(29KB) jeffersonJEFFERSON
Jefferson is one of the few men whose portrait, as preserved for us, shows us the man as we imagine him to be. No one can look at that lofty and noble countenance, with its calm and wide-set eyes, its firm yet tender mouth, its expression of complete serenity, without realizing that here was a man placed above the weakness and pettiness and meanness of the world, on a pinnacle of his own, strong in spirit, wise in judgment, and almost prophetic in vision.
The presidency descended, by an overwhelming majority, to one of Jefferson's stanch friends and supporters, for whom he had paved the way—James Madison, also a Virginian, who had been his secretary of state for eight years, and who was himself to serve two terms, during which the influence of the "Sage of Monticello" was paramount. The great crisis which Madison had to face was the second war with England, a war brought on by British aggression on the high seas, and bitterly opposed, especially in New England. The war, characterized by blunders on land and brilliant successes on the ocean, really resulted without victory to either side, and, indeed, was very nearly a defeat for America; but in the end, it enabledus to regain possession of the posts which England had persisted in occupying along the western boundary, and banished forever any fear that she might, at any time in the future, attempt to reassert her sovereignty over the United States.
Madison was also fortunate in his wife, the beautiful and brilliant Dolly Payne Todd, who played so prominent a part in the social life of the time, and who, when the British were marching into Washington to sack that city, managed to save some of the treasures of the White House from the invaders. It is difficult for us to realize, at this distant day, that our beautiful capital was once in the enemy's hands, given over to the flames; that was one of the great disgraces of the War of 1812; for the only force which rallied to the defense of the city was a few regiments of untrained militia, which could not stand for a minute before the British regulars, but ran away at the first fire.
Madison and his wife, however, soon came back to the White House from which they had been driven, and remained there four years longer, until the close of his second term, in 1817. For nearly a score of years thereafter, they lived a happy and tranquil life on their estate, Montpelier.
It is somewhat difficult to estimate Madison. He stood on a sort of middle ground between Jefferson and Hamilton. Earlier in his career, Hamilton influenced him deeply in regard to the adoption of the Constitution, of which he has been called the father. But, at a later date, Jefferson's influence became uppermost,and Madison swung over to the extreme of the state rights view, and drew the resolutions of the Virginia legislature declaring the Alien and Sedition laws "utterly null and void and of no effect," so that he has also been called the "Father of Nullification." However unstable his opinions may have been, there is no questioning his patriotism or the purity of his motives.
Again the presidential tradition was to remain unbroken, for Madison's successor was James Monroe, his secretary of state, a Virginian and a Democrat. The preponderance of the Democratic party was never more in evidence, for while he received 183 electoral votes, Rufus King, the Federalist candidate, received only 34. This, however, was as nothing to the great personal triumph he achieved four years later, when, as a candidate for re-election, only one vote was cast against him, and that by a man who voted as he did because he did not wish to see a second President chosen with the unanimity which had honored Washington.
Monroe is principally remembered to-day from a "doctrine" enunciated by him and known by his name, which remains a vital portion of American policy. It was in 1823 that he declared that the United States would consider any attempt of a European power to establish itself in this hemisphere as dangerous to her peace and safety, and as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition. The language is cautious and diplomatic, but what it means in plain English is that the United States will resistby force any attempt of a European power to conquer and colonize any portion of the three Americas—in other words, that this country will safeguard the independence of all her neighbors. This principle has come to be regarded as a basic one in the foreign relations of the United States, and while no European power has formally acknowledged it, more than one have had to bow before it. It is interesting to know that the enunciation of such a "doctrine" was recommended by Thomas Jefferson, and that Jefferson was Monroe's constant adviser throughout his career.
Monroe retired from the presidency in 1825, and the seven remaining years of his life were passed principally on his estate in Virginia. Jefferson said of him, "He is a man whose soul might be turned wrong side outwards, without discovering a blemish to the world,"—an estimate which was, of course, colored by a warm personal friendship, but which was echoed by many others of his contemporaries. Certain it is that few men have ever so won the affection and esteem of the nation, and his administration was known as the "era of good feeling." He is scarcely appreciated to-day at his true worth, principally because he does not measure up in genius to the great men who preceded him.
At striking variance with the practical unanimity of Monroe's election was that of John Quincy Adams, his successor. Over a quarter of a century had elapsed since a northern man had been chosen to the presidency. That man, strangely enough, wasthe father of the present candidate, but had retired from office after one acrimonious term, discredited and disappointed. Since then, the government of the country had been in the hands of Virginians. Now came John Quincy Adams, calling himself a Democrat, but really inheriting the principles of his father, and the contest which ensued for the presidency was unprecedented in the history of the country.
Adams's principal opponent was Andrew Jackson, a mighty man of whom we shall soon have occasion to speak, and so close was the contest that the electoral college was not able to make a choice. So, as provided by the Constitution, it was carried to the House of Representatives, and there, through the influence of Henry Clay, who was unfriendly to Jackson, Adams was chosen by a small majority. An administration which began in bitterness, continued bitter and turbulent. Men's passions were aroused, and four years later Adams repeated the fate of his father, in being overwhelmingly defeated.
But the most remarkable portion of his story is yet to come. Before that time, it had been the custom, as we have seen, for the ex-President to spend the remaining years of his life in dignified retirement; but the year after Adams left the White House, he was elected to the House of Representatives, and was returned regularly every two years until his death, which occurred upon its floor. He did much excellent work there, and was conspicuous in more than one memorable scene, but he is chieflyremembered for his battle for the right of petition. No more persistent fight was ever made by a man in a parliamentary body and some reference must be made to it here.
Soon after he took his seat in Congress, the movement against slavery was begun, and one fruit of it was the appearance of petitions for the abolition of slavery in the House of Representatives. A few were presented by Mr. Adams, and then more and more, as they were sent in to him, and finally the southern representatives became so aroused, that they succeeded in passing what was known as the "gag rule," which prevented the reception of these petitions by the House. Adams protested against this rule as an invasion of his constitutional rights, and from that time forward, amid the bitterest opposition, addressed his whole force toward the vindication of the right of petition. On every petition day, he would offer, in constantly increasing numbers, petitions which came to him from all parts of the country for the abolition of slavery. The southern representatives were driven almost to madness, but Adams kept doggedly on his way, and every year renewed his motion to strike out the gag rule. As constant dripping will wear away a stone, so his persistence wore away opposition, or, rather, the sentiment of the country was gradually changing, and at last, on December 3, 1844, his motion prevailed, and the great battle which he had fought practically alone was won. Four years later he fell, stricken with paralysis, at his place in the House.
