The termination of Lincoln's legislative career, his marriage and his increasing legal practice did not stay his hunger for political distinction. Music, society or nature did not allure him. His range of interest was limited. His pleasure was not in his fame as a counselor. He was impatient of the tiresome devotion to detail demanded of the lawyer. Longing to be a leader in the world of events, he sought a wider field of activity for the full expression of his personality, splendidly realizing that his greatest service to himself and his fellows was in guiding and interpreting a righteous public opinion.
Lamon has portrayed Lincoln's political ambition with merciless vividness, claiming that he was never agitated by any passion more intense than his thirst for distinction; that it governed all his conduct, from the hour when he astonished himself by his oratorical success in the back settlements of Macon County, to the day when the assassin marked him as the first hero of the restored Union; that he was ever ready to be honored, and struggled incessantly for place.[176]Politics was his world,—a world filled with enchantment. "In his office," says Mr. Herndon, "he sat down, or spilt himself on his lounge, read aloud, told stories, talked politics,—never science, art, literature, railroad gatherings, colleges, asylums, hospitals, commerce, education, progress,nothing that interested the world generally except politics."[177]
Yet Lamon and Herndon missed the deeper unity in his life. Neither politics nor distinction was the end with him. They were the paths leading to his palace, not the palace itself. It is not too much to say that love of his kind transcended his love of distinction. At the time when he seemed lost in the maelstrom of partisanship, as Burns in the storm thought of the "ourie" cattle, so Lincoln thought of those hapless sons of misfortune who were biding the "bitter brattle" of slavery. Thus in a letter to his friend Speed, he said, "In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any other slave border."[178]
The extent to which he mingled in political affairs is shown by his activity at a mass meeting in March, 1843, at Springfield. He was the master of ceremonies. In a careful statement, he uttered the cardinal principles of his party. He was materially steeped in the party spirit of his day. For the fifth resolution recommends that a Whig candidate for Congress be run in every district, regardless of the chances of success. "We are aware," it continued, "that it is sometimes a temporary gratification, when a friend cannot succeed, to be able to choose between opponents; but we believe that that gratification is the seed time which never fails to be followed by a most abundant harvest of bitterness. By this policy we entangle ourselves."[179]
Though Lincoln, at first, fought the convention system forthe nomination of candidates, as undemocratic, his conversion to its championship further exposes his training in the school of practical politics. The statement declared that the Whigs should not stop to inquire whether the system was just, but that while their opponents used the plan it was madness in them not to defend themselves with it.[180]
The conclusion of this address is also a sure sign of prolonged association with the hue and cry of party spirit: It stated with assurance that the Whigs were always a majority of the nation, and that if every Whig would act as though he knew the result to depend upon his action, that surely a Whig would be elected President of the United States.[181]
Political office being the reward of party service, Lincoln was a zealous worker in the ranks. He was ever at the call of the party managers for speeches or other personal work. They could not charge him with being a laggard in the day of defeat. He did not wait for waves of advancement. He was not in accord with the policy that the office should seek the man. He slowly toiled his way to the eminence he reached. While Lincoln was in Congress, Herndon wrote to him complaining of his sluggard progress in politics, and carped at the old men for usurping all the places of power and profit. In an intimate reply to his associate, we find the plain paths he trod: "You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men? You young men get together and form a 'Rough and Ready Club,' and have regular meetings and speeches. Take in everybody you can get. Harrison Grimsley, L. A. Enos, Lee Kimball, and C. W. Matheny would do to begin the thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about town, whetherjust of age or a little under age,—Chris. Logan, Reddick Ridgely, Lewis Swizler, and hundreds such. Let every one play the part he can play best,—some speak, some sing, and all 'holler.' Your meetings will be of evenings; the older men and the women will go to hear you; so that it will not only contribute to the election of 'Old Zach,' but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties of all engaged. Don't fail to do this."[182]
Lincoln no sooner completed his long term in the Legislature than he cast his eye on a seat in Congress. "Now, if you should hear" he wrote a friend, "any one say that Lincoln don't want to go to Congress, I wish you, as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is I would like to go very much. Still, circumstances may happen which may prevent my being a candidate. If there are any who be my friends in such an enterprise, what I now want is that they shall not throw me away just yet."[183]
Lincoln's race for the nomination was full of excitement. When he began his canvass, he was a member of the firm of Logan and Lincoln. Besides Hardin, Baker and Lincoln, Logan also was a candidate. Logan deemed his long service as entitling him to the honor, while Lincoln regarded his legislative career as his claim to distinction. It is not amazing that concord did not dwell in this home of political rivalry. Herndon says he was not, therefore, surprised to have Lincoln rush into his quarters and with more or less agitation tell him that he had determined to sever the partnership with Logan; and Herndon states that although painfully aware of his want of ability and experience, when Lincoln remarked in his earnest, honest way, "Billy, I can trust you if you can trust me," he felt relieved and acceptedthe generous proposal of legal partnership.[184]
The most dramatic incident in this fight was the contest between Baker and Lincoln. It was a battle between brilliancy and solidity. No man of his time surpassed Baker in dashing eloquence. Handsome, of winning personality, he was the idol of the young men of Springfield. Lincoln was no longer, as at New Salem, the leader of the gang. His alliance with aristocratic Mary Todd, the demands of his profession and a settled life largely sundered the partnership. It was a natural, not a sudden, intentional separation. Strange rumors were afloat that he was no more a friend to the lowly and that he was seeking new ways. Not free to mingle with the people, he could not readily combat the suspicion. And they were ever demanding a perfect embodiment of their conception of heroism. They found it fully in one of the most dramatic heroes and charming personalities in the panorama of American politics—Edward D. Baker.
