Part 4

Who can describe that unforgetable and decisive debate in Illinois?

On the very day of his nomination Lincoln uttered the thought that was pressed on and on until slavery and secession were trampled into dust under the heels of the Union armies:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the house to fall--but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

Gaunt, gray-eyed, crooked-mouthed Lincoln! In all history no man ever flayed an opponent as he did Douglas.

“I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just,” he exclaimed in one of his loftiest moments.

He pelted Douglas with logic, exposed the sham of his “squatter sovereignty” doctrine, and pitilessly analyzed the predatory policy of the slavery forces. He forced Douglas to defend and explain his Kansas-Nebraska law, trapped him into confusing admissions and showed that his popular sovereignty principle meant simply “that if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man, nor anybody else, has a right to object.”

Against the awkward country lawyer with shriveled, melancholy countenance and shrill voice, the polished, handsome and resourceful Douglas contended in vain in the seven monster outdoor meetings of the debates. The humanity of Lincoln, the fairness of his statements, the moral height from which he spoke, the homely, cutting anecdotes, the originality and imagination, the obvious simplicity and sincerity of his arguments beat down Douglas’ lawyer-like pleas.

Douglas charged Lincoln with favoring the political and social equality of the white and black races. Lincoln denied that he considered the negro the equal of the white man. “But in the right to eat the bread which his own hands earns,” he added, “he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.”

Nothing in the whole story of the American people approaches this struggle between Lincoln and Douglas for dramatic setting and popular enthusiasm; and nothing in Lincoln’s life proved more clearly that with his feet set upon a moral issue he was matchless. He was filled with the majesty of his cause.

“If slavery is right,” he said that winter in Cooper Institute, New York, “all words, acts, laws and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality, its universality. If it is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension, its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right and our thinking it wrong is the precise facts upon which depends the whole controversy.”

In the race for the Senatorship Douglas defeated Lincoln; but in that defeat Lincoln won a great victory in the awakened conscience and courage of the North.

We who love him now can hardly understand how deep was the love and how great the confidence that, a year later, raised the cabin-born, uncouth country lawyer and politician to be President of the United States.

We remember his strength and faith in the great war; we remember his gentle patience, his justice and mercy, and his martyrdom; but do we fully realize the effort he made to save his people from the ghastly sacrifice made on the battlefields where the nation was reborn?

IX

How still Lincoln became after his nomination for President in 1860! A note of acceptance, just twenty-three lines long, and then unbroken silence till the end of the campaign.

He had thundered throughout the country against the Christless creed of slavery until men forgot his crude manners, preposterous figure and shrill, piping voice in admiration and reverence of his noble qualities.

Now the crooked mouth was set hard. He retired to his modest home in Springfield, Illinois. Nor could threats or persuasions induce him to address a word to the public during that terrific campaign which was the prelude to the horrors of civil war.

In the upward reachings of Lincoln’s life there was a singular mysticism that sometimes startles one who contemplates the imperishable grandeur of his place in history.

He saw omens in dreams; experimented with the ghostly world of spiritualism; half-surrendered to madness, when his personal affections were attacked; predicted a violent death for himself; dreamed of his own assassination, and discussed the matter seriously; and gave evidence many times of a strange, aberrant emotional exaltation, alternated with brooding sadness or hilarious, uncontrollable merriment.

But behind these mere eccentricities were sanity, conscience, strength and far-seeing penetrativeness.

In the midst of his heroic debate on slavery with Douglas in 1858, while the whole nation watched the exciting struggle, he showed his statesmanlike appreciation of the situation when he said: “I am after larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.”

And when he was nominated in the roaring Chicago Convention, where the foremost politicians of the East actually shed tears over the defeat of William H. Seward, he let his party do the shouting, promising, denouncing and hurrahing, while he--wiser, cooler, abler than all--stood squarely on his record and his party’s platform, without apology, explanation or mitigation.

