sion enlisted directly in the South, while the Northern 
sympathizers entered the militia or the United States 
Army. 

In Kentucky the play was somewhat similar, but 
more cautious. The Governor's answer for troops was 
a categorical refusal. " Kentucky will furnish no 
troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister 
Southern States." But the Legislature, after a month 
of struggle, stood for Union, on an understanding 
between prominent Kentucky citizens and Lincoln that 
the Loyalists were to be furnished with arms and decisive 
military support. For many months the people them- 
selves held to the argument that though they were 
Unionists they neither wished to fight for the North 
in an aggressive policy against the South, or for the 
South against the North. They were, they said, in a 
state of armed neutraUty. Meetings of citizens de- 
nounced secession, and at the same time denounced 
Lincoln for attempting to put down secession. One 
speaker asked: "Why are we fighting? Because 
Presidents Lincoln and Davis could not settle the 
etiquette upon which way the troops were to be with- 
drawn from Fort Sumter." " If we must fight," 
another speaker said, " let us fight Lincoln and not 
our Government." 



CIVIL WAR 153 

They chose for themselves an impossible position 
which the trend of events was to sweep away, for the 
armies had to march across Kentucky to fight in other 
sections. " The present duty of Kentucky," they said, 
" is to maintain her independent position, taking sides 
not with the Administration nor with the seceding states, 
but with the Union against them both, declaring her 
soil to be sacred from the hostile tread of either, and if 
necessary to make the declaration good with her strong 
right arm." 

However, they themselves were soon convinced of 
the impossibility of neutrality, and in the Congressional 
elections of 20th June nine out of the ten Congressmen 
chosen were outspoken Loyalists. 

Lincoln, understanding Kentucky much better than 
did Massachusetts, seemed to the North too slow in his 
counter-attack upon the South. It is quite true that 
the fear of offending Kentucky alone tied his hands 
for many weeks. As someone put it, " Lincoln would 
like to have had God on his side, but he must have 
Kentucky." 

He not only had to have Kentucky on his side, but he 
courted and accepted all the non-Republican and Demo- 
cratic elements that were willing to support the Union, 
so that we even find Douglas, who had made a bitter 
Senatorial speech denouncing the attempt to provision 
Sumter, now that it was an accomplished fact, spending 
two hours on that memorable Sunday evening after the 
bombardment, closeted alone with Lincoln. All day 
the Executive Mansion had been thronged with mes- 
sengers from the various parties and governors of the 
states. He accepted all aid. 



154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" The War Democrats," he said, " are just where 
we WTiigs were in 1848 about the Mexican War. 
The Democrats must vote to hold the Union now, 
wthout bothering whether we or the Southern men got 
things where they are, and we must make it easy for 
them to do this, for we cannot live through the case 
without them." He was glad the question as to who 
commenced the fight was over. It only reminded 
him, he said, of an Illinois man who was chased 
by a fierce bull in a pasture, and dodging around 
a tree caught the tail of the pursuing beast. After 
pawing the earth for a time, the bull broke away 
on a run, blowing at every jump, while the man, 
clinging to its tail, cried: " Darn you, who commenced 
this fuss? " 

His call for seventy-five thousand troops had with it 
also the order to convene Congress in special session on 
4th July. This would necessitate Congressional elec- 
tions in the border states as well as in the North, and 
with secession definitely drawn, a new Congress, which 
would be more sympathetic to the Administration than 
the old one, brought together under the Buchanan 
Administration. 

Early in the month he suggested to Virginia that 
if she would adjourn her State Convention, which 
was debating the question of secession, he would post- 
pone definitely the provisioning of Fort Sumter. But 
Virginia sent up her loyal men too late for these pro- 
positions, and on the 17th, two days after the evacua- 
tion of Sumter, she passed her secession ordinance. 
This left the city of Washington, which lay between 
Maryland and Virginia, so close to the Confederate line 



CIVIL WAR 155 

that its flag could be seen floating from the capitol 
steps. Washington, whose native population was 
Southern and not to be trusted, was absolutely unpre- 
pared for defence. For two days a hastily-formed com- 
pany bivouacked in the White House itself, their new 
sabres shining brilliantly against the rich red pattern 
of the velvet carpet. The 6th and 8th Massachusetts 
regiments were marching to Washington, but it took 
eight days. Hour by hour an attack was expected. 
Unprepared for war in the very seat of the Government, 
Lincoln began to show signs of nervousness for the 
safety of Washington. This was the one question over 
which he could lose his head. Often he countermanded 
his Generals' orders, thinking they had not left enough 
soldiers for the city's protection. In this first week 
of waiting he said to some soldiers: " I begin to believe 
that there is no North. The 7th Regiment is a myth. 
Rhode Island is another." He paced the floor at night, 
straining his eyes for the expected regiments and re- 
peating to himself: " Why don't they come? Why 
don't they come? " Finally, on the 25th of April, the 
Northern soldiers arrived, and amid the cheers of the 
crowd awaiting them marched up to the White House, 
Washington, thus for the first time in its history, became 
the seat of Northern power. 

Lincoln was not at all as certain as the country 
at large that it could be maintained by the show of 
arms that the seventy-five thousand troops would make. 
He scanned the military situation very seriously, and 
asked the General of the Armies, Scott, for a daily 
memorandum, as early as ist April, even before the fall 
of Sumter. That General, too, had a premonition of 



156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the struggle that was to come. His plan was one which 
had to be adopted in all the earnest of its meaning 
in the fourth year of the war. It was to throw a 
cordon of forts between the North and South, from 
the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and combine them 
with a close coast and river blockade, and virtually 
throttle the Confederacy. The North laughed, called 
it Scott's Anaconda, and prepared gaily for the " little 
holiday jaunt " to " whip the rebs into obedience." 

The least warlike of men, and yet the one most 
prepared at this crisis, Lincoln was not at all anxious 
to rush into reprisals for the Sumter insult, but was 
earnestly trying to find some means by which the root 
of the question could be solved. A show of arms on the 
one hand, and an offer of indemnity for the slaves on 
the other, was his plan of procedure. But first of all, 
before beginning to act, he was anxious to know the 
temper of the people behind him. Would they support 
him in a War? In his call for a special Congress he 
had also called for 400,000 troops and $400,000. The 
people returned a Congress which was Republican, 
Unionist, and anti-slavery, and with an almost childish 
eagerness to take possession of the fruits of their 
political victory. 

Lincoln, in his message to this Congress, made a 
careful analysis of the significance of the struggle and 
of the alignment of forces that were on each side. " This 
is essentially a people's contest," he said. " On the 
side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in 
the world that form and substance of government 
whose leading object is to elevate the condition 
of men — to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; 



CIVIL WAR 157 

to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to 
afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in 
the race of Hfe. Yielding to partial and temporary 
departures, from necessity, this is the leading object 
of the Government for whose existence we contend." 

The adversaries, he pointed out, " have adopted 
some declarations of independence in which, unlike 
the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the 
words, ' all men are created equal.' Why? They 
have adopted a temporary national constitution in the 
preamble of which, unlike our good old one, signed by 
Washington, they omit ' We, the people,' and sub- 
stitute ' We, the deputies of the sovereign and inde- 
pendent states.' Why? Why this deliberate pressing 
out of view of the rights of men and the authority of 
the people? " 

With this appeal to the people who made up the 
RepubHcan ranks, the small farmer of the West, and 
the worker and immigrant of the East, seeking for 
what they called a " fair start " in the new territories, 
that they stand by him, he still held out the olive 
branch to the South, promising it that when the re- 
bellion should be suppressed the course of the Govern- 
ment toward the Southern States would be guided by 
the Constitution and the laws, and there would be no 
different understanding of its powers and duties than 
that expressed in his inaugural address. His desire 
was only to maintain in every state a Republican form 
of government according to the dictates of the Con- 
stitution. 

But this last appeal fell on deaf ears both North and 
South. It was too late for the South to recede, the 



< 



A'^^ 



158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

plans of the oligarchy were too successful, while the 
North would never for a moment give its money for 
anything other than but the absolute control of the 
A.i-iA< tut^-^: territories^ At the suggestion of giving its money for 
the purchase of slaves the anti-slavery factions became 
suddenly very revolutionary. Emerson wrote: " Pay 
ransom to the owner, ay ! fill it up to the brim ! Who is 
the owner? The slave is owner, and ever was. Pay him." 

But who was to pay? 

All knew that the strong commercial classes of the 
East would not. The people were to pay by war. It 
was not the question of the condition of the negro or the 
condition of labour that was at stake, but the question 
of the form of ownership and labour in the new land. 
Not only would the North not give money to the negro, 
but it excluded him absolutely from the new territories 
opened after the war, and refused to go even as far as 
Russia did in her liberation of the serfs, and give him a 
strip of land, which, if money were not forthcoming, 
could have been taken from his erstwhile masters as a 
war indemnity. 

But in paper rights the North had largess, and for 
the moment it was quite impatient with Lincoln's slow- 
ness in reprisals. Congress not only approved of 
Lincoln's acts, but for the 400,000 men which he asked 
it gave 500;000, and for the $400,000 it gave 1500,000. 
Now the country wanted action. After the secession of 
Virginia, the Capitol of the Confederacy was moved 
from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. 
" On to Richmond! On to Richmond! " became the 
cry. The Tribune printed daily in large letters: " The 
Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on 



CIVIL WAR 159 

the 20th of July ! By that date the place must be held 
by the national army." 

The " national army " of three-month men was about 
to be dissolved with nothing done. This, to the excited 
state of the country, Lincoln knew would not have looked 
well. Lincoln, who, they say, had a fine eye for military 
tactics, and who certainly had a fine ear for the voice of 
pontics, did for the first time what he was to do so 
often in the years of struggle to come — order a general 
movement of the araiy on a fixed day. On 9th July 
an advance must be made against Manassas Junction 
so that the Potomac would be free for Northern use ! 

By great exertion, M'Dowell, the General in com- 
mand, issued his marching orders on i6th July, but 
even then with an insufficiency of supplies. Three 
things in M'Dowell's orders were to be held unpardon- 
able: first, to come upon a battery or a breastwork 
without a knowledge of its position; second, to be 
surprised; third, to fall back. They came upon the 
Southern army behind a winding, sluggish stream called 
Bull Run, three miles in front of Manassas Junction. 
The two sides began with a few skirmishes, which were 
to the advantage of the North. For two days the 
armies did nothing, the Northern army seeking an un- 
fortified crossing over Bull Run. Finally, on the 20th, 
a ford was found, and it was decided to make an aggres- 
sive advance in the morning. The attack was made 
and the Confederate army fell back. In Washington 
all was joy. Members of Congress had ridden out to 
the rear of the lines to watch the battle. Suddenly, 
in the afternoon, the tide turned. The Confederates 
were reinforced, and the Northern men, with one 



i6o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

accord, threw down their arms and ran. The next 
day found them still running, and they did not stop 
until Washington was reached, thirty miles away. 

Lincoln had been spending the day trying to under- 
stand the varied telegrams and reports which came in 
every ten or fifteen minutes. About six in the evening 
came the despatch announcing the panic and flight. 
They say he listened in silence, without any change 
of feature or expression, and then walked away to 
army headquarters. So often was that hasty, anxious 
walk repeated in the four years to come! There a 
telegram from M' Do well confirmed the disaster. Lin- 
coln went back to the Cabinet room in the White House, 
and there, lying on the couch, heard the news of the 
battle from eye-witnesses. All night he was up, lis- 
tening to reports and making memoranda for future 
action. 

What he had feared in his heart of hearts was to 
come true. To bring the seceded states back into 
the Union was not the gay and easy task the North 
had promised itself. To fight nine million men along 
a battle-line flung two thousand miles by land and as 
many by sea needed years and a well-organized equip- 
ment. With a heavy heart, and that melancholy which 
rested with him towards the end, for he felt that by 
both North and South not a national interest, not even 
expediency would be sought, but mastery of power, he 
wrote down his plans for an effective prosecution of the 

war. 

" 23rd July 1861. 

" I. Let the plan for making the blockade effective be 
pushed forward with all possible despatch. 



CIVIL WAR i6i 

"2. Let the volunteer forces at Fort Monroe and 
vicinity, under General Butler, be constantly drilled, dis- 
ciplined and instructed, without more for the present. 

" 3. Let Baltimore be held as now, with a gentle but 
firm and certain hand. 

" 4. Let the force now under Patterson or Banks be 
strengthened and made secure in its position. 

"5. Let the forces in Western Virginia act till further 
orders, according to instructions or orders from General 
M'Clellan. 

" 6. Let General Fremont push forward his organization 
and operations in the West as rapidly as possible, giving 
rather special attention to Missouri. 

" 7. Let the forces late from Manassas, except the 
three-month men, be reorganized as rapidly as possible in 
their camps here and about ArUngton. 

" 8. Let the three-month forces who dechne to enter 
the longer service be discharged as rapidly as circumstances 
will permit. 

"9. Let the new volunteer forces be brought forward 
as fast as possible; and especially into the camps on the 
two sides of the river here." 

On 27th July he added two more suggestions: 

"27th July 1 861. 

" When the foregoing shall have been substantially 
attended to : 

" I. Let Manassas Junction (or some point on one or 
other of the railroads near it) and Strasburg be seized, and 
permanently held, with an open hue from Washington to 
Manassas, and an open Une from Harper's Ferry to Stras- 
burg — the mihtary men to find the way of doing these. 

" 2. This done, a joint movement from Cairo on 
Memphis; and from Cincinnati on East Tennessee." 



i62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

But not all had the great determination of Lincoln. 
The failure at Bull Run caused a reaction to the ardour 
of the North. Already factional criticism ran high. 

Stanton, who had been a member of the Buchanan 
Cabinet, said it was the " painful imbecility of Lin- 
coln " which brought on the struggle. The catastrophe 
was due to Lincoln's " running the machine for five 
months." Greeley perhaps expressed the moneyed 
interests of the East best of all when he advised im- 
mediate surrender. After all, the lands of the West 
would compensate little to the great burden of a war 
which they feared might fall too heavily on their 
shoulders. Greeley wrote to Lincoln: 

July 29j i86i, Midnight. 

" Dear Sir, — ^This is my seventh sleepless night — yours, 
too, doubtless — yet I think I shall not die, because I have 
no right to die. I must struggle to Hve, however bitterly. 
But to business. You are not considered a great man, and 
I am a hopelessly broken one. You are now undergoing a 
terrible ordeal, and God has thrown the gravest responsi- 
bilities upon you. Do not fear to meet them. Can the 
rebels be beaten after all that has occurred, and in view of 
the actual state of feeling caused by our late awful dis- 
aster? If they can — and it is your business to ascertain 
and decide — write me that such is your judgment, so that I 
may know and do my duty. And if they cannot be beaten — 
if our recent disaster is fatal — do not fear to sacrifice your- 
self to your country. If the rebels are not to be beaten — if 
that is your judgment in view of all the Light you can get — 
then every drop of blood henceforth shed in this quarrel 
wiU be wantonly, wickedly shed, and the guilt will rest 
heavily on the soul of every promoter of the crime. I pray 
you to decide quickly and let me know my duty. 

" If the Union is irrevocably one, an armistice for thirty, 



CIVIL WAR 163 

sixty, ninety, one hundred and twenty days — better still, 
for a year — ought at once to be proposed, with a view to 
a peaceful adjustment. Then Congress should call a 
National Convention, to meet at the earhest possible day. 
And there should be an immediate and mutual exchange or 
release of prisoners and a disbandment of forces. I do not 
consider myself at present a judge of anything but the 
pubHc sentiment. That seems to me everywhere gathering 
and deepening against a prosecution of the war. The 
gloom in this city is funereal — for our dead at Bull Run 
were many and they he unburied yet. On every brow sits 
sullen, scorching, black despair. It would be easy to have 
Mr Crittenden move any proposition that ought to be 
adopted, or to have it come from any proper quarter. The 
first point is to ascertain what is best that can be done — 
which is the measure of our duty — and do that very thing 
at the earhest moment. 

" This letter is written in the strictest confidence, and 
is for your eye alone. But you are at hberty to say to 
members of your Cabinet that you hiow I will second any 
move you see fit to make. But do nothing timidly or by 
halves. Send me word what to do. I will hve till I can 
hear it, at all events. If it is best for the country and for 
mankind that we make peace with the rebels at once and 
on their own terms, do not shrink even from that. But 
bear in mind the greatest truth: ' Whoso would lose his Hfe 
for my sake shall save it.' Do the thing that is the highest 
right, and tell me how I am to second you. — Yours in the 
depths of bitterness, Horace Greeley." 

The only answer Lincoln made was to dedicate him- 
self and the nation still further to the task before him. 
With humbleness and prayer he girded his sword. It 
was no longer a moment for reason ; a peculiar mystic 
faith, a continuous hope rising out of despau:, carried 
him along in the one idea before him now — the Union — 



i64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the Union on a Republican basis, the Union of the 
framers of the Constitution. He did not know and he 
did not desire those new conceptions and new rights 
which were to be undertaken before the task to which 
he had dedicated himself — the conservation of the 
Union — could be consummated. 

Thus for answer, in a spirit of humility and firmness, 
he sent out a proclamation for a national fast day on 
the I2th of August, and ordered the nation to fight on. 

" Whereas, when our own beloved country, once, by 
the blessing of God, united, prosperous and happy, is now 
afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for 
us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, 
and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and 
crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble our- 
selves before Him and to pray for His mercy — to pray 
that we may be spared further punishment, though 
most justly deserved, that our own arms may be blessed 
and made effectual for the re-establishment of law, order 
and peace throughout the wide extent of our country ; 
and that the inestimable boon of civil and religious 
liberty, earned under His guidance and blessing by the 
labours and sufferings of our fathers, may be restored 
in all its original excellence : 

" Wherefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
United States, do appoint the last Thursday in Sep- 
tember next as a day of humiliation, prayer and fasting 
for all the people of the nation." 



CHAPTER X 
EMANCIPATION 

THE disaster at Bull Run caused the Repub- 
lican Congress to be wary of its words, and on 
the 22nd of July, two days later, it passed a 
resolution to the effect that the war was not prosecuted 
in any spirit of aggression, or for conquest or subjuga- 
tion, or for overthrowing or interfering with the rights 
or established institutions in the states, but to defend 
and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and 
to preserve the Union. 

Less lenient to the South than Lincoln, it understood 
that to carry on a civil war for the maintenance of the 
supremacy of the Constitution and the preservation 
of the Union it would soon have to interfere with the 
rights and the established institutions of the hostile 
states; but leaving that question aside for the moment, 
it bent all its energies in supporting Lincoln in the war 
measures he had undertaken. The approval given was 
a little hesitant and his acts were accepted in toto 
instead of seriatim, as he had asked. 

The main task was to provide the money for the 
cost of the war. Here Congress undertook a financial 
policy which it carried out unflinchingly to the end, the 
solution of which was to be an issue in American politics 
for two generations. At the outbreak of the war the 
National Treasury was less than empty. There was a 

debt of $90;000,ooo, and the Government was running 

165 



i66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

behind $25,000,000 annually. Congress immediately 
passed the long-coveted protective tariffs, and as the 
manufacturers began to flourish a tax of 3 per cent, was 
laid on all incomes over $800, which was all that capital 
could be made to give during the strain of the whole war. 
Compared to what the people were to give in men, and 
- yvJUw^^a, in the inflation of prices caused by the issue of paper 
y^^t "^ • •■ money and the internal and external taxes and revenues, 

- *i^^f this one clause shows why war was preferred to the offer 

^tt*'*'** of the purchase of slaves. It was cheaper for capita- 
■ listic America. To-day, in time of peace, Germany 
••••*'- ■'*•' lays a war tax not on incomes but on gross capital. 

.£4****^ As the revenue thus obtained was far from suffi- 

'•'^^^^'^''^ J ^ cient, an internal revenue system was created in 1863, 
t^itir^pK . which laid a tax on almost everything that was con- 

sumed, bought, sold or owned. 

The money raised by the internal revenue and 
tariff was used to pay current expenses and the interest 
on the national debt. The gross war expenses were 
met by selling bonds and the issuance of United States 
notes, which naturally had to be left to later genera- 
tions to redeem. The question whether to pay the 
bonds and notes in gold, silver or paper racked the 
politics of America up to 1900. Over a million dollars 
worth of bonds were sold in the four years of the war, 
bearing a 5, 6 or 7 per cent, interest. 

The United States notes were of two kinds. About 
$600,000,000 were interest paying; about $500,000,000 
bore no interest, were in denominations of from one 
dollar up, and were legal tender in the payment of all 
debts, public or private, except duties on imports and 
interest on the public debt. 



EMANCIPATION 167 

Of course, the issue of paper caused all specie money 
to disappear down to the smallest fractional silver piece. 
Postage stamps, cheques, I.O.U. notes, " token " pieces 
of brass and copper were used; and in 1863, $50,000,000 
in paper fractional currency, in " shin-plasters " as they 
were called, were authorized. 

The high prices caused by inflated money pleased 
the farmers, and in later years they strenuously opposed 
any contraction of it. They also opposed the payment 
of the bonds in gold, demanding that they be paid in 
paper. This naive request was later modified to a 
demand that silver be made legal tender in the pay- 
ment of all debts, public and private, and that the 
silver dollar be coined at the ratio of sixteen to one — 
that is, that the same number of dollars be made out of 
sixteen pounds of silver as of one pound of gold. 

To get more money for the war an attempt was 
made in 1863 to induce the State banks to buy Govern- 
ment bonds. But the State banks did not do so until 
1865, at the close of the war, when a 10 per cent, tax 
was laid on the amount of paper money each bank 
issued. In the meantime the banks had issued over 
$150,000,000 in 700 different kinds of notes. 

Great as the cost of the war was — almost three 
billions — banks, manufactures and commerce flourished 
through the war. Boat-builders, iron and steel manu- 
facturers, cloth makers and cotton speculators, all 
made profits, and as the war dragged itself out year 
after year the people began to accuse Lincoln and the 
Administration of prolonging it for the sake of the 
commercial classes. But, on the face of it, money must 
be had to carry on the struggle and had to be taken 



i68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

from wherever it could be obtained. On the question of 
the distribution of the burden, as on the question of the 
negro and slavery, Lincoln, of all men, would have liked 
to have had more justice done, but in the solution of the 
problems before him he was practical and counted only 
on self-interest. It was not misanthropy, it was a gentle 
and forgiving realism — too gentle and too forgiving. 
On the question of slavery he showed personal bias 
ri\M^MA.**\. tia which went beyond necessity or expediency. Despite 
vxlA^ ^< M-TT"^, the fact that he came from Illinois his philosophy was 
i* A^ »^*^ border-state. He was born in Kentucky, he had 
^U^^^%^Lt( married a Kentuckian, his closest friends came from 
. tUi^d^ *wi-i, that state. But in those first two years of war, in 
^ <*^ A-v« *»M#»».the test of strength between the two opposing sections, 
^^titC^ itM*, Uk it was fortunate that the leader of the North had a 
k^J^JS!:i***^ '■■' border-state philosophy. It made the sectional fight 
■a4 f»i ^ <^'^t> appear non-sectional. He was the ideal executive of a 
'wt£»rt»^ tLt Mm ' materialistic democracy. 
. V 7 tfj The Northern Congress began to attack slavery 

gu**4^**^.*W .^ .^^ ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^j^ ^^ g^jj j^y^ g^^g ^^^^ 

^T*^r^ I the needed excuse. The Southerners had used their 
t'fV*^ ^ p»^ » ^ gi^ygs to drive their heavy waggons, to dig the trenches 
attr/ifw.^r"' ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ fortifications. On the 6th of August a 
n h /a^'*^ Confiscation Act was passed, which annulled the pro- 

perty rights of owners over slaves whom they^ required 
or permitted to be employed in aid of rebellion. 

