Part 3

It is true that in his second term in the Legislature he voted for all manner of extravagant and preposterous schemes of “internal improvements.” But that was a day of inflated hope, and Illinois was delirious with land gambling. Lincoln, like the other politicians of the State, was swept along by the current of popular enthusiasm. He swaggered, dreamed, bragged and voted with the rest. The voters wanted railways, canals and river improvements. So the Legislature authorized thirteen hundred miles of railways, a canal between the Illinois River and Lake Michigan, and endless improvements of rivers and streams; and to carry out this staggering programme of improvements in a poor, half-settled frontier State, a loan of twelve million dollars was voted.

Not only did Lincoln in his early life vote for this audacious and spendthrift scheme, in response to a harebrained popular demand, but he advocated woman suffrage; proposed a usury rate, with the naive suggestion that “in cases of extreme necessity there could always be found means to cheat the law”; wrote foolish love letters to blue-eyed Mary Owens, offering to keep his supposed marriage engagement to her, but advising her for her own sake not to hold him to it; and developed into a more or less ranting, downright country politician, ready to make a stump speech, tell a story, shake hands with a crowd or thrash a ruffian on the slightest provocation.

And when the capital of Illinois was changed to Springfield, he rode into that town on a borrowed horse, with “two saddlebags, containing two or three law books and a few pieces of clothing,” and, not having seventeen dollars with which to buy a bed and furnishings, accepted a free room over the store of his friend, Mr. Speed, dropped his saddlebags on the floor and smilingly said, “Well, Speed, I’m moved.” That was his entrance into the town which saw his rise to the Presidency.

Around the fireplace in Speed’s store Lincoln used to sit with Douglas, Baker, Calhoun, Browning, Lamborn and other rising politicians and orators of the West. Here every question under heaven was debated, stories were told, jokes cracked, poems recited; and it would take the pen of a Balzac to describe the scenes of merriment, or serious, sharp contest, that happened before those blazing logs, with an attentive ring of friends listening to the never-ceasing flow of wit and wisdom.

Again and again Lincoln was elected to the Illinois Legislature, always as a Whig. Yet he remained humble in spirit. In answer to the taunt that the Whigs were aristocrats, he made a speech showing that he understood how the political sympathies of the West were to be won:

“I was a poor boy, hired on a flatboat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches to my back, and they were buckskin. Now, if you know the nature of buckskin when wet, and dried by the sun, it will shrink; and my breeches kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches; and whilst I was growing taller, they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day. If you call this aristocracy I plead guilty to the charge.”

He could outwrestle, outrun and out-talk any man in his section. He was recognized as the most skillful and hard-headed politician in his State. His courage and shrewdness in ordinary affairs were notable, and his honesty and earnestness, sweetened by a sure sense of humor, lent distinction and dignity to a ridiculous figure and sometimes theatrical manner of address.

Yet there was a strange, gloomy self-distrust in Lincoln which showed itself in his love affairs; an imaginative melancholy that wrung his heart and tortured his mind with baseless, shadowy misgivings. He engaged himself to marry Mary Todd and, doubting his own love, broke the engagement. It has been even charged that he deserted her when she was attired for the wedding. Lincoln described his parting to Mr. Speed:

“When I told Mary I did not love her,” he said, “she burst into tears and almost springing from her chair and wringing her hands as if in agony, said something about the deceiver being himself deceived. To tell you the truth, Speed, it was too much for me. I found the tears trickling down my own cheeks. I caught her in my arms and kissed her.”

So great was Lincoln’s agony and depression after this that he was watched by his friends lest he might commit suicide. “I am now the most miserable man living,” he wrote to Major Stuart. “If what I feel were distributed 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 forbode I shall not.”

The shadow of threatened insanity passed, and within two years Mary Todd became his wife. It was a singular jest of fate that he should have won her away from Stephen A. Douglas, who was yet to be his rival in the great anti-slavery struggle that was ended only by millions of armed men.

Poor heart-torn, shrewd, foolish, humble, sublime Lincoln!

Then there was the duel with James Shields. That hot-headed Irishman had challenged Lincoln to fight because the tall politician had written certain anonymous letters for the _Springfield Journal_. Lincoln accepted and named “cavalry broadswords of the largest size.” The duelists went to the place appointed by the river, and sat on logs on opposite sides of the field. Here is a description of the scene by an onlooker, from Miss Tarbell’s “Life of Abraham Lincoln”:

“I watched Lincoln closely while he set on his log awaiting the signal to fight. His face was grave and serious. I could discern nothing suggestive of ‘old Abe,’ as we knew him. I never knew him to go so long without making a joke, and I began to believe he was getting frightened. But presently he reached over and picked up one of the swords, which he drew from its scabbard. Then he felt along the edge of the weapon with his thumb, like a barber feels of the edge of his razor, raised himself to his full height, stretched out his long arms and clipped a twig from above his head with the sword. There wasn’t another man of us who could have reached anywhere near that twig, and the absurdity of that long-reaching fellow fighting with cavalry sabres with Shields, who could walk under his arm, came pretty near making me howl with laughter. After Lincoln had cut off the twig he returned the sword to the scabbard.”