When the friends of Baker first put forth the charge that Lincoln belonged to a proud family, he was amused. He met it with a laughing remark: "That sounds strange to me, for I do not remember of but one who ever came to see me, and while he was in town he was accused of stealing a Jew's harp."[185]But as the campaign developed in intensity, and he realized that the shameless report was scattered to his harm, he thought bitterly of the false charge. The injustice of the accusation and his incapacity to meet it, quite crushed him. He could meet an open foe with a giant's strength, but the gnat of malignant rumor defied him. Thus the humblest politician that ever trod the soil of the Western continent was not saved from the charge of being "puffed up," and the leader of the lowly traveled in the domain ofbitter experience. The enthusiasm of the young men carried the day for Baker in Sangamon County.
After his defeat, Lincoln took his old friend Jim Matheny far into the woods. He unburdened himself, protesting that he was anything but aristocratic and proud. "Why, Jim," he said, "I am now and always shall be the same Abe Lincoln I was when you first saw me."[186]
The story of the defeat as told by Lincoln to Speed, shows much of his political training: "Baker beat me, and got the delegation instructed to go for him. The meeting, in spite of my attempt to decline it, appointed me one of the delegates; so that in getting Baker the nomination I shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a groomsman to a man who has cut him out and is marrying his own dear 'gal'."[187]
Yet, Lincoln did not at once reconcile himself to the selection of Baker. A letter from his friends in Menard County led him still to contemplate possibilities and induced him to skirmish on the frontier of his duty to the choice of Sangamon County. He wrote to a supporter: "You say you shall instruct your delegates for me unless I object. I certainly shall not object. That would be too pleasant a compliment for me to tread in the dust. And besides if anything should happen (which, however, is not probable) by which Baker should be thrown out of the fight, I would be at liberty to accept the nomination if I could get it."[188]
In this same letter, he gave an account of the factors that conspired to his defeat, saying that it would astonish the older citizens to learn that he (uneducated, penniless boy, working on a flatboat at $10.00 per month) had been put down there as a candidate of pride and wealth; that therewas, too, the strangest combination of church influence against him; that Baker was a Campbellite, and with few exceptions got all that church; that his wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some with the Episcopal churches, and wherever it would tell, he was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to go for him, because he belonged to no church, was suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fighting a duel.[189]In the long letter Lincoln did not even mention the personal strength and popularity of his opponent, or suggest that Baker was the victor by his own merit.
Though Lincoln returned to the practice of his profession with increased devotion, he kept his interest in local and national events. He still remained a student of the whims of individual voters as well as a keen observer of political affairs of general moment. A letter to Hardin at Washington illustrates this: "Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to trouble you heretofore; and I now only do so, to get you to set a matter right which has got wrong with one of our best friends. It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek—(Berlin, P. O.). He has received several documents from you, and he says that they are old newspapers and documents, having no sort of interest in them. He is, therefore, getting a strong impression that you treat him with disrespect. This, I know, is a mistaken impression; and you must correct it. The way, I leave to yourself. Robert W. Canfield says that he would like to have a document or two from you.
"The Locos here are in considerable trouble about Van Buren's letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors. They are growing sick of the Tariff question; and consequently aremuch confounded at V. B.'s cutting them off from the new Texas question. Nearly half the leaders swear they won't stand it."[190]
As early as 1837, Webster publicly declared that it could not be disguised that a desire, or an intention, was already manifested to annex Texas to the United States.[191]Under the nursing of Tyler and Calhoun, a treaty of annexation was concluded and the scheme almost consummated. The Senate, in 1844, alone stood in the way. The proposal of annexation overtopped all other issues in the campaign of that year. It proved at the time a dominating incident and left abundant traces on American history. Van Buren, rising to the solitary eminence of statesmanship, uttered a firm and subdued protest against the southern policy. But the edict of the Calhoun democracy, that Texas must be annexed was remorseless, and their old friend, Martin Van Buren, in the homely language of Lincoln, was "turned out to root."[192]It proved the beginning of the cleft on the slavery question that in less than twenty years hopelessly divided the successors of the triumphant Jackson party.
In June, 1844, Clay fairly represented the views of the Whigs declaring that the annexation of Texas, at this time, without the consent of Mexico, as a measure compromising the National character, involving war with Mexico, probably with other foreign powers, dangerous to the integrity of the Union, inexpedient in the present financial condition of the country, was not called for by any general expression of public opinion.[193]Later coquetting with southern sympathies on this issue, he modified his opposition to the present annexation of Texas with the fatal statement that he had no hesitation in saying that, far from having anypersonalobjectionto the annexation of Texas,he should be glad to see it—without dishonor, without war, with the common consent of the Union and upon just and fair terms.[194]This seeming retreat, despite all explanation, insured his defeat. The diversion gained him no strength in the South and alienated needed support in the North.