To his mind the issue was simple. It could not be misunderstood. Slavery was immoral. It must be confined to the slave States, where it had a constitutional sanction, but uncompromisingly kept out of the free territories.

Yet the country rang with threats that the slave States would break up the Union if Lincoln was elected. He had declared that the nation could not endure half slave and half free. That, they insisted, was a declaration of war against the slave States.

Lincoln drew the short gray shawl about his stooped shoulders, and his face grew more sorrowful. But he said nothing.

Not many months before he had written a letter to a Jefferson birthday festival in Boston, in which he flung the name of Jefferson against the Democrats as Douglas hurled the heart of Bruce into the ranks of the heathen:

“The Democracy of to-day holds the _liberty_ of one man to be absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man’s right of _property_.

Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man _before_ the dollar.

I remember being once amused much at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great coats on, which fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed the same feat as the two drunken men....

The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society, and yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’ Another bluntly calls them ‘self-evident lies.’ And others insidiously argue that they apply to ‘superior races.’...

This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and the capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.

Your obedient servant, A. LINCOLN.”

After that no man might claim that he had not bared his soul.

Editors, political leaders, personal friends, vainly attempted during the Presidential campaign to draw from him some public expression of opinion, some hint of what was going on in his mind while the national horizon flamed with passion and threats of war were openly made by the slaveholders.

But he knew that it would not pay to say a word that might complicate a question so clear. The American people were sound at heart. If the issue could be confined to the question of whether slavery was morally right or wrong, the common people could be depended upon to vote against spreading it to the free territories.

Lincoln’s confidence in the plain people grew with years. In spite of his shrewd experience in politics he was free from cynicism. There was a childlike simplicity in his character, a central purity and earnestness, that enabled him to see under the broadcloth and ruffles of the East the same elemental humanity he had known under the deerhide, jeans and coonskins of the West.

Up to the hour of his death he gave no evidence of class consciousness. The rich citizen was no better and no worse than the poor citizen. The college professor was no better and no worse than the field hand. At the bottom of each was the original man, with almost divine possibilities of justice, love and compassion in him.

It was this supreme faith in the better natures of men, and their ability to reach sound conclusions on simple moral issues, that persuaded Lincoln to remain mute throughout the struggle.

How many political leaders are there in the United States to-day who disclose their minds and hearts so unreservedly to the people that they could dare to stand for office with closed lips, relying solely on their record and on the general public intelligence?

Even in his career as a lawyer Lincoln made fun of himself. His small fees were the jest of his companions. It is probable that he did not earn an average of more than three thousand dollars a year, notwithstanding his eloquence and logic. When he went to the White House, all his possessions, including his residence, were worth only about seven thousand dollars.

So he laughed at and made light of his personal appearance. The change from deerhide breeches and coonskin cap to black cloth and a high silk hat simply emphasized the clumsy enormity of his figure. His skin was yellow and his face seamed and puckered. The gray eyes looked out of hollow sockets. The high cheek-bones protruded sharply above sunken cheeks. The mouth was awry and the neck long, lean and scraggy. His immensely long arms swung loosely from stooped shoulders, his trousers were always “hitched up too high,” and his ill-kept hat was set at a grotesque tilt from his lugubrious countenance. His great height, the lank, swinging slouchiness of his immense frame, his somber, saggy clothing and sorrowful expression, added to unconventional manners, made him a target for his political opponents.

“Old ape,” “ignorant baboon”--these were the favorite flings of the Southern Democrats. He was pictured as a raw, coarse, brutal and reckless “nigger lover,” filled with hatred of the slave States, eager to rob them of their legitimate property, a half-horse-half-alligator, unfit to enter a polite house or associate with gentlemen, and almost insane with the murderous fanaticism of the New England abolitionists.

If Lincoln felt the sting of this cruel satire he gave no sign of it. So humble was his nature that, after his election, he grew a beard at the suggestion of a little girl, who wrote to say that it might make him look better. He wrote this during the Presidential campaign:

“If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes--No other marks or brands recollected. A. LINCOLN.”