It is worth pausing to remark that, of the six men who, up to this time, had held the presidency, four were from Virginia and two from Massachusetts; that, in every instance, the Virginians had been re-elected and had administered the affairs of the country to the satisfaction of the people, while both the Massachusetts men had been retired from office at the end of a single term, and after turbulent and violent administrations. All of them were what may fairly be called patricians, men of birth and breeding; they were the possessors of a certain culture and refinement, were descended from well-known families, and there seemed every reason to believe that the administration of the country would be continued in the hands of such men. For what other class of men was fitted to direct it? Then, suddenly, the people spoke, and selected for their ruler a man from among themselves, a man whose college was the backwoods, whose opinions were prejudices rather than convictions, and yet who was, withal, perhaps the greatest popular idol this country will ever see; whose very blunders endeared him to the people, because they knew his heart was right.
On the fifteenth day of March, 1767, in a little log cabin on the upper Catawba river, almost on the border-line between North and South Carolina—so near it, in fact, that no one knows certainly in which state it stood—a boy was born and christened Andrew Jackson. His father had died a few days before—one of those sturdy Scotch-Irish whom we haveseen emigrating to America in such numbers in search of a land of freedom. The boy grew up in the rude backwoods settlement, rough, boisterous, unlettered; at the age of fourteen, riding with Sumter in the guerrilla warfare waged throughout the state against the British, and then, captured and wounded on head and hand by a sabre-stroke whose mark he bore till his dying day, a prisoner in the filthy Camden prison-pen, sick of the small-pox, and coming out of it, at last, more dead than alive.
His mother nursed him back to life, and then started for Charleston to see what could be done for the prisoners rotting in the British prison-ships in the harbor, only herself to catch the prison-fever, and to be buried in a grave which her son was never able to discover.
Young Jackson, sobered by this and other experiences, applied himself with some diligence to his books, taught school for a time, studied law, and at the age of twenty was admitted to the bar, for which the standard was by no means high. To the west, the new state of Tennessee was in process of organization—an unpeopled wilderness for the most part—and early in the year 1788, Jackson secured the appointment as public prosecutor in the new state. It is not probable he had much competition, for the position was one calling for desperate courage, as well as for endurance to withstand the privations of back-woods life, and the pecuniary reward was small. In the fall of 1788, he proceeded to Nashville with a wagon train which came within an ace of beingannihilated by Indians before it reached its destination.
Jackson found his new position exactly suited to his peculiar genius. His personal recklessness made him the terror of criminals; he possessed the precise qualifications for success before backwoods juries and for personal popularity among the rough people who were his clients, with whom usually might was right. At the end of three or four years, he practically monopolized the law business of the district; and he soon became by far the most popular man in it, despite a hot-headed disposition which made him many enemies, which involved him in numberless quarrels, and which resulted in his fighting at least one duel, in which he killed his opponent and was himself dangerously wounded.
It was inevitable, of course, that he should enter politics, and equally inevitable that he should be successful there. Eight years after his arrival from Carolina, at the age of twenty-nine, he was elected to represent his state in Congress, and covered the eight hundred miles to Philadelphia on horseback. From the House, he was appointed to serve in the Senate, resigned from it to accept an election as Judge of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, was chosen major-general of the Tennessee militia, and so began that military career which was to have a remarkable culmination.
On the 25th of June, 1812, apprised of the outbreak of the second war with England, Jackson offered to the President his own services and thoseof the twenty-five hundred militia men of his district. The offer was at once accepted, and Jackson, getting his troops together, proceeded down the river to New Orleans. But jealousies at headquarters intervened, he was informed that New Orleans was in no present danger, his force was disbanded and left to get back home as best it could. Jackson, wild with rage, pledged his own resources to furnish this transportation, but was afterwards reimbursed by the government.
It was while he was getting his men back home again that Jackson received the nickname of "Old Hickory," which clung to him all the rest of his life, and which was really a good description of him. The story also illustrates how it was that his men came to idolize him, and why it was that he appealed so strongly to the common people. Jackson had three good horses, on that weary journey, but instead of riding one of them himself, he loaned all three to sick men who were unable to walk, and himself trudged along at the head of his men.
"The general is tough, isn't he?" one of them remarked, glancing at the tall, sturdy figure.
"Tough!" echoed another. "I should say he is—as tough as hickory!"
Jackson was lying in bed with a bullet in his shoulder, which he had received in an affray with Jesse Benton, and also, no doubt, nursing his chagrin over his treatment by the War Department, when news came of a great Indian uprising in Alabama. The Creeks had gone on the warpath and had openedproceedings by capturing Fort Mims, at the junction of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, on August 30, 1813, and massacring over five hundred people who had taken refuge there. Alabama was almost abandoned by the whites, and Georgia and Tennessee at once rushed to her relief by voting men and money to put down the Indians.
Jackson forgot wound and chagrin and took the field as soon as he was able to stir. He at once quarrelled with the other officers; but his men believed in him, though lack of food and the expiring of the short term of enlistment created so much insubordination that, on one occasion, he had to use half his army to prevent the other half from marching home. His energy was remarkable; he pushed forward into the Creek country, cut the Indians to pieces at Horseshoe Bend, and drove the survivors into Florida. At the end of seven months, the war was over, and the Creeks had been so punished that there was never any further need to fear them.
The campaign had another result—it established Jackson's reputation as a fighter, and soon afterwards he was appointed a major-general in the army of the United States, and was given command of the Department of the South. The pendulum had swung the other way, with a vengeance! But Jackson rose magnificently to this increased responsibility. He discovered that the English were in force at Pensacola, which was in Florida and therefore on Spanish territory; but he did not hesitate. He marched against the place with an army of three thousand,stormed the town, captured it, blew up the forts, which the Spaniards hastily surrendered, and so made it untenable as an English base. Perhaps no other exploit of his career was so audacious, or so well carried out. Pensacola subdued, he hastened to New Orleans, which was in the gravest danger.