Lincoln was not pleased with the Bill. He wanted 
Congress to trust him in the matter, as one who had 
a wider view, being both military and civil executive. 
He had written a veto to the measure, but signed it 
instead, and passed a written argument along with it 
wherein he suggested various changes. 



EMANCIPATION 169 

He tried to mitigate the effects of the Confiscation 
Act by recommending in his first Annual Message of 
3rd December that Congress provide for the colonization 
of the slaves made free by this act. He could only 
conceive of the abolition of slavery with the coloniza- 
tion of the negro. 

He struggled with this question of emancipation, 
not only with Congress but with his own generals and 
Cabinet. The question arose whether the slaves who 
ran away for protection, from the Confederate armies 
or from their masters, to the camps of the North, were 
to be kept or returned. Each general decided this 
problem according to his own predilection. The 
generals, hostile to slavery, kept them on the ground 
that they were " contrabands of war," and the phrase, 
" a contraband arrived," etc., became common in war 
dispatches. The other generals, even those mildly 
favourable to slavery, drove them from the camps or 
sent them back to their owners. 

Early in the war Lincoln sent an indirect com- 
munication to General M'Dowell, asking, " Would it 
not be well to allow the owners to bring back those 
' fugitive slaves ' which have crossed the Potomac with 
our troops? " He asked also that this communication 
be kept secret, for he did not wish that his name 
should be brought before the public in connection with 
this delicate subject at this time. 

But his position on this " delicate subject " was soon 
to be forced into the open by John C. Fremont, who had 
been the Republican Presidential candidate in the pre- 
vious campaign, and whom Lincoln now made Major- 

General in the Regular Army, and to whom he had 
12 



I70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

assigned command of the Western Department. Fremont 
had no sooner reached St Louis than he placed the whole 
state of Missouri under martial law, declaring the pro- 
perty of all persons who were active enemies of the United 
States, or who had taken up arms against it, to be con- 
fiscated, and their slaves, if they had any, emancipated. 
Lincoln wrote Fremont privately, asking hun to revoke 
the proclamation on the ground that it " will alarm 
our Southern friends and turn them against us; per- 
haps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky." In 
principle, too, he wrote to his friend Browning, he 
was against emancipation by proclamation, as it was a 
matter " purely political and not within the range of 
military law or necessity. ... If the general needs 
them (the slaves) he can seize them and use them; 
but when the need is past it is not for him to fix their 
permanent future condition. That must be settled 
according to laws made by law-makers, and not by 
military proclamation. . . . What I object to is that 
I, as President, shall expressly or impliedly seize and 
exercise the permanent legislative functions of the 
Government." 

Fremont refused to revoke his proclamation, on the 
ground that it would be bad discipline to appear so 
vacillating before his soldiers, and so forced Lincoln 
to revoke it publicly. This was a shrewd political 
stroke on Fremont's part, for it brought a storm of dis- 
approval around Lincoln's head and turned Fremont 
into a popular idol with the radicals. Fremont remained 
their political idol unto the very last and was nominated 
by them as opposition candidate to Lincoln in 1864. 

But Lincoln, arch-executive that he was, had only 



EMANCIPATION 171 j 

one purpose — to preserve the Union as he found it. 

In January the Secretary of War, Cameron, in issuing ' 

his annual report, recommended emancipation and 

the arming of negroes. The report was already in j 

the hands of the post-masters when Lincoln hastily ! 

recalled it by telegraph. ii 

In the following May, four months before the issue I 

of his owTi preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, he j 
still held back the army by main force from stating 

openly what in the nature of things was taking | 

place, that wherever the Northern armies came in con- \ 

tact with the slaves they had to set them free. For as the i 

Northern armies had to take the provision trains of the i 

South if they came upon them, so they had to keep the j 

runaway slaves who came to them. ] 

Nevertheless Lincoln even at this late date dared create j 

a situation similar in effect to the one with Fremont. I 

General Hunter, commanding in South Carolina, issued \ 

a virtual emancipation proclamation which Lincoln ] 
again publicly revoked and repudiated. 

But, hold back the North as he would, in the hope J 
that the seceded states, realizing that in truth " the 
Government will not assail them," might find secession 

difficult to maintain, and one by one return to the fold, ' . 1 - .» \ 
he could do nothing those first two years which would *''***'**'*^' .'*^' 

cause secession to surrender. One decisive battle * -ifrvi** v*- 

might have brought about this result, but the years '^ 
followed the months and the one decisive battle 
never came. 

It could not come. Both sides were rich a.nd t Jir^rt »^ Tux j 
strong, the theatre of the war was vast ; tens of thou- /-^Jv^t^A 4ht44 » 1 

sands were pitched against tens of thousands, and ] 



172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

victories were so costly that they amounted to defeats. 
It was only by the slow crushing of each separate section 
that the North won. 

In the search for a general who would lead them to 
victory, the country fixed upon General M'Clellan, who 
even before Bull Run had had several engagements 
upon a small scale in Western Virginia, where the sym- 
pathies of the people were with the Union, and these 
had resulted in giving the upper sources of the Potomac 
and the Ohio Rivers to the Unionists. And so M'Clellan, 
the " Young Napoleon," was called to take command 
of the Army of the Potomac, which had suffered such 
defeat under M'Dowell. 

The " Young Napoleon " showed splendid qualities 
as an organizer, moulding the raw recruits into fine 
shape, but as a fighter " he had the slows," as Lincoln 
put it. In the days when the country looked for 
victories he stayed in camp, urging the Government 
continually for more men and more supplies, so fearful 
of defeat that he moved not at all until Lincoln had to 
ask him if he really thought the other side was so much 
better equipped than he. Finally, in October, the 
army set on its march, but because of some vague order, 
a detachment of about two thousand men was sent un- 
aided into the Confederate lines, and there it was sur- 
rounded and almost entirely lost. Compared to the 
army that rested behind it, the loss was insignificant, 
but the effect on the North was most discouraging. 

Carping criticism of the Administration began again 
and ended this time only with the end of the war. 
The effect on M'Clellan was to make him the mxore 
obdurate and impervious to all urgings to move. The 



EMANCIPATION 173 

winter wore away into the spring and nothing was done. 
" The sky and earth seem to beckon the army," said 
Lincoln, but he supposed General M'Clellan knew his 
business and had his reasons for disregarding these 
hints of Providence. " If M'Clellan can't fish," he 
observed, " he ought to cut bait at a time like this." 
Often he remarked bitterly that if the Commander 
had no use for his army he would like to " borrow it." 

Finally he ordered a forward movement on 22nd 
February, which is the birthday of George Washington 
and is celebrated as a national holiday. But even 
this appeal to patriotism had no effect, and on 9th 
March the Confederates withdrew from their position 
on the Potomac, feeling that they were unable to hold 
it. This proof of the needlessness of M'Clellan's 
caution so enraged the North that two days later 
Lincoln removed him from command of the United 
States armies, but he still held his post as Commander 
of the Army of the Potomac. 

About this time more encouraging news was coming 
from the West. Side campaigns in the previous autumn 
and winter had secured for the Federal power the greater 
part of Missouri and Kentucky, and on 6th March 1862 
a severe engagement at Pea Ridge in North-western 
Arkansas, placed that region and the whole of Missouri 
under its control. A month earlier an actual invasion of 
the seceded states had been begun. A land force, under 
Ulysses S. Grant, and a fleet of gun-boats under Com- 
modore Foote, moved up the Tennessee, and on 6th 
February Foote captured Fort. Henry and Grant, 
moving immediately over to the Cumberland, after three 
days of fighting, captured Fort Donelson on the now 



174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

famous terms of " unconditional and immediate sur- 
render." Then a Federal force under Pope, also sup- 
ported by gun-boats, cleared the Mississippi with great 
difficulty at New Madrid and Island Number Ten. 

For the purpose of securing the Mississippi Valley 
and opening the river, Grant advanced up the Ten- 
nessee to reach Corinth, a railway centre of Northern 
Mississippi. At Pittsburg landing he was checked and 
driven back, but, reinforcements arriving next day, 
he reached Corinth, settled down to a siege, and on 
the 30th of May 1862 took it. Memphis then fell and 
the river was open as far south as Vicksburg. 

It had been open below Vicksburg by the surrender 
of New Orleans on 24th April. Commodore Farragut 
had begun the bombardment of the forts below New 
Orleans, but, unable to make headway, he ran his ships 
past the deadly fire on the 24th, and with the assistance 
of General Butler, who had command of the land force, 
the city was captured, and on ist May actual possession 
of it took place. 

But these successes in no way mitigated the despair 
that the repeated failures in the East caused. The 
proximity of the two Capitols made them harbour the 
delusion that if the Northern armies could but cross 
the line and capture Richmond secession would be 
ended with one stroke. Moreover, it caused a con- 
tinual nervousness lest the Confederates reach Wash- 
ington and sack that city. More than one detachment 
was held back from a forward march on Richmond in 
the fear that Washington was insufficiently guarded. 

For a while, after M'Clellan had been degraded in 
rank, the Secretary of War, Stanton (Cameron had been 



EMANCIPATION 175 

removed for incompetency), was practically Com- 
mander-in-Chief. M'Clellan, in the spring, against the 
advice of Lincoln and aJmost everyone else, chose the old 
Revolutionary fighting ground, the peninsula between 
the York and the James Rivers, for his attack upon 
Richmond. This route was more expensive in time and 
money than the more direct one by land to Manassas 
Junction, and in case of disaster more difficult to retreat. 
He spent a month besieging Yorktown, but the Con- 
federates evacuated it, and M'Clellan, though he pur- 
sued and fought them at Williamsburg, could not pre- 
vent them crossing the Chickahominy, and so gained 
nothing. In fact, before his troops were half over Fair 
Oaks he was attacked by Johnston, and with difficulty 
the men were kept from panic and flight. M'Clellan 
had expected to be reinforced by M'Dowell, but he 
was kept to defend Washington, General Jackson 
(" Stonewall " Jackson, who leceived the fond title by 
his stand against the charges of the Unionists at Bull 
Run) having suddenly appeared in the Shenandoah 
Valley and cleared it of Federal troops. Having suc- 
ceeded in dividing M'Clellan's forces by his feint against 
Washington, Jackson now wheeled about and joined 
Lee, who was in command of the Confederate troops, 
for General Johnston had been wounded, and together 
they hammered at M'Clellan for seven days, foicing 
him to the James River. The capture of Richmond 
was not so simple a matter after all. 

M'Clellan was here practically deprived of his com- 
mand and most of his men given to General Pope, and the 
experiment with Stanton as Commander-in-Chief not 
being very happy, Halleck, who had gained for himself 



176 ABRxVHAM LINCOLN 

the honours in the West due to Grant, was made Com- 
mander-in-Chief. General Pope fared even worse than 
M'CleUan. On gth August 1862 " StonewaU " Jack- 
son, by a forced march through the mountains, turned 
his flank and defeated General Banks in command of 
the western end of his line at Cedar Mountain, and on 
29th August Pope's forces were attacked at Groveton, 
and on the 30th routed at Bull Run, by Lee and Jack- 
son. A force captured Harper's Ferry with its arsenal 
and supplies and 11,000 Federal troops. 

The North was terrified. Washington was again 
open to attack, and Lincoln, on his own initiative, re- 
called M'Clellan, for though the Government and the 
North distrusted him, the soldiers loved him. His 
organizing still was needed and he was reinstated on 
2nd September. 

Lee crossed the Upper Potomac and entered Mary- 
land, and M'Clellan met him at Antietam Creek on 17th 
September. The battle fought was so indecisive, the 
losses on both sides so great, that Lee withdrew across 
the Potomac to his base of operations. Lincoln urged 
for over a month that M'Clellan follow Lee and break 
his communication with Richmond ; but he had his old 
failing, " the slows." He was removed, permanently 
this time, and his command given to General Burnside. 

Lincoln, who had written privately to the Governors 
in July, " If I had 50,000 additional troops here now I 
believe I could substantially close the war in two 
weeks," was forced at last to give up his hope of a 
restoration of the Union " with few eggs broken," and 
had to consent to the prosecution of the war on the 
basis of a Northern conquest. 



EMANCIPATION 177 

Not only was his position of fighting and yet having 
very Httle to fight over becoming equivocal at home, 
but in foreign relations his position was an untenable 
one for a struggle lasting so long a time. The Govern- 
ments and upper classes of France and England showed 
from the first a decided tendency toward Southern sym- 
pathy. It was with difficulty that recognition of the 
South was prevented. Before the new Ambassador 
to London, Charles Francis Adams, had time to arrive, 
England had declared herself a neutral in the struggle 
between the North and South, and thus, by giving 
the South belligerent rights, she bestowed a quasi- 
recognition upon it. 

The dispatch which Secretary Seward sent to Adams 
concerning this matter has become famous because 
of the modifications Lincoln made. Seward, whose 
panacea for the ensuing struggle was a foreign war, sent 
an aggressively hostile letter to Adams for him to de- 
liver to the English Government. 

Lincoln, though untrained in diplomacy, knew 
the delicate shading of language, and he drew his pen 
through whole paragraphs, or changed a word like 
" wrongful " to " hurtful," or the phrase, " no one of 
these proceedings will be borne " to " will pass un- 
questioned." The open threat of war in case Great 
Britain recognized the Confederacy he omitted entirely. 

But hostile feeling existed between both countries 
and only a spark was needed to kindle a fire. The 
spark was given when, a few months after the disaster 
at Bull Run, the country relieved its feelings in a general 
rej oicing over a very doubtful exploit. The Confederate 
Commissioners to England and France, J. M. Mason 



178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

and John Slidell, ran the Federal blockade at Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, successfully, and embarked at 
Havana on the steamer Trent for England. On 8th 
November she was boarded by Captain Wilkes of 
the American man-of-war, San Jacinto, and the two 
Commissioners taken from her and carried prisoners to 
Fort Warren in Boston Harbour. The North went 
wild with joy, banquets were given to Wilkes, while 
Lincoln was heard to mutter something about the 
prisoners " proving white elephants yet." 

England immediately demanded reparation and 
the release of the prisoners, and without waiting for a 
reply sent troops to Canada and prepared for war. 

This " Trent Affair " made a very painful impression 
on both sides of the Atlantic, and the hostility of feel- 
ing once started was slow to wear off. Much against 
popular approval the Commissioners were released, 
for Lincoln was too good an executive to heed a popular 
outcry which had no permanent meaning. " One war 
at a time," he told the North, and with this ambiguous 
offer to their war spirit he bridged the crisis which 
undoubtedly would have resulted in the immediate 
recognition of the South. 

But the danger of intervention was never over. 
Friction between England and the United States arose 
again the second summer of the war over the escape to 
the open sea of the Alabama, one of the " commerce de- 
stroyers " of the Confederacy, which had been built at 
Liverpool and permitted to leave against the protests 
of the American Ambassador. 

At home, too, events were driving Lincoln to a change 
of policy. The moment had come when recruiting 



EMANCIPATION 179 

became more and more difficult, and the North wished 
to fight only on its own terms. Lincoln could not 
keep revoking the emancipation proclamations of his 
generals much longer, nor could he continue vetoing the 
radical measures of the Republican Congress on the 
subject of slavery. In the first flush of its victory it 
had passed the long-sought-for Homestead Bill, which 
offered portions of the public domain to heads of families 
at a nominal fee, and had given a charter to the Union 
Pacific Railway with huge grants of land and money 
from the Federal Government. Bills were brought in 
as early as 1861 for the repeal or the modification of the 
Fugitive Slave Law and for the abolition of slavery in 
the district of Columbia. Another Bill asked Congress 
to abolish slavery in all states which had seceded, for 
it was argued that they had forfeited the right of state- 
hood by secession and therefore were to be considered 
territories which the United States had ordained to be 
free by special ordinance. This Bill was not passed, but 
the argument of the reduction of the states to terri- 
tories was very important, for it was destined to come 
up again in the question of reconstruction. By March 
1862 Congress had forbidden the officers of the Army 
and Navy to return escaped slaves to their masters, 
and in June slavery was prohibited in all the territories 
held at that time or which might be acquired in the 
future. This was the realization of the prime article 
in the platform of the Republican Party and once and 
for all overthrew the Dred Scott decision. 

Lincoln endorsed all the Bills that Congress passed 
relative to slavery or land in the territories, but he 
threw his whole influence against interfering with 



r8o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

slavery in the states, except with compensation to the 
owner and colonization for the negro. He was disturbed 
at the Bill for the abolition of slavery in the district 
of Columbia, though it included both his ideas of com- 
pensation and colonization. Compensation was offered 
to loyal owners at a maximum rate of $300 a slave, and 
colonization to Haiti or Liberia at a cost not exceeding 
$100 to any coloured person who wished to go. 

His recommendation for compensation had already 
passed Congress in the spring of 1862. He was troubled 
over the constitutionality of the process. He did not 
assume, he said in his message in March, that Congress 
or he had the power to proceed in this question without 
the consent of the states involved. He put his recom- 
mendation in the form of a resolution which read: 
" Resolved that the United States ought to co-operate 
with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment 
of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be 
used by such state in its discretion to compensate for the 
inconveniences, public and private, produced by such 
change of system." He used all the persuasive power 
at his command to make this resolution acceptable. 
He called the representatives of the border-states to 
him and explained the advantages of the Bill to them. 
They said nothing at the time, but the answers which 
they gave later were almost all unfavourable. They 
were unwilling to perform of themselves that which 
Congress and the President admitted they could not 
constitutionally force them to do. 

In revoking General Hunter's Emancipation Pro- 
clamation, Lincoln, who had a gift of finding oppor- 
tunities to lay his case before the people, took occasion 



EMANCIPATION 181 

to appeal again to the border-states to accept compen- 
sated abolishment, " I do not argue — I beseech you to 
make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you 
would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a 
calm and large consideration of them, ranging if it may be 
far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal 
makes common cause for a common object, casting no 
reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The 
change it contemplates would come gently as the dews 
of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will 
you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, 
by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of 
God it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast 
future not have to lament that you have neglected it." 
In July, with the Emancipation Proclamation already 
formulated in his mind, Lincoln again asked the repre- 
sentatives of the border-states to a conference on com- 
pensated emancipation. He urged them to accept it as 
an act of patriotism. " It would be the most swift and 
potent means of ending it (the war) . Let the states which 
are in rebellion see definitely and certainly that in no 
event will the states you represent ever join their pro- 
posed Confederacy and they cannot much longer main- 
tain the contest. But you cannot divest them of their 
hope to ultimately have you with them so long as you 
show a determination to perpetuate the institution 
within your own states. Beat them at elections, as 
you have overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, 
they still claim you as their own. You and I know what 
the lever of their power is . Break that lever before their 
faces and they can shake you no more forever." He 
told them plainly that " the incidents of war cannot be 



1 82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

avoided . . . the institution in your states will be ex- 
tinguished by mere friction and abrasion; " and more, 
that he could no longer afford to give offence to the 
elements who were supporting him and who were 
pressing in the direction of immediate emancipation. 

Of his own contemplated step in that direction he 
told no one. His appeal to the border-states fell on 
deaf ears, but the appeals to him by the Abolitionists 
and radicals he also seemingly disregarded. 

In the dark summer of 1862, when there was a 
general hopelessness in the field and a great danger of 
Republican losses in the elections, he matured his plan 
for a general military emancipation. He called his 
Cabinet and read the Proclamation, saying that he had 
made up his mind about it and only wanted to hear 
what each member thought. The Cabinet all disap- 
proved, but Lincoln said he was determined. The 
only question discussed was when to read it. Seward 
thought it best to wait until the North had won 
some victory, so as not to have it seem a gesture 
of despair. " Yes," said Lincoln, " that is a good idea. 
Otherwise it might sound like our last shriek on the 
retreat." 

On 20th August, when military reverses seemed to 
sweep this paper yet farther away, Horace Greeley 
signed an editorial in the Tribune, which he called 
" The Prayer of Twenty Million," asking for the im- 
mediate abolition of negro slavery. Lincoln, glad of 
the opportunity to speak to the people, answered, re- 
minding them of their duty, and though revealing his 
purpose in the war, never admitted that he contem- 
plated emancipation. 



EMANCIPATION 183 

" I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest 
way under the Constitution. The sooner the national 
authority can be restored the nearer the Union will be the 
Union as it was. If there be those who would not save the 
Union, unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, 
I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or 
destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing 
any slaves I would do it ; and if I could save it by freeing 
some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What 
I do about slavery and the coloured race I do because I 
beUeve it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I 
forbear because I do not beUeve it would help to save the 
Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am 
doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall 
believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct 
errors when shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views 
so fast as they shall appear to be true views." 

To the delegations that came to him demanding a 
general proclamation of abolition he denied that it 
would be of any good, for it would only affect the states 
in rebellion, where he had little power, and be, as he 
said, like " a pope's bull against a comet." Never- 
theless, he held just such a document ready to be issued 
at the first favourable moment. Finally, on 17th 
September 1862, the battle of Antietam was won by 
M'Clellan. It was hardly a victory, for 10,000 lay dead 
on either side, and instead of following up the enemy 
M'Clellan fell back to rest; yet Lincoln took this occa- 
sion, since it was the only one he had, to send forth 
his Emancipation Proclamation. It read as follows: 

" I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of 
America, and Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy 



i84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter as 
heretofore the war will be prosecuted for the object of 
practically restoring the constitutional relations between 
the United States and each of the states and the people 
thereof, in which states that relation is or may be suspended 
or disturbed. That it is my purpose, upon the next meet- 
ing of Congress, to again recommend the adoption of a 
practical measure, tendering pecuniary aid to the free 
acceptance or rejection of all the slave states, so-called, 
the people whereof may not then be in rebellion against the 
United States, and which states may then have voluntarily 
adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, the immediate 
or gradual abolishment of slavery within their respective 
hmits; and that the effort to colonize persons of African 
descent, with their consent, upon this continent or else- 
where, with the previously -obtained consent of the Govern- 
ments existing there, will be continued. That on the first 
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight 
hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within 
any state or designated part of a state, the people whereof 
shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall 
be then, henceforward, and forever free; and the Executive 
Government of the United States, including the miHtary 
and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain 
the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to 
repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may 
make for their actual freedom. That the Executive will, 
on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation, 
designate the states, or parts of states, if any, in which the 
people thereof, respectively, shall then be in rebelhon against 
the United States ; and the fact that any state, or the people 
thereof, shall, on that day, be in good faith represented in 
the Congress of the United States by members chosen 
thereto at elections, wherein a majority of the qualified 
voters of such state shall have participated, shall, in the 
absence of strong, countervaihng testimony, be deemed 



EMANCIPATION 185 

conclusive evidence that such state, and the people thereof, 
are not then in rebellion against the United States. 