He was silent in the face of pitiless abuse and carricature, yet he sent many confidential letters, advising, encouraging, admonishing the Republican leaders. While his supporters carried fence-rails in processions and shouted hosannahs, he quietly directed matters from his home.

And, although he would sometimes laugh with a pure humor that bubbled up unconsciously from his blameless nature, as the strain of the political campaign increased, the tragic sadness of his countenance deepened, for his keen eyes began to see the awful significance of the eminence to which he was to be lifted.

A year ago the rebellion of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry had dramatically revealed the irreconcilable temperaments of North and South. While Virginia enthusiastically hanged the man who tried to create an armed negro revolution, the North tolled her bells, lowered her flags to half-mast and glorified him as a holy martyr.

X

A month before the first vote for President was cast, Governor Gist, of South Carolina, addressed a secret circular to the other slave State governors saying, that if Lincoln were elected, which seemed almost certain, South Carolina would secede from the Union. The whole South was urged to join in this dismemberment of the republic.

The answers of the governors, even before the election had occurred, showed that it was not the intention of the slave States to submit to the rule of the majority, and that, already, armed resistance to the national authority was acceptable as the alternative to “the yoke of a black Republican President.”

If any secret voice of this germinating treason reached Lincoln at Springfield he kept it to himself.

But when his victory was assured by a majority that made the combined vote of his opponents seem insignificant, his continued silence in the midst of general rejoicing and boasting showed that he understood the gravity of the situation.

South Carolina withdrew from the Union, seizing custom houses, post offices, arsenals and forts.

President Buchanan, old, weak and cowardly, promised to use no force against the rebels, but to leave everything to Congress. His Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, was a traitor, secretly helping the slave States to arm against the general government. His Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, also conspired with the disunionists, and finally resigned to take part in the rebellion. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, actually acted as a rebel commissioner to spread the doctrine of secession while he was still in the Cabinet. The Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Trescott, was another member of the great plot.

Within two months, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had followed South Carolina out of the Union. Forts, arsenals, post offices and custom houses were captured, the Stars and Stripes lowered, and the rebel flag hoisted.

Before Lincoln could be inaugurated, the seceded States had organized a Confederate government, with Jefferson Davis for President.

With treason in his Cabinet, and armed rebellion openly preached in Congress, the bewildered, rabbit-hearted Buchanan did nothing to defend the national sovereignty. He was no traitor--simply a poltroon, without character, convictions or courage enough to assert the plain powers of his office, and willing to shelter his cringing soul and dishonored responsibilities behind a paramount authority which he pretended to find in Congress.

Imagine Lincoln, sitting in far-away Springfield, helpless to act, while Buchanan permitted a foreign government to be set up within the United States, and promised to use no force against the rebels lest war might follow.

Think of the newly-chosen leader of the American people compelled to silence and impotence while the President refused to send relief to loyal Major Anderson and his handful of soldiers besieged in Fort Sumter by rebels whose arms had been furnished by the government they sought to destroy!

The lines in Lincoln’s face deepened. His eyes grew more sorrowful. The stooping shoulders stooped still lower. There was that in his look sometimes that compelled mingled awe and pity.

For Lincoln loved his country with the love that a father has for his child, and the pent-up agony that showed in his lean visage as he watched the attempt to break up the great republic might not yet find utterance.

It was useless for him to repeat that he did not hate the South; that he did not favor the political and social equality of negroes and whites; that he was not an abolitionist; that, although he considered slavery wrong and would oppose its extension to Kansas and all other free soil of the United States, he would do nothing to interfere with it in the States where it had Constitutional rights.

Yet he waited patiently and silently, believing that he could persuade the South that he was not an enemy, and in that time of slow anguish his soul turned to God for help.

The careless, foot-free, waggish woodchopper of New Salem had scoffed at religion, and written a bitter attack on the Bible, which a wiser friend had snatched from his hands and burned. The President-elect with the cares of a mighty nation in its death throes descending upon his shoulders, stretched his hands child-like to a power greater even than the “omnipotent and sovereign people.”