Before the combat could begin, friends arrived in a canoe, Shields was induced to make a concession, and presently Lincoln and his opponent returned to town fast friends.

VII

We love Lincoln because his life plucks every harp-string in true democracy. Lincoln is the answer to Socialism. He represents individualism, justifying opportunity. Self-government stands vindicated in his name. The thought of him is at once an inspiration and challenge to the poorest and most ignorant boy or man in America.

But we love him most of all because he saved the nation which Washington began, and, in the bloody act of salvation, brought human slavery to an end in the great Republic.

In following Lincoln through his picturesque and gaunt youth and through his service in the Illinois Legislature and in Congress to the point where the inner and outer influences of his life, his soul and its environments, merged into one supreme idea--the preservation of the Union--we must not forget the things that preceded the final test of his life.

Up to Lincoln’s time it had not been determined whether the fathers of the Republic had really produced a nation, or merely a contract or treaty between independent and sovereign States. The system of separated, incoordinate and aloof colonies--a shrewd and stubborn British device for keeping their American subjects weak by disunion--grew into the system of States which formed the Republic.

When the Constitution of the United States was framed, ten of the thirteen States had prohibited the importation of slaves. Georgia and the two Carolinas still permitted the slave trade with Africa. In order not to leave these three States out of the Union, the Constitution permitted the importation of slaves until 1808. But the conscious horror of that concession is to be recognized in the care with which the word slavery is avoided. To satisfy all the slave-owning States, whose consent was necessary to the adoption of the Constitution, slavery itself, within those States, was recognized and sanctioned by a clause providing that five slaves should equal three free persons as a basis of representation in the national House of Representatives.

So that, whether we like the remembrance or not, it is a fact that the founders of the nation actually did sanction slavery, although there was some righteous talk in the Constitutional Convention over the reluctant compromise.

While this convention, in Philadelphia, was legalizing slavery, the Continental Congress, in New York, passed an ordinance for the government of the “territory of the United States northwest of the river Ohio,” providing that slavery should be forever prohibited in that territory.

In 1820 the ocean slave-trade was declared to be piracy, punishable by death.

In that same year Congress, under pressure from the slave owners, adopted the Missouri Compromise, by which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave State, with the proviso that slavery should be always forbidden in any other part of the territory north of 36° 30´ north latitude.

New England raged against slavery. Her abolitionists cried out against it night and day. To the assertion of the South that slaves were valuable property, legally acquired and legally held, they answered that slavery was a deep damnation in the sight of God, an unspeakably cruel crime, intolerable among civilized men. They helped slaves to escape from their masters, and did everything in their power to make a farce of the laws under which such fugitives might be returned.

A great gulf opened between the free States and the slave States, a gulf flaming with passion and menace. Could the nation hold together?

There were tremendous scenes in the Senate in 1850, when a compromise was reached. California was to be admitted a free State, slavery was to be abolished in the District of Columbia, and there was to be an effective Fugitive Slave Law. These were the principal points.

Henry Clay, in his seventy-third year, spoke for two days in favor of compromise and peace, picturing the frightful war that must result from a failure to agree. John C. Calhoun, pale, haggard and dying, rose from his sick bed, staggered into the Senate on the arms of friends and, being too weak to speak, sat there while his plea for the rights of the South was read. Then he went back to his bed to die a few days later, groaning, “The South! The poor South! God knows what will become of her.” Daniel Webster, too, raised his voice for compromise in one of his noblest orations. William H. Seward and Salmon P. Chase bitterly opposed any compromise on the basis of the Fugitive Slave Law. So fierce did the debate become that Senator Benton drew a pistol on Senator Foote.

Yet in the end, the compromise was adopted and the Fugitive Slave Law was passed.

Then, in 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, United States Senator from Illinois, introduced a bill providing a government for the immense country now included in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana and portions of Wyoming and Colorado--a country larger than all the existing free States. All this region was in the area from which slavery was forever prohibited by the Missouri Compromise. Yet Douglas’ bill provided that whenever any part of the territory should be admitted to the Union the question of slavery or free-soil should be decided by its inhabitants. This was the famous “squatter sovereignty” idea, a virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

After a desperate fight in Congress, Douglas carried his bill. It was a startling step and a direct bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency. By this act Douglas made himself one of the most conspicuous men in the country.