" And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons 
engaged in the miUtary and naval service of the United 
States to observe, obey and enforce, within their respective 
spheres of service, the acts and sections above recited. 
And the Executive will, in due time, recommend that all 
citizens of the United States, who shall have remained loyal 
thereto throughout the rebelhon, shall, upon the restoration 
of the constitutional relations between the United States 
and the people, if that relation shall have been suspended 
or disturbed, be compensated for all losses' by acts of the 
United States, including the loss of slaves " 



13 



CHAPTER XI 
THE NEW RECKONING 

THE preliminary Emancipation Proclamation 
was received with joy in most Republican 
quarters; meetings were held in celebration 
of it; but the people at large found a war which fell 
heavily on them in men and money so heavy a burden 
that this advance in pohtical morality made slight 
impression. The twenty months of war had brought 
out all the young men who were willing to go as volun- 
teers. To continue the war a forced conscription was 
necessary to call forth the serious members of the 
population who were not so eager to hail the negro 
as their brother at the cost of their Hves. 

Lincoln himself was doubtful of the effect of Eman- 
cipation, and the decline in the Bourse and in the 
Republican majorities of the October elections verified 
his fears. The RepubHcan representatives dropped 
from a majority of seventy-two to forty-six, and in New 
York a Democratic Governor was elected, who by his 
power over levies of recruits could hinder and check- 
mate the task in Washington. 

Lincoln looked to Emancipation to perform two 
services, which it ultimately did. First and paramount 
was the adding of coloured troops to fill up the con- 
stantly-opening gaps in the army; the second was to 

place the struggle on a moral basis and prevent foreign 

186 



THE NEW RECKONING 187 

intervention. This last danger was narrowly averted 
in the year 1863. 

Except as pointing to a future policy the form of 
the Emancipation did not entirely please the radicals 
of the country, yet it had the merit of drawing them to 
Lincoln's side. It was truly a pope's bull against a 
comet. It emancipated where it had no power, and did 
not release where it had. It was tardy in coming and 
it did not revive the war spirit. Fortunately it was not 
promulgated for that purpose. 

Among the Democrats it enhanced the disaffection 
which was already beginning to be felt. The West was 
the special field of this anti-war spirit, and so strong 
had it grown that there was talk of a North-western 
Confederacy, and the South made plans in earnest for 
a union with this section. " Copperhead " was the 
popular name for these anti-war Democrats, and 
they formed secret societies in aid of deserters and 
carried on a systematic propaganda against recruiting, 
which the unpopularity of the war had caused to stop 
almost entirely. 

By March 1863, after a winter's wrangle in Congress, 
a stringent Draft Act was passed, which provided for 
conscription by lot, and on the same day Lincoln was 
authorized to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus in 
cases of persons suspected of disaffection towards the 
Union. This he had done since his first call for volun- 
teers in April 1861, but by martial law. 

The forced conscription and the suspension of the 
writ of Habeas Corpus inflamed copperheadism. In 
the Eastern States conscription provoked resistance. 
It was asserted that the officers in charge of the arrange- 



1 88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

merits for the conscription acted in a partisan manner, 
making the heaviest levies upon counties and dis- 
tricts which were Democratic, but the underlying cause 
was the too great burden of the war. The discontent 
was manipulated into expressions of race-prejudice. 
Anti-draft riots took place in many cities, the most 
formidable being in the city of New York, where 
for four days the city was given over to a mob 
which first destroyed the deputy provost-marshal's 
headquarters, and then hanged negroes on the street 
comers. 

Lincoln used his inimitable tact to mitigate the 
hardships of conscription. In Pennsylvania, where a 
band called the " Molly Maguires " threatened open 
rebellion, he sent a verbal message to Colonel M'Clure, 
Chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate, 
that he was very desirous to have the laws executed, 
" but it might be well in an extreme emergency to be 
content with the appearance of executing the laws." 
The hint was taken and the quotas were allowed to be 
filled by volunteers who had enlisted in other towns or 
cities outside of the most troublesome township, and 
the danger in Pennsylvania was averted. In the fall 
a war Governor was re-elected. 

The richer classes avoided the conscription by 
having the states and districts pass bounty laws whereby 
they could buy men to fill up their places in the quotas. 
Usually the bounty was $300. 

But for the common people the draft was hard to 
bear, and it had to be carried on in the West and in the 
East at the point of the bayonet. Deserters in the 
army itself were numerous. In the spring 3000 officers 



THE NEW RECKONING 189 i 

and 80,000 privates were absent from the Army of the J ^t.^yUn^ /i-»«V*^i*{ 
Potomac alone, for reasons unknown. -/^ ^a-^i* /'-<^/ | 

The war had necessitated the governing of the country -i 

by the War Department instead of the Constitution. y«*-4i -JfiMJ 

All telegraph wires centred in the room of the Secretary .^^ • 

of War, and there was a common saying that that , 

gentleman had but to touch a bell and the arrest of any 
person at the uttermost edge of the vast Republic would 
be consummated. Speech and the press were censured 
and the suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus fell on i 

men prominent in politics and letters. j 

The agitation against the war finally culminated \ 

in the famous Vallandigham case. Here Lincoln, by | 

applying the principle that " it might be well in an 
extreme emergency to be content with the appear- 
ance of executing the laws," and by again using his 
talent of speaking to the people, succeeded in smoothing 
over what might have proved a serious disaffection. 

An Ohio Democrat, Vallandigham, had made so 
fervent an anti-war speech that he was arrested by 
General Burnside and sentenced to imprisonment in 
a fortress. At this a storm of protest swept over the 
country. Lincoln seems to have doubted the expedi- 
ency of any arrest whatever, but he sustained it after it 
happened, except that he changed the sentence from 
imprisonment to exile to the South. This form of 
martyrdom struck the humour of the American people. 
The Confederates were not over-anxious for their guest, 
but they decided to receive him as a transient alien, and 
escorted him to Charleston, South Carolina. From 
thence he sailed to Canada and re-entered Ohiol and the 
Democrats nominated him for Governor of the State as a 



'^*♦A^> 



71 



I90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

protest against the war and the Administration. It 
was decided officially to ignore his activities in Ohio, 
and this policy was vindicated at the election, where 
Vallandigham lost by a hundred thousand majority. 

Lincoln in the meantime had used his opportunity 
to address himself to the people. A Vallandigham 
meeting was held in New York, which was attended by 
the newly-elected Democratic Governor of the State 
himself, who denounced the arrest as dishonourable 
despotism. " The action of the Administration," he 
said, " will determine in the minds of more than one- 
half of the people of the loyal states whether this war 
is waged to put down rebellion in the South or to 
destroy free institutions in the North." 

Lincoln answered this meeting, and his argument 
that he was saving the boys in the army struck home. 

" I understand the meeting whose resolution I am 
considering to be in favour of suppressing the rebellion 
by military force — by armies. Long experience has 
shown that armies cannot be maintained unless deser- 
tion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. 
The case requires, and the law and the Constitution 
sanction, this punishment. Shall I shoot a simple- 
minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch 
a hair of the wily agitator who induces him to desert? 
This is none the less injurious when effected by getting 
a father, a brother or friend into a public meeting and 
there working upon his feelings till he is persuaded to 
write the soldier boy that he is fighting in a bad cause 
for a wicked Administration of a contemptible Govern- 
ment, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall 
desert. I think that, in such a case, to silence the 



THE NEW RECKONING 191 

agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional 
but withal a great mercy. . . . Nor am I able to appre- 
ciate the danger apprehended by this meeting that the 
American people will, by means of military arrests 
during the rebellion, lose the right of public discussion, 
the liberty of speech and the press, the law of evidence, 
trial by jury and Habeas Corpus throughout the in- 
definite peaceful future which I trust lies before them, 
any more than I am able to believe that a man could 
contract so strong an appetite for emetics during tem- 
porary illness as to persist in feeding upon them during 
the remainder of his natural life." 

Disaffection went so far that it was reflected in 
Congress and Lincoln was on the verge of a Cabinet 
crisis. The conservatives were against Chase, the 
Secretary of the Treasury, on the ground that he was 
too radical, and the radicals were against Seward, the 
Secretary of State, on the ground that he was too con- 
servative. The result was an actual demand by a 
caucus of Senators that Seward be removed. This was 
modified to a request that Lincoln make changes in his 
Cabinet. Lincoln invited both the Committee and the 
Cabinet on one and the same evening, and they met, to 
the surprise of each, to hear each other's incriminations. 
Seward had already sent in his resignation, and the 
result of the evening's meeting was the resignation of 
Chase. Lincoln received it a httle hastily, then with 
a sigh of relief tore up the resignations of both men. 
" Now," he said, " I can ride. I have a pumpkin in 
each bag." 

He was much more in sympathy with Seward's 
conservatism than with Chase's radicalism, but he 



192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

needed both men for the " balancing of matters," 
which was a favourite phrase of his. It was no time to 
show weakness by making changes in the Government. 

The immediate problem before him was to persist 
in the prosecution of the war. This was no easy 
matter, with copperheadism and various other parties 
clamouring for peace, and a people heavily burdened 
by taxes and the draft. If he could not approach the 
rich, who had protected their property with a three per 
cent, tax and their lives by bounty laws, he went still 
further down in the strata of society and called upon 
the " cause of the war to be the material for its own 
destruction " — he called upon the newly-freed slaves 
to carry arms for their country. 

Thus, on the 14th of January, we find him writing to 
General Dix a letter marked " Private and Confidential," 
in which he says: " The Proclamation has been issued; 
we were not succeeding — at best were progressing too 
slowly — ^without it. Now that we have it, and bear all 
the disadvantages of it (as we do bear some in certain 
quarters), we must also take some benefit from it, if 
practicable. I therefore will thank you for your well- 
considered opinion whether Fortress Monroe and York- 
town, one or both, could not in whole or in part be 
garrisoned by coloured troops, leaving the white forces 
now necessary at those places to be employed else- 
where." 

All through the spring he kept up a continuous pro- 
paganda for the raising of coloured troops. In March 
he wrote to Andrew Johnson, i\Iilitary Governor of 
Tennessee, who was later Vice-President under him, 
and President after his assassination: 



THE NEW RECKONING 193 

" I am told you have at least thought of raising a 
negro miUtary force. In my opinion the country now 
needs no specific thing so much as some man of your 
abihty and position to go to this work. WTien I speak 
of your position I mean that of an eminent citizen of 
a slave state and himself a slave-holder. The coloured 
population is the great available and yet unavailed 
of force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of 
50,000 armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks 
of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once ; and 
who doubts that we can present that sight if we but 
take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it, 
please do not dismiss the thought." 

The South, in a rage, threatened extermination and 
massacre, but the value of these soldiers was too great 
to desist because of the prejudice that had to be over- 
come. The Confederate Secretary of War suggested 
to General Kirby Smith that white men leading negro 
troops " be dealt with red-handed on the field of war or 
immediately after. ' ' Lincoln in turn promised extra pro- 
tection for these troops, and after the summer victories 
he sent an order that " for every soldier of the United 
States killed in violation of the laws of the war a rebel 
soldier shall be executed." This order was never carried 
out, but it shows to what extent the precautions for the 
safety of the coloured troops had to be taken, and even 
so massacres were not prevented. On ist April he put 
the case before General Hunter in this wise : 

" I am glad to see the accounts of your coloured 
force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are 
driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It 
is important to the enemy that such a force shall not 



194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in 
precisely the same proportion it is important to us that 
it shall. Hence the utmost caution and vigilance is 
necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra 
efforts to destroy them, and we should do the same to 
preserve and increase them." 

Yet the North itself, willing on the whole to make 
use of this new war material, was unwilling to place 
it on an equal footing with the white soldier. There 
were objections to the negro being put in the same 
uniform as the white and to his being given promotions 
or equal pay. A point in his favour was gained when the 
idea of the same uniform finally prevailed and Lincoln 
promised he would see justice done in the matter of pro- 
motions, but as to equal pay — " some concession must 
be made to prejudice," he said, and besides, " it was not 
proved that the negro could make as good a soldier as 
the white man." The negroes, rather than be so 
humiliated, gave their life's-blood in the defence of their 
country without any pay whatever. In this their 
families, who were homeless and without work and who 
depended on the pay for bread, stood loyally by the 
men in the fields, until the country, grown respectful 
of this self-respect, paid in full what it owed them 

By the end of the year Lincoln could write in his 
Annual Message to Congress : 

" Of those who were slaves at the beginning of the 
rebellion, fully one hundred thousand are now in the 
United States military service, about one-half of which 
number actually bear arms in the ranks; thus giving 
the double advantage of taking so much labour from 
the insurgent cause and supplying the places which 



THE NEW RECKONING 195 

otherwise must be filled with so many white men. So 
far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good 
soldiers as any. No servile insurrection, or tendency to 
violence or cruelty, has marked the measures of eman- 
cipation among the blacks. These measures have been 
much discussed in foreign countries, and contemporary 
with such discussion the tone of public sentiment 
there is much improved. At home the same measures 
have been fully discussed, supported, criticised, de- 
nounced, and the annual elections following are highly 
encouraging to those whose official duty it is to bear the 
country through this great trial. Thus we have the new 
reckoning. The crisis which threatened to divide the 
Union is past." 

By the following April 130,000 soldiers, seamen and 
labourers were in the service. 

In the South a rigorous conscription had begun a 
year before the Northern Draft Act, in April 1862. 
It forced all males between the ages of eighteen and 
thirty-five into the service, and in September of that 
year it was extended to include all males between the 
ages of eighteen and forty-five. 

Towards the end of the war conscription included 
boys of sixteen and seventeen and old men, and a re- 
solution was passed to enlist the negro population. 
This last plan came too late in the war to be tried, but 
slaves had served the army from the very first as 
labourers upon the fortifications, as teamsters, hostlers, 
cooks and body-servants. Whether they could have 
been made to fight for their masters with gun in 
hand was not put to the test. 

The strain of the internal war was made trebly 



196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

difficult this year for the Federal Government by the 
strain of foreign relations. Though it was true that 
" the tone of public sentiment " was much improved in 
foreign countries by the discussion of the emancipation 
measures, yet the improvement cannot be laid wholly 
to that cause. 

The English upper classes, and for a while the 
Government, seemed in sympathy with the Southern 
Confederacy, but the bulk of English trade was with 
the North, and England had nothing to gain from a 
recognition of the Southern Confederacy. The cotton 
mills in England were closed in 1861 and 1862 and the 
spinners were told that the closed mills were due to the 
American blockade. In reality the mills would have 
been closed under any circumstances, because of a glut 
of cotton goods in China and India. By the time 
the cotton market had righted itself, Egypt, Syria 
and Brazil were furnishing their cotton to the mills of 
England. 

In the autumn of 1862 the danger of recognition 
was at its height. It was at this time that Gladstone 
made his famous Newcastle speech, in which he said 
that " Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South 
have made an army, they are making, it appears, a navy, 
and they have made, what is more than either, they 
have made a nation." Though it was said with less 
forethought than the Northern States attributed to 
him, he could not have said it unless the Government 
had been very close to intervention of some kind. 

Both Palmerston and RusseU were ready to propose 
intervention after Pope's defeat at the second battle of 
Bull Run in August 1862. 



THE NEW RECKONING 197 

The edict of freedom in January made a favourable 
impression upon the workers of England, but the pre- 
liminary proclamation of September was hardly appre- 
ciated. The governing classes saw in it only an attempt 
to incite servile insurrection, and even Bright, as late 
as December, in his speech of that day, made no allusion 
to it. But on 14th October it was announced that the 
Government did not intend to interfere. The deter- 
mining factor was Seward's letter to Adams of 2nd 
August, in which he said: 

" If Great Britain shall in any way approach you, 
directly or indirectly, with propositions which assume or 
contemplate an appeal to the President on the subject of 
our internal affairs, whether it seem to imply a purpose to 
dictate or to mediate, or to advise or even to solicit or per- 
suade, you will answer that you are forbidden to debate, 
to hear or in any way receive, entertain or transmit any 
communication of the kind. 

" If the British Government, either alone or in com- 
bination with any other Government, should acknowledge 
the insurgents . . . you will immediately suspend the 
exercise of your functions and give notice of that suspen- 
sion to Earl Russell and to this Department." 

This letter was shown to Forster. Its firm tone and 
the certainty that war would ensue made the Govern- 
ment desist from following the lead of what Palmerston 
called the " eager money-making spirit of British mer- 
chants and shipbuilders." 

The crushing defeat at Fredericksburg in December 
confirmed all Europe in the belief that the cause of 
the North was hopeless. Louis Napoleon, who had 



198 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

taken advantage of the lull in the enforcement of the 
Monroe Doctrine to manipulate affairs in the Mexican 
Republic by setting up a throne for the Archduke 
Maximilian of Austria, now (on 9th January 1863) 
offered mediation, but in a friendly and courteous 
tone. This was as politely and courteously declined on 
3rd February. 

The distress in the cotton-manufacturing districts 
of France was as acute as that of England, but the 
people of France and England stood solidly for the 
cause of free labour. 

When the January edict appeared mass meetings 
were held in every manufacturing centre in England. 
In Manchester 6000 operatives hailed the " dawn of 
the New Year as the beginning of an epoch of uni- 
versal freedom upon the Western Continent and of 
closer friendship between the people of England and 
America." 

To which Lincoln replied, on 19th January, making 
a careful exposition of his cause : 

" To THE Working-Men of Manchester 

" I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of the 
address and the resolutions which you sent me on the eve 
of the New Year. When I came, on the 4th of March 1861, 
through a free and constitutional election, to preside in the 
government of the United States, the country was found 
on the verge of civil war. Whatever might have been the 
cause, or whosoever the fault, one duty paramount to all 
others was before me, namely, to maintain and preserve at 
once the Constitution and the integrity of the Federal Re- 
public. A conscientious purpose to perform this duty is 
the key to all the measures of administration which have 



THE NEW RECKONING 199 

been and to all which will hereafter be pursued. Under our 
frame of government and my official oath I could not de- 
part from this purpose if I would. It is not always in the 
power of Governments to enlarge or restrict the scope of 
moral results which follow the policies that they may deem 
it necessary for the pubhc safety to adopt. 

" I have understood well that the duty of self-preserva- 
tion rests solely with the American people. But I have, at 
the same time, been aware that favour or disfavour of 
foreign nations might have a material influence in enlarging 
or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the 
country is engaged. A fair examination of history has 
seemed to authorize the beUef that the past actions and 
influences of the United States were generally regarded as 
having been beneficial to mankind. I have, therefore, 
reckoned on the forbearance of nations. Circumstances — 
to some of which you kindly allude — induce me especially 
to expect that if justice and good faith should be practised 
by the United States they would encounter no hostile in- 
fluence on the part of Great Britain. It is now a pleasant 
duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of 
your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this 
country may prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is 
respected and esteemed in your own country only more 
than she is by the kindred nation which has its home on 
this side of the Atlantic. 

" I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the 
working-men of Manchester, and in all Europe, are called 
to endure in this crisis. It has been often and studiously 
represented that the attempt to overthrow this Government, 
which was built on the foundation of human rights, and to 
substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the 
basis of human slavery, was hkely to obtain the favour of 
Europe. Through the actions of our disloyal citizens the 
working-men of Europe have been subjected to severe 
trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to that 



200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard 
your decisive utterances upon the question as an instance 
of sublime Christian heroism, which has not been surpassed 
in any age or in any country. It is indeed an energetic and 
reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth and of 
the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity 
and freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have 
expressed will be sustained by your great nation; or, on 
the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring you that 
they will excite admiration, esteem and the most reciprocal 
feehngs of friendship among the American people. I hail 
this interchange of sentiment as an augury that whatever 
else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your 
country, as my own, the peace and friendship which now 
exists between the two nations will be, as it shall be my 
desire to make them, perfected." 

All through January and February there were de- 
monstrations the like of which had not been seen 
since the abolition of the Corn Laws. Even in Liver- 
pool, where the shipbuilding interests made the city 
pro-Southern, a reaction in Northern favour had set 
in, and the President was addressed with " respectful 
sympathy." 

In Bradford, Yorkshire, a resolution was passed 
that " any intervention, physical or moral, on behalf 
of the slave power would be immoral." On 29th 
January a large overflow meeting, " crowded with 
workers and scholars," was held in Exeter Hall, in 
London, at which the name of Lincoln was cheered and 
cheered again. 

On 2nd February Lincoln again answered the 
address of a New Year's meeting in London, held in 
celebration of the proclamation: 



THE NEW RECKONING 201 

" To THE Working-Men of London 

" I have received the New Year's address which you 
have sent me, with a sincere appreciation of the exalted 
and humane sentiments by which it was inspired. 

" As these sentiments are manifestly the enduring 
supports of the free institutions of England, so I am sure 
also that they constitute the only rehable basis for institu- 
tions throughout the world. 

" The resources, advantages and powers of the American 
people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded 
to equally great responsibihties. It seems to have devolved 
upon them to test whether a Government estabhshed upon 
the principles of human freedom can be maintained against 
an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of 
human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new 
evidences which your proceedings furnish that the mag- 
nanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true 
friends of freedom and humanity in foreign countries. 

" Accept my best wishes for your individual welfare, 
and for the welfare and happiness of the whole British 
people." 

But by March 1863 the situation with England 
again looked grave. Two ships, the Alabama and the 
Florida, which had been built in Liverpool for the 
Southern Confederacy the year before, and had been 
manned by British seamen and had shown the Eng- 
lish flag, were making great depredations among 
American merchantmen, and the irritation in America 
against England was increasing. The Alabama alone 
had burned fifty-seven vessels at a value of six and 
a half million dollars. The blockade could not be 
weakened to catch her or the Florida. Under such 
circumstances the news came that three more vessels 
14 



202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

were being built for the South, and that a three-milUon- 
pound loan had been floated in London. Adams wrote 
home that he expected war in six months, for the only 
thing that could check the course of the wealthy classes 
was a military success for the North which did not seem 
to come at all. 

There was a debate in the House on 27th March 
over the question of the fitting out of vessels, and the 
light manner with which Palmerston waived aside the 
American grievance gave the impression to the friends 
of the North that the debate meant war. But on 5th 
April Russell stopped one of the vessels, the Alexandria, 
and as a result the loan dropped. 