The Southern States openly put forth their reasons for annexation. To keep pace with the northern growth they needed new States, otherwise they saw the doom of the institution that they deemed the very palladium of their prosperity and happiness. The unresting Calhoun finally triumphed in awakening dormant fears and sentiments.[195]
The main contention in the famous letter of Jackson was better calculated, than this southern claim, to appeal to the northern democracy, and was more in harmony with the substantial trend of the national destiny. "I do not hesitate to say that the welfare and happiness of our Union require that it should be accepted. If, in a military point of view alone, the question be examined, it will be found to be most important to the United States to be in possession of the territory.
"Great Britain has already made treaties with Texas; and we know that far-seeing nation never omits a circumstance, in her extensive intercourse with the world, which can be turned to account in increasing her military resources. May she not enter into an alliance with Texas?"[196]
While the Texan issue stirred the Garrisonian Abolitionists, it did not allay their hostility to organized political action, they declared that they would open no road to political preferment; that the strength of their cause was in the humble, fervent prayer of the righteous man, which availethmuch, and the blessing of that God who had chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty; that it was to be expected that some political wolves would put on the clothing of Abolitionism, and seek to elevate themselves and manage the anti-slavery organization for their own purposes.[D]The political Abolitionists, however, named James G. Birney for President.
There was then, already, a complexity of opinion on the slavery question that shadowed forth the future alignment of parties. While many were confounded by wavering lights, Lincoln picked his way with sure footed precision through maze and pitfall. His unprejudiced mind wondered at the conduct of the "Liberty men" that deprecating the annexation of Texas, deliberately promoted its success by indirection. Their application of the proposition "we are not to do evil that good may come of it" he reduced to plain sophistry, saying that if by their votes they could have prevented the extension of slavery, it would have been good, and not evil, so to have used their votes, even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder, and he earnestly asked if the fruit of electing Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing him have been evil?[197]He held that it was a paramount duty of the free States to let the slavery of the other States alone, while it was equally clear that they should never knowingly lend themselves, directly or indirectly, to prevent slavery from dying a natural death—to find new places for it to live in, when it could no longer exist in the old.[198]Here, is clearly announced the seeming paradox that, though slavery was an evil, there still remained the duty to let it alone in the States where it then existed. This further piles up evidence that his views suffered little change with years.
Lincoln boldly participated in the campaign of 1844; Clay was the political hero of his youth and manhood as Washington was of his boyhood. Like many other Whigs, he, too, was enthralled by the magic of the far famed eloquence of the name, that, in the words of the orator who nominated Clay, expressed more enthusiasm, that it had in it more eloquence than the names of Chatham, Burke, Patrick Henry, and, more than any other and all other names together.[199]
During the campaign, Lincoln encountered his former employer, John Calhoun, and other old antagonists. It is said that Calhoun came nearer whipping Lincoln in debate than Douglas did.[200]Nothing survives of those speeches. Still, his enthusiasm and skill in the controversies of the campaign awakened a demand for his services throughout the State. His name as an orator even invaded Indiana. In the closing hours of the contest his voice was heard on the soil that he hastened from some fifteen years before as an adventurer. While speaking at Gentryville, his old friend Nat Grigsby entered the room. Lincoln stopped and crying out "There's Nat," scrambled through the crowd to his modest associate of former days. After greeting him warmly, he returned to the platform. When the speech was done, he passed the rest of the evening with Nat. Then Lincoln insisted that they should sleep together; and long into the night, they talked over old times and were once more Abe and Nat.[201]
The appearance of Clay's August letter stirred the political Abolitionists to fateful activity. They insisted that his antagonism to annexation, not being founded on anti-slavery convictions, was of no account.[202]They polled enough votes to elect pro-slavery Polk. Mingled with the ribaldry, the din and howl of abandoned politicians over the election ofPolk, were the exultant shouts of the sober and respectable men of the Liberty Party. They celebrated in unison the victory they both promoted.
The solemn selection of James K. Polk instead of Henry Clay as President, was a discordant incident that the Whig patriot did not linger over willingly. That a pigmy should sit in the seat of the statesman, that a puppet should stand in the place of the nature-dowered son of American policies,—this opinion made Clay's followers doubt the wisdom of republican government. To them this defeat was more than a partisan grief, it was a national loss. From loyal supporters hurried a grand tribute to their uncrowned champion in his retreat: "We will remember you, Henry Clay, while the memory of the glorious or the sense of the good remains in us, with a grateful and admiring affection which shall strengthen with our strength and shall not decline with our decline. We will remember you in all our future trials and reverses as him whose name honored defeat and gave it a glory which victory could not have brought. We will remember you when patriotic hope rallies again to successful contest with the agencies of corruption and ruin; for we will never know a triumph which you do not share in life, whose glory does not accrue to you in death."[203]
It is quite generally believed in Sangamon County that a bargain was entered into between Baker, Lincoln, Logan and Hardin whereby the "four should 'rotate' in Congress until each had had a term."[204]There is evidence in the writings of Lincoln that there was some kind of an understanding between Baker, Lincoln and Logan. There is a startling story as to the character of the arrangement. A delegate to the Pekin Convention of 1843 states, that he was asked by Lincoln immediately after the nomination of Hardin, if he would favor a resolution recommending Baker for the next term. On being answered in the affirmative Lincoln told the delegate to prepare the resolution, and he would support it. It created a profound sensation, especially among the friends of Hardin. After angry discussion, the resolution passed by a bare majority.[205]This incident illustrates the sagacious policy of Lincoln in furthering his restless political ambition. He publicly declined to contest the nomination of Baker in 1844. Pursuant to a widespread expectation, Baker did not stand in the way of Lincoln two years later.