Hell seemed to break loose after President Pierce signed this bill. It became impossible to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. The anti-slavery agitation in the North broke out with indescribable fury. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published. The abolitionists were almost insane with anger and indignation. Douglas was denounced as a scoundrel who had sold himself to the slaveholders for the sake of his Presidential ambitions.

Lincoln was a well-supported candidate for the United States Senate in 1854, but he gave up his chance and threw his strength to Lyman Trumbull, a weaker candidate, rather than risk the election of a pro-slavery Senator.

Miss Tarbell gives this picture of Lincoln by his friend, Judge Dickey:

“After a while we went upstairs to bed. There were two beds in our room, and I remember that Lincoln sat up in his nightshirt on the edge of the bed arguing the point with me. At last we went to sleep. Early in the morning I woke up, and there was Lincoln half sitting up in bed. ‘Dickey,’ he said, ‘I tell you this nation cannot exist half slave and half free.’ ‘Oh, Lincoln,’ said I, ‘go to sleep.’”

The Territories of Kansas and Nebraska became the center of interest, for whether they would be slave States or free States must depend upon the vote of their inhabitants, and that was a simple question of emigration.

Bands of colonists were sent to Kansas by both the slavery and anti-slavery forces. The work of colonizing the State was organized on a large scale by both sides. The pro-slavery men from Missouri crossed into Kansas in 1854 and elected a pro-slavery delegate to Congress. In 1855 about five thousand Missourians, armed with pistols and bowie knives, invaded Kansas and carried the elections for the Territorial Legislature. This Legislature enacted the Missouri slavery laws and, in addition, provided the death penalty for inciting slaves to leave their masters or revolt. The Free Soil Kansans thereupon elected a Constitutional Convention, and organized a State government, with a constitution prohibiting slavery.

Thus there were two governments in Kansas, one pro-slavery, the other anti-slavery. Blood began to flow as the hostile governments collided.

In 1856 Preston Brooks, a nephew of Senator Butler, of South Carolina, stole up behind Senator Sumner, who had brilliantly defended the Free Soilers of Kansas, and beat him on the head with a heavy cane till he fell unconscious. The pro-slavery Kansans sacked the town of Lawrence. John Brown and his abolitionist fanatics went from cabin to cabin in Kansas, killing and mutilating pro-slavery men. Riots and murders terrorized the State. It was war to the knife between slavery and anti-slavery. And Douglas, in Washington, was pressing his bill declaring that, as soon as Kansas had ninety-three thousand voters, the pro-slavery Territorial Legislature should call a convention and organize the State.

VIII

It was in 1856 that the conscience and courage of the North found a voice in Abraham Lincoln. In his great soul the civilization of America suddenly flowered.

In Congress Lincoln had vainly opposed the war with Mexico as “unnecessary and unconstitutional,” and he had gone back to Springfield to practice law with his new partner, William H. Herndon.

The mighty sweep of events in the country had forced the Whigs and Northern Democrats to form the Free Soil party, not to extinguish slavery, but to prevent its spread from the slave States into the free Territories, and Lincoln’s tongue had pleaded powerfully for freedom. But Fremont, the Free Soil candidate for President, was defeated, and the contending slaveowners and abolitionists continued to press the cup of horror and hatred to the trembling lips of the nation. The South threatened to withdraw from the Union.

Again and again Lincoln had expressed his opinion that slavery was a crime against civilization. In the teeth of Senator Douglas, the eloquent and all-powerful Democratic leader of Illinois, who was arousing the West for slavery, he lashed and trampled upon the attempt to make Kansas a slave State.

While trying to obtain the release of a free-born Illinois negro boy held by the authorities of Louisiana, Lincoln appealed to the Governor of Illinois, to whom he said, “By God, Governor, I’ll make the ground in this country too hot for the foot of a slave, whether you have the legal power to secure the release of this boy or not.”

Even then the man who felt in himself the stirrings of power great enough to utter that threat was a grotesque figure among his fellow-lawyers. Yet there was no shrewder advocate, no more effective jury-pleader and no kindlier heart in Illinois. Mr. Herndon gives this picture of him:

“His hat was brown, faded, and the nap usually worn or rubbed off. He wore a short cloak and sometimes a shawl. His coat and vest hung loosely on his gaunt frame, and his trousers were invariably too short. On the circuit he carried in one hand a faded green umbrella, with ‘A Lincoln’ in large white cotton or muslin letters sewed on the inside. The knob was gone from the handle, and when closed a piece of cord was usually tied around it in the middle to keep it from flying open. In the other hand he carried a literal carpet bag, in which were stored the few papers to be used in court, and underclothing enough to last until his return to Springfield. He slept in a long, coarse yellow flannel shirt, which reached half way between his knees and ankles.”