There was still some nervousness all through April, 
but the debate on the American question in the House, 
of 24th April, showed a much more friendly tone than 
the earlier one, and when on 30th June Roebuck, in the 
House, put a practical instruction to the Government 
" to enter into negotiations with the great Powers of 
Europe for the purpose of obtaining their co-operation 
in recognition of the Confederacy," there was such a 
preponderating opposition to him that on 13th July he 
withdrew the motion. 

This absolute determination not to recognize the 
Confederacy was made when even the friends of the 
North believed that its cause was hopeless. General 
Hooker had been defeated before Chancellorsville and 
Lee had invaded Pennsylvania. Any day tidings might 
come that he had captured Washington and Baltimore. 
Grant was still held at bay at Vicksburg and the result 
of that siege was doubtful. When the news came that 
Lee had actually been defeated at Gettysburg, and 



THE NEW RECKONING 203 

Grant had captured Vicksburg, a good part of the 
English Press and the upper classes mourned as for 
a calamity. The fall of Washington had been fully 
expected. 

Seward's letter to Adams concerning the two rams 
that were being built was that if any more ships were 
fitted out they would "pursue the pirates into British 
ports," and Adams wrote hastily to Lord Russell con- 
cerning the ships, " This is war." On 8th and 9th 
October 1863 the rams were seized by the English 
Government, and in the end purchased by them. 

But the " new reckoning " was not in the world of 
foreign or domestic politics, but in the field of battle. 
The limitless resources of the North and the limited 
resources of the South were being matched to a logical 
conclusion. By the summer of 1863 the decisive battles 
were fought in favour of the North. 

In September of the year before, when M'Clellan 
had fought and won at Antietam, Lincoln had hoped 
that he would prevent Lee from escaping with his army 
already crippled by a fourth, and that Richmond would 
be taken, and thus the war be brought to an end. It 
seemed to him that under the conditions this was feas- 
ible. Perhaps the wish was father to the thought, for 
he knew that another year of war would mean a radical 
change in the laws of the Government he was trying 
to uphold, a forced conscription of soldiers, and per- 
haps foreign recognition of the South, or mediation. 

He urged M'Clellan with gentleness, with argu- 
ments, and finally with impatience. " I have just 
read your dispatch about sore-tongued and fatigued 
horses," he wrote to him on 23rd October, two weeks 



204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

before his dismissal. " Will you pardon me for asking 
what the horses of your army have done since the 
battle of Antietam that fatigues anything? " 

Finally, on the 7th of November, he sent an order 
which relieved M'Clellan of his command and placed 
Burnside in his stead, " because he was a good house- 
keeper." In reality because there was no one else, 
Bumside had twice refused the command on the ground 
of his own unfitness, and most military experts agree 
with him. 

The fatality of the Eastern campaign continued. 
Bumside threw himself against the Confederate forces 
at Fredericksburg Heights on 13th December, with 
the result that 13,000 Union soldiers lay slain on the 
field. Again and again he sent his men up against a 
fortified stone wall, only to be mown down. Bumside 
had proved almost as slow in movements as M'Clellan 
and not as cautious. 

The army reverses angered the nation and the blame 
fell on Lincoln. A cartoon of 3rd January in Harper's 
Weekly showed Columbia demanding of Lincoln an 
accounting of the thousands slain at Fredericksburg. 

" This," repHed Lincoln, " reminds me of a little 
joke." 

" Go," she said. " Tell your little joke at Spring- 
field." 

With the nation watching him, Lincoln tried yet 
another experiment in the army. He relieved General 
Bumside and placed in his stead General Hooker, 
" Fighting Joe Hooker," who had criticized his com- 
mander to such an extent, and had talked so much of 
the necessity of a dictatorship, that Lincoln decided to 



THE NEW RECKONING 205 

try him. He sent him a characteristic letter ending 
with, " What I ask of you is military success and I will 
risk the dictatorship." 

Hooker brought neither success nor the much-talked- 
of dictatorship. He met Lee in May at Chancellorsville 
and went down heavily before him. Seventeen thou- 
sand were dead on the side of the North, and thirteen 
thousand on the South. The South lost one of its 
ablest generals in the death of Stonewall Jackson, who 
was shot accidentally by one of his own pickets. 

Lee, whose resources were less than the North's, 
naturally continued the offensive and followed up his 
victory. But he lay for a month on the opposite side 
of the Rappahannock facing Hooker's camp, held back 
by his own Government, which hoped that the defeat 
at Chancellorsville, coupled with the discontent of the 
Copperheads and the threat of foreign intervention, 
would force a treaty of peace from Lincoln. No offer 
of peace came, except on the basis of Union and the 
laying down of arms, and Lee finally began his desperate 
and fatal march northward. 

Hooker would have preferred to continue against 
Richmond, but the idea recurred to Lincoln that here 
again the decisive battle could be fought. " Lee's 
army and not Richmond is your true objective point," 
he told him. 

On 22nd June the Confederates entered Pennsyl- 
vania. The intensity of the situation showed itself 
in a nervous changing of commanders. General Hal- 
lock was put over Hooker, and on the 27th Hooker 
was entirely reHeved, and General Meade, at three in 
the morning, was given the appointment. The argu- 



2o6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ments in his favour were that he was a native of Penn- 
sylvania, where the battle was to be fought, and a 
Democrat, which would check that party's demand for 
the restoration of M'Clellan. 

On the first day of July the Northern armies under 
Meade surrounded Lee, now in exactly the same 
position as the Northern generals were in the South, 
in hostile territory, with no means of getting infor- 
mation. 

The battle lasted three days, Lincoln spending his 
days and nights in the telegraph-office of the War 
Department. The North won, but with dreadful losses, 
and Lee escaped. Before this battle Lincoln had a 
dream which he had dreamed before on the eve of the 
battle of Antietam. 

He saw a ship sailing away, badly damaged, with 
victorious Union vessels in pursuit. There appeared 
also the end of a battle on land, the enemy routed, and 
the Union forces in possession of an important point. 

The dream seemed of great portent to him, coming 
as it did before the battle of Gettysburg, now called 
the pivotal battle of the war. When it was fought, 
however, it seemed only another one of those indecisive 
Union victories at the cost of fearful carnage. Twenty- 
three thousand lay slain on either side and Lee's army 
was free. 

Whether Meade could have pursued Lee and really 
crushed his forces is a matter of military speculation, 
but Lincoln's distress over Meade's failure to do so 
was keen. He wrote Meade as near a letter of censure 
as he came to writing anyone, but he thought better 
of sending a letter of criticism to a general who had won 



\ 



THE NEW RECKONING 207 

what was after all an important battle, and he did not 
send it. But he could not help writing and speaking 
of it to other men. It was one of his greatest dis- 
appointments of the war. 

The day after Gettysburg better news reached 
Lincoln. Vicksburg had fallen, and a few days later, 
9th July, Port Hudson was taken, and Lincoln could 
write, " The Father of Waters again goes un vexed to 
the sea." 

The Union forces in the West were pressing toward 
the heart of the Confederacy. After the evacuation of 
Corinth, in May 1862, the Confederate General, Bragg, 
had moved northward to Chatanooga with 35,000 
soldiers. He made an advance upon Louisville, Ken- 
tucky, but was checked by General Buell at Perryville 
in a decisive battle on 8th October. The Confederates 
returned to Chatanooga. 

In the meantime an attempt was made to recapture 
Corinth, under the Confederate General, Van Dorn, 
which almost succeeded, but on the second day of 
desperate fighting (4th October) was driven back by 
General Rosecrans. 

Step by step the battlefields and the armies were 
being pushed towards the strongholds of Tennessee 
and Georgia. 

General Rosecrans succeeded General Buell in Ten- 
nessee, and after three days' terrible fighting around 
Murfreesboro, 31st December to 2nd January, held his 
ground against the attacks of the Confederates and 
the latter were forced to leave even Chatanooga to the 
Northern troops. 

Nine months later, on 19th and 20th September 



2o8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

1863, General Bragg made a stand against Rosecrans 
and inflicted upon him a defeat which came very nearly 
being the most overwhelming Federal disaster of the 
war. Much blood was yet to be shed before the winter's 
fighting was over. On 24th and 25th November, 
Grant, who had taken charge of the forces at Chatanooga, 
fought Bragg, who was besieging them at Missionary 
Ridge and Lookout Mountain, with such force and 
success as to break up the siege and make him retreat. 
General Bragg fell back to Dalton, and the Confederate 
General, Longstreet, with the force that General Bragg 
had sent into Eastern Tennessee, crossed the mountains 
and joined Lee in Virginia. 

To the world, at this moment, Lincoln, in his official 
capacity as President of the United States, presented 
his Gettysburg address, which has become one of the 
basic documents of American history. Every school 
child is taught to say it by heart ; it is recited at every 
national anniversary. 

The field of Gettysburg was dedicated as a national 
cemetery for the soldiers who died in the war. Edward 
Everett gave the speech of the occasion and the Presi- 
dent dedicated the ground. They say that at the time 
the speech made small impression. It was too cryptic, 
too chiselled to be impressive, read to a vast throng in 
an open field drenched with the blood of 50,000 men. 
" That speech won't scour," said Lincoln to his friend 
Lamon. "It is a flat failure. The people are dis- 
appointed." 

They have long since awakened to its beauty: 

" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought 



THE NEW RECKONING 209 

forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, 
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

" Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle- 
field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of 
that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave 
their Hves that that nation might live. It is altogether 
fitting and proper that we should do this. 

" But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we can- 
not consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The 
brave men, Hving and dead, who struggled here have con- 
secrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. 
The world will httle note nor long remember what we say 
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is 
for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the un- 
finished work which they who fought here have thus far so 
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated 
to the great task remaining before us — that from these 
honoured dead we take increased devotion to that cause for 
which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that 
we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a 
new birth of freedom; and that government of the 
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish 
from the earth." 

To himself he expressed a thought which came to 
him in the second year of the war, when he saw that 
the struggle was not to be the holiday jaunt that had 
been generally expected. His economic and social 
philosophy was insufficient to answer the question of 
the meaning of the great struggle, its length, and the 
great task it was to accomplish. He sought an answer 



2IO ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

through the divine will. In September 1862 he made 
this note: — 

" The Will of God prevails. In great contests each 
party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. 
Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for 
and against the same thing at the same time. In the 
present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is 
something different from the purpose of either party, and 
yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, 
are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am 
almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God 
wills this contest and wills that it shall not end yet. By 
His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants 
He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without 
a human contest. Yet the contest began, and having begun. 
He could give final victory to either side any day. Yet the 
contest proceeds." 



CHAPTER XII 
RE-ELECTION 

THE battle of Gettysburg did not put an end to 
the war. Yet it was decisive enough to assure 
ultimate success to the arms of the North. Dis- 
couraging as was the disastrous defeat at Chickamauga 
of 20th September 1863, it did not deter the country from 
voting approval in the elections of November. Vallan- 
digham was defeated in Ohio, a War Governor was 
elected in Pennsylvania, and in general there were 
RepubUcan gains over the elections of the year before. 
Lincoln wrote a little ironically of the fortuitousness 
of this success: 

" I am glad the elections this summer have gone favour- 
ably, and that I have not, by native depravity or under evil 
influence, done anything bad enough to prevent the good 
result. I hope to ' stand firm ' enough to not go backward, 
and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's 
cause." 

Though the country approved of the purpose of the 
war, a clamour arose for its end. Suspicion was begin- 
ning to be felt that Lincoln and the Administration 
could end it quickly if they so desired, and not Congress, 
but the war and the political skirmishes for the Presi- 
dential campaign of 1864 held the attention of public 
interest. 

Lincoln earnestly desired a re-nomination to finish 
211 



212 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the task that he had begun. The republican form of 
government puts its administration on trial at every 
election, and voting had to take place when the national 
authority was trying to assert itself through the means 
of a civil war. Yet, to quote Lincoln, " we cannot 
have free government without elections, and if the re- 
bellion could force us to forego or postpone the national 
election it might fairly claim to have already conquered 
and ruined us." 

The elections were to be held, but in this precarious 
condition it must be confessed that the whole machinery 
of the Government was employed to further its success. 

In the early fall preparations were being made for 
the nominations to be held in the spring and summer. 
The slow, deliberate and lenient policies which Lincoln 
laid down made him an unpopular candidate \vith his 
own party, the Republican. It was dissatisfied with his 
continued support of the more conservative faction in 
Missouri, which were represented by his personal friends, 
the Blairs, and which disputed incessantly with the 
radicals, who showed their temper by the support of 
Fremont and his proclamation of freedom. 

On the other hand there was growing up in the Re- 
publican ranks, as in the other parties, a strong peace 
faction, which placed the length of the war on Lincoln's 
shoulders, and which, like Greeley, held to the anomalous 
position that it would not sacrifice slavery yet would 
make peace. Lincoln was becoming unpopular for still 
another cause — the conservative principles upon which 
he was instituting amnesty and a reconstruction of the 
States brought back under Federal control, and which 
seemed to the radicals a surrender of the principles of 



REELECTION 213 

freedom gained through the war. In general it was felt 
that however well or ill Lincoln's task had been per- 
formed, a newer man, uncommitted to definite policies, 
was needed to carry on the task now grown into larger 
fields and surrounded with larger problems. 

Lincoln realized that his one hope of re-nomination 
was to drop party lines, and to place himself at the head 
of the one principle for which he was fightmg — uncon- 
ditional union. For this purpose the Republican party 
changed its name to the National Union League, and 
thus it included under its banner a great many so-called 
war Democrats as well as Republicans. 

In August of 1863 Lincoln practically offered himself 
for re-nomination in a letter written to the Union men 
at Springfield. He still felt it incumbent upon him, 
despite the cries of the radicals that his heart was not 
in the freeing of the negro, to disclaim the charge that 
the war was carried on in the negro's behalf. It 
showed whose cries were the louder; it also showed, 
perhaps, to whom his ear was best attuned. 

Letter to J. C. Conkling. 

•' Washington, 26ih August 1863. 

" My dear Sir, — Your letter inviting me to attend a 
mass meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at 
the capitol of Illinois on the 3rd day of September, has 
been received. It would be very agreeable to me to thus 
meet my old friends at my own home, but I cannot just now 
be absent from here so long as a visit there would require. 

" The meeting is to be of all those who maintain un- 
conditional devotion to the Union ; and I am sure my old 
political friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the 
nation's gratitude to those and other noble men whom no 



214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

partisan malice or partisan hope can make false to the 
nation's life. 

" There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To 
such I would say: You desire peace, and you blame me 
that we do not have it. But how can we attain it? There 
are but three conceivable ways: First, to suppress the re- 
bellion by force of arms. This I am trying to do. Are you 
for it? If you are, so far we are agreed. If you are not for 
it, a second way is to give up the Union. I am against this. 
Are you for it? If you are, you should say so plainly. If 
you are not for force, nor yet for dissolution, there only 
remains some imaginable compromise. I do not beheve 
any compromise embracing the maintenance of the Union 
is now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite 
beUef. The strength of the rebelhon is its mihtary, its 
army. That army dominates aU the country and aU the 
people within its range. Any offer of terms made by any 
man or men within that range, in opposition to that army, 
is simply nothing for the present, because such man or men 
have no power whatever to enforce their side of a com- 
promise, if one were made with them. 

"To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and 
peace men of the North get together in convention, and 
frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration 
of the Union. In what way can that compromise be used 
to keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania? Meade's army 
can keep Lee's army out of Pennsylvania, and, I think, can 
ultimately drive it out of existence. But no paper com- 
promise to which the controllers of Lee's army are not 
agreed can at all affect that army. In an effort at such 
compromise we should waste time which the enemy would 
improve to our disadvantage, and that would be all. A 
compromise, to be effective, must be made either with those 
who control the rebel army, or with the people first Uber- 
ated from the domination of that army by the success of 
our own army. Now, allow me to assure you thatino word 



RE-ELECTION 215 

or intimation from that rebel army, or from any of the men 
controlling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever 
come to my knowledge or belief. All charges and in- 
sinuations to the contrary are deceptive and groundless. 
And I promise you that if any such proposition shall here- 
after come it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from 
you. I freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, 
according to the bond of service — the United States Con- 
stitution — and that, as such, I am responsible to them. 

" But to be plain. You are dissatisfied with me about 
the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion 
between you and myself on that subject. I certainly wish 
that all men could be free, while I suppose you do not. Yet, 
I have neither adopted nor proposed any measure which is 
not consistent with even your view, provided you are for 
the Union. I suggested compensated emancipation, to 
which you replied you wished not to be taxed to buy 
negroes. But I had not asked you to be taxed to buy 
negroes, except in such way as to save you from greater 
taxation to save the Union exclusively by other means 

" You disHke the emancipation proclamation, and per- 
haps would have it retracted. You say it is unconsti- 
tutional. I think differently. I think the Constitution in- 
vests its commander-in-chief with the law of war in time of 
war. The most that can be said — if so much — is that 
slaves are property. Is there — has there ever been — any 
question that, by the law of war, property, both of enemies 
and friends, may be taken when needed? And is it not 
needed whenever taking it helps us or hurts the enemy? 
Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property when 
they cannot use it ; and even destroy their own to keep it 
from the enemy. Civihzed belligerents do all in their 
power to help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few 
things regarded as barbarous or cruel. Among the excep- 
tions are the massacre of vanquished foes and non-com- 
batants, male and female. 



2i6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" But the proclamation, as law, either is vaHd or is not 
valid. If it is not vahd it needs no retraction. If it is 
vahd, it cannot be retracted any more than the dead can 
be brought to hfe. Some of you profess to think its re- 
traction would operate favourably for the Union. Why 
better after the retraction than before the issue? There 
was more than a year and a half of trial to suppress the 
rebellion before the proclamation issued; the last one 
hundred days of which passed under an exphcit notice that 
it was coming, unless averted by those in revolt returning 
to their allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as 
favourably for us since the issue of the proclamation as 
before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of 
others, that some of the commanders of our armies in the 
field, who have given us our most important successes, be- 
lieve the emancipation pohcy and the use of the coloured 
troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt to the re- 
belHon, and that at least one of these important successes 
could not have been achieved when it was but for the aid 
of black soldiers. Among the commanders holding these 
views are some who have never had any affinity with what 
is called Abohtionism, or with Repubhcan party pohtics, 
but who hold them purely as mihtary opinions. I submit 
these opinions as being entitled to some weight against the 
objections often urged that emancipation and arming the 
blacks are unwise as military measures, and were not 
adopted as such in good faith. 

" You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of 
them seem wilhng to fight for you; but no matter. Fight 
you, then, exclusively, to save the Union. I issued the pro- 
clamation on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. When- 
ever you shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, 
if I shall urge you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time 
then for you to declare you will not fight to free negroes. 

' I thought that in your struggle for the Union, to what- 
ever extent the negroes should cease helping the enemy, to 



RE-ELECTION 217 

that extent it weakened the enemy in his resistance to you. 
Do you think differently? I thought that whatever negroes 
can be got to do as soldiers leaves just so much less for 
white soldiers to do in saving the Union. Does it appear 
otherwise to you? But negroes, hke other people, act upon 
motives. Why should they do anything for us if we will 
do nothing for them? If they stake their lives for us they 
must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise 
of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept. 

" The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes 
un vexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North-west for it. 
Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they 
met New England Empire, Keystone and Jersey, hewing 
their way right and left. The sunny South, too, in more 
colours than one, also lent a hand. On the spot, their part 
of the history was jotted down in black and white. The 
job was a great national one, and let none be blamed who 
bore an honourable part in it. And while those who have 
cleared the great river may well be proud, even that is not 
all. It is hard to say that anything has been more bravely 
and well done than at Antietam, Murfreesboro, Gettysburg, 
and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must Uncle Sam's 
web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they 
have been present. Not only on the deep sea, the broad 
bay, and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy 
bayou, and wherever the ground was a little damp, they 
have been and made their tracks. Thanks to all: for the 
great Republic — for the principle it lives by and keeps ahve — 
for man's vast future — thanks to all. 

" Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it 
will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be 
worth the keeping in all future time. It will then have 
been proved that among free men there can be no successful 
appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and that they who 
take such appeal are sure to lose their case and pay the cost. 
And then there will be some black men who can remember 
15 



2i8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

that with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, 
and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to 
this great consummation, while I fear there will be some 
white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and 
deceitful speech they strove to hinder it. 

"Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final 
triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply 
the means, never doubting that a just God, in His own 
good time, will give us the rightful result." 

This letter by no means rallied all forces to his 
side. There was a definite movement to nominate 
Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury. It went so far 
as to produce a circular, which declared that the re- 
election of Lincoln was " practically impossible," that 
the cause of human liberty and the dignity of the 
nation suffered from his " tendency towards com- 
promises and temporary expedients "; and that in the 
Hon. Salmon P. Chase were to be found " more of the 
qualities needed in a President during the next four 
years," than were " combined in any other available 
candidate." 

When this circular became public Chase sent in 
his resignation, but Lincoln refused to accept it. 
" Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury 
Department," he wrote to him, " is a question which I 
will not allow myself to consider from any standpoint 
other than my judgment of the public service, and, in 
that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change." 

As it turned out, the State Convention in Ohio, 
Chase's home state, refused to give him the nomination, 
deciding for Lincoln instead. However, the opposition 
factions kept up their search for a more available 



RE-ELECTION 219 

candidate than Lincoln, and towards the spring two 
definite movements took place — a radical opposition 
which went towards Fremont, and a more conservative 
one which sought Grant. 

The movement towards Grant worried Lincoln 
very much, for he was needed in the field. He was 
the first aggressive general whom the war had produced 
and he could not be spared. " He fights," were the 
repeated answers of Lincoln to the requests that Grant 
be removed by officers jealous of his successes. " He 
keeps still and saws wood." This quality was needed 
now at the crucial stage of the war, when to lose him 
would have meant a virtual surrender. But Grant 
had a wholesome fear, as he said himself, " of the 
politicians in Washington," and refused to give his 
consent to political scheming. He had other work to 
do for the cause, and his victory at Chatanooga, in 
December 1863, reflected glory to Lincoln's war policy, 
and helped Lincoln on to popular favour. 

In March 1864 Congress decided to renew the title 
of Lieutenant-General of All the Armies which had 
been given to Washington, and it was presented to 
Grant, in the hope that he could now, with all the 
armies imder him, break the forces of the Confederates 
and end the war by the summer. 

In May Grant commenced his " Wilderness " Cam- 
paign, which was an advance from the Potomac upon 
Lee, who lay between him and Richmond. This had 
to be done through a wood with thick undergrowth 
which stretched south of Fredericksburg and the Rappa- 
hannock to the York River. Grant's army was greatly 
superior in nxmibers to Lee's, but the latter operated 



2 20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

on shorter lines and behind entrenchments, and suc- 
ceeded in holding Grant for sixteen days of continued 
fighting before making a stand at Cold Harbor on 
2nd June 1864. Grant stormed his position along his 
whole line, but in an hour was repulsed with a loss of 
17,000. He then decided to enter Richmond by its 
back-door, Petersburg, but failing, with great losses, 
in its capture, sat dovra to a nine months' siege. 

