The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (10 page)

On October 5, the day after Lincoln’s great speech at Springfield, a meeting of this new Republican party was held in that city. The organizers were eager to win Lincoln’s support, since he was an influential Whig, but Herndon, although he enthusiastically favored the new party, advised his partner to leave town immediately so he would have neither to reject
nor accept the Republican policies at this early stage. Lincoln took his advice and left town hurriedly the next day, bound for Pekin, ostensibly to plead a law case there, but actually to avoid the issue. It was as strange a political journey as he was ever to take, but now, having come out boldly against slavery in his speech, his natural prudence bade him not to commit himself too far.

But he had completely regained his interest in politics, and he wanted to be in office again so he could influence public policy. The autumn elections gave the Anti-Nebraska men in Illinois a much stronger position in the State Legislature which elected the United States Senators. Lincoln immediately began a skillful canvass of his friends and possible supporters in order to gain the Senatorship.

The election was held at the State House on February 8, 1855. Lincoln’s opponents were James Shields (the man with whom he had almost fought a duel in 1842), Lyman Trumbull, one of his best friends, and Joel A. Matteson, then the Democratic Governor of Illinois. Lincoln received 44 votes on the first ballot against 41 for Shields. It soon became obvious, however, that Matteson was his real opposition. Lincoln’s votes went steadily down as Matteson’s went up; on the tenth ballot Lincoln instructed his followers to vote for Trumbull in order to stop Matteson. Trumbull was a Democrat but he was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Lincoln preferred to see him win, rather than let the pro-Nebraska Democrat, Matteson, be elected. Mrs. Lincoln was so incensed at her husband’s defeat for office that she would never speak to Trumbull’s wife again, although until that moment Mrs. Trumbull had been one of her closest friends.

Lincoln, again disappointed in his political ambitions, returned to his regular circuit-riding routine. But events were not to let him rest in inactivity and obscurity. The territory opened up to settlers under the Kansas-Nebraska Act was
becoming a potential battleground for the opposing forces that were struggling to win the new land for slavery or for freedom. The South sent men into Kansas from Missouri and other slave states; the North, not to be outdone, financed anti-slavery settlers who wished to enter the new territory. An Emigrant Aid Society was founded in New England, and men, guns and ammunition were shipped to Kansas to win the state for the anti-slavery forces.

On March 30, 1855, an election was held in Kansas to choose the first legislature. There were no slaves to speak of in the territory, but the South was determined to hold Kansas for her own. Five thousand armed men from Missouri marched across the line to vote illegally. Seventy-five percent of the voting was done by these outsiders. A pro-slavery legislature was elected, but the anti-slavery men refused to recognize it. They set up a government of their own, and the territory actually had two mutually antagonistic governments for a while.

Violence naturally flourished under such circumstances. On May 21, 1856, seven hundred and fifty pro-slavery men entered Lawrence under the pretext of serving as a sheriff’s posse. They sacked the town, threw newspaper presses into the street and set fire to several buildings. Three days later, John Brown of Ossawatomie (later to be heard from at Harper’s Ferry), went into action and “sacrificed” five pro-slavery men in retaliation for the sack of Lawrence.

The news of the Lawrence outrage hit the country simultaneously with the news of another attack made on the North by the South—this time in Washington, on the floor of the Senate Chamber. Charles Sumner, ardent anti-slavery Senator from Massachusetts, had made a bitter speech during a debate on Kansas in which he impugned the character of Senator Butler of South Carolina. On the day after the sack of Lawrence, Preston Brooks, a relative of Butler’s and a Representative from the same state, entered the Senate Chamber
and assaulted Sumner, beating the seated man over the head with a gutta-percha cane until he fell to the floor almost unconscious. Sumner was severely injured—so severely that it took him several years to recover.

These two events coming together, and so closely associated with each other, threw the whole country into a turmoil of angry discussion. The North was enraged at the destruction of Lawrence, and even more furious at the attack on Sumner. Brooks was dubbed “Bully” Brooks, and his act was cited as an example of the South’s readiness to appeal to violence when provoked. The South looked with horror at the calm and deliberate killings done by John Brown in the name of his stern New England God. But the South made Brooks a hero. He was feted and honored in Southern cities, and deluged with a flood of canes presented to him by enthusiastic compatriots.

Underneath the partisan demonstrations the nation stirred in uneasy alarm at the course the slavery issue was taking. Civil war was being waged in Kansas; blood was beginning to flow as American killed American in the struggle over the basic question of whether a Negro was a human being or merely a piece of chattel property.

During this period Lincoln took no political action, nor was he even certain in his own mind just what course he should take. In a letter to his old friend Joshua Speed, dated August 24, 1855,
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he explained his position on the problems
of slavery, Kansas and Know-Nothingism. Speed had upheld slavery, but, as an enlightened Southerner, he opposed the way that Kansas was being administered. Lincoln, in reply to him, said:

I shall advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a Territory, and when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.… In my opposition to the admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to dissolve the Union. I think it probable, however, we shall be beaten.…

You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington, I voted for the Wilmot proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that “all men are created equal.” We now practically read it “all men are created equal, except Negroes.” When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read “all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.” When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.

By May, 1856, the tide of public opinion in the North was moving so swiftly that Lincoln could no longer postpone his decision as to where he stood politically. A county convention of the Republican party was scheduled to be held in Springfield on May 24 to elect delegates for the state convention. Herndon signed Lincoln’s name to the list of men making the call for the convention. When Lincoln’s more conservative friends protested, Herndon telegraphed his partner, asking for
his sanction. Lincoln wired back: “All right; go ahead. Will meet you—radicals and all.” He was elected as a delegate to the state convention.