The overthrow of Napoleon and his banishment to Elba had given England a breathing-space, and the veteran troops which had been with Wellington in Spain were left free for use against the Americans. A great expedition was at once organized to attack and capture New Orleans, and at its head was placed General Pakenham, the brilliant commander of the column which had delivered the fatal blow at Salamanca. A fleet of fifty vessels, manned by the best sailors of England, was got ready, ten thousand men put aboard, and in December, a week after Jackson's arrival at New Orleans, this great fleet anchored off the broad lagoons of the Mississippi delta. Seventeen thousand men, in all, counting the sailors, who could, of course, be employed in land operations; and a mighty equipment of artillery, for which the guns of the fleet could also be used. The few American gunboats were overpowered, and Pakenham proceeded leisurely to land his force for the advance against the city, which it seemed that nothing could save. On December 23d, his advance-guard of two thousand men was but ten miles below New Orleans.
On the afternoon of that very day, the vanguard of Jackson's Tennesseans marched into New Orleans, clad in hunting-shirts of buckskin or homespun, wearingcoonskin caps, and carrying on their shoulders the long rifles they knew how to use so well. They had made one of the most remarkable marches in history, in their eagerness to meet the enemy, and Jackson at once hurried them forward for a night attack. It was delivered with the greatest fury, and the British were so roughly handled that they were forced to halt until the main body of the army came up.
When they did advance, they found that Jackson had made good use of the delay. With the first light of the dawn which followed the battle, he had commenced throwing up a rude breastwork, one end resting on the river, the other on a swamp, and by nightfall, it was nearly done. Mud and logs had been used, and bales of cotton, until it formed a fairly strong position. The British were hurrying forward reinforcements, and little did either side suspect that on that very day, at Ghent, thousands of miles away, a treaty of peace had been signed between the United States and England, and that the blood they were about to spill would be spilled uselessly.
In a day or two, the British had got up their artillery, and tried to batter down the breastworks, but without success; then, Pakenham, forgetting Bunker Hill, determined to try a frontal assault. He had no doubt of victory, for he had three times as many men as Jackson; troops, too, seasoned by victories won over the most renowned marshals of Napoleon. At Toulouse they had driven Marshal Soult from a position infinitely stronger than this rude breastworks; time after time they had charged and carriedfortifications, manned by the best soldiers in Europe. What chance, then, had this little force of backwoodsmen, commanded by an ignorant and untrained general? So Pakenham ordered that the assault should take place on the morning of January 8th.
From the bustle and stir in the British camp, the Americans knew that something unusual was afoot, and long before dawn, the riflemen were awake, had their breakfast, and then took their places behind the mud walls, their rifles ready. At last the sun rose, the fog lifted, and disclosed the splendid and gleaming lines of the British infantry, ready for the advance. As soon as the air was clear, Pakenham gave the word, and the columns moved steadily forward. From the American breastworks not a rifle cracked. Half the distance was covered, three-fourths; and then, as one man, those sturdy riflemen rose and fired, line upon line. Under that terrible fire, the British column broke and paused, then surged forward again, almost to the foot of the breastworks. But not a man lived to mount them. No column could stand under such a fire, and the British broke and ran.
Mad with rage, Pakenham rallied his men and placed himself at their head. Again came the word to charge, and again that gleaming column rushed forward, only to be again met by that deadly hail of lead. Pakenham, mortally wounded, reeled and fell from his saddle, officer after officer was picked off by those unequalled marksmen, the field was covered with dead and dying. Even the British saw, at last,the folly of the movement, and retired sullenly to their lines. For a week they lay there; then, abandoning their heavy artillery, they marched back to their ships and sailed for England. The men who had conquered the conquerors of Europe had themselves met defeat.
The battle had lasted less than half an hour, but the British left behind them no less than twenty-six hundred men—seven hundred killed, fourteen hundred wounded, five hundred prisoners. The American loss was eight killed and thirteen wounded.
News of this brilliant victory brought sudden joy to a depressed people, for elsewhere on land the war had been waged disgracefully enough, and Jackson's name was on everyone's lips. His journey to Washington was a kind of triumphal march, and his popularity grew by leaps and bounds. People journeyed scores of miles to see him, for there was a strange fascination about the rugged old fighter which few could resist, and already his friends were urging him as a candidate for the presidency. There could be no doubt that he was the people's choice, and at last, in the campaign of 1823, he was formally placed in nomination, his chief opponent being John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts. The result of that contest has already been told. Jackson received more electoral votes than any other candidate, but not enough to elect, and the contest was decided by the House of Representatives. On that occasion, Henry Clay came nearer committing political suicide than ever again in his life, for he threw his influence against Jackson,and lost a portion of his popularity which he never recovered.
Jackson bided his time, and spent the four years following in careful preparation for the next contest. So well did he build his fences that, when the electoral vote was cast, he received the overwhelming majority of 178 votes to 83 for Adams.
Never before had the city of Washington seen such an inauguration as took place on the fourth of March following. It seemed as though the whole population of the country had assembled there to see the old fighter take the oath of office. Daniel Webster wrote of it, "I never saw such a crowd here before. Persons came five hundred miles to see General Jackson and really seem to think that our country is rescued from some dreadful danger." As, perhaps, it was.
Jackson began his administration with characteristic vigor. It was he who first put into practice the principle, "To the victors belong the spoils." There was about him no academic courtesy, and he proceeded at once to displace many Federal officeholders and to replace them with his own adherents. The Senate tried for a time to stem the tide, but was forced to give it up. There was no withstanding that fierce and dominant personality. Jackson was more nearly a dictator than any President had ever been before him, or than any will ever be again. His great popularity seemed rather to increase than to diminish, and in 1832, he received no less than 219 electoral votes.
(25KB) jacksonJACKSON
Let us do him justice. Prejudiced and ignorant and wrong-headed as he was, he was a pure patriot, laboring for his country's good. Nothing proves this more strongly than his attitude on the nullification question, in other words, the right of a state to refuse to obey a law of the United States, and to withdraw from the Union, should it so desire. This is not the place to go into the constitutional argument on this question. It is, of course, all but certain that the original thirteen states had no idea, when they ratified the Constitution, that they were entering an alliance from which they would forever be powerless to withdraw; and the right of withdrawal had been asserted in New England more than once. South Carolina was the hot-bed of nullification sentiment, arising partly from the growing anti-slavery feeling at the North, and partly because of the enactment of a tariff law which was felt to be unjust, and on October 25, 1832, the South Carolina legislature passed an ordinance asserting that, since the state had entered the Union of its free will, it could withdraw from it at any time and resume the sovereign and independent position which it had held at the close of the Revolution, and that it would do so should there be any attempt to enforce the tariff laws within the state.