The country had no idea that Grant's campaign 
would be so long or so costly. With the disaster at 
Cold Harbor it saw 55,000 veteran troops dead, and 
Richmond still untaken, and Grant settling down to a 
long siege. But in May, when the manoeuvres were 
begun, hopes ran high, and the National Union League 
Convention, which met in Baltimore on 17th June, felt 
the country behind it eager for the continuation of 
the war. Lincoln was nominated by the whole Con- 
vention, with the exception of the delegation from 
Missouri, who were ever against him, and who gave 
their vote to Grant. For the purpose of including all 
shades of national Unionists, the Convention nominated 
a war Democrat of the South, Andrew Johnson, as Vice- 
President, and counteracted this conservative ticket 
by a radical platform which recommended a change 
in the Cabinet and the passing of a 13th Amend- 
ment to the Constitution for the abolition of slavery. 

On 31st May the radical Republicans, imcom- 
promising to the last, met in Convention, about 350 
strong, and nominated Fremont for President. Their 
platform demanded one term for President (the same 
argument of a one-term Presidency was used by the 
supporters of Chase), the confiscation of the land of 



RE-ELECTION 221 

the rebels, the reconstruction of the rebelHous states 
by Congress, not by the President, vigorous war 
measures, and the destruction of slavery for ever. 
Wendell Phillips was one of the ardent supporters of 
Fremont. The re-election of Lincoln, he said, would 
mean the end of Union, or a reconstruction on terms 
worse than Union. 

When Lincoln heard of the nomination he said 
nothing, but read from Samuel: "And everyone that 
was in distress, and everyone that was discontented, 
gathered themselves unto him, and he became a captain 
over them, and there were in all about four hundred 
men." 

The wave of popularity which brought Grant to the 
post of Lieutenant-General of All the Armies caused 
him again to be spoken of as Republican candidate. 
The very Saturday before the Union League Conven- 
tion met a large Grant meeting was held in New York 
under the auspices of the leading Republican politicians. 
Their hope lay in his having such speedy success that he 
would be of necessity the man before the people, and 
Lincoln be disqualified. Lincoln watched these pro- 
ceedings, and only remarked: " If he takes Richmond, 
let him have the nomination." 

He used his political knowledge to help him gain 
the nomination, but he did not sacrifice the cause for 
the sake of popularity. He waited until the October 
states had voted in 1863 before calling for 300,000 
volunteers ; but in the midst of the political depression 
of the following summer, after the defeat at Cold Harbor 
and Petersburg, he called for 500,000 troops for one, 
two and three years. His political advisers warned 



222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

him against such a call, but the men were needed, and 
the call was given almost at the cost of his re-election. 
Lincoln was called a tyrant, a Nero, who could have 
peace but kept on draining the country of its best 
blood because of his war lust. Discontent went so far 
that an organized movement was set on foot to recall 
his nomination and place someone else in his stead. 

The darkest days were in July and August. The 
repeated rumours that peace could be had if Lincoln 
so wished could not be stilled. Greeley kept up a con- 
tinual fire on the subject. 

" I know," said Greeley, " that nine-tenths of the 
whole people. North and South, are anxious for peace — 
peace on almost any terms — and utterly sick of human 
slaughter and devastation." He had received informa- 
tion, he wrote to Lincoln, that there were two ambas- 
sadors of " Davis & Co." with full and complete powers 
for peace. " Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying 
country longs for peace and shivers at the prospect of 
fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations 
and new rivers of human blood." He urged Lincoln 
to make an offer to the commissioners. Lincoln de- 
cided to send Greeley " to crack that nut himself," and 
he shrewdly appointed him as commissioner to meet 
these men with an ultimatum, written i8th July 1864 : — 



"To Whom It May Concern: Any proposition which 
embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the 
whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and which 
comes by and with an authority that can control the armies 
now at war against the United States, will be received and 
considered by the Executive Government of the United 



RE-ELECTION 223 

States, and will be met by liberal terms on other substantial 
and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers thereof 
shall have safe conduct both ways." 



The negotiations came to nothing, and the To Whom 
It May Concern letter made a very unfavourable im- 
pression in some quarters, because of the ultimatum 
that both the Union and the abandonment of slavery 
should be recognized. It gave semblance to the state- 
ment that peace could be had if Lincoln so willed it. 
Greeley especially felt that he had been duped. 

In August, after the added disaster of Petersburg 
and the dissatisfaction that arose from his call for more 
troops, Lincoln wrote a letter which was never sent, in 
which he said: " If Jefferson Davis wishes for himself, 
or for the benefit of his friends in the North, to know 
what I would do if he were to offer peace and reunion, 
say nothing about slavery, let him try me." As he 
did not send this, one cannot say that he was ready to 
abandon the slavery question for peace. 

The Union Party had lost all hope of election. 
" Mr Lincoln is already beaten," wrote Greeley on 
i8th August. " He cannot be re-elected, and we must 
have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow." 
The Cincinnati Gazette said openly that " the people 
regard Mr Lincoln's candidacy as a misfortune, his 
apparent strength when nominated was fictitious." 
Lincoln was again worried lest they might take Grant 
away from the field and set him up as a candidate. He 
sent a friend to sound him. Grant brought his hand 
down emphatically on the back of his arm-chair and 
said : " They cannot do it, they cannot compel me to 



224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

do it." Lincoln was relieved at that. Nevertheless, 
as late as August, he wrote a resolution on a shp of paper 
which he gave to his Cabinet to sign. He asked them 
to put their names on the back of it, without telling 
them what was written within. 

"This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly 
probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. 
Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President- 
elect as to save the Union between the election and the 
inauguration ; as he wiU have secured his election on such 
ground that he cannot possibly save it afterward." 

An idea of the state of affairs can be seen from a 
letter of Leonard Swett's to his wife, written towards 
the end of August. Swett was one of Lincoln's political 
managers. 

" My dear Wife, — The fearful things in relation to the 
country have induced me to stay a week here. I go to 
Washington to-night, and can't see how I can get away 
from there before the last of the week. 

" A summary of movements is as follows: 

" The mahcious foes of Lincoln are calling or getting 
up a Buffalo Convention to supplant him. They are — 
Sumner, Wade, Henry Winter Davis, Chase, Fremont, 
Wilson, etc. 

" The Democrats are conspiring to resist the draft. We 
seized this morning three thousand pistols going to Indiana 
for distribution. The war Democrats are trying to make 
the Chicago nominee a loyal man. The peace Democrats 
are trying to get control of the Government, and, through 
alliance with Jefferson Davis, to get control of both armies 
and make universal revolution necessary. 

" The most fearful things are probable. 



RE-ELECTION 225 

" I am acting with Thurlow Weed, Ra5nnond, etc., to 
try to avert. There is not much hope. 

" Unless material changes can be wrought, Lincoln's 
election is beyond any possible hope. It is probably clean 
gone now." 

The military situation was discouraging for all 
concerned. While Grant was besieging Petersburg, 
General Hunter had been driven from the valley of the 
Virginia by the Confederates earlier in the year, and the 
Confederate General Early, with part of Lee's troops, 
defeated General Lew Wallace and General Crook and 
came so close to Washington that with a little more 
promptness the capital would have been his. He was 
driven back by Sheridan after a spectacular ride, to 
rally his troops. His telegram — " We have just sent 
them whirling through Winchester and are after them 
to-morrow " — became a rallying cry for the North in 
August. 

In the West the operations were to be ultimately 
more successful than in the East, but in the months of 
July and August the end could not be foreseen. Sher- 
man was driving General Johnston, who was General 
Braggs' successor, back upon Atlanta. General Johnston 
was not strong enough to face Sherman, but his retreat 
was brilliant. In July he was in Atlanta, ready to 
make his stand, when President Davis relieved him and 
placed General Hood in his stead. On 2nd September 
Sherman repulsed General Hood's attacks, and moving 
around Atlanta, cut his lines of supply and took the city. 
General Hood went north, towards Tennessee, hoping 
that Sherman would follow, but instead he began his 
famous march to the sea, foraging off the land and 



226 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

destroying property as he went along, until he reached 
Savannah in December. He then turned north-west, 
in 1865, and crossed South Carolina. Not a seaport 
of importance remained in the hands of the Confeder- 
ates, Mobile having been taken on 5th August by 
Admiral Farragut, in co-operation with land forces. 

Sherman's march would have had no military 
significance had not General Thomas attacked and 
utterly destroyed the Confederate General Hood's army 
at Nashville, Tennessee, on 15th December. Sherman, 
moving at his will, had only to keep General Johnston 
employed, and Johnston retreated before him into 
North Carolina, leaving Grant free to work his will on 
Richmond and Petersburg. 

This whole military campaign could not be foreseen 
in August of 1864, and when the Democrats met in 
Convention in Chicago the war was so unpopular that 
Vallandigham and his friends succeeded in putting 
forth an absolute peace platform. " A cessation of 
hostilities with a view to the convention of states " 
was demanded, and it described the sacrifice of lives 
and treasures as " four years of failure to restore the 
Union by the experiment of war." 

Not to lose the war Democrats entirely, General 
M'Clellan, a man who had fought and believed in the 
war, was nominated for President. He made his posi- 
tion and that of his party still more anomalous by re- 
pudiating the peace platform entirely. 

Coupled with this contradictory and impossible 
position in which the Democrats were placed came the 
news of the capture of MobUe and Atlanta. The 
war was succeeding. " Sherman and Farragut," said 



REELECTION 227 

Seward, " have knocked the bottom out of the Chicago 
nominations." 

The question of the " reconstruction " of the re- 
bellious states brought back under Federal control 
was also a factor in the struggle over the elections. 
Already there was a disagreement between Congress 
and Lincoln over the subject. Lincoln's attitude was 
consistent from the first, but he showed a tendency to 
leniency which was not at all in keeping with the temper 
of Congress, which wanted to see more durable fruit as 
a result of the four years' war. Congress did not 
trouble itself about consistency. It recognized states 
when it was to its advantage to do so, and did not when 
it might prove otherwise. Thus it recognized the 
government of the Western Counties of Virginia which 
remained loyal as the government of the whole state. 
It took this body's consent for the formation of the 
Western Counties into the state of West Virginia, but 
in 1863 it repudiated its power when it removed to 
Alexandria and set up its rule over such counties as 
were newly brought under the control of the Federal 
lines. 

Lincoln, on the other hand, showed plainly where his 
tendency lay. In December of 1863, acting on his 
power to grant pardons and reprieves, and by an author- 
ization of an Act of Congress of July 1862, he issued a 
proclamation of amnesty. This promised full restora- 
tion of rights in property, except in slaves, of aU persons 
who laid down their arms and took the oath of loyalty 
to the Union. Only persons who had taken a prominent 
part in secession, or who had left the United States 
service for the Confederate, were exempted. Also, 



228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

whenever in any state one-tenth of the voters of i860 
should take the oath and organize a State government, 
republican in form under the meaning of the Constitu- 
tion, he would recognize it, that is, consider it " recon- 
structed and entitled to representation in Congress." 
Of course it lay in the power of Congress to seat such 
representatives or not. 

Arkansas was reorganized under the Federal 
authority in 1863 on substantially the same lines as 
the Proclamation offered, and in 1864 Lincoln recognized 
the new Governments of Louisiana and Tennessee. 
When the electoral votes were sent in from Louisiana 
and Tennessee Congress refused to admit them, though 
representatives from Louisiana had been admitted in 
the House during the last month of the preceding 
Congress. 

Lincoln vetoed the plan of reconstruction which 
Congress passed, which demanded that not one-tenth 
of the voters of i860 should constitute electoral voters, 
but a majority of the male population, and that they 
should prohibit slavery forever in their constituencies. 
Lincoln vetoed this Bill, and he was accused of not 
wishing to settle this question in the summer of 1864 
so as to guard against defeat at the polls by putting 
himself in a position to have the votes of these Southern 
States counted if they became necessary. The opposi- 
tion faction in Congress published an attack on him 
in the Tribune of 5th August, in which they accused 
him openly of such designs. 

Lincoln had delegates elected from Tennessee, 
Louisiana, Arkansas and West Virginia, and the battle 
for their admission to the Union League Convention 



RE-ELECTION 229 

in Baltimore was led by Lincoln's followers. The test 
struggle came over the admission of the delegates from 
Tennessee. They were finally admitted, and Louisiana 
and Arkansas were then also seated as a matter of course. 
Lincoln received the nomination without the aid of 
their votes, but thej^ were there in readiness to retrieve 
any lost position. 

Lincoln's speech of acceptance to the Committee 
announcing his nomination is noteworthy, because of a 
telling phrase which was taken up by the people and 
repeated from one end of the country to the other. 
" I do not allow myself to suppose that either the Con- 
vention or the League have concluded to decide that I 
am either the greatest or best man in America, but 
rather they have concluded that it is not best to swap 
horses while crossing the river, and have further con- 
cluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might 
not make a botch of it in trying to swap." 

Though that it were best not to swap horses while 
crossing a stream became a by-word, nevertheless a 
strict vigilance was maintained lest the people change 
their mind and become reckless. The country was 
well organized in Lincoln's behalf, and well-known 
politicians were recalled from the field to take the plat- 
form for him. Newspapers were won over to plead 
his cause. James Gordon Bennett, of the New York 
Herald, who had favoured the nomination of M'Clellan 
by the Democrats, received a letter in Lincoln's own 
hand, offering him the post of Minister to Paris. 
Bennett declined, but soon came forth with the sugges- 
tion in his paper that an entirely new nomination was 
needed. '* Lincoln has proved a failure," he said. 



230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

" Fremont has proved a failure. Let us have a new 
candidate." As was expected, the new candidate 
could not be found, and the Herald announced itself 
openly in favour of Lincoln. 

By September, Fremont and the radical Re- 
publicans saw that their cause was hopeless, and they 
withdrew from the canvass. When the time fore lec- 
tions approached the whole War Department was made 
use of to ensure success. Officers and privates were 
given fiirloughs to go home for the voting, and where 
the State laws permitted it, soldiers voted in the fields. 
In New York the State Legislature passed a law per- 
mitting the soldiers to vote in the ranks, and to send 
their ballots to their friends in New York for polling. 
For this it was necessary to know just where all the New 
York companies were located. This Secretary Stanton 
at first refused to allow, but a word from Lincoln settled 
that difficulty quickly. 

With such elaborate preparations the election came 
off on 8th November. Lincoln carried states enough 
to give him 212 electoral votes out of 233, and a popular 
majority of 500,000. New Jersey, Delaware and 
Kentucky voted for M'Clellan. 

With Fremont out of the race, and only M'Clellan, 
a pro-slavery Democrat, as an opponent, the re- 
election of Lincoln was a great relief to the more 
radical elements. His election meant a proposal in 
Congress for the constitutional amendment abolishing 
slavery. Enough Republican and Unionist members 
were elected to the House of Representatives to ensure 
the requisite majority for this. " I give you joy of 
the election," wrote Emerson to a friend. " Seldom in 



REELECTION 231 

history was so much staked on a popular vote, I suppose 
never in history." 

Lincoln himself received the news quietly, sitting 
in Stanton's office, studying the telegraphic returns. 
When there was a lull in the reports he read aloud the 
writings of a contemporary humorist, " Petroleum V. 
Nasby." The country had approved his task, and 
with his re-election it was soon to be finished. 

Satisfied, he read quietly on. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE END 

THE problems before him were changing. The 
war was soon to end with victory assured for 
the North, and more and more he had to con- 
sider how to change the sword back again into the 
ploughshare. The fate of the war he left entirely in 
the hands of General Grant, not because the latter had 
been made almost his equal in command, but because 
he at last had found the general who was equal to the 
situation. He aided and supported Grant in every 
request, even at the most critical point in his own 
political career, as in the call for troops in July, and 
seldom did he suggest anything. Only once in 
September, when General Early came so near Washing- 
ton that the capital was in danger, did he send the 
following tentative telegram: — 

" Washington, 29/A Sept. 1864. 

" I hope it will have no constraint on you, nor do harm 
in any way, for me to say I am a little afraid lest Lee sends 
reinforcements to Early, and thus enables him to turn upon 
Sheridan." 

In general his telegrams to him were of encourage- 
ment and approval. WTien it became evident that the 
Wilderness Campaign meant " going through on this 
line " much longer than the summer, he sent Grant the 
following characteristic telegram: — 

232 



THE END 233 

"Washington, 17/-4 Au^. 1864. 

" I have seen your dispatch expressing your unwilling- 
ness to break your hold where you are. Neither am I 
willing. Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and 
choke as much as possible." 



With Grant in control of the military situation 
Lincoln had two problems which still remained to him. 
One was to gain peace on his own terms, and the other 
to carry through his policy concerning the reconstruc- 
tion of the seceded states. 

The latter was, of course, the most difficult and 
important of the two, but nevertheless the peace factions 
were so strong, and the rumours so thick, that peace 
could be had but for Lincoln's refusal, that he was 
persuaded more than once to follow up the various 
clues that were offered him in the cause of peace. 

It is true he was never very sanguine of results, and 
at heart he trusted much more to keeping the powder 
dry than to forming peace conferences, but his political 
sense prevented him from ignoring them entirely. 

In January he made the most earnest effort for 
peace yet attempted. He was persuaded by Blair, a 
mutual friend of both the Confederate President, Davis, 
and himself, that the former was willing to come to 
terms. Lincoln sent Seward, the Secretary of State, 
to a Conference in Hampton Roads, where the Con- 
federate Vice-President, Stephens, and two other 
representative men of the Confederacy were to meet. 

Even in this Conference there was a premonition 

of failure in the preliminary skirmishes over the 

wording of the commissions. Davis had written that 
16 



234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the purpose of the meeting was to secure peace "for 
the two countries," while Lincoln wrote it was to secure 
peace to the people " of our common country." 

"When it finally did take place, Lincoln himself came 
to Hampton Roads, hoping that by his being present 
in person he could accomplish something definite, but 
the statement that the reconstruction of the Union was 
a " sine qua non with him " again definitely ended the 
discussion. However, he took occasion to show how 
lenient was his personal attitude towards the South. 
As for the Confiscation Acts, he said, since their enforce- 
ment was left entirely to him he could be relied upon 
to be liberal. He went so far as to say that he was will- 
ing that the North be taxed to remunerate the South 
for their liberated slaves, since after all the North was 
as responsible for slavery as the South. In fact, he 
continued, he knew some who were in favour of an 
appropriation as high as four hundred million dollars 
for this purpose. But he maintained the point that 
he could not give any definite conditions to the South 
while they were in arms. Someone suggested that 
there were cases in history where this was done — 
Charles L for instance. Lincoln answered that he did 
not remember much about the history of Charles L 
except that he had lost his head. The Conference 
ended, as might have been foreseen, without results. 

Davis presented Lincoln's ultimatum with harsh- 
ness, and left out entirely the suggestion of in- 
demnity. In an impassioned but rather odd speech 
to the people at Richmond he said: " I spoke always 
of two countries, Mr Lincoln spoke always of a common 
country. I can have no common country with the 



THE END 235 

Yankees. My life is bound up always with the Con- 
federacy. . . . With the Confederacy I will live or 
die. Thank God I represent a people too proud to eat 
the leek or bow the neck to mortal man." 

Lincoln's statement that he knew some who were in 
favour of an appropriation as high as four hundred 
million dollars for the purpose of an indemnity was 
far too optimistic. As far as could be seen, he stood 
alone in that suggestion. Two days later he called 
his Cabinet and submitted a draft of a message which 
he was going to send to Congress. It was to em- 
power the President to pay four hundred million 
dollars to all the slave-holding states, in or out of the 
Union, as compensation for their slaves. This was to 
be distributed among the states pro rata according to 
their respective slave population, as shown by the 
census of i860, on condition that all resistance to the 
national authority was to cease by the ist of April. 
The Cabinet disapproved unanimously and urged him 
not to send the message. He sighed and folded up the 
paper. " I see you are all against me," he said. And 
he did not present the resolution, which would have 
been most unpopular with the very Republican Con- 
gress then sitting, there being friction enough over the 
question of the organization of Louisiana and Tennessee. 

However, Lincoln had learned that if he could not 
drive Congress, he at least could make it meet him half 
way, if not a good piece further. He had tact, and 
the lack of harmony over the question of reconstruc- 
tion in no way became personal as it did under 
Johnson's Administration. He took especial pains 
to show his friendship to the leader of the opposition, 



236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Sumner, the Republican Senator from Massachusetts, 
making him the guest of honour at the Inaugural Ball, 
where he came in on the arm of Mrs Lincoln. In all 
the weeks of the debates Sumner had free entrance into 
the White House. Had Lincoln lived he might have 
been able to carry out his plans for reconstruction. 
His frankness on the negro question would have 
prevented the Northern capitalists from the whole- 
sale exploitation of the South which they under- 
took immediately upon his death; but the negro 
would have lost even the paper rights that were 
bestowed upon him. There is some evidence that 
his assassination was directed more from the head- 
quarters of finance in New York, Wall Street, than from 
the South. However it may be, no one anticipated 
that this winter would be the last of his life, least of all 
Lincoln himself, and he was holding a loose rein on the 
question of reconstruction and a tight one on this 
matter of war. 

" Let nothing," he telegraphed to Grant, when the 
Hampton Roadj negotiations were going on, " which is 
transpiring change, hinder or delay your military move- 
ments or plans." 

The end was truly near. The South was absolutely 
exhausted, her money gone, and after the disasters of 
1863 the blockade so successful that no supplies what- 
ever could be got for the army. King Q)tton, under 
whose aegis the war had been begun, lay prostrate on 
the wharves of Southern ports. All hope of foreign 
recognition was gone, and the body of public opinion, 
which had been unconvinced of the need of secession 



THE END 237 

in i860, now began to assert itself strongly for peace. 
The soldiers were deserting in large numbers, and twice 
the Confederate Congress had suggested that they lay 
down their arms. President Davis was obdurate, and 
the war was pressed on, but the discontent had reached 
even the Cabinet, where Alexander Stephens, the Vice- 
President of the Confederacy, resigned in despair. 

The South was without railways, and the theatre 
of the war was necessarily along her waterways. Her 
strongholds lay along the Tennessee, the Cumberland, 
the Ohio and the Mississippi, and to protect them she 
had to keep many more men locked behind fortress walls 
than she could afford to take away from active service. 
Thirty thousand prisoners went with the fall of Vicks- 
burg, the largest number ever taken in history. With 
Fort Hudson seven thousand were taken. With the 
fall of Vicksburg, the Mississippi, which was the one 
inland carrier, fell into the hands of the North, and the 
South was cut off from its grain and food supply, Texas. 
The North now commenced an offensive war, swarming 
across the Southern lands with the deliberate and 
business-like purpose of destruction. It is significant 
that it was upon the newly-founded mills and railways 
that especial wTath was visited. Sherman's march 
through Georgia and the Carolinas was directed especi- 
ally against the railways, and his report to the War 
Department makes a perfect manual on " Railway 
Wrecking." 