The die was cast. Lincoln had finally made up his mind to stand or fall with the new party. On May 29, the state convention was held at Bloomington, and there Lincoln went with many others who were still not sure just what attitude the new party would adopt. Democrats, who had revolted from their party because of Douglas’s support of the Kansas-Nebraska Act; Whigs, who were desperately trying to find some raft of safety to which they could swim in the troubled sea in which their own party was rapidly sinking; abolitionists, who saw in the new party some hope for a strong political movement to which they could attach themselves—all came to Bloomington to see what would happen there. Curiously enough, the word “Republican” was never used at the convention. The term had been seized upon by the Democrats and branded with the curse of abolitionist radicalism; “black Republican” was already an epithet; and many men who were willing to oppose the Nebraska Act were still not ready to identify themselves with outspoken abolitionism. There was a good deal of pussyfooting on all sides. Everybody was trying to sound out everybody else’s sentiments without revealing his own.

Lincoln could be of great importance to the new party. As a leading Whig he could knit together the strong body of conservative sentiment in the state. He was known, liked and respected throughout Illinois. He stood firmly on middle ground, so he would frighten no one by his views. He was opposed to slavery, sympathetic to the Free State cause but he had not been rashly outspoken about the struggle in Kansas. He could do a great deal for the new party. It was not yet suspected how much the new party could do for him.

Before Lincoln entered the convention hall, he made a purchase that carries with it a poignant personal significance. He visited a jewelry store and bought his first pair of spectacles.
He paid thirty-seven and a half cents for them, and they were fitted to his eyes by the old-fashioned method of trying on all kinds until he found a pair that seemed to be right. His eyes had begun to fail; long study of books and legal documents had impaired the far-seeing range of vision that had been his during his youth on the wide prairie—and he was forty-seven years old.

Speeches at the convention were filled with references to Kansas and the assault on Sumner in the Senate Chamber. Men who had fought in Kansas were at Bloomington to relate their experiences to the delegates. Emotion ran high, yet it was essential for political reasons to hold the convention to a middle course. Lincoln played an active part in this. He guided the meeting through dangerous channels and kept public declarations of policy reasonably mild. He was called upon, too, to perform one very necessary duty. Someone had to address the convention who could rouse enough enthusiasm among the delegates to make them feel that they were joining a fighting party, but he had, at the same time, to do this in such a way that the more conservative element would not be antagonized. Unity had to be brought out of the warring elements present; agreement had to be established on those common points on which all could agree.

Lincoln was called upon to speak. His effort was probably the greatest achievement in oratory that he had yet made. He spoke on Kansas, denouncing what had taken place there; he pleaded for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise which had been repealed by the Nebraska Act; and he warned the South: “We won’t go out of the Union and you shan’t!” He ended on a plea for tolerance though, saying that “moderation and forbearance will stand us in good stead, when, if ever, we must make an appeal to battle and to the God of Hosts!” With this prophetic closing he sat down to a round of tremendous applause. Herndon said that on this day Lincoln was “seven feet high.” His friends told Lincoln that
the speech was the greatest in his career and that it would make him President. There is, in fact, good reason to believe that Lincoln’s definite Presidential ambitions dated from this occasion.

The words of the great speech, however, were lost to posterity. No record was made as Lincoln spoke, nor did he ever write out the speech afterward. Various reasons have been given for not recording it. One was that the reporters present became so excited and moved by what Lincoln said that they simply forgot to put down his words. Another was that Lincoln, speaking extemporaneously on this occasion where he had to commit himself to statements that he might not want held against him later, persuaded the reporters not to publish it. At any rate, the words were forever lost. H. C. Whitney, who was present that day, attempted to reproduce the speech from memory forty years later. Whitney’s record may be reasonably accurate as to content, but the words he reports are certainly not like Lincoln’s; he never spoke in florid oratorical manner attributed to him in Whitney’s reproduction of the famous “Lost Speech.”
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Lincoln had made his mark at the Bloomington Convention, and it had made its mark on him. He was now publicly committed to the principles of the Republican party (whether it was called by that name or not). Actually, he had had very little choice in the matter—there was no other party to which a man of his beliefs could honorably turn. The old Whig party had become so moribund that it could not find a candidate for the next election; it had to adopt the Know-Nothing nominee, Millard Fillmore. Whigs and Know-Nothings combined were then able to carry only one state (Maryland).

The National Republican Convention was held in Philadelphia, on June 19, 1856. John C. Frémont was quickly chosen as its Presidential nominee, but in the ensuing scramble
for the Vice-Presidential nomination, a new and significant political move took place. Friends of Abraham Lincoln presented his name to the convention and succeeded in getting one hundred and ten votes for him, although they were unable to obtain the nomination. It was given finally to William L. Dayton, Senator from New Jersey. The move to nominate him was a complete surprise to Lincoln. When he first heard of it, he thought some other man by the name of Lincoln was meant. There was a well-known family of Lincolns in New England. It might be one of them, he said.

The publicity Lincoln received at the Philadelphia Convention made him better known in Eastern political circles. It was to be useful at the next Republican convention in 1860.

The bright hopes of the Republican party for winning the election of 1856 were dashed to the ground as soon as the returns came in. The Democratic candidate, James Buchanan, received 1,838,000 popular votes and 174 electoral votes. Frémont received 1,341,000 popular votes and 114 electoral votes. More significant, however, than the number of votes for each candidate is an examination of where they came from. Buchanan, and even Fillmore, received a respectable number of votes in every one of the thirty-one states of the Union. Frémont did not receive a single vote in the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. His total vote in the four Southern states that permitted him to be listed on the ballot (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Virginia) was 1,194. It seemed that the solid South had such a strong hold on the elective powers of the nation that it would be forever impossible to elect a Republican President.