Jackson's attitude on this question was already well known. At a banquet celebrating Jefferson's birthday, two years before, at which Calhoun and others had given toasts and made addresses in favor of nullification, Jackson had startled his audience byrising, glass in hand, and giving the toast, "Our Federal Union—it must be preserved!" That toast had fallen like a bombshell among the ranks of the nullifiers, and had electrified the whole Nation. Since then, he had become a stronger nationalist than ever; besides, he was always ready for a fight, and whenever he saw a head had the true Irishman's impulse to hit it. So he responded to the South Carolina nullification ordinance by sending two men-of-war to Charleston harbor and collecting a force of United States troops along the Carolina border. "I consider the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union," he wrote; and when a South Carolina congressman, about to go home, asked the President if he had any commands for his friends in that state, Jackson retorted:
"Yes, I have; please give my compliments to my friends in your state, and say to them that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on, engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach."
Whether or not this message was delivered history does not say, but the whole Nation arose in wrath behind its President, state after state denounced nullification and disunion, and the South Carolina ordinance was finally repealed. So the storm passed for the moment. It left Jackson more of a popular hero than ever; it was as though he had won another battle of New Orleans. One cannot but wonder whatwould have happened had he been acting as President, instead of Buchanan, in those trying years after 1856.
He retired from the presidency broken in health and fortune, for however well he took care of the interests of his friends, he was always careless about his own. The last eight years of his life were spent at his Tennessee estate, The Hermitage. The end came in 1845, but his name has remained as a kind of watchword among the common people—a synonym for rugged honesty, and bluff sincerity. His career is, all in all, by far the most remarkable of any man who ever held the high office of President—with one possible exception, that of Abraham Lincoln.
Jackson was one of the most perfect political manipulators and machine-builders this country ever saw, and he had so perfected his machine at the close of his second term that he was able to name as his successor and the heir of his policies, Martin Van Buren, of New York, a man who had been one of Jackson's most valued lieutenants from the first, an astute politician, but not remarkable in any way, nor able to impress himself upon the country. He announced at his inauguration that it was his intention, to tread in the footsteps of his "illustrious predecessor," but none for a moment imagined that he was big enough to fill Jackson's shoes. Indeed, Jackson, was by far the most important figure at the inauguration.
Van Buren's term as President witnessed nothingmore momentous than the great panic of 1837, which he faced with a calmness and clear-sightedness surprising even to his friends, but which nevertheless assisted a collection of malcontents, under the leadership of Henry Clay, calling themselves National Republicans or Whigs, to defeat him for re-election. There was really no valid reason why he should have been re-elected; he had little claim, upon the country, but was for the most part, merely a clever politician, the first to attain the presidency. His life had been marked by an orderly advance from local to state, and then to national offices—an advance obtained not because he stood for any great principle, but because he knew how to make friends and build his political fences.
His nomination and election to the presidency was in no sense an accident, as was Taylor's, Pierce's, Hayes's and Garfield's, but was carefully prearranged and thoroughly understood. Yet let us do him the justice to add that his public services were, in some respects, of a high order, and that he was not wholly unworthy of the last great honor paid him. He was a candidate for the nomination in 1844, but was defeated by James K. Polk; and four years later, secured the nomination, but was defeated at the polls by Zachary Taylor. That ended his political career.
In the campaign against him of 1840, the Whigs were fortunate in having for their candidate William Henry Harrison, a man of immense personal popularity, resembling Jackson in that his reputation hadbeen made as an Indian fighter in the West, where he had defeated Tecumseh at the battle of Tippecanoe, and by a successful campaign in the war of 1812. Since then, he had been living quietly on his farm in Ohio, with no expectation of anything but passing his remaining years in quiet, for he was nearly seventy years of age. But Clay, with a sort of prophetic insight, picked him out as the Whig leader, and "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too" became the rallying cry of a remarkable campaign, which swept the country from end to end and effectually swamped Van Buren. It was too strenuous for a man as old as Harrison, and he died at the White House within a month of taking the oath of office.
The "Tyler Too" was John Tyler, who had been elected Vice-President, and who assumed the office of President upon Harrison's death. His accession was little less than a bomb-shell to the party which had nominated him and secured his election. For he was a Virginian, a follower of Calhoun and an ardent pro-slavery man, while the Whigs were first, last and all the time anti-slavery. He had been placed on the ticket with Harrison, who was strongly anti-slavery, in the hope of securing the votes of some disaffected Democrats, but to see him President was the last thing the Whigs desired. The result was that he soon became involved in a bitter quarrel with Clay and the other leaders of the party, which effectually; killed any chance of renomination he may have had. He became the mark for perhaps the most unrestrainedabuse ever aimed at a holder of the presidency.
It was largely unmerited, for Tyler was a capable man, had seen service in Congress and as governor of his state; but he was dry and uninspiring, and not big enough for the presidency, into which he could never have come except by accident. His administration was marked by few important events except the annexation of Texas, which will be dealt with more particularly when we come to consider the lives of Sam Houston and the other men who brought the annexation about. He retired to private life at the close of his term, appearing briefly twenty years later as a member of a "congress" which endeavored to prevent the war between the states, and afterwards as a member of the Confederate Congress, in which he served until his death.
Clay secured the Whig nomination for himself, in the campaign of 1844, and his opponent on the Democratic ticket was James Knox Polk, a native of North Carolina, but afterwards removing to Tennessee. He had been a member of Congress for fourteen years, and governor of Tennessee for three, and was a consistent exponent of Democratic principles. Two great questions were before the country: the annexation of Texas and the right to Oregon. Polk was for the immediate annexation of Texas and for the acquisition of Oregon up to 54° 40" north latitude, regardless of Great Britain's claims, and "Fifty-four forty or fight!" became one of the battle-cries of the campaign. Clay, inveterate trimmerand compromiser that he was, professed to be for the annexation of Texas, provided it could be accomplished without war with Mexico, which was arrant nonsense, since Mexico had given notice that she would consider annexation an act of war. The result of Clay's attitude, and of a widespread distrust of his policies, was that Polk was elected by a large majority.