Lincoln kept close to those who moulded public opinion,—the men of the press. Then the personality of an editor was a weighty factor in the decision of political contests. Hewrote to an editor and supporter in 1846 that as the paper at Pekin had nominated Hardin for governor and the Alton paper indirectly nominated him for Congress, it would give Hardin a great start, and perhaps use him up, if the Whig papers of the district should nominate Hardin for Congress, and that he wished that the editor would let nothing appear in his paper which might operate against him.[206]
To this, he received a reply that this supporter had, in fact, nominated Hardin for governor. The tactful response deserves attention: "Let me assure you that if there is anything in my letter indicating an opinion that the nomination for governor, which I supposed to have been made in the Pekin paper, was operating or could operate against me, such was not my meaning. Now that I know that nomination was made by you, I say that it may do me good, while I do not see that it can do me harm. But, while the subject is in agitation, should any of the papers in the district nominate the same man for Congress, that would do me harm; and it was that which I wished to guard against. Let me assure you that I do not for a moment suppose that what you have done is ill-judged, or that anything that you shall do will be."[207]
"I should be pleased," he wrote another friend, "if I could concur with you in the hope that my name would be the only one presented to the convention; but I cannot. Hardin is a man of desperate energy and perseverance, and one that never backs out; and I fear, to think otherwise is to be deceived in the character of our adversary. I would rejoice to be spared the labor of a contest; but 'being in', I shall go it thoroughly, and to the bottom." He then admonished his friend not to relax any of his vigilance.[208]
He was sensitive to the shifting changes of the campaign. "Nathan Dresser is here," he wrote a friend, "and speaks as though the contest between Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County.—I know he is candid and this alarms me some—I asked him to tell me the names of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said Morris was about as strong as any—Now, tell me, is Morris going it openly? You remember you wrote me, that he would be neutral. Nathan also said that some man he could not remember had said lately that Menard County was going to decide the contest and that that made the contest very doubtful. Do you know who that was?
"Don't fail to write me instantly on receiving telling me all—particularly the names of those who are going strong against me."[209]
The splendid generalship of Lincoln, his telling blows gradually disposed of the gallant Hardin, who gracefully declined to be longer considered as a candidate. Through the inspiration of Lincoln, with equal gallantry, there promptly appeared in the leading Whig journal, a statement superbly designed to soothe the dignity of his late antagonist: "We have had, and now have, no doubt that he (Hardin) has been, and now is, a great favorite with the Whigs of the district. He states, in substance, that there was never any understanding on his part that his name was not to be presented in the canvasses of 1844 and 1846. This, we believe, is strictly true. Still, the doings of the Pekin Convention did seem to point that way; and the general's voluntary declination as to the canvass of 1844 was by many construed into an acquiescence on his part. These things had led many of his most devoted friends to not expect him to be a candidate at this time. Add to this the relation that Mr. Lincolnbears, and has borne, to the party, and it is not strange that many of those who are as strongly devoted to Gen. Hardin as they are to Mr. Lincoln should prefer the latter at this time. We do not entertain a doubt, that, if we could reverse the positions of the two men, that a very large portion of those who now have supported Mr. Lincoln most warmly would have supported Gen. Hardin quite as warmly."[210]
He was a thorough politician. He attended to details himself. Like a general on the battlefield, he kept his reserve forces well in hand. He would rather minimize his own strength than mistake the power of opposing forces. He never lost a victory through misplaced confidence. Though he looked darkly at a contest, this rather increased than abated his activity. From policy as well as inclination he did not engage in the crimination of his adversaries. He had a marvelous capacity of personally commanding the conduct of men.
Out of their ranks, the Democrats called the famed preacher—Peter Cartwright, as their standard bearer in this Congressional contest. Until he was sixteen years old, he was a slave to the common vices of his day. His dramatic conversion during the revival of 1801 preluded the marvelous career of a man who unflinchingly, for sixty years, "breasted the storm and suffered the hardships" of his calling in forest and prairie. His heroic treatment of Jackson shows the man. "Just then," Cartwright says, "I felt some one pull my coat in the stand, and turning my head, my fastidious preacher, whispering a little loud, said: 'General Jackson has come in: General Jackson has come in.' I felt a flash of indignation run all over me like an electric shock and facing about to my congregation, and purposely speakingout audibly, I said, 'Who is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea negro!'"[211]
The reasons that prompted Cartwright to follow the trail from Kentucky to Illinois are of historical importance. "First, I would get entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the gospel to destitute souls that had, by their removal into some new country, been deprived of the means of grace."[212]The South poorly reckoned the cost to her, of the institution that drove into exile such master spirits, who enriched the states of their adoption.
Hating human bondage, still he was no friend of abolitionism. He declared that it riveted the chains of slavery tighter; blocked the way to reasonable emancipation; threw fire brands into legislative halls; that millions were expended every year in angry debates and that laws for the good of the people were neglected; talents and money thrown away; that prejudice, strife, and wrath, and every evil passion stirred up until the integrity of the Union was in imminent danger, and that not one poor slave was set free; not one dollar expended to colonize them and send them home happy and free; that through unchristian, excited prejudices mobs were fast becoming the order of the day.
He maintained that after more than twenty years' experience as a traveling preacher in slave states, he was convinced that the most successful way to ameliorate the condition of the slaves and Christianize them, and finally secure their freedom was to treat their owners kindly and not tomeddle politically with slavery!