The control of the Mississippi offered the control 
of Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, and the fall of 
Chatanooga opened Georgia and the Carolinas. The 
war was carried home to the Southerner. 



238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Lee, besieged in Richmond by Grant, had to resort 
to an open circular asking the surrounding country for 
provisions for his army. The lack of funds and of men 
meant the physical impossibility of carrying on the 
war, which became patent to both the North and South. 
President Davis had forced the war on past the elections 
with the hope that Lincoln might be defeated and a 
peace more advantageous to the South offered. He 
little guessed that though Lincoln showed such firmness 
on the question of Union, his terms of peace were much 
more favourable than the rising capitalistic class in 
the North desired or permitted. 

By February Congress passed the 13th Amendment, 
which had failed in the previous session. This pro- 
vided for the absolute abolition of slavery. Lincoln 
was as eager that it be passed as any of the so-called 
more " radical " Republicans, for once having proceeded 
towards emancipation it was evidently impracticable 
and impossible to recede. Even in the South, the 
stress of events had made the Confederate Congress 
consider emancipation of the slaves as well as arming 
them. Over and over again Lincoln said he could not 
" return to slavery any person who is free by the terms 
of that proclamation, or by any of the acts of Congress." 

" If the people should, by whatever mode or means, 
make it an executive duty to re-enslave such per- 
sons, another, and not I, must be their instrument to 
perform it." 

But the drastic flames of the war had left very few 
who believed that Union and slavery were to be the 
motive forces of the new national life. All agreed 
upon emancipation, but the division lay in the question 



I 



THE END 239 

as to who was to profit by it. Lincoln, who was very 
much opposed to large combinations of wealth, was 
eager to put through his programme, which would 
enable the Southern States to begin their political and 
therefore economic life as quickly as possible. The 
war had been fought on the constitutional power of 
" suppressing domestic insurrection." During the con- 
flict it was never admitted by the Federal power that the 
states were out of the Union; now, when victory was 
at hand, a cry went up to make them dependent terri- 
tories. This was actually accomplished in 1867, two 
years after the war was closed. 

The supposed reason for this attitude was that the 
Southern States could not be trusted in their legislation 
concerning the negro. It was true that as fast as they 
could get control of their State legislatures they were 
enacting vagrancy laws, copied in most cases from the 
vagrancy laws of the North, which put the negro back 
into virtual bondage. Lincoln had not much hope of 
counteracting this, except by a limited suffrage for the 
more educated negro, colonization, and a general speedy 
recuperation of the economic condition of the South 
which would reflect indirectly on the welfare of the 
negro. 

The Northern capitalist, however, had no desire 
to let his victory go, and under the philanthropic guise 
of supporting the negro entered the South, and captured 
the State governments for his own purpose. 

The abolitionists and radicals went hand in hand 
with the business men of the Republicans, for with 
them lay the only hope, meagre as it was, for the newly- 
freed slaves. The West already rejected any suggestion 



240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

to colonize them on its lands. When it was suggested 
in Congress that land be given them in the South, 
the argument arose that there were as many landless 
whites as blacks, and since the nation was too poor 
to give land to all who were without it, the proposals 
for economic betterment were dropped for ever. 

The North already outnumbered the South in both 
Houses of Congress. No matter how great Lincoln's 
personal influence might have been on the question of 
reconstruction, he could not have prevented a sectional 
conquest, or a high tariff in the interests of Northern 
manufacture, or an extensive pension system for 
Federal soldiers, which the South had to help pay, or 
the exclusion of the defeated party from Federal office - 
holding. Only the negro would have been deprived 
of the ten years of political freedom which he was given 
by the victorious Republicans to aid them in their 
control of the State Governments of the South. During 
these ten years the 14th and 15th Amendments to the 
Constitution were passed, the first in 1868, which be- 
stowed citizen rights upon the negro, and the second 
two years later, which endowed him with the suffrage. 
This amendment was supported by so-called Force 
Bills, which empowered the use of the army when the 
right of suffrage was interfered with. 

By 1876 capital was well enough established in the 
country at large for the Republicans to abandon their 
support of the negro. His rights are now being steadily 
taken away from him by the Southern States, but 
nationally they still exist, and in the North the negro's 
vote is a factor in political computations. 

Lincoln, who had seen the reasons and the first 



THE END 241 

passions of the war, was too close to its causes to feel 
the onrush of new ideas which its culmination brought. 
He did not wish to admit them, in the fear of injuring 
the principles upon which the war was begun. But 
already these principles were being crushed beyond 
recognition. 

In his second Inaugural Address he dwelt upon 
the great fact of the war, attempting to explain and 
puzzle out the past, hardly hinting at the future. 

" Fellow-countrymen: At this second appearing to take 
the oath of the presidential office, there is less occasion for 
an extended address than there was at the first. Then a 
statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued 
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four 
years, during which public declarations have been constantly 
called forth on every point and phase of the great contest 
which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies 
of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The 
progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, 
is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I 
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With 
high hope for the future no prediction in regard to it is 
ventured. 

" On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all 
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. 
All dreaded it— all sought to avert it. While the Inaugural 
Address was being delivered from this place, devoted alto- 
gether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents 
were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking 
to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. 
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make 
war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would 
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. 

" One-eighth of the whole population were coloured slaves. 



242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in 
the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a pecuhar 
and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, 
somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate 
and extend this interest was the object for which the in- 
surgents would rend the Union, even by war; while the 
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict 
the territorial enlargement of it. 

" Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or 
the duration which it has already attained. Neither anti- 
cipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or 
even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked 
for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the 
same God; and each invokes his aid against the other. It 
may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of 
other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not 
judged. The prayers of both could not be answered — 
that of neither has been answered fully. 

" The Almighty has His own purposes. ' Woe unto the 
world because of offences! For it must needs be that 
offences come ; but woe to that man by whom the offence 
cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is 
one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must 
needs come, but which, having continued through His 
appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives 
to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to 
those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein 
any departure from those divine attributes which the be- 
lievers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do 
we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge 
of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it 
continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two 
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be 



THE END 243 

paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three 
thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ' The judgments 
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.' 

"With maHce toward none; with charity for all; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let 
us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the 
nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the 
battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which 
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves, and with all nations." 

The last paragraph is taught to the American school 
child as one of the tenets of government. " With 
malice toward none, with charity toward all," and so 
forth. In the meantime, the North was already eager 
for the new problem — reconstruction, without regard 
for malice or charity, but for power. 

While methods of reconstruction were being dis- 
cussed and evolved the ragged edges of the war had to 
be tied up. Grant's long siege around Richmond was 
finally to come to a close by Lee's evacuation. On 
2nd April he left Richmond in the hope of uniting with 
Johnston, who was now in command of the remnants 
of Hood's army, which had had such a crushing defeat 
at Nashville in December. With one united army in 
the field Lee still had hopes of prolonging the war, but 
Grant hastened after him, and the concentration of the 
Confederate forces was not to be. 

Lincoln had come down to City Points, Grant's 
headquarters, the week before. Could not victory 
be had, he asked, without another battle? Grant's 
answer was very disappointing, for he felt sure another 
battle was to take place. But in the end Lincoln's 



244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

hopes were fulfilled. The great slaughterings were 
over. 

When Lee evacuated Richmond, Davis and the 
Cabinet fled also. Lincoln walked into the city, and 
even went through the buildings which had held the seat 
of the former Government. The city was in a turmoil, 
with buildings on fire, drunken soldiers everyw^here, 
and negroes in a religious frenzy over the evacuation of 
the Confederates and the sudden appearance of the 
President. He spent the night in Richmond and re- 
turned to Washington without having been molested 
in any way, though he was recognized by all. The 
negroes greeted him with ecstatic joy. " Glory Halle- 
lujah, God bless Massa Lincoln! He's de Messiah, 
shuah! " they cried, as they crowded around him. 
" See yeah, honey, look at de saviour, and you'll git 
well," one negress called out, holding her child up to 
look at the President. 

On 6th April Sheridan reported: " If the thing 
is pressed, I think that Lee will surrender." Grant 
sent the dispatch to Lincoln, who replied: " Let the 
thing be pressed." At the same time he sent Grant 
instructions not in any way to give terms of peace, as 
that should be left to the Administration. 

Grant came to Sheridan's camp in the middle of 
the night, " to press the thing." The sentinels recog- 
nized him. " Boys, this means business," they cried. 

On the same day Lee had made a stand, but was 
defeated, and for three days he made desperate efforts 
to join Johnston, but was hemmed in on all sides. 
There was no alternative for the Army of Virginia but 
to surrender. 



THE END 245 

The two generals met in the little village of Appo- 
mattox, seventy-five miles from Richmond. Lee wore 
a new full-dress uniform, " buttoned to the throat, • 
and a sword studded with jewels," while Grant had on 
a blouse of dark blue flannel, unbuttoned in front, and 
carried no sword. At the point of victory he was em- 
barrassed. " My own feelings," he wrote, " which had 
been quite jubilant on the receipt of Lee's letter, were 
sad and despondent." They talked a long time of 
things in general, of the armies, and finally the matter 
of surrender was reached. Lee said that the privates 
owned their own horses and it would prove a great 
hardship if they should have to forfeit them to the 
Union. Grant conceded the point, and let the men 
go out on parole with their horses, so that they could 
use them for the spring ploughing on their " little 
farms." " Each officer and man," he wrote, " will be 
allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed 
by United States authorities so long as they observe 
their parole and the laws in force where they may 
reside." These terms far exceeded his powers, but 
Lincoln made no objections when he read them, 
and even exclaimed many times, "Goodl All right! 
Exactly the thing I " 

The war was over! There were only Johnston's 
remnants to be taken, and Sherman was already dis- 
patched after them. Laus Deo was on every lip. 
Flags were displayed, and meetings were held all over 
the country. A day of thanksgi\'ing was specially 
set aside. Lincoln, tall and gaunt, threw his long 
arms over Stanton's short stocky frame, and weeping 
thus embraced him for joy. As to the question of 



246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

what to do with the " Confederate gentlemen," as he 
once called them, Lincoln had one thought — leniency. 
Someone suggested that Davis be hanged. " Let us 
judge not," he said, " that we be not judged." He 
followed this with one of his telling stories : 

" When I was a boy in Indiana I went to a neigh- 
bour's house one morning and found a boy of my own 
size holding a coon by a string. I asked him what he 
had, and what he was doing. He said: ' It's a coon. 
Dad cotched six last night, and killed all but this poor 
little cuss. Dad told me to hold him until he came back, 
and I'm afraid he's going to kill this one too! and oh, 
Abe, I do wish he would get away ! ' ' Well, why don't 
you let him loose? ' ' That wouldn't be right! and if 
I let him go. Dad would give me hell. But if he would 
get away himself, it would be all right.' Now, if Jeff 
Davis and those other fellows will only get away, 
it will be all right. But if we should catch them, 
and I should let them go, ' Dad would give me 
heU.' " 

On the 14th Dana came to him to ask whether a 
warrant of arrest should be sent out for one of Davis's 
Cabinet members who was about to escape to Canada. 
Lincoln answered: "If you get hold of an elephant 
by the hind leg and he is running away, you had better 
let him go." 

On that same day, the 14th of April 1865, he 
discussed reconstruction with the Cabinet. He was 
anxious to get the State governments in operation as 
soon as possible. He wished to have his plan at work 
before the December session of Congress. " No one 
need expect me to take any part in hanging or killing of 



THE END 247 

these men." he said, " even the worst of them. Frighten 
them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them 
off ! " And he threw up his hands as if he were scaring 
away sheep. " Enough Uves have been sacrificed. We 
must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony 
and union." 

He greeted Grant, who came in on that day, with 
especial warmth. There would soon be good news, he 
said, for he had had a dream about a vessel, the same 
kind of dream which came to him before Antietam, 
Murfreesboro and Vicksburg. Grant only answered 
that Murfreesboro was no victory and had no important 
results. 

He had been telling these last days of a dream that 
had come to him. He had retired late one night, having 
waited for important dispatches from the front : 

" I could not have been long in bed when I fell into 
a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. 
There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. 
Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people 
were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered 
downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same 
pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I 
went from room to room ; no living person was in sight, 
but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I 
passed along. It was light in all the rooms, every 
object was familiar to me ; but where were all the people 
who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I 
was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning 
of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of 
things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I 
arrived at the east room, which I entered. There I 



248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a cata- 
falque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral 
vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were 
acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, 
some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face 
was covered, others weeping pitifully. ' Who is dead 
in the White House? ' I demanded of one of the soldiers. 
' The President,' was his answer; ' he was killed by an 
assassin! ' Then came a loud burst of grief from the 
crowd, which awoke me from my dream. I slept no 
more that night ; and although it was only a dream I 
have been strangely annoyed by it ever since." 

At night he went to the theatre with his wife, to- 
gether with a Major Rathbone and another guest, 
three who after the dreadful night were never to be 
of right mind again. A little after ten o'clock, in the 
midst of the performance, an actor, but not one of the 
company playing, had let himself into the President's 
box, locked the door, and pressing a revolver behind 
his ear, shot him, crying, "Sic semper tyrannis! " 
which was the motto of the State of Virginia. In 
jumping from the box his spur caught in the flags which 
draped it, and his leg was broken. Wounded as he was, 
he reached the door of the theatre, jumped upon a 
horse which he had waiting for him, and escaped. In 
the first hush of surprise a voice called out, " The 
President is shot." Then there was tumult, and a rush 
for the doors. 

The bullet had pierced Lincoln's brain, and he sank 
forward in his chair, unconscious, no cry escaping from 
his lips. He was carried to a little house across the 
street. All night through, until twenty-two minutes 



THE END 249 

past seven in the morning, his giant frame struggled 
with death. As he breathed his last, Stanton, weeping, 
exclaimed, " Now he belongs to the ages." 

His assassination was part of a general plot to kill 
the Cabinet Ministers. Seward had been attacked 
that same night, but was not killed, and rumour had it 
that the whole Cabinet had been exterminated. 

All night the City of Washington tramped back 
and forth in front of the little house opposite Ford's 
theatre. WTien the news was telegraphed throughout 
the country, it pulled down its gay flags and draped its 
homes in black, even to the little isolated farmhouses 
of the interior. The people felt suddenly that someone 
who had been very near to them was gone. They 
lingered long over his body in death. It was borne 
back from Washington to Springfield, his home, over 
the exact route he had travelled after his first election 
as President in 1861. In Baltimore, in Philadelphia, 
in Harrisburg, in Indianapolis, in almost the exact spot 
where he had stood and spoken to the people who had 
come to look upon their new President four years 
before, they now placed his bier. When the body 
reached Springfield his face had become shrunken and 
black. " Would that we who had known him in life 
had not known him in death," they cried. 

The sudden snatching away of him brought a sudden 

realization of his powers. He became martyr and hero 

at once. The abolition of slavery, the undertaking of 

the war and the successful close of it, the preservation 

of the Union and the unassuming gentleness with 

which these colossal tasks were carried through, raised 

him to the heights of a legendary demi-god. Even 
17 



250 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

before the dictum of history passed its verdict of 
approval upon him, the masses of both Europe and 
America hailed him as their great leader. He became 
the Emancipator, the Friend of the People, the Martyr 
for their Cause. 

In America the mourning was deepest, for they 
still had great need of him. Storms were brewing, and 
the waters that the Ship of State was yet to travel upon 
were black and troubled. They could ill afford untried 
hands at the helm. And above all it flashed across 
them that they had always loved the large pilot with 
the gnarled hands, who had brought them safely through 
the dreadful tempest. The great anguish that arose 
at their sudden loss is best given by Walt Whitman, 
himself a man of the people. 

O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN! 

O Captain ! My Captain ! Our fearful trip is done, 

The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is 

won. 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and 
daring; 

But heart ! heart ! heart ! 

Oh, the bleeding drops of red, 
Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen, cold and dead. 

O Captain! My Captain! Rise up and hear the bells, 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills. 
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the 

shores a-crowding. 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces 

turning; 



THE END 251 i 

Here, Captain! dear father! ! 

This arm beneath your head ! ] 

It is some dream that on the deck -, 

You've fallen cold and dead. 

My Captain does not answer, his hps are pale and still, ] 

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, ' 

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and 

done. 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
Exult, shores, and ring, O bells! 

But I with mournful tread, I 

Walk the deck my Captain lies, 1 

Fallen, cold and dead. < 



CHAPTER XIV 
LINCOLN AND THE UNION 

EVEN in the most cursory review of Abraham 
Lincoln's life it becomes evident that there 
was something beyond mere patriotism which 
inspired him in his efforts to maintain the integrity of 
the United States. His significance to-day comes from 
a deeper cause than the " saving of the Union." It 
lies in the social ideals he represented, and which ani- 
mated his acts. They are the beacon lights by which 
the average American is trying to guide his political 
course to-day. 

Two conceptions were clear in Lincoln's mind when 
he undertook the war. One, that the Union based 
on the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
stitution carried out successfully the American ideal 
of government — equal economic opportunity for all. 
Second, that the freedom promised by this ideal could 
not be maintained by a division of the Union. " Physi- 
cally speaking," he said, " we cannot separate. We 
cannot remove our respective sections from each other, 
nor build an impassable wall between them." 

Lincoln said this in his first Inaugural Address in 
1861, and he acted upon this idea immediately on his 
accession to power. The West, which was half Southern 
and which understood the nature of the Southerner 
better than the East, readily agreed with him. The 

East, however, even the most Republican East, could 

252 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 253 

not quite see this oneness of the Union. Still before 
their eyes were the outlines of the State constitution 
and State borders of their school geographies and 
histories. They did not know the long flowing rivers 
and wide valleys of the West, with the result that they 
theorized and " believed " in State rights as much as 
the South. 

At the time of the war the South urged this belief 
as a casus belli and the North happened to repudiate 
it. It never could have been a principle strong enough 
either to prevent war or cause war. Both the South 
and the North had certain purposes in going to war, 
which were far deeper and more vital than the abstract 
legal theory whether the states had a constitutional 
right to secede from the Union or not. To hide their 
main purpose the slave-holders almost successfully 
swept the South with the cry of " rights." Especially 
did this cry succeed with the youth who from a spirit 
of adventure rushed to the front at the first bugle-call. 
" We disbelieve in slavery," they said, " but we fight 
for State rights." 

There was so much reiteration of the statement 
that the war was being fought to maintain the principle 
of State rights that historians writing soon after the 
war give it as one of its causes. But the men who i 
undertook the war understood the facts far better. 

It was not the right to secede that was questioned, ♦ J^-.^^*/ if*.^ 
but the purpose of the secession, the form of govern- 
ment that was to be replaced after this right was gained. 
No American statesman, not Jefferson, not even Hamil- 
ton, not Lincoln, ever disclaimed the right of the people 
to revolution. Lincoln went so far as to reaffirm this 



i»^ 



l/JHf *(*»! 



254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

principle in his first Inaugural Address, when he was 

speaking to a country already at fever heat over the 

problems before it. It was patent to the men of the 

" c^\l\^*< time that not a secession but a civil war was attempted, 

tvUi-^E^ ^ ^* cind secession but cloaked a revolt of a reactionary 

» - * *^ • class in the Union. 

\ iJe*f/Ht »■ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ fought therefore on the abstract 

>* i^e4,fHe4 pi'inciple of the right of the South to form their own 

a Ji^*if**<t institutions, but over the institutions themselves. It 

i^^P /*iW*-** was a struggle between conflicting economic interests, 

- - -^, ' and though it was apparently a war of the sections, 

it was in the fullest sense a civil war — a clash over the 

control of the machinery of one and the same Govem- 

^ ment and not a mere sectional struggle. 

f^y^****^*' • No one understood this more quickly and more 
' ***' M</ iy thoroughly than the West, or than Lincoln, its best and 
* *^*'*^-*-*** "*■ truest representative. The East was not so quick to 
'^ % .<i/i«- see it, and the South showed a far greater hostility to 
*r^r >/ ■ the candidate of the West, Lincoln, than they showed 
against his Eastern rival, Seward. Over and over 
again Lincoln said, " There is no line, straight or 
crooked, suitable for a national boundary line upon 
which to divide." The West, he said, belongs not to 
one State or to another, but to the nation as a whole. 
This rich section must have egress to the ocean, it must 
be allowed to develop its resources, it must follow out 
its natural destiny, which was that of the individual 
small landholder. "It is the great body of the Re- 
public. The other parts are but marginal borders 
to it." 

Emerson, who did not have to be as politic as 
Lincoln, could express the truth more bluntly — that 



tA •/< 



€^n. 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 255 

the Federal Government was put on the defensive! 
After two years of war he came to see that the battle- 
field would have been as large with secession permitted 
as it was with secession fought. " If we had consented 
to a peaceable secession of the rebels," he said, speak- 
ing on the Emancipation Proclamation, " the divided 
sentiment of the Border States made peaceable seces- 
sion impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever 
the border might be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle 
the fire. Give the Confederacy New Orleans, Charles- 
ton and Richmond, and they would have demanded 
St Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they 
would have insisted on Washington, Give them 
Washington, and they would have assumed the army 
and navy, and, through these, Philadelphia, New York 
and Boston. It looks as if the battlefield would have 
been at least as large in that event as it is now." 

The truth of this became evident during the war, 
when the South fostered a North-western Confederacy 
which was ultimately to join with it. By its acts 
it accepted the idea of a civil war as well as the North, 
and by its attacks upon the National Government was 
the first to force the struggle in that direction. In one 
sense, the war was the French Revolution of America, 
with this difference, that here it was the aristocrat, the 
great landlord, who undertook the offensive against 
the small property-holder, in the desperate hope of 
maintaining an already defeated position. 

Fundamentally, however, the two opposing classes 
which struggled for political power were much more 
closely allied than the aristocrat and the petty bourgeois 
of France. The structure of Southern society was 



/»*n 



256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

simple, and to the student of evolutionary history un- 
interesting; a condition as primitive as in Judea, in 
which the free lands forced the tying down of labour 
to the soil for the benefit of large landlords. Its history 
could be worked out by the mere formula, even without 
the aid of specific detail. When it found itself hemmed 
in by opposing forces it attempted the time-worn means 
of a political coup d'etat to maintain its power. 

Its rival was much more interesting. A breath 
of the new and the modern permeated its being. The 
free land of the West, which produced slavery in the 
South, in the North acted as the safeguard of economic 
and political liberty. It produced ideals of democracy 
and economic justice which, though they were never 
tested by the generation which uttered them sincerely 
enough, were temporarily in actual application by virtue 
of the free and generous nature about them. Thus 
America with her ideals of the eighteenth century, 
bom of France, could, unlike her sister Republic, put 
them into practice for a period of almost a hundred 
years, or until the free lands were gone. 