Lincoln was not a distinguished lawyer. Nor was he a financial success in his profession. His partners complained that he neglected the business side of things and was completely absorbed in the justice or humanity involved in his cases. His heart would melt over the sorrows of a client, and he would either accept a petty fee or altogether neglect to collect anything. Mr. Lamon, his junior partner, has testified that when he charged a fee of $250, Lincoln made him return half the money to their client on the ground that “the service was not worth the sum.” So extreme was his generosity and charity, so averse was he to accepting anything but the most modest fees, that Judge David Davis once rebuked him from the bench for impoverishing his brother lawyers by such an example.

Not only that, but Lincoln many times in court showed his deep and unfailing love of justice and fair play by refusing to take advantage of the mere slips of his opponents. That generous honesty made him a power with judges and juries.

It was when the Republican party was born in the convention at Bloomington, Illinois, on May 29, 1856, that Lincoln displayed the full grandeur of his character. His speech opposing the extension of slavery to Kansas was so stirring, his presence so inspiring, that the reporters forgot to take notes. His hearers were thrilled, swept out of themselves. He seemed to grow taller as he spoke, his eyes flashed, his face shone with passion, he seemed suddenly beautiful, for his soul was in his eyes and on his lips as he declared that slavery was a violation of eternal right.

“We have temporized with it from the necessities of our condition,” he said, “but as sure as God reigns and school children read, that black, foul lie can never be consecrated into God’s hallowed truth.”

_McClure’s Magazine_ in 1896 gave a report of this extraordinary speech. Here is an extract:

“Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Therefore, let the legions of slavery use bullets; but let us wait patiently till November and fire ballots at them in return.... We will be loyal to the Constitution and to the ‘flag of our Union,’ and no matter what our grievance--even though Kansas shall come in as a slave State; and no matter what theirs--even if we shall restore the Compromise--we will say to the Southern disunionists, ‘_We won’t go out of the Union and you shan’t!_’”

We love Lincoln because on that day he spoke as one naked in the presence of God. There was no lie in his mouth. Slavery must be kept out of Kansas. Kansas must be free. Slavery was an unspeakable offence in the nostrils of a free people. Yet, since the Constitution and the Missouri Compromise permitted it in the slave States, a law-respecting nation must permit it to remain there. But Kansas must be free. All the soil as yet uncursed by slavery must be kept free.

And slave or free, the nation must be held together--that was the central note of Lincoln’s great speech.

It is a common mistake to suppose that Lincoln was an advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. Yet in 1854, while denouncing slavery as a “monstrous injustice,” he said:

“When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution.”

There was a sincere man, brave enough and humble enough to make such an admission in the teeth of the terrific abolitionist crusade. So, too, he stood in 1856. The nation had given its word, right or wrong, to the slaveholders, and the nation’s word must be kept. But Kansas must be free.

No, tender and merciful as Lincoln was, he did not raise his voice for negro emancipation. That thought came years afterwards, when, in the agony of fratricidal strife, he proclaimed the freedom of the blacks as a war measure.

However, when the Supreme Court of the United States in 1857 decided in the Dred Scott case that a negro could not sue in the national courts, and expressed the opinion that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the territories, there was a fierce outcry in the free States, for five of the Supreme Court justices were from slave States. It is impossible to indicate the pitch of excitement in the country.

Senator Douglas, prompt, bold, masterful, faced his constituents in Illinois and stigmatized opposition to the Supreme Court as simple anarchy. Lincoln answered him at once. The people must not resist the court, but it was well known that the court had often overruled its own decisions and “it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country.”

Another strain was placed upon the nerves of the overwrought country. By trickery the pro-slavery men of Kansas had brought about the “Lecompton Constitution,” permitting slavery in the State. President Buchanan pressed for the admission of Kansas into the Union with this constitution.

So, in 1858, when Lincoln was nominated by the Republicans to succeed Douglas in the Senate, and when he challenged Douglas to a joint debate, the nation was in the throes of an agitation that transcended all other passions in its history.

When the long-legged country lawyer, in loose-hung cloak, faded hat and ill-fitting trousers--sunken-eyed, lantern-jawed and stoop-shouldered--went forth to meet the great Senator before the people, the whole country watched the struggle with intense interest. For, ever since Andrew Jackson overthrew the Virginia oligarchy, the West had grown stronger in the national councils, and it was even now suspected that the balance of political power was passing from the South to the North. And Lincoln, risen from the soil itself, was a singularly bitter challenge to the aristocratic and haughty temper of the slaveowners.