Patriot and prophet alike, he contended that abolitionism awakened a bitter and wrathful spirit among the guardians of the black man that made discord a partner in the Federal Union; that despite the legion moral evils of slavery, he had never seen a rabid abolition or free soil society that he could join, because they resorted to unjustifiable agitation, confounding the innocent with the guilty, and that if force was resorted to the Union would be dissolved, a civil war would follow, death and carnage would ensue, and the only free nation on the earth would be destroyed.[213]In early manhood, Cartwright cherished sentiments that were brother to those Lincoln later avowed at the outset of his career.
In his autobiography, Cartwright states that he was twice elected as a representative from Sangamon County, and he found that almost every measure had to be carried by a corrupt bargain and sale.[214]
For nearly half a century he had traversed the western states. In nearly every Methodist Church and mission his voice had summoned many to a better life. His ministration to the sick, his rides at night over the lonely prairie to the death bed had endeared him to thousands of homes. He had a host of relations in the Congressional district. All this and his steady advocacy of Jacksonian Democracy constituted him no paltry antagonist.
An active campaign ensued. Lincoln was again subjected to the harsh charge of religious infidelity. The Whigs, taking up the challenge rallied to his support. Their activity soon turned the tide. Lincoln carried the district by 1511, exceeding the vote of Clay in 1844 by nearly 600. Sangamon County showed her loyalty by piling up a larger majority than ever before given to a political favorite.[215]The battle largely centered around the wisdom of a preacher participating in politics. The pioneer, who twenty years before, had voted for Cartwright had now become a citizen of a settled community. After this election, there was no question as to the deep seated distrust of the average voter permitting a church official to be the political representative of the people.
A Democrat who loathed the canvass of Cartwright still deemed it a hard thing to vote against his party. So Lincoln told him that he would give him a candid opinion as to whether the vote was needed or not. On the day of election, Lincoln told the Democrat that he had got the preacher,—and didn't want his vote.[216]With this power to foretell results, Lincoln was more richly dowered than any modern leader. It was this gift that enabled him to do and speak things that to other men seemed ruinous.
The victory of Polk in its immediate results hardly surprised friend or foe. His election was the signal gun of the Mexican war. Events were rapidly hurried forward under the fostering guidance of the Tyler administration and in its last gasp a messenger was dispatched to Texas to mature the annexation.[217]In weighty words Greeley uttered the protest of the aroused North, declaring that the annexation of Texas challenged the regard of mankind and defied the consciences of our own citizens; that for the first time our Union stood before the nations, not merely as an upholder, but as a zealous, unscrupulous propagandist of human slavery.[218]It required no special genius to provoke martial hostilities and anxiety soon found ammunition to drive even a reluctant opponent to the chance of battle. So Mexico was almost dared into the inevitable combat.
Until this time the nation was little stirred by politicalunrest and strife. The battles in Congress that form so vast an asset of the historian, hardly disturbed the daily life of the inventor, farmer, mechanic and student. Lincoln entered the national Legislature at a momentous period. For more than a third of a century, "grim visaged war had smoothed her wrinkled front." The nation was lost in industrial pursuits, the hero of the community was the business man. Patriotism slumbered, national impulses seemed dead. Then the wild passion for war awakened the people from apathy, they rejoiced that the spirit of the fathers was still strong in them, that they had not forgotten Bunker Hill and New Orleans. Commerce for the time forewent its eminence, the soldier stepped to the front. In a moment the standard of the nation shifted from the dollar to the deed. Men did not stop to debate the righteousness of the war or what the end would be. They did not reason as to its effect on the status of slavery. Emotion, not judgment, was their guide. They knew only the pulsation of a subtle and subduing patriotism. Many marched to the front, while others hurried on supplies and ammunition to the seat of trouble. The present alone absorbed their interest, busied every impulse.
Lincoln did not willingly come into conflict with this public sentiment. He, too, was moved by the heroism of the hour, he too saw with pride the flag unfurled and heard the throbbing drum. When Hardin and Baker and Shields hastened from Springfield for the field of glory and danger, he was one of the speakers at the parting public meeting. The Congressman-elect urged a sturdy, vigorous prosecution of hostilities, admonished all to permit no shame to the government and to stand by the flag till peace came with honor.[219]This was not a reluctant politic approbation, as Lamon intimates,[220]but a benediction upon the cause of his country that came deep from the heart.
The attitude of Lincoln toward the annexation of Texas is of importance, not alone for its own intrinsic interest but as illustrating the opinion of thousands of sober, patriotic citizens throughout the land. These had no kinship with the radicals who regarded the conduct of the war, as well as its inception, with bitter hostility; who feared the visitation of Divine Power upon a conflict conceived in aggression. They were not akin to the Democrats who looked neither to the right nor left but marched over cherished principles of the Republic for the sake of extending the territory and enlarging the activity of a sectional institution.
Lincoln entered Congress with no thought of opposition to any phase of the war. Like Grant, he doubtless knew that the man who criticized a war in which his nation is engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in life or history, and that he might better advocate "war, pestilence and famine," than to act as an obstructionist to a war already begun.[221]
The President and his advisors would not allow the Whigs to vote alone for supplies. They sought to interpolate resolutions expressing the original justice of the war. Lincoln's interesting commentary on this uncalled for procedure is worth quoting. "Upon these resolutions when they shall be put on their passage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I cannot be silent if I would. Seeing this, I went about preparing myself to give the vote understandingly when it should come. I carefully examined the President's message, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all the President states asfacts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him. Under the impression thus made I gave the vote before mentioned."[222]
The issue once made, Lincoln and other Whigs did not hesitate; he did not even hide in silence. He took up the challenge of the President that war existed by the act of Mexico. He followed with probing resolutions, with a series of penetrating questions that precluded quibbling. The first one well illustrates the series.