His administration was destined to be a brilliant one, for Texas was at once annexed, and the brief war with Mexico which followed, one of the most successful ever waged by any country, carried the southwestern boundary of the United States to the Rio Grande, and added New Mexico and California to the national domain, while a treaty with England secured for the country the present great state of Oregon, although here Polk receded from his position and accepted a compromise which confined Oregon below the forty-ninth parallel. But even this was something of a triumph. With that triumph, the name of Marcus Whitman is most closely associated, through a brilliant but rather useless feat of his, of which we shall speak later on. Polk seems to have been an able and conscientious man, without any pretensions to genius—just a good, average man, like any one of ten thousand other Americans. He refused a renomination because of ill-health, and died soon after retiring from office.
The Democratic party had by this time become hopelessly disrupted over the slavery question, which had become more and more acute. The great strengthof the state rights party had always been in the South, and southern statesmen had always opposed any aggression on the part of the national government. The North, on the other hand, had always leaned more or less toward a strong centralization of power. So it followed that while the Democratic party was paramount in the South, its opponents, by whatever name known, found their main strength in the North.
Yet, even in the North, there was a strong Democratic element, and, but for the intrusion of the slavery question, the party would have controlled the government for many years to come. But the North was gradually coming to feel that the slavery question was more important than the more abstract one of national aggression; the more so since, by insisting upon the enforcement of such measures as the Fugitive Slave Law, the South was, as it were, keeping open and bleeding a wound which might to some extent have healed. In 1848 the split came, and the Democratic party put two candidates in the field, Lewis Cass for the South, and Martin Van Buren for the North.
The Whig Party, taking advantage of the knowledge gained in previous campaigns, looked around for a famous general, and managed to agree upon Zachary Taylor, who had made an exceedingly brilliant record in the war with Mexico. He was sixty-five years old at the time, a sturdy giant of a man, reared on the frontier, hardened by years of Indian warfare, whose nickname of "Old Rough and Ready" was not a bad description. He caught thepopular fancy, for he possessed those qualities which appeal to the plain people, and this, assisted by the division in the ranks of his opponents, won him a majority of the electoral votes. He took the oath of office on March 4, 1849, but, after sixteen months of troubled administration, died suddenly on July 9, 1850.
Millard Fillmore, who had been elected Vice-President, at once took the oath of office as chief executive. He was a New York man, a lawyer, had been a member of Congress, and, as Vice-President, had presided over the bitter slavery debates in the Senate. His sympathies were supposed to be anti-slavery, yet he signed the Fugitive Slave Law, when it was placed before him, much to the chagrin of many people who had voted for him. He signed his own political death-warrant at the same time, for, at the Whig National Convention in 1852, he was defeated for the nomination for President, after a long struggle, by General Winfield Scott, another veteran of the Mexican war. Four years later, Fillmore, having managed to regain, the confidence of his party, secured the Whig nomination unanimously, but was defeated at the polls, and spent the remaining years of his life quietly at his home in Buffalo.
Against General Scott, the Democrats nominated Franklin Scott Pierce, the nomination being in the nature of an accident, though Pierce was in every way a worthy candidate. His family record begins with his father, Benjamin Pierce, who, as a lad of seventeen, stirred by the tidings of the fight at Lexington,left his home in Chelmsford, musket on shoulder, to join the patriot army before Boston. He settled in New Hampshire after the Revolution, and his son Franklin was born there in 1804. He followed the usual course of lawyer, congressman and senator, and served throughout the war with Mexico, rising to the rank of brigadier-general, and securing a reputation second only to that of Scott and Taylor.
At the Democratic convention of 1852, Pierce was not a candidate for the nomination, and did not know that any one intended to mention his name, or even thought of him in that connection. But the convention was unable to agree on a candidate, and on the fourth day and thirty-third ballot, some delegate cast his vote for General Franklin Pierce, of New Hampshire. The name attracted attention, Pierce's career had been distinguished and above reproach, other delegates voted for him, until, on the forty-ninth ballot, he was declared the unanimous choice of the convention. His election was overwhelming, as he carried twenty-seven states out of thirty-one.
Once in the presidential chair, however, this popularity gradually slipped away from him. He found himself in an impossible position, between two fires, for the slavery question was dividing the country more and more and there seemed no possible way to reconcile the warring sections. Pierce, perhaps, made the mistake of trying to placate both, instead of taking his stand firmly with one or the other; andthe consequence was that at the convention of 1856, he received a few votes from courtesy, but was never seriously in the running, which resulted in the nomination of James Buchanan. Pierce returned to his home in New Hampshire, to find his friends and neighbors estranged from him by his supposed pro-slavery views, which had yet not been radical enough to win him the friendship of the South; but time changed all that, and his last years were spent in honored and opulent retirement.
James Buchanan was, like Andrew Jackson, of Scotch-Irish descent, but there the resemblance between the two ended, for Buchanan had little of Jackson's tremendous positiveness and strength of character. His disposition was always to compromise, while Jackson's was to fight. Now compromise is often a very admirable thing, but where it shows itself to be impossible and leaves fighting the only resource, the wise man puts all thought of it behind him and prepares for battle. Which is precisely what Buchanan did not do. He had been a lawyer and congressman, minister to Russia, senator, secretary of state and minister to England, and so had the widest possible political acquaintanceship; he was a man of somewhat unusual culture; but, alas! he found that something more than culture was needed to guide him in the troublous times amid which he fell. I have often thought that Buchanan's greatest handicap was his wide friendship, which often made it almost impossible to say no, however much he may have wished to do so. An unknownbackwoodsman, like Andrew Jackson, with no favors to return and no friendships to be remembered, could have acted far more effectively.
Buchanan's opponent for the presidency was John C. Frémont, and there was a great stir and bustle among the people who were supposed to support him, but Buchanan won easily, and at once found himself in the midst of the most perplexing difficulties. Kansas was in a state of civil war; two days after his inauguration the Supreme Court handed down the famous Dred Scott decision, declaring the right of any slave-holder to take his slaves as property into any territory; while the young Republican party was siding openly with the abolitionists, and, a very firebrand in a powder-house, in 1859, John Brown seized Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and attempted to start a slave insurrection. Now a slave insurrection was the one thing which the South feared more than any other—it was the terror which was ever present. And so John Brown's mad attempt excited a degree of hysteria almost unbelievable.