It must be admitted that there were contradictions 
and compromises from the very beginning. The pro- 
perty-ridden constitution, where even slavery was 
accepted, the class form of government, where suffrage 
was made dependent on property, and the thwarting 
of the will of the people by vetoes of the Senate or the 
President or the Supreme Court, cannot be called pure 
democracy; yet despite all this the ideal of an economic 
democracy was for the majority attainable at the time, 
and the crises arising from the compromises and con- 
tradictions were for the future generations to solve, and 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 257 

not for the fortunate ones enjoying the bounties of the 
new society. 

There is a manifest lack of statesmanship and lack 
of sufficient anxiety for the condition of the future of 
the nation in the compromise of the founders of the 
Republic and the men following them, including 
Lincoln. On the other hand, they had a utilitarian 
and pragmatic view of their ideals, which saved them 
from hypocrisy. Only minorities have ever profited 
by the revolutions that heretofore had come. Actu- 
ally to demand that the doctrine of equal economic 
opportunity then in application be put into practice 
for all and for all time would mean, as we can see to- 
day, a denial of perpetual ownership to the class in 
power. This was a hopeless demand at the time, for the 
Revolution and the struggles leading up to the War of 
Secession, despite the doctrines and ideals which were 
expounded, was only a struggle between first comers 
over the ownership and control of property. 

The ideal of Jefferson, and of Lincoln, who inherited 
his philosophy, was a nation of small farmers, who 
might labour for hire in their youth, but who were 
later to acquire small homesteads for themselves, while 
their liberties were to be maintained, not by vesting 
them in a majority, but by negating as much as possible 
the function of government. 

This felicitous state actually existed for three- 
quarters of a century, and still existed in Lincoln's 
time, and was supposed to continue for ever. However, 
in 1862 Lincoln wrote that " there are already among 
us those who, if the Union be preserved, will live to 
see it contain 250,000,000." He counted on the ratio 



258 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 






of increase of population that had existed in these 
first seventy years of the country's founding. How 
he hoped to maintain the perpetual right of the in- 
dividual to acquire property freely and the perpetual 
state wherein a large reserve property, ever in abund- 
ance, was to lie unacquired, is not known. Even at 
a rate of increase in population much lower than he 
counted upon, the free lands were already gone by 
1890. 

Lincoln was blind to all this, though even in his 
day there were men who foresaw the danger of un- 
limited ownership, and a radical free-soil movement 
arose which reached its height about 1850. Lincoln, 
who remained, as he described himself, " a Western 
free-state man," and a Henry Clay Whig, was not in 
sympathy with this movement. It went farther than 
his natural conservatism would permit him to go. The 
non-extension of slavery, he thought, would facilitate 
the free-soil movement (which it did), and was the first 
barrier to that goal of economic equality which had 
to be removed. 

The radical free-soil movement reached its height 
in Wisconsin, where a Bill, which proposed that the 
homestead should be practically inalienable on the one 
• side, and on the other that it should be forbidden 
that anyone inherit more than 160 or 320 acres, almost 
passed in the Legislature of 1851. The general demand 
of the moment was for all citizens to have the right to 
a homestead, a demand quite feasible at the time, for 
there was more than enough land for all. 

Up to the time of the war land sold at $1.25 an 
acre, supposedly to homesteaders, but more often to 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 259 

speculators and land companies, who later put their 
own price to the actual settler. The history of America 
is the history of land speculation, in which the most 
illustrious names are involved, from George Washington 
to gentlemen in the Senate who dabbled with the lands 
acquired from the Mexican War. Lincoln, the repre- 
sentative of the genuine homesteader, stands out 
remarkably free from the temptation of land deals, 
though as surveyor he had as much chance for such 
indulgence as Washington. 

During the war, and for a decade after, homesteads 
were offered absolutely free to all comers, and an at- 
tempt to consummate the American ideal of equality 
was made by this free distribution of land. However, 
it must have been patent to Lincoln and other American 
democrats that a " distributive community," as some- 
one called it, could not be maintained when freedom of 
economic opportunity meant also freedom to accumu- 
late wealth. Within forty-one days after the passage 
of the Homestead Act Congress authorized the giving 
away of 23,500,000 acres of the public domain to private 
corporations. It also, far from being laissez /aire, 
as was supposed, aided transportation enterprises by 
offering to guarantee bonds issued by the companies 
to the amount of $65,000,000. 

The uniting of the Free-soil Party with the anti- 
slavery factions, instead of being a more radical step, 
was in reality a more conservative one, for instead of 
looking to a control of wealth as a means of eliminating 
the feared and obnoxious large landlord class, as in the 
measure to limit inheritance, it contented itself only 
with the non-extension of that class, and left the prin- 



26o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

ciple of free acquisition and inheritance of wealth 
intact. 

Lincoln, who was against the large capitalist, as he 
was against the landed aristocracy represented by the 
slaveholder, was not opposed to the giving of land 
grants and subsidies to railroads, for in this case the 
land had only a speculative value. The land was given 
instead of the much more needed money, and the 
prospective sale of the land to the people of the towns 
and cities that might be built on that land by virtue of 
the improved transportation did not necessarily throw 
the railroads into the large landlord class. Not only, 
it was argued, was it a means of bringing greater pros- 
perity to the whole community, but they were in truth 
only lending themselves money, for as each man could 
have a little homestead, so each man could have a small 
number of shares in the stock of the railroad company. 
Internal improvements were clamoured for from 
the beginning of the century, and the building of roads 
and canals was forced upon the State governments, 
not for the creation of a plutocracy, but in aid of the 
small property-holder. Lincoln's first public utter- 
ance as a young man of twenty-two was a strong plea 
for internal improvements, and as a member of the 
State Legislature of Illinois he fostered all the plans in 
that direction. 

It was natural, then, that when the small property- 
.^•»- ' owner actually came into his own, through the election 

4,vAMi .^» * « ' of Lincoln, he should apply the policies he was using 

'X^*»*^ iri the State governments to the country as a whole. 

; . ' . .. C/^ Ai ^^^ contradiction was not between the practice and 
the theory, but between the ideal and the theory. The 



.*.t* 



4^ili 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 261 

ideal was an equal economic opportimit}^ for all, the 
theory that small private holdings could consummate 
that ideal. Knowing only of the past, the one thing 
that was feared was the most obvious curse of the past, 
the large landlord. The revolt against the old world 
that animated Jefferson and the FederaUsts, and was 
passed on to the generations of Americans following, 
was the revolt of the large landlord through the realiza- 
tion that through him came all the evils of aristocracy 
and class rule. 

Jefferson had no conception of the plutocracy. The 
country was an idyllic state of small farmers ; the city 
was largely composed of mobs of sailors and journey- 
men artisans, and a floating proletariat who might at 
any moment, as long as there was unoccupied land, 
enter the farmer class. 

Lincoln of necessity knew more of the capitalist 
than did Jefferson, and often he addressed himself to 
him as well as to the landowner. But he did not con- 
ceive his significance. He saw the capitalist born, 
but he did not see the colossal height, unprecedented 
in any previous civilization, to which he was to grow. 
This is not to be wondered at, for the capitalist was 
born from the conception of the inalienable and in- 
dividual right to property, plus the miraculous factor 
of human invention. The latter factor was unlooked for 
and could not have been foretold. It was this unknown 
quantity that ate up the land much more quickly than 
Lincoln had calculated, and by monopolies and trusts 
created a class stronger and more firmly intrenched 
than the large landlord, and left the unpropertied as 
powerless to acquire property or to enlarge what they 



262 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

had as they had been under the landlord aristocracies 
of Europe or the South. 

Lincoln had not the same excuse for his failure to 
foresee this as had Jefferson, for already in the fifties 
the railroads were being laid, patents for thousands 
of inventions were being issued by the patent office 
every year, and industries were rising so rapidly that 
a very large part of the population were becoming 
working-men. It is difficult to understand on what 
grounds he based his hope that each individual work- 
ing-man would sooner or later find himself in the small 
propertied class. 

With the revolution that was taking place in trans- 
portation, the ideal of the small landlord proprietor 
became translated into the ideal of the small capitalist, 
so that even the large fortunes of the Astors and the 
Vanderbilts were in no way frowned at. There was no 
fear at the time of over-concentration of wealth. The 
curious shibboleth that the American social order went 
from " shirt-sleeve to shirt-sleeve in three generations " 
helped to colour roseate any divinings into the future. 
The doctrine came of the overthrow of primogeniture, 
and it was firmly believed that the generation follow- 
ing the one that acquired property would surely lose 
it, and the third would have to begin with sleeve rolled 
up, true sons of toil. Thus no class, no aristocracy, 
not even inheritance, was possible, and an economic 
democracy was happily established for all time. It 
took fifty years of monopolies and trusts for the small 
capitalist to realize that he was being cut off from the 
spoils, and to view the Rockefellers and the Morgans of 
to-day with the alarm that had filled the small Western 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 263 



farmer at the sight of the long-stretching tentacles of i 

the large landlord of the South. "'' ' •' S '" i 

But at the moment it was not foreseen that in the ••■'-* -^i '**«»»-f 

overthrow of that class by the war an equivalent class '•*^*'* •*'' ' 

would spring up in the North composed of the large ' *^* --*^^«»>**»^ 

manufacturer, the large railroad man and the " money ^#»»v h^JI^ 4^%, 
magnate," who would own the industries and wealth 
of the country as firmly as the landlord owned the 
limited acres of land. With this new capitalist the 

absorption of property into one class continued, and the r.<U-#M ' »^ t^H**^ 
American ideal, economic democracy, has been again 
overthrown. 

The South, composed of large landlords, and accept- j 

ing the fact of class rule, had asked the North all along j 

what difference there was between labour for hire or ) 

labour as a slave, when the private ownership of capital I 

and property makes the one labourer as fixed in his ] 

condition as the other. Where then would come in i 
the basic American principle of an equal economic 

opportunity for all? | 

Lincoln readily agreed that if the one labourer ! 

were as fixed in his condition as the other, the differ- ', 

ence would be small, if any. But he denied the exist- '; 
ence of such a fact. As far as the generation around 

him was concerned, he spoke the truth. He was not j 

yet fixed in his condition. The labourer was becoming J 
a small capitalist as fast as the lands were opened to 

him. His own words give both the ideal of American ' 

economy and the true picture of how closely that ideal ] 

was consummated even at his time. - 

" . . . The insurrection," he wrote in his annual i 

message of 1862, " is largely if not exclusively a war upon ' 



»«f, Hvii'4, 






264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the first principle of popular government — the rights of the 
people. . . . 

" . . . . It is the effort to place capital on an equal 
footing with, if not above, labour, in the structure of Govern- 
ment. It is assumed that labour is available only in connec- 
tion with capital ; that nobody labours unless somebody else, 
owning capital, somehow by the use of it induces him to 
labour. This assumed, it is next considered whether it 
is best that capital shall hire labourers, and thus induce 
them to work by their own consent, or buy them, and drive 
them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus 
far, it is naturally concluded that all labourers are either 
hired labourers or what we call slaves. And, further, it is 
assumed that whoever is once a hired labourer is fixed in 
that condition for life. 

" Now, there is no such relation between capital and 
labour as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man 
being fixed for fife in the condition of a hired labourer. 
Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from 
them are groundless. 

" Labour is prior to, and independent of, capital. 
Capital is only the fruit of labour, and could never have 
existed if labour had not first existed. Labour is the 
superior of capital and deserves much the higher considera- 
tion. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protec- 
tion as any other rights. Nor is it to be denied that there is, 
and probably always will be, a relation between labour and 
capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming 
that the whole labour of the community exists within that 
relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid 
labour themselves, and with their capital hire or buy 
another few to labour for them. A large majority belong 
to neither class — neither work for others nor have others 
working for them. In most of the Southern States a 
majority of the whole people, of all colours, are neither 
slaves nor masters; while in the Northern a large majority 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 265 

are neither hirers nor hired. Men with their families — 
wives, sons and daughters — work for themselves, on their 
farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole 
product to themselves, and asking no favours of capital on 
the one hand nor of hired labourers or slaves on the other. It 
is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle 
their own labour with capital — that is, they labour with their 
own hands and also buy or hire others to labour for them; 
but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle 
stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class. 

" Again, as has already been said, there is not, of neces- 
sity, any such thing as the free hired labourer being fixed 
to that condition for life. Many independent men every- 
where in these states, a few years back in their hves, were 
hired labourers. The prudent, penniless beginner in the 
world labours for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which 
to buy land or tools for himself, then labours on his own 
account another while, and at length hires another new 
beginner to help him. 

" This is the just and generous and prosperous system," 
he goes on to say, " which opens the way to all — gives 
hope to all, and consequent energy and progress and im- 
provement of condition to all." 

It is a significant fact that Lincoln believed he 
could maintain the " just and generous and prosperous 
system " without the abolition of slavery. The limit- 
ing of slavery was sufficient to give the free lands to 
the majority, and it was with majorities that he dealt. 
This forced limiting might in the long run cause a 
gradual abolishment, due to a lack of feeding — a 
suffocation; but the question from the point of view 
of slavery in the slave states did not trouble him very 
much. It was an unfortunate state of affairs, from 
which, for the time being, he saw no way out. For 



266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

the future only a separation of the races seemed to him 
the solution of what he called the negro problem. 

In the meantime the preservation of the Union, 
whether with slavery or without, provided it was not 
extended to the territories, could maintain the ideal 
of American society. Lincoln contended that the 
framers of the Constitution looked to an ultimate 
abolishment of slavery, and not at all to the 
national recognition of it, as was demanded by the 
South, and almost carried out by the Dred Scott 
decision. 

He made the best argument for this contention in 
his Cooper Union speech in i860. The passage of the 
North-West Ordinance showed clearly, he said, the 
policy of the Government, and the statement of Wash- 
ington to Lafayette that he considered the prohibition 
of slavery a wise measure, and that he hoped there 
should at some time be a confederacy of free states, 
showed the sentiment of even Washington, a slave- 
holder himself, on the subject. Jefferson also looked 
towards the ultimate abolition of slavery. This was to 
take place by the suppression of the slave trade, by the 
non-extension of slavery, and by the emancipation of 
slaves in the slave states. No one contended at the 
time, and Lincoln heartily agreed with them, that the 
Federal Government had the power to aboHsh slavery 
where that institution already existed, nor that it was 
necessary to do so to attain the ultimate abolition 
of it. 

Already the extension of slavery was defeated in 
Kansas and California, and the election of the Re- 
publican candidate defeated it before the people at 



LINCOLN' AND THE UNION 267 

large. It was therefore that, in comparison with the 
question of Union, Lincoln seemed very lenient and 
almost callous to the question of slavery in the slave 
states, or as a Federal policy. In his hesitancy to 
proclaim emancipation, in his proclamations of amnesty, 
in his outline for the new governments of Louisiana and 
Maryland, he showed clearly that he did not consider 
that the condition of the Negro in the South affected 
the greater problem of the ultimate maintenance of 
the so-called free institutions of America. 

The Union had existed for eighty-seven years, 
half slave and half free, and though he pronounced 
it an impossible condition for any Government to 
sustain long, he was in no haste to make the adjust- 
ment. He showed great anxiety over the direction 
the Government was taking, but not at all in the speed 
it took to reach its goal. 

As President he was no longer of the opposition, 
but of the Administration. His standards had to be 
modified to the demands of expediency. The restored 
Union was to be composed of elements which he, as 
representative, could not oppose too rigidly, or even 
ignore. He was very willing to accept Louisiana on 
12,000 votes out of her 55,000 qualified voters and 
not question too deeply what the remaining 43,000 
would do once that State received its full power in the 
Union. 

The Union, he argued, based on the Constitution 
and the Declaration of Independence, was infallible, 
and " gave liberty not alone to the people of the country 
but hope to all the world for all future time. It was 
that which gave promise that in due time the weights 



268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that 
all should have an equal chance." 

It was this naive conviction, much more conserva- 
tive than Seward's, who accepted a higher law above 
the Constitution, and which did not take into account 
the compromises it offered and the contradictory 
phrases of its promise of Hberty, that made Lincoln so 
lenient with the class he was trying to subordinate. 
Not only his policy of reconstruction, but his whole 
manner of carrying on the war, was that of a lenient 
father. The child was asking too much, but even at 
the moment of restraining him he was anxious to give 
him all he could— much more than the other children 
desired or ultimately permitted. 

It is not strange, then, that as the war progressed 
his simple formula should fall short of the great struggle 
that he had started. He saw less and less the historical 
necessity for the clashes which the compromises in the 
Constitution forced upon his generation. The liberty 
he conceived of could have been maintained with 
slavery firmly entrenched in the slave states, wth the 
great landlord still holding his share in the general 
government, and with the small capitalist of the West 
restricted to power in his own section. For this there 
was no need of the dreadful holocaust of war, of the 
forced expropriation of property, and of the humbling 
and disqualifying from the Federal Government of a 
whole section of the Union. 

More and more he found himself nonplussed by the 
sad riddle, and this materialist of the primeval forests 
began to play with a thought, not usually permitted 
to statesmen, that the nation was a puppet in the 



LINCOLN AND THE UNION 269 

hand of a Divine Power, whose hidden purposes it was 
forced bUndly to obey. This thought came to him 
towards the end of the first year of the war, and as 
we have seen, dwelt with him towards the very last, 
creating one of the most eloquent passages in his 
second Inaugural Address : 

" The Almighty has His own purposes. ' Woe unto the 
world because of offences! For it must needs be that 
offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence 
cometh.' If we shall suppose that American slavery is one 
of those offences which, in the providence of God, must 
needs come, but which, having continued through His ap- 
pointed time. He now wills to remove, and that He gives to 
both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due those 
by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any de- 
parture from those divine attributes which the believers in a 
living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — 
fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may 
speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until 
all the wealth piled by the bondman'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 with the sword, as was said three thousand years 
ago, so still it must be said, ' The judgments of the Lord 
are true and righteous altogether.' " 



;#rvt f-*i^ ^Cfri' 




kmT' «U«^/*^R>«t 









CHAPTER XV 
LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 

BEST of all to call Lincoln the executive, the 
arch-representative of the people. He held 
the pulse of the nation, he had the gift of ex- 
pressing its final opinion. That gift was not cerehrale, 
it did hot come from an intellectual summing-up, but 
because he was flesh of its flesh, having deep within 
hun the conflicting desires and convictions of the 
American people. 

His attitude towards slavery and the Negro, there- 
fore, came from as firm a personal bias as from an 
understanding of the needs of the situation. And his 
personal bias was typically American, opportunistic, 
without thought of the future, compromising, and with 
a sad, futile humanism which left him uncertain whether 
it sprang from a personal hostility to the subject race 
or the knowledge of the hostility of his fellow-citizens. 
His hesitancy to act in the favour of the Negro, 
even after the exigencies of war and politics demanded 
such steps, showed a strong and driving conviction 
that there was no place for the Negro in his social 
philosophy. 

He was opposed to slavery on principle, but he 
was not only ready to compromise with the institution 
itself, but was also ready to compromise with the 
principles that underlay it. Not only did he not want 

to disturb slavery in the states where that " institution " 

270 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 271 

already existed, but he did not want the Negro to Hve 
in freedom side by side with the white in the new 
territories for which he was fighting. He could not 
conceive of the two races enjoying the same political 
and social privileges. His democracy was a white 
man's democracy. It did not contain Negroes, as it 
did not contain slaves or labourers " fixed in that con- 
dition for life," or landlords or large capitalists. It 
was the democracy of the small white farmer. 

He was remarkably unchanging in his point of view. 
From his first public utterance on the subject of slavery 
as a young man of twenty-eight, to his Emancipation 
Proclamation and his innumerable other statements 
concerning slavery and the Negro, he held a consistent 
and fixed policy. He was firmly convinced against the 
extension of slavery — slavery was a wrong to the 
slave — but of more vital importance — it was a wrong 
to the whrte man. " If Judge Douglas does not like 
the negro," he said, " let him not bring him out into 
the new lands — let that remain for the white." 

Farther than this white man's conviction against 
the economic, and being somewhat of a practical 
materialist, therefore moral, value of slavery he would 
not go. 

In his first public utterance in 1837 he protested 
against certain pro-slavery resolutions which were 
passed by the Illinois Legislature. Slavery, he de- 
clared, was founded on both injustice and bad policy, 
but he carefully added, he considered the promulga- 
tion of abolition doctrines to tend rather to increase 
than to abate its evils. This negative anti-slavery 
statement is the key-note of his conviction. For a 



272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

young statesman at the beginning of his career to fear 
the promulgation of the aboHtion of an evil which he 
considers both an injustice and a bad policy showed 
a yielding to the aggressive slave - holder. The 
national exigency demanded a much more positive 
programme, if the calamity of an internecine war was 
to be averted. Even Washington had a broader out- 
look upon the country's problem, and his statement 
that his first wish was to see some plan adopted " by 
which slavery in this country may be averted," showed 
a care for the future. 

A decade later we find Lincoln bringing in a resolu- 
tion to Congress, suggesting gradual and compensated 
emancipation in the district of Columbia, which was 
only meant as an expression of the Federal Government 
on the subject, and could have no immediate bearing. 
But even this mild policy, the effect of which could 
only be felt in the nation's attitude towards new terri- 
tories, he considered too hostile to the slave-owners, 
and a few months later he brought in a resolution in 
order " to conciliate divergent interests," which pro- 
vided for the extension of the Fugitive Slave Law over 
the same district. 

When he emerged from that curious lapse in his 
life which lasted from his return from Congress in 
1843 to the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise — 
a time, as Herndon who knew him best said, when 
the " iron entered the soul " — he still held the 
same intellectual position on these great questions. 
The years of crisis did change the nature of his 
being, which was peculiarly attuned to what the 
American politician calls harmony — more often 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 273 

another name for surrender of principle. It was 
true, Lincoln never retreated from the position that 
slavery was not to be extended, but it is a grave question 
whether the farmer of the West would ever have per- 
mitted him to do so. We must deal with his concep- 
tions before he became President, and with his policies 
that failed, for in those the true Lincoln appeared. 

A strong and active Abolition movement was going 
on, based on moral and intellectual grounds, which 
Lincoln saw close at hand, but which he never joined. 
Herndon, his law partner for twenty intimate years, 
was an ardent Abolitionist, in close touch with the 
leaders of New England. Lincoln knew of these men 
and their work. He may have sympathized with them, 
but the movement never called him. While Herndon 
joined the Free-Soil Party and the New Liberty Party, 
Lincoln remained an old line Whig, a Clay man, and 
canvassed the country for Taylor. It was Herndon 
who signed his name to the call for the Bloomington 
Convention of the Republican Party in 1856, much to 
the horror of Mrs Lincoln's relatives and his own former 
law partners. 

He came before the country in a series of joint 
debates with Douglas at the climax of his career. It 
was here that the question of slavery and the problem of 
the Negro in America was discussed from every angle, and 
it is easy enough to find Lincoln's exact position on these 
questions. He had to define them very clearly before 
audiences that were critical and ready to vote against a 
man who could not hold within himself the balance of 
all the contradictory sentiments on these questions. 