"RESOLVED, By the House of Representatives, that the President of the United States be respectfully requested to inform the House—
"First, whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819 until the Mexican revolution."[E]
The President never heeded them, nor does it appear that any friend of the administration soberly attempted the sore task of facing their keen, sabre-like stroke. They allowed little room for shifting, and demanded a logical response. Three weeks later, came the speech which was responsive to the desire of his Springfield friends to distinguish himself.[223]It was sober and restrained in expression; curbed in statement, concise in logic and comprehensive in treatment. He spoke more like a distinguished jurist than a partisan pleader.
"Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present warcommenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat and so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion—no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed,—then I am with him for his justification."[224]Then a sentence follows, painful and remorseless in its treatment of the vacillating policy of the President stating that his mind, taxed beyond its power, was running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it could settle down and be at ease.[225]
This speech should have won him a high place in the national arena of controversy and debate, were it not that the shifting standard of public judgment often exalts the thing of the hour for intrinsic value, ostentation for merit, popularity for worth. This speech may in itself command the interest of those who would know the motives that led the Whigs to their course of conduct. They did not seek hard duties, but still they would not shirk or retreat when they showed their front.
Lincoln soon learned that his resolutions and speech, however unanswerable, did not save him from the damaging charge of opposition to the war of his country. Dissatisfaction ran through the Whig ranks in Illinois. General discontent with the course of his partner even turned Herndon into one of the malcontents. A letter soon advised Lincoln of the condition, who sent a sturdy reply to the complaint on his vote on Ashmun's amendment,—"That vote affirmsthat the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President; and I will stake my life that if you had been in my place you would have voted just as I did. Would you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie? I know you would not. Would you have gone out of the House—skulked the vote? I expect not.—You are compelled to speak, and your only alternative is to tell the truth or a lie. I cannot doubt which you would do."[226]
Later Herndon forwarded a constitutional argument in favor of the policy of Polk ingeniously saying that it was the duty of the President as Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy, in the absence of Congress, if the country was about to be invaded, to go, if necessary, into the very heart of Mexico and prevent the invasion; that it would be a crime in the executive to let the country be invaded in the least degree; that the action of the President was a necessity.[227]
The reply that hurried to Springfield was a supreme answer. No judge of a high tribunal, no statesman of mature experience could have more thoroughly disposed of a specious contention.[228]In this letter of Lincoln there appears a might and an ability to grapple with a great issue, a sincerity of purpose, a soberness of thought that well betokens a student and patriot, whose heart was in unison with the inherent purposes of the Republic. He insisted that the imperial function of the Constitution in leaving the declaration of war with Congress was that no one man should hold the power of bringing the oppression of war upon the people.[229]Through this letter there looms up the man, who above all men hated kingly power and domination, and the consequent impoverishment of the people. Herndon, theAbolitionist, would, for the sake of policy, sanction the inception of an unjust aggression, while the conservative Lincoln stood resolutely when the hour summoned uncompromising conduct; then his knees were as "unwedgeable as the gnarled oak." When principle was at stake he sent policy to the rear. At such times he was more aggressive than the radical.
A letter to the Editor of theTribuneshows the deep hold that this subject had on Lincoln, his restlessness to be rightly understood on the theme. And the fact that he undertook to correct Horace Greeley in a familiar tone is an indication that he was coming to the front as a champion in the Whig ranks. He wrote the editor that he discovered a paragraph in theTribunein which it was said that all Whigs and many Democrats contended that the boundary of Texas stopped at the Nueces. He contended that such a statement was a mistake which he disliked to see go uncorrected in a leading Whig paper; that the large majority of Whigs in the House of Representatives had not taken that position and that as the position could not be maintained it gave the Democrats advantage of them. In conclusion Lincoln asked the editor to examine what he said in a printed speech that he was sending him.[230]
He earnestly wrote to a minister that he would be obliged for a reference to any law, human or divine, in which an authority could be found for saying that the action of the Government constituted "no aggression." He then asked, "Is the precept 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them' obsolete? of no force? of no application?"[231]
He was not so elated with patriotism that he lost his standard of righteousness. As he was an honest judge of his own conduct, so he was of that of his country. This rareability became a force of moment in later years.
During the tumult of the debate on the Mexican war Lincoln wrote in his own rare way that Stephens, of Georgia, a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, had just concluded the very best speech of an hour's length he ever heard; that his old withered dry eyes were full of tears yet.[232]
His appreciation knew no sectional limits. His range of vision was not bounded by the Mason and Dixon line. He was as much at home with the sons of the South as of the North; he took the same interest in the speech of Stephens of Georgia as he would in that of Webster.