Small wonder that Buchanan was soon at his wits' ends. His sympathies were with the slave-holders; he doubted his right to coerce a seceding state; his friendships were largely with southern statesmen—and yet, to his credit be it stated, on January 8, 1860, after secession had become a thing assured, he seems suddenly to have seen his duty clearly, and in a special message, declared his intention to collect the revenues and protect public property in all thestates, and to use force if necessary. Taken all in all, his attitude in those trying days was a creditable one—as creditable as could be expected from any average man. What the time needed was a genius, and fortunately one rose to the occasion. Buchanan, harried and despondent, must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when he surrendered the helm to the man who had been chosen to succeed him—the man, by some extraordinary chance, in all the land best fitted to steer the ship of state to safety—the man who was to be the dominant figure of the century in American history.
WASHINGTON, GEORGE. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22 (old style, February 11), 1732; sent on a mission to the French beyond the Alleghenies, 1753-54; appointed lieutenant-colonel, 1754; defeated by the French at Fort Necessity, July 3, 1754; aide-de-camp to Braddock, 1755; commanded on the frontier, 1755-57; led the advance-guard for the reduction of Fort Duquesne, 1758; married Martha Custis, January 9, 1759; delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-75; appointed commander-in-chief of the continental forces, June 15, 1775; assumed command of the army, July 3, 1775; compelled evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776; defeated at battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776; defeated at White Plains, October 28, 1776; surprised the British at Trenton, December 26, 1776; won the battle of Princeton, January, 1777; defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; at Valley Forge, during the winter of 1777-78;won the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778; captured Yorktown and the army of Cornwallis, October 19, 1781; resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, December 23, 1783; president of the Constitutional Convention, 1787; unanimously elected President of the United States, January, 1789; inaugurated at New York, April 30, 1789; unanimously re-elected, 1793; issued farewell address to the people, September, 1796; retired to Mount Vernon, March, 1797; died there, December 14, 1799.
ADAMS, JOHN. Born at Braintree, now Quincy, Massachusetts, October 30, 1735; graduated at Harvard, 1755; studied law, took a leading part in opposing Stamp Act, was counsel for the British soldiers charged with murder in connection with the "Boston massacre" in 1770, and became a leader of the patriot party; member of Revolutionary Congress of Massachusetts, 1774; delegate to first and second Continental Congress, 1774-75; commissioner to France, 1777; negotiated treaties with the Netherlands, Great Britain and Prussia, 1782-83; minister to London, 1785-88; Federal Vice-President, 1789-97; President, 1797-1801; defeated for re-election and retired to Quincy, 1801; died there, July 4, 1886.
JEFFERSON, THOMAS. Born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743; member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-75, and 1776-78, and of the Continental Congress, 1775-76; drafted Declaration of Independence, 1776; governor of Virginia, 1779-81; member of Congress, 1783-84; minister to France, 1784-89; secretary of state, 1789-93; Vice-President, 1797-1801; President, 1801-09; died at Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia, July 4, 1826.
MADISON, JAMES. Born at Port Conway, Virginia, March 16, 1751; graduated at Princeton, 1771; delegate to Congress, 1780-83, and to the Constitutional Convention, 1787; member of Congress, 1789-97; secretary of state, 1801-09; President, 1809-1817; died at Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia, June 28, 1836.
MONROE, JAMES. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, April 28, 1758; member of Virginia assembly, 1782; member of Congress, 1783-86; United States senator, 1790-94; minister to France, 1794-96; governor of Virginia, 1799-1802; minister to Great Britain, 1803-07; secretary of state, 1811-17; President, 1817-25, an administration, known as "the era of good feeling"; died at New York City, July 4, 1831.
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY. Born at Braintree, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767; graduated at Harvard, 1788; admitted to the bar, 1791; minister to the Netherlands, 1794-97; and to Prussia, 1797-1801; United States senator, 1803-08; minister to Russia, 1809-14; minister to England, 1815-17; secretary of state, 1817-25; President, 1825-29; member of Congress, 1831-48; died at Washington, February 23, 1848.
JACKSON, ANDREW. Born at the Waxham settlement, North Carolina (?), March 15, 1767; member of Congress, 1796-97; United States senator, 1797-98; justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1798-1804; defeated the Creeks at Talladega, 1813, and at Horseshoe Bend, 1814; captured Pensacola from the English, 1814; won the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815; commanded against the Seminoles, 1817-18; governor of Florida, 1821; United States senator, 1823-25; defeated for President by J.Q. Adams, 1824; President,1829-37; died at the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, June 8, 1845.
VAN BUREN, MARTIN. Born at Kinderhook, New York, December 5, 1782; admitted to the bar, 1803; entered New York State Senate, 1812; United States senator, 1821-28; governor of New York, 1828-29; secretary of state, 1829-31; Vice-President, 1833-37; President, 1837-41; defeated for President, 1840, 1844, 1848; died at Kinderhook, July 24, 1862.
HARRISON, WILLIAM HENRY. Born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Virginia, February 9, 1773; governor of Indiana Territory, 1801-13; won victory of Tippecanoe, 1811, and of the Thames, 1813; member of Congress, 1816-19; United States senator, 1825-28; minister to Colombia, 1828-29; defeated for Presidency, 1836; elected President in the "log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign, 1840; inaugurated, March 4, 1841; died at Washington, April 4, 1841.
TYLER, JOHN. Born at Greenway, Charles City County, Virginia, March 29, 1790; admitted to the bar, 1809; member of Virginia legislature, 1811-16; member of Congress, 1816-21; governor of Virginia, 1825-27; United States senator, 1827-36; elected Vice-President, 1840, and succeeded to Presidency on the death of General Harrison, April 4, 1841; president of the peace convention of 1861, favored secession and served as member of the Confederate provisional Congress; died at Richmond, Virginia, January 18, 1862.
POLK, JAMES KNOX. Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, November 2, 1795; admitted to thebar, 1820; member of Congress, 1825-39; speaker of the House of Representatives, 1835-39; governor of Tennessee, 1839-41; President, 1845-49; died at Nashville, Tennessee, June 15, 1849.