In the very first debate, in Ottawa, Illinois, he 



274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

said definitely: " I agree with Judge Douglas. He 
(the Negro) is not my equal in many respects — certainly 
not in colour, perhaps not in moral or intellectual 
endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, with- 
out the leave of anybody else, which his owti hand earns, 
he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the 
equal of every living man." 

This much-quoted statement, generally given to 
show the innate principles of freedom and justice 
which animated Lincoln, carries with it a fundamental 
contradiction, which he himself recognized. If social 
and pohtical equality were forbidden the Negro, and 
the whites must remain socially and politically superior 
and dominant, as he believed, then even after emanci- 
pation another condition would arise scarcely better 
than slavery itself. In 1854, in one of the Douglas 
debates, Lincoln asked what should be done with the 
slaves. " Free them all, and keep them among us as 
underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their 
condition? I think I would not hold slavery at any 
rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to 
denounce people upon." 

Knowing this, he surrendered still further to the 
anti-Negro arguments of " white domination," and 
in his debate in Charleston, Illinois, defined what he 
meant by equality: 

" I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in 
favour of bringing about in any way the social and political 
equality of the white and black races — that I am not, nor 
ever have been, in favour of making voters or jurors of 
negroes, nor of quahfying them to hold of&ce, nor to inter- 
marry with white people ; and I will say in addition to this 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 275 

that there is a physical difference between the white and 
black races which I beheve will forever forbid the two races 
Uving together on terms of social and political equality. 
And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain 
together there must be the position of superior and inferior, 
and I as much as any other man am in favour of having 
the superior position assigned to the white race." 

Over and over again he maintained that he did not 
want to interfere with the institution of slavery where it 
existed. He had " no legal right to do it and no inclina- 
tion to." He 5delded to the institution of slavery, he 
said, as had the framers of the constitution, with the 
hope that some day it would be ultimately extinct. 

These statements might have been given for reasons 
of political expediency, were he not so insistent on 
adding that, with the extinction of slavery, he did 
not want the condition of a free white and a free black 
living together on the same land. " What I would 
most desire," he said, " would be the separation of the 
white and black races." 

He saw no way of bestowing citizenship upon the 
Negro. " So far as I know, the Judge (Douglas) has 
never asked me the question before. He shall have 
no occasion to ever ask it again, for I tell him very 
frankly that I am not in favour of negro citizenship." 

While referring to the Dred Scott decision, he said : 
" My opinion is that the different states have the 
power to make a negro a citizen under the Constitution 
of the United States, if they choose. The Dred Scott 
decision decides that they have not that power. If 
the State of Illinois had that power I should be opposed 
to the exercise of it. That is all I have to say about it." 



276 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

If he was unwilling to bestow political equality, 
which is a principle inborn in every American, it goes 
without saying that he was against the social equality 
of the Negro, for here the American is innately un- 
friendly to that race. In the Charleston debate he said : 

" I do not understand that because I do not want a 
negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a 
wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. 
I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never have 
had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems 
to me quite possible to get along without making either 
slaves or wives of negroes. I will add to this that I have 
never seen, to my knowledge, a man, woman or child who 
was in favour of producing a perfect equality, social and 
political, between negroes and white men. ... I will 
also add to the remarks I have made that I have never 
had the least apprehension that I or my friends would 
marry negroes if there was no law to keep them from it; 
but as Judge Douglas and his friends seem to be in great 
apprehension that they might, if there were no law to keep 
them from it, I give him the most solemn pledge that I 
will to the very last stand by the law of this State, which 
forbids the marrying of white people with negroes." 

He gave the best definition of the Republican 
anti-slavery position as against that of the Abolitionist 
in his sixth debate at Quincy, Illinois: 

" We have in this nation the element of domestic 
slavery. It is a matter of absolute certainty that it is a 
disturbing element. It is the opinion of all the great men 
who have expressed an opinion upon it, that it is a dan- 
gerous element. We keep up a controversy in regard to it. 
That controversy necessarily springs from difference of 
opinion, and if we can learn exactly — can reduce to the 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGKO 277 

lowest elements — what that difference of opinion is, we 
perhaps shall be better prepared for discussing the different 
systems of policy that we would propose in regard to that 
disturbing element. I suggest that the difference of 
opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than the 
difference between the men who think slavery a wrong and 
those who do not think it wrong. The Republican Party 
think it wrong — we think it is a moral, a social and a 
political wrong. We think it is a wrong not confining itself 
merely to the persons or the states where it exists, but that 
it is a wrong which in its tendency, to say the least, affects 
the existence of the whole nation. Because we think it 
wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall deal with it 
as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so 
far as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal 
with it that in the run of time there may be some promise 
of an end to it. We have a due regard to the actual presence 
of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting rid of it in 
any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations 
thrown about it. I suppose that in reference both to its 
actual existence in the nation, and to our constitutional 
obligations, we have no right at all to disturb it in the states 
where it exists, and we profess that we have no more in- 
cUnation to disturb it than we have the right to do it. We 
go further than that : we don't propose to disturb it where, 
in one instance, we think the Constitution would permit us. 
We think the Constitution would permit us to disturb it in 
the district of Columbia. Still we do not propose to do 
that, unless it should be in terms which I don't suppose 
the nation is very hkely soon to agree to — the terms of 
making the emancipation gradual and compensating the 
unwiUing owners. Where we suppose we have the con- 
stitutional right, we restrain ourselves in reference to the 
actual existence of the institution and the difficulties 
thrown about it. We also oppose it as an evil so far as it 
seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall 



278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

restrict it to its present limits. We don't suppose that in 
doing this we violate anything due to the actual presence 
of the institution, or anything due to the constitutional 
guarantees thrown around it." 

Considering as he did that slavery was a wrong, 
he announced openly to the people that he was not 
and never was in favour of the unconditional repeal 
of the Fugitive Slave Law, that he did not stand pledged 
against the admission of any more slave states into the 
Union, that he did not stand pledged to the abolition 
of slavery in the district of Columbia ; that all he was 
impliedly if not expressly pledged to was the right and 
duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United 
States Territories. It was not, he said, that he was 
quibbling over the word " pledged," but that he firmly 
believed that under the Constitution of the United 
States the people of the Southern States were entitled 
to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. And with 
this same respect for the Constitution and the Union 
he would admit any state into the Union " if it should 
ever do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave 
constitution uninfluenced by the actual presence of the 
institution among them." 

" I do not wish to be misunderstood upon the subject 
of slavery in this country," he said. " I suppose it may 
long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to 
an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time." 

After his election and before his inauguration the 
Congress of the United States had passed a far different 
13th Amendment from the one passed five years later 
and heralded as " that great and sublime event " which 
lifted a race from bondage. In this former 13th 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 279 

Amendment it was resolved that no constitutional 
amendment should be made in the future " which 
authorized or gave to Congress the power to abolish 
or interfere within any state with the domestic in- 
stitutions thereof, including that of persons held to 
labour or service by the laws of said state." Lincoln 
did not have to sign this amendment, but he approved 
of it in his Inaugural Address of 4th March. Only the 
immediate secession of South Carolina prevented the 
amendment from being ratified by the states. Had 
the South not seceded then there is no doubt that 
with Lincoln's influence it would have received the 
necessary two-thirds majority. 

When the war commenced it became evident that 
slavery would be affected in some way by it. The 
Northern armies marching through the South confis- 
cated slaves along with other property. In fact, the 
Negroes themselves came swarming into the army for 
protection and freedom. Each military commander, 
as he advanced into the enemy's territory, had the 
power of emancipation. It was this very exigency of 
the war which Lincoln fought hard to prevent for 
almost two years. He had no faith in the cries of the 
Abolitionists for the peremptory wiping out of the 
institution. He never heeded or respected their cries, 
deeming them a small sect of visionaries, without 
influence, scorned and laughed at by the people. 
" That abolition-sneak," Mrs Lincoln once said of 
Seward — a tell-tale phrase. While Boston was voting 
for Lincoln, Wendell Phillips and Garrison were being 
hounded on its streets. The Far East was not as ear- 
nestly anti-slavery as the West. Commerce and manu- 



28o ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

facture did not conflict with slavery as did farming; 
in fact, except for the question of tariff, they profited 
by it. The East was won away from the South not 
because of slavery, but because she became the market 
for the West, where the real slavery conflict took pi ace. 
And in the West " abolition " and " anti-slavery " had 
two different meanings. 

So convinced was Lincoln that the country was not 
for abolition that he did not heed the abolition demands 
of the Border States themselves, although usually so 
careful to conciliate them. He offended the radicals 
in Missouri by revoking General Fremont's Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation, and by continually supporting the 
conservative faction in that state, to such an extent 
that they were irreconcilable to the very end, refusing 
absolutely to give him their votes at the time of his 
renomination for President. 

But the Northern arms were unsuccessful. He 
could not restore the Union on the old basis, because, 
to quote his own phrase, " the longer the basket that 
holds the eggs is being shaken, the more eggs will 
break." Not being able to reconcile this more con- 
servative element, which called for " the Union as 
it was and the Constitution as it is," he had to comply 
with the more radical elements of the North, who were 
supporting him in arms and by the vote. But this he 
did very tentatively and shrewdly. He issued a pre- 
liminary emancipation on 22nd September 1862, which 
was meant not as a blessing to the Negro, but as a 
warning to the Southerner in rebellion that his slaves 
would be confiscated if he did not pay allegiance to the 
Government He gave him a hundred days in which 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 281 

to lay down his arms. Had the Southerners been less 
bent upon victory they could have returned to the 
Union with the institution of slavery intact. Seeing 
that the Northern armies were ruthlessly abolishing the 
institution, Lincoln began working out several plans 
by which this forced abolition would be made more 
bearable to the expropriated slaveholder. His plan, 
on the one hand, was to urge Congress and the states 
that emancipation be gradual and compensated, and 
on the other that the Negroes be exported or colonized 
as soon as freed. He did not believe that freedom 
would benefit the Negro if left unprotected upon the 
hands of his embittered master. He was opposed 
to bestowing the suffrage upon the Negro, perhaps 
because he understood that the suffrage without 
economic power to sustain that equality which it 
promised was worthless. But he did not propose any 
means of his becoming economically free, which even 
Russia attempted to do, by the distribution of some 
of the land taken from the landlords among the ninety 
million liberated serfs. His solution of the problem 
was the separation of the races. 

The history of Lincoln's acts from this time on is 
a history of his activity in the direction of gradual 
and compensated emancipation, and incessant minor 
attempts at colonization. He understood that coloni- 
zation on a large scale was an impossibility, but he was 
sorely worried over the status of the Negro after freedom 
should have been accomplished, and he hoped by some 
successful example to set a precedent for colonization 
that would be followed. His great concern, however, 
lay in averting " the indispensable necessity for military 
19 



282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

emancipation and arming of the blacks " by " appeals 
to the Border States for compensated emancipation." 
The Border States refused to adopt his resolution, 
which was that " the United States ought to co-operate 
with any state which may adopt gradual abolishment 
of slavery, giving to such state pecuniary aid, to be used 
by such state in its discretion to compensate for the 
inconvenience, public and private, produced by such 
change of system." Congress laid the resolution on the 
table, while the Border State representatives themselves 
refused to make any such resolution before their own 
Legislature. In July he made an appeal to them, saying : 

" How much better for you and for your people to take 
the step which at once shortens the war and secures sub- 
stantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly 
lost in any other event ! How much better to thus save the 
money which else we sink forever in the war ! How much 
better to do it while we can, lest the war ere long render us 
pecuniarily unable to do it! How much better for you as 
seller, and the nation as buyer, to sell out and buy out that 
without which the war could never have been, than to sink 
both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting one 
another's throats? I do not speak of emancipation at once, 
but of a decision at once to emancipate gradually. Room 
in South America for colonization can be obtained cheaply 
and in abundance, and when numbers shall be large enough 
to be company and encouragement for one another, the freed 
people will not be so reluctant to go." 

He wrote a personal letter to a Republican from 
Delaware, arguing against the plea of expensiveness 
that his plan of gradual emancipation with com- 
pensation entailed. He gave the price of the slaves 
and the cost of one day's war, saying that it was 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 283 

three times the cost of all the slaves in Delaware. He 
computed the cost of the slaves in Delaware, Maryland, 
the district of Columbia and Kentucky at $400 each, 
and argued that by eliminating eighty-seven days of 
war their cost would be covered. He had even worked 
out the manner and the instalments that were to be 
paid to the states if they accepted his plan. 

In his special message to Congress of December 
1863 he proposed a constitutional amendment which 
would give universal freedom, but this freedom was to 
be gradual, covering a period of thirty-seven years, 
up to ist January igoo, and the slaves were to be paid 
for by the Government. 

The Republican Congress was hostile to his sugges- 
tion that Northern money be used in compensating 
Southern slaveholders. Their interest lay neither in 
doing justice to the slaveholder nor the Negro, but in 
maintaining their own power, which they could do 
very well by emancipating the slave and enfranchising 
him, and by preventing him from emigrating to their 
lands by the legislation of the Western States. The 
Democrats, with reactionary blindness, refused to see 
the trend of the times, and strongly opposed Lincoln's 
measures on the ancient premise that they interfered 
dangerously with the domestic institutions of each state. 
It was therefore with relief on all sides that Lincoln's 
request from the House for $180,000,000, to be used 
for compensating loyal slave-owners and an appropria- 
tion of $20,000,000 for colonizing freed negroes came 
so late in the session that it was not considered. 

While urging compensation, he was devising plans 
for the colonization of the freed Negro. Apart from 



284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

asking Congress for appropriations, he appealed to 
the Negro himself. As early as August 1862 he called 
a deputation of coloured men to him and urged them 
to colonize in Central America : 

" Your race is suffering, in my judgment, the greatest 
wrong inflicted on any people. But even when you cease 
to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed 
on an equality with the white race. You are cut off from 
many of the advantages which the other race enjoys. The 
aspiration of men is to enjoy equahty with the best when 
free, but on this broad continent not a single man of your 
race is made the equal of a single man of ours. Go where 
you are treated the best, and the ban is still upon you. I 
do not propose to discuss this, but to present it as a fact 
with which we have to deal. I cannot alter it if I would. 
It is a fact about which we all think and feel ahke, I and you. 
We look to our condition. Owing to the existence of the 
two races on this continent, I need not recount to you the 
effects upon white men, growing out of the institution of 
slavery. . . . The practical thing I want to ascertain is, 
whether I can get a number of able-bodied men, with a 
mixture of women and children, who are wiUing to go when 
I present evidence of encouragement and protection. Could 
I get a hundred tolerably inteUigent men, with their wives 
and children, and able to ' cut their own fodder,' so to 
speak? If I could find twenty-five able-bodied men, with 
a mixture of women and children — good things in the 
family relation, I think — I could make a successful com- 
mencement. I want you to let me know whether this can 
be done or not. This is the practical part of my wish to 
see you." 

The coloured deputation answered, politely enough, 
that it would consider his proposition, but refused to 
take kindly to it, and it was learned in the end that 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 285 

Central America, where he was to send them, did not 
want them. Later he obtained some sums of money 
from Congress, and an island was bought in the West 
Indies — He D'Vache. Several hundred Negroes were 
collected and put upon this unknown corner of the 
world. It turned out to be a poisonous, malarial 
country, covered with reptiles, and a ship had to be 
sent to bring back the few survivors. Nevertheless, he 
kept on with his experiments. There is one story told 
by Chittenden which shows how seriously he thought 
of this proposition: 

"During one of his welcome visits to my office the Pre- 
sident seemed to be buried in thought over some subject 
of great interest. After long reflection he abruptly ex- 
claimed that he wanted to ask me a question. 

" ' Do you know any energetic contractor? ' he in- 
quired ; ' one who would be willing to take a large contract 
attended with some risk? ' 

'"I know New England contractors,' I replied, ' who 
would not be frightened by the magnitude or risk of any 
contract. The element of prospective profit is the only 
one that would interest them. If there was a fair prospect 
of profit they would not hesitate to contract to suppress 
the Rebellion in ninety days.' 

" ' There will be profit and reputation in the contract I 
may propose,' said the President. ' It is to remove the 
whole coloured race of the slave states into Texas. If you 
have any acquaintance who would take that contract, I 
would like to see him.' 

" ' I know a man who would take that contract and per- 
form it,' I replied. ' I would be willing to put you into 
communication with him, so that you might form your own 
opinion about him.' 

" By the President's direction I requested John Bradley, 



286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

a prominent Vermonter, to come to Washington. He was 
at my office the morning after I sent the telegram to him. 
I decUned to give him any hint of the purpose of my invi- 
tation, but took him directly to the President. When I 
presented him I said: ' Here, Mr President, is the con- 
tractor whom I named to you yesterday.' 

" I left them together. Two hours later Mr Bradley 
returned to my of&ce overflowing with admiration for the 
President and enthusiasm for his proposed work. ' The 
proposition is,' he said, ' to remove the whole coloured 
race into Texas, there to estabhsh a republic of their own. 
The subject has pohtical bearings of which I am no judge, 
and upon which the President has not yet made up his mind, 
but I have shown him that it is practicable. I will under- 
take to remove them all within a year.' " 

He never gave up hope of the colonization of the 
Negro. After the 13th Amendment giving constitu- 
tional freedom to all the Negroes had been passed, 
he called in General Butler and discussed with him a 
plan of exporting the coloured soldiers to some foreign 
land, in Liberia, South America or Demerara. 

" ' General Butler,' he said, ' I am troubled about the 
negroes. We are soon to have peace. We have got some 
one hundred and odd thousand negroes who have been 
trained to arms. When peace shall come I fear lest these 
coloured men shall organize themselves in the South, 
especially in the States where the negroes are in preponder- 
ance in numbers, into guerilla parties, and we shall have 
down there a warfare between the whites and the negroes. 
In the course of the reconstruction of the Government it 
will become a question of how the negro is to be disposed of. 
Would it not be possible to export them to some place, say 
Liberia, or South America, and organize them into com- 
munities to support themselves? Now, General, I wish you 
would examine the practicabihty of such exportation. Your 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 287 

organization of the flotilla which carried your army from 
Yorktown and Fort Monroe to City Point, and its success, 
show that you understand such matters. Will you give 
this your attention, and at as early a date as possible report 
to me your views upon the subject.' I repUed, 'Will- 
ingly,' and bowed and retired. After some few days of 
examination, with the aid of statistics and calculations, of 
this topic, I repaired to the President's office in the morning, 
and said to him: ' I have come to report to you on the 
question you have submitted to me, Mr President, about 
the exportation of the negroes.' He exhibited great in- 
terest, and said: ' Well, what do you think of it? ' I 
said: ' Mr President, I assume that if the negro is to be 
sent away on shipboard you do not propose to enact the 
horrors of the middle passage, but would give the negroes 
the air-space that the law provides for emigrants.' He 
said, ' Certainly.' " Well, then, here are some calculations 
which will show you that if you undertake to export all the 
negroes — and I do not see how you can take one portion 
differently from another — negro children will be born 
faster than your whole naval and merchant vessels, if sub- 
stantially all of them were devoted to that use, can carry 
them from the country: especially as I believe that their 
increase will be much greater in a state of freedom than of 
slavery, because the commingling of the two races does not 
tend to productiveness.' He examined my tables carefully 
for some considerable time, and then he looked up sadly 
and said: ' Your deductions seem to be correct. General. 
But what can we do? ' I rephed: ' If I understand you, 
Mr President, your theory is this : That the negro soldiers 
we have enhsted will not return to the peaceful pursuits of 
labouring men, but will become a class of guerillas and 
criminals. Now, while I do not see, under the Constitution, 
even with all the aid of Congress, how you can export a 
class of people who are citizens against their will, yet the 
Commander-in-Chief can dispose of soldiers quite arbitrarily. 



288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Now, then, we have large quantities of clothing to clothe 
them, large quantities of provisions with which to supply 
them, and arms and everything necessary for them, even to 
spades and shovels, mules and waggons. Our war has 
shown that an army organization is the very best for digging 
up the soil and making intrenchments. Witness the very 
many miles of intrenchments that our soldiers have dug 
out. I know of a concession of the United States of Colombia 
for a tract of thirty miles wide across the Isthmus of Panama 
for opening a ship canal. The enlistments of the negroes 
have all of them from two to three years to run. Why not 
send them all down there to dig the canal? They will 
withstand the climate, and the work can be done with less 
cost to the United States in that way than in any other. 
If you choose I will take command of the expedition. We 
will take our arms with us, and I need not suggest to you 
that we wiU need nobody sent down to guard us from the 
interference of any nation. We will proceed to cultivate 
the land and supply ourselves with all the fresh food that 
can be raised in the tropics, which will be all that will be 
needed, and your stores of provisions and supplies of cloth- 
ing will furnish all the rest. Shall I work out the details 
of such an expedition for you, Mr President? ' He re- 
flected for some time, and then said: ' There is meat in 
that suggestion. General Butler; there is meat in that sug- 
gestion. Go and talk to Seward, and see what foreign 
complication there will be about it. Then think it over, 
get your figures made, and come to me again as soon as you 
can. If the plan has no other merit, it will rid the country 
of the coloured soldiers.' " 

The death of Lincoln, coming soon after, of course dis- 
turbed this plan to rid the country of the coloured soldiers. 

Far from being discouraged by his failure to receive 
a response from Congress on the question of compen- 
sation, he planned a still greater request two months 



LINCOLN AND THE NEGRO 289 

before the end of the war. This was that Congress 
empower the President to pay $400,000,000 to the 
respective slave states in proportion to their slave popu- 
lation in i860. 

His Cabinet unanimously vetoed the document, 
and folding it up with a sigh, he put it away, but not 
without a secret hope that he would be able to use it 
in the near future. 

He was of his time and above his time. Walt 
Whitman said of him: " The invisible foundations and 
vertebra of his character, more than any man's in 
history, were mystical, abstract, moral and spiritual 
— ^while upon all of them was built and out of all of 
them radiated, under the control of the average of 
circumstances, what the vulgar call horse-sense, and a 
life often bent by temporary but most urgent material- 
istic and political reasons." 

If there was inconsistency in his nature the fault 
was America's, not his. The representative of a people 
cloaked in mystic words of freedom, which were only 
used to cover their property not themselves, it is no 
wonder that he almost despaired that any human 
justice could prevail that did not bring immediate 
material profit. Tentatively, and as a private sugges- 
tion, he wrote to the Governor of Louisiana that per- 
haps it were well to admit some of the coloured people 
" for an elective franchise, as, for instance, the very 
intelligent and especially those who have fought gallantly 
in our ranks. They would probably help in some try- 
ing time to keep the jewel of liberty within the family of 
freedom." 

Slowly his demands grew with the needs. In the 



290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Amnesty Proclamation he promised that the National 
Executive would not object " if the states would recog- 
nize and declare their (the Negroes') permanent freedom 
and provide for their education, which may yet be con- 
sistent as a temporary ar