Lincoln's main assignment in congressional committee work was on Post-office and Post-roads. He plodded through the detail duties with industry. There was no more earnest worker in the ranks of Congress. On an important occasion, Lincoln stood by the Democratic Postmaster General, and opposed the policy of the Whig members of the Committee. He worked out a painstaking plan for certain postmasters receiving subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals. He declared it to be in accordance with republican institutions, which could be best sustained by the diffusion of knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the medium of the public press.[233]
Lincoln prepared himself thoroughly in the logic of protection to American industries. He advanced considerably in a serious understanding of its fundamental importance. Not satisfied with old and common contention, he sounded the depths of discussion, by his quaint and original method.
He had intense sympathy for the toiler. He deemed a wise and just distribution of wealth a national duty. He pronounced that rather than production the deeper object of government. "And inasmuch," he said, "as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them.But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. That is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government."[234]
He was in advance of the thought of his day in insisting that all transportation, commerce, distribution, not essential, was a heavy pensioner upon industry, depriving it of a large proportion of its just fruits. He advocated the remedy of driving useless toil and idleness out of existence. He announced that all work done directly or indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little effort at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, was useless labor.[235]These fragments show the intellectual power of a growing man of fine sympathies, the sound conviction of a benefactor of his kind.
That Lincoln rapidly adapted himself to the ways of Congress appears from the variety of the subjects he discussed. Few of the new comers were more in evidence. His speech on internal improvements reveal the secret of his power. He sought no name to sanction his opinions, he used his own illustrations and reached his conclusions unaided. He attacked the opinions of those high in power and station. President Polk maintained that the burden of improvements would be general while the benefits would be local, thus involving a pernicious inequality. The reply of Lincoln is a sign of his political wisdom. He argued that inequality was never to be embraced for its own sake; but that if every good thing was to be discarded which might be inseparably connected with some degree of inequality, then all governmentwould have to be discarded. The Capitol, he continued, was built at the public expense, but still it was of some peculiar local advantage, and to make sure of all inequality Congress would have to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about." He added that there were few stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself; that an honest laborer dug coal at about seventy cents a day, while the President dug abstractions at about Seventy Dollars a day, and the coal was clearly worth more than the abstractions. He declared that the true rule, in determining whether to embrace or reject anything, was not whether it had any evil in it, but whether it had more of evil than of good; that almost everything, especially of government policy, was an inseparable compound of the two; so that the best judgment of the preponderance between them was continually demanded.[236]
A great national party witnessed only the malign consequences of the internal improvement policy. To avoid its abuse, they practically advocated its abatement. Seeing only the danger of extravagance, the Democratic party was not free to contemplate prudent expenditures. Lincoln with his keen sight presented a solution indicative of statesmanship. His plan permitted the States working in a smaller sphere of activity in local improvements to cross paths and to work together in larger national matters under the guidance of sober and restrained general legislation, based on statistical information.
The keen, shrewd instinct of the politician in Lincoln shows through his strenuous advocacy of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for the Presidency. He was in the van in fighting opposition in Illinois to the silent soldier and untriedstatesman. In April he wrote his friend Washburne to let nothing discourage or baffle him, but, in spite of every difficulty, to send a good Taylor delegate from his circuit, and to make Baker, who was a good hand to raise a breeze, to help about it.[237]On the same day he admonished another associate in his inimitable manner. "I know our good friend Browning is a great admirer of Mr. Clay, and I therefore fear he is favoring his nomination. If he is, ask him to discard feeling, and try if he can possibly, as a matter of judgment, count the votes necessary to elect him.
"In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor; but we cannot elect him without a nomination. Therefore, don't fail to send a delegate."[238]
His admiration for Clay was subdued in his zeal for political success. He would not do honor to the statesman as an idle tribute so he would put him aside and call to the leadership of the Whig party a man whose strength was largely in the uncertainty of his views, in silence not in known sincerity. He saw its cause could triumph with Taylor; that the extension of the slave power was more likely to come from the northern non-slave-holding Cass than from the southern slave-holding Taylor. To still further confound the jumble, the Whig convention avoided annunciation of distinctive principles, and even dared to vote down an affirmance of the Wilmot Proviso.[239]After the selection of "Old Rough," with Stephens, Toombs and Preston, he continued an aggressive interest in his candidacy.[240]He again pleaded with his friends for support from his State.