TAYLOR, ZACHARY. Born in Orange County, Virginia, September 24, 1784; entered the army as first lieutenant, 1808; served in War of 1812, attaining rank of major; served in Black Hawk's war, 1832, with rank of colonel; defeated Seminole Indians, 1837; commander-in-chief of Florida, 1838; took command of the army in Texas, 1845; won battle of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, and that of Reseca de la Palma, May 9, 1846; captured Matamoras, May 18, and Monterey, September 24, 1846; defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847; appointed major-general, June 29, 1846; elected President, 1848; inaugurated, March 4, 1849; died at Washington, July 9, 1850.
FILLMORE, MILLARD. Born at Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, January 7, 1800; admitted to the bar, 1823; member of New York State legislature, 1829-31; member of Congress, 1833-35, 1837-43; elected Vice-President, 1848, and succeeded to presidency on the death of Taylor, July 9, 1850; died at Buffalo, New York, March 8, 1874.
PIERCE, FRANKLIN. Born at Hillsborough, New Hampshire, November 23, 1804; member of Congress, 1833-37; United States senator, 1837-42; served with distinction in Mexican war; President, 1853-57; died at Concord, New Hampshire, October 8, 1869.
BUCHANAN, JAMES. Born at Stony Batter, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, April 22, 1791; member ofCongress, 1821-31; minister to Russia, 1831-33; United States senator, 1833-45; secretary of state, 1845-49; minister to Great Britain, 1853-56; President, 1857-61; died at Wheatland, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 1, 1868.
And so we have come down through the years to Abraham Lincoln—that patient and gentle man whose memory ranks with Washington's as America's priceless heritage. A blessing and an inspiration—a mystery, too; an enigma among men, lonely and impressive; not fully understood nor understandable to the depths of that great heart of his; not fully explainable, for what strange power was it lifted that ignorant, ill-bred, uncouth, backwoods boy to a station among the stars?
Seldom has any man who started so low mounted so high. Abraham Lincoln's early life was of the most miserable description. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a worthless rover; his mother, Nancy Hanks, was of a "poor white" Virginia family with an unenviable record. His birthplace was a squalid log cabin in Washington County, Kentucky. His surroundings were such as are commonly encountered in a coarse, low, ignorant, poverty-stricken family. His father was at the very bottom of the social scale, so ignorant he could scarcely write his name. His mother inherited the shiftlessness and carelessness which is part and parcel of "poor white."These things are incontestable, they must be looked in the face. And yet, in spite of them, in spite of such a handicap as few other great men even approximated, Abraham Lincoln emerged to be the leader of a race.
In 1816, Thomas Lincoln decided he would remove to Indiana. Abraham was at that time seven years old, and for a year after the removal, the family lived in what was called a "half-faced camp," fourteen feet square—that is to say, a covered shed of three sides, the fourth side being open to the weather. Then the family achieved the luxury of a cabin, but a cabin without floor or door or window. Amid this wretchedness, Lincoln's mother died, and was laid away in a rough coffin of slabs at the edge of the little clearing. Three months later, a passing preacher read the funeral service above the grave.
Thomas Lincoln soon married again and, strangely enough, made a wise choice, for his new wife not only possessed furniture enough to fill a four-horse wagon, but, what was of more importance, was endowed with a thrifty and industrious temperament. That she should have consented to marry the ne'er-do-well is a mystery; perhaps he was not without his redeeming virtues, after all. She made him put a floor and windows in his cabin, and she was a better mother to his children than their real one had ever been. For the first time, young Abraham got some idea of the comforts and decencies of life, and, as his step-mother put it, "began to look a little human." He was not an attractive object, even at best, forhe was lanky and clumsy, with great hands and feet, and a skin prematurely wrinkled and shrivelled. By the time he was seventeen, he was six feet tall, and he soon added two more inches to his stature. Needless to say, his clothes never caught up with him, but were always too small.
His schooling was of the most meagre description; in fact, in his whole life, he went to school less than one year. Yet there soon awakened within the boy a trace of unusual spirit. He actually liked to read. He saw few books, but such as he could lay his hands on, he read over and over. That one fact alone set him apart at once from the other boys of his class. To them reading was an irksome labor.
All this reading had its effect. He acquired a vocabulary. That is to say, instead of the few hundred words which were all the other boys knew by which to express their thoughts, he soon had twice as many; besides that, he soon got a reputation as a wit and story-teller, and his command of words made him fond of speechmaking. He resembled most boys in liking to "show off." He had learned, too, that there were comforts in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, and so, as soon as he was of age, he left that unattractive dwelling-place and struck out for himself, making a livelihood in various ways—by splitting rails, running a river boat, managing a store, enlisting for the Black Hawk war—doing anything, in a word, that came to hand and would serve to put a little money in his pocket. He came to know a great manypeople and so, in 1832, he proclaimed himself a candidate for the state legislature for Sangamon County, Illinois, where he had made his home for some years. No doubt to most people, his candidacy must have seemed in the nature of a joke, and though he stumped the county thoroughly and entertained the crowds with his stories and flashes of wit, he was defeated at the polls.
That episode ended, he returned to store-keeping; but he had come to see that the law was the surest road to political preferment, and so he spent such leisure as he had in study, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. As has been remarked before, the requirements for admission were anything but prohibitory, most lawyers sharing the oft-quoted opinion of Patrick Henry that the only way to learn law was to practise it. Lincoln decided to establish himself at Springfield, opened an office there, and for the next twenty years, practised law with considerable success, riding from one court to another, and gradually extending his circle of acquaintances. He even became prosperous enough to marry, and in 1842, after a courtship of the most peculiar description, married a Miss Mary Todd—a young woman somewhat above him in social station, and possessed of a sharp tongue and uncertain temper which often tried him severely.
It was inevitable, of course, that he should become interested again in politics, and he threw in his fortunes with the Whig Party, serving two or three terms in the state legislature and one in Congress,All of this did much to temper and chasten his native coarseness and uncouthness, but he was still just an average lawyer and politician, with no evidence of greatness about him, and many evidences of commonness. Then, suddenly, in 1858, he stood forth as a national figure, in a contest with one of the most noteworthy men in public life, Stephen A. Douglas.
Douglas was an aggressive, tireless and brilliant political leader, the acknowledged head of the Democratic party, and had represented Illinois in the Senate for many years. He had a great ambition to be President, had missed the nomination in 1852 and 1856, but was determined to secure it in 1860, and was carefully building to that end. His term as senator expired in 1858, and his re-election seemed essential to his success. Of his re-election he had no doubt, for Illinois had always been a Democratic state, though it was becoming somewhat divided in opinion. The southern part was largely pro-slavery, but the northern part, including the rapidly-growing city of Chicago, was inclined the other way. This division of opinion made Douglas's part an increasingly difficult one, for pro-slave and anti-slave sentiment were as irreconcilable as fire and water.