Mr. Herndon, his law partner, has given us an unforgetable picture of Lincoln a day before his departure for the White House:

“He crossed to the opposite side of the room and threw himself down on the old office sofa, which, after many years of service, had been moved against the wall for support. He lay for some moments, his face towards the ceiling, without either of us speaking. Presently he inquired, ‘Billy’--he always called me by that name--‘how long have we been together?’ ‘Over sixteen years,’ I answered. ‘We’ve never had a cross word in all that time, have we?’... He gathered a bundle of papers and books he wished to take with him, and started to go; but, before leaving, he made the strange request that the sign-board which swung on its rusty hinges at the foot of the stairway should remain. ‘Let it hang there,’ he said, with a significant lowering of the voice. ‘Give our clients to understand that the election of a President makes no change in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. If I live, I am coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practising law as if nothing had happened.’ He lingered for a moment, as if to take a last look at the old quarters, and then he passed through the door into the narrow hallway.”

On the day Lincoln left Springfield to take the oath of office at Washington he stood in a cold rain on the rear end of the train that was to take him away, and addressed a bareheaded crowd. His face worked with emotion. His lips trembled and his voice shook. His eyes sought the faces of his old neighbors with a new sadness.

“To-day I leave you,” he said, bending his tall, ugly figure, as if in benediction. “I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with me and aid me, I must fail.”

Strong men in the crowd wept.

“But if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail--I shall succeed.”

The long arms and bony hands were extended. The crooked mouth quivered, the gray eyes were moist, and the tall figure seemed to grow taller.

“Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.”

With that prayer on his lips Lincoln went on his way to Washington through many a cheering multitude that uncovered as the train passed.

He made speeches at Indianapolis, Columbus, Steubenville, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany and New York. He begged the American people to be patient. No blood would be shed unless the government was compelled to act in self-defense. There would be no “coercion” or “invasion” of the South, but the United States would retake its own forts and other property and collect duties on importations. In Cincinnati Lincoln spoke to the South, which was reviling him and defying the national authority, in terms that prove how eager he was to avert armed conflict:

“We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Constitution; and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerate men--if we have degenerated--may, according to the examples of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson and Madison. We mean to remember that you are as good as we are; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat you accordingly.”

It took a great soul in a man of Lincoln’s heroic origin, direct methods, intense patriotism and deep hatred of slavery to speak in such terms to rebellion.

The time came when he hurled a million armed men against the insurgent South, when with a stroke of his pen he set free four millions of slaves, representing a property value of about two and a half billion dollars; and when, with fire and sword and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions on billions of treasure, he proved to the world that democratic institutions were strong enough to resist the mightiest shocks of civil war.

But as he moved on to the scene of his great ordeal in Washington, there was nothing but temperate reason, kindness and peace on his lips.

It must not be forgotten that the tall, gawky, sad-faced lawyer in ill-fitting funereal black, was no limp-limbed product of sedentary sentimentalism, but a man with muscles of steel, who had thrashed and cowed the most dreaded desperadoes of the frontier, a self-made son of the wilderness, who had battled against floods, famines and wild beasts; and who had in him the stout heart and steady will of the cabin-born and forest-bred. Lincoln was incapable of fear, save the fear of folly or injustice. He was not afraid even of ridicule, that poisoned weapon before which so many strong men tremble.

As the nation prepared to honor the hundredth anniversary of his birth, well might it remember him, newly separated from his provincial and rude, but heroic West, advancing between the haggard passions of a divided country with firm, brotherly hands held out to the whole people.

In Philadelphia he was told by Allan Pinkerton, the detective, that there was a conspiracy to murder him when he reached Baltimore. Unless he agreed to make the rest of the journey secretly he could not reach Washington alive. He was urged not to expose himself again in public, but to go right on to his destination at once.

With this knowledge of his peril, he assisted in the raising of a new flag over Independence Hall that day, and delivered a noble address, in which he recalled the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence “which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”