"By many, and often, it has been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shallhave a most overwhelming glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us—Barburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. Some of the sanguine men have set down all the states as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Cannot something be done even in Illinois? Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and upon which they are doomed to be hanged themselves."[241]
According to a peculiar and prevalent method in the House, of spending public money for personal or partisan purposes, Lincoln availed himself of the privilege of making a campaign speech. It has met with varied comment. Lamon freely and soberly passes this judgment. "Few like it have ever been heard in either of those venerable chambers. It is a common remark of those who know nothing of the subject, that Mr. Lincoln was devoid of imagination; but the reader of this speech will entertain a different opinion. It opens to us a mind fertile in images sufficiently rare and striking, but of somewhat questionable taste. It must have been heard in amazement by those gentlemen of the House who had never known a Hanks, or seen a New Salem."[242]
Herndon, twenty years later, pronounced it a masterpiece and declared that one who would read it would lay it down convinced that Lincoln's ascendency for a quarter of a century among the political spirits in Illinois was by no means an accident, and would not wonder that Douglas, with all his forensic ability, averted, as long as he could, a contest with a man whose plain, analytical reasoning was not lesspotent than his mingled drollery and caricature were effective.[F]
Lincoln entered on thehard jobof showing that it was sound doctrine for the President to shun defined public opinions and allow Congress its own way without hindrance from the chief executive. The history of the United States has been a vigorous answer to this contention. As President he made short shrift of that policy, though his splendid statement of the Whig position may well attract more than passing attention. He maintained that the Democrats were in favor of laying down in advance a platform as a unit, and then of forcing the people to ratify all of its provisions, however unpalatable some of them might be; that the Whigs were in favor of making Presidential elections, and the legislation of the country distinct matters; so that the people could elect whom they pleased, and afterwards legislate just as they pleased. The difference, he insisted, was as clear as noon day, and that leaving the People's business in their hands was the true Republican position.[243]
No more dramatic attack during the entire session, arraigning the Democratic candidate was made than in this speech for his attitude on the Wilmot resolution. "In 1846," says Lincoln, "General Cass was for the proviso at once; that in March, 1847, he was still for it, but not just then; and that in December, 1847, he was against it altogether. This is a true index to the whole man. When the question was raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see glimpses of the great Democratic ox-goad waving in his face, and to hear indistinctly, a voice saying, 'Back! Back, sir! Back a little!' He shakes his head and bats hiseyes, and blunders back to his position of March, 1847; but still the goad waves, and the voice grows more distinct and sharper still, 'Back, sir, Back, I say! Further back!'—and back he goes to the position of December, 1847, at which the goad is still, and the voice soothingly says, 'So! Stand at that!'"[G]
That Lincoln had not fully forgotten the form of utterance that angered Darbey and has bothered most biographers since, appears in the following selection: "Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you. You not only twice made President out of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another."[244]
At least it may be said that he was not the aggressor or the sole participant in such a "scathing and withering style,"[245]nor is it at all hard to find like statements and oratory in every period of our history. This is almost the last time that the historian need halt in his comment on the expression of Lincoln. Years of experience brought him to a higher conception of public utterances. When the subject matter bade exalted expression he grew to the occasion with amazing avidity.
This speech revealed Lincoln to Congress. It gained prestige among the fulminations of the session. TheBaltimore Americannamed it the "crack speech of the day." It labeled Lincoln as a very able, acute, uncouth, honest, upright man and a tremendous, wag withal.[246]
His reputation as a Congressman and orator, begot him the honorable privilege of addressing in September, the same audience in the east that often listened to the triumphant Webster. Only a faint echo of these speeches of the Illinois representative remains.
A representative Boston newspaper reports him as saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the people in Massachusetts on the slavery question, except, that they did not think about it as constantly; that all agreed that slavery was an evil, which could not be affected in the slave states; but that the question of theextensionof slavery to new territories was under control. In opposition to this extension Lincoln believed that the self-named "Free Soil" party was far behind the Whigs; that the "Free Soil" men in claiming that name, indirectly attempted a deception, by implying that Whigs were not free soil men; that in declaring that they would "do their duty and leave the consequences to God," merely gave an excuse for taking a course they were not able to maintain by fair argument. Making this declaration, he further argued, did not show what their duty was, that if it did there would be no use for judgment; that men might as well be made without intellect, and when divine or human law did not clearly point their duty, they had no means of finding out what it was by using their most intellectual judgment of the consequences, and that if there were divine law or human law for voting for Martin Van Buren, then he would give up the argument.[247]
New England testified to its liking for the western advocate of Taylor. TheBoston Advertiserstated that at theclose of his masterly speech, the audience gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and three more for the eloquent Whig member from that state.[248]His Boston speech was so effective "that several Whigs who had gone off on the 'Free Soil' fizzle returned again to the Whig ranks."[249]
Ida Tarbell contends that at this time Lincoln first experienced the full meaning of the "Free Soil" sentiment, as Massachusetts was then quivering under the impassioned protests of the great Abolitionists, and Sumner was beginning to devote his life to freedom and was speaking often at riotous meetings. Miss Tarbell further maintains Lincoln was sensitive to every shade of popular feeling in New England, and was stirred as never before on the question of slavery; that he heard Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, and that night, as the two men sat talking, said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate:
"Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing."[250]
This evidence does not prove that Lincoln then began to take radical ground on the slavery question. Ten years before in the Illinois Legislature, he made his protest, and later at every opportunity when circumstances favored. His hatred to slavery had long been kindled. He needed little inspiration from the New York orator on New England soil to start his indignation. His statement to Seward shows that he was ready for radical conduct as soon as the event permitted the onslaught. He rejoiced at the growth of the public opinion that betokened the doom of the artificial institution. But he did not need to sit at the feet of eastern teachers. The New England trip was an incident, not anepoch in his career.
The second session of this Congress was rather free from turbulence. Lincoln was a silent spectator. He went with his party on the main issues and voted for the Wilmot Proviso "about 42 times."[251]The Northern Democrats in the House returned in a resentful spirit at the support rendered Taylor by eight slave states. They were not backward in supporting legislation to exclude slavery from California and New Mexico.[252]The Senate, true to its love of vested interests speedily disposed of the proposal.
During the session a New York representative let loose a resolution with the clanging preamble of a "law rooting out the slave trade in the District of Columbia."[253]Lincoln was one of three or four northern Whigs who voted to lay this exuberant measure on the table.[254]
As the sole Whig representative of his State, coming from a constituency hardly distinguished for its anti-slavery sentiments, while most Whigs even from the New England states were silent; no external duty beckoned him; no powerful organization called him to ride the storm by branding the jealous institution. Selfish ambition whispered prudence and calmed the voice of protest.