Lincoln, meanwhile, had been active in the formation of the new Republican party in the state, had made a number of strong speeches, and, on June 16, 1858, the Republican convention resolved that: "Hon. Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's termof office." A month later, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. Douglas at once accepted, never doubting his ability to overwhelm his obscure opponent, and the famous duel began which was to rivet national attention and give Lincoln a national prominence.
The challenge on Lincoln's part was a piece of superb generalship. In such a contest, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Whatever the result, the fact that he had crossed swords with so renowned a man as Stephen A. Douglas would give him a kind of reflected glory. But in addition to that, he had the better side of the question. His course was simple; he was seeking the support of anti-slavery people; Douglas's task was much more complex, for he wished to offend neither northern nor southern Democrats, and he soon found himself offending both. To carry water on both shoulders is always a risky thing to attempt, and Douglas soon found himself fettered by the awkward position he was forced to maintain; while Lincoln, free from any such handicap, could strike with all his strength.
His stand from the first was a bold one—so bold that many of his followers regarded it with consternation and disapproval. In his speech accepting the nomination, he had said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other," and he pursued this line of argument in the debates alleging that the purpose of the pro-slavery men was to make slavery perpetual and universal, and pointingto recent history in proof of the assertion. When asked by Douglas whether he considered the negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." He was not an abolitionist, and declared more than once that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists," that he had "no lawful right to do so," but only to prohibit it in "any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of the evil."
Even so skillful a debater as Douglas soon found himself hard put to it to answer Lincoln's arguments, without offending one or the other of the powerful factions whose support he must have to reach the presidency. At the beginning, his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage, which, however, Lincoln's earnestness and directness soon overcame. Tens of thousands of people gathered to hear the debates, they were printed from end to end of the country, and Lincoln loomed larger than ever before the nation; but so far as the immediate result was concerned, Douglas was the victor, for the election gave him a majority of the legislature, and he was chosen to succeed himself in the Senate.
Yet more than once he must have regretted that he had consented to cross swords with his lank opponent, for he had been forced into many an awkward corner. There is a popular tradition that the presidential nomination came to Lincoln unsought;but this is anything but true. On the contrary, in those debates with Douglas, he was consciously laying the foundation for his candidacy two years later. He used every effort to drive Douglas to admissions and statements which would tell against him in a presidential campaign, while he himself took a position which would insure his popularity with the Republican party. So his defeat at the time was of no great moment to him.
He had gained an entrance to the national arena, and he took care to remain before the public. He made speeches in Ohio, in Kansas, and even in New York and throughout New England, everywhere making a powerful impression. To disunion and secession he referred only once or twice, for he perceived a truth which, even yet, some of us are reluctant to admit: that every nation has a right to maintain by force, if it can, its own integrity, and that a portion of a nation may sometimes be justified in struggling for independent national existence. The whole justification of such a struggle lies in whether its cause and basis is right or wrong. So, beneath the question of disunion, was the question as to whether slavery was right or wrong. On this question, of course, northern opinion was practically all one way, while even in the South there were many enemies of the institution. The world was outgrowing what was really a survival of the dark ages.
When the campaign for the presidential nomination opened in the winter of 1859-1860, Lincoln was early in the field and did everything possible to winsupport. He secured the Illinois delegates without difficulty, and when the national convention met at Chicago, in May, the contest soon narrowed down to one between Lincoln and William H. Seward. Let it be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln. But in the course of his public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of opportunity; Lincoln's friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant, succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third ballot.
So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Washington to head the Revolutionary army—a selection made primarily, not because of Washington's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.
The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter," might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all, rail-splitting, however honorable in itself,was the best training for a President. However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a spirited canvass was made, greatly assisted by the final and suicidal split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men, Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all along, to drive his opponents. Had the party been united, he would have been hopelessly defeated, for in the election which followed, he received only a little more than one third of the popular vote; but this was sufficient to give him the northern states, with 180 electoral votes. But let us remember that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice for President of very much less than half the people of the country.
The succeeding four months witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the South leisurely completing its arrangements for secession, and perfecting its civil and military organization, while the North, under a discredited ruler of whom it could not rid itself until March 4th, was unable to make any counter-preparation or to do anything to prevent the diversion of a large portion of the arms and munitions of the country into the southern states. It gave the southern leaders, too, opportunity to work upon the feelings of their people, more than half of whom, inthe fall of 1860, were opposed to disunion. It should not be forgotten that, however fully the South came afterwards to acquiesce in the policy of secession, it was, in its inception, a plan of the politicians, undertaken, to a great extent, for purposes of self-aggrandizement. They controlled the conventions which, in every case except that of Texas, decided whether or not the state should secede. "We can make better terms out of the Union than in it," was a favorite argument, and many of them dreamed of the establishment of a great slave empire, in which they would play the leading parts.
To the southern leaders, then, the election of Lincoln was the striking of the appointed hour for rebellion. South Carolina led the way, declaring, on December 17, 1860, that the "Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed. Opinion at the North was divided as to the proper course to follow. Horace Greeley, in the New YorkTribune, said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain, and, as Greeley afterwards observed, theTribunehad plenty of company in these sentiments. Meanwhile the Southern Confederacy had been formed, Jefferson Davis elected President, and steps taken at once for the organization of an army.
Everyone was waiting anxiously for the inauguration of the new President—waiting to see what hiscourse would be. They were not left long in doubt. His inaugural address was earnest and direct. He said, "The union of these States is perpetual. No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union. I shall take care that the laws of the Union are faithfully executed in all the States." It was, in effect, a declaration of war, and was so received by the South. Whether or not it was the constitutional attitude need not concern us now.
The story of Lincoln's life for the next five years is the story of the Civil War. How Lincoln grew and broadened in those fateful years, how he won men by his deep humanity, his complete understanding, his ready sympathy; how, once having undertaken the task of conquering rebellion, he never faltered nor turned back despite the awful sacrifices which the conflict demanded; all this has passed into the commonplaces of history. No man ever had a harder task, and no other man could have accomplished it so well.