Part 2 (2/2)

”The question is whether the cla.s.s of persons (negroes) compose a portion of the people, and are const.i.tuent members of this sovereignty.

We think they are not included under the word 'citizen' in the Const.i.tution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges of that instrument.”

Negroes, as a race, were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior cla.s.s who had been subjugated by the dominant whites, and had no rights or privileges except such as those who held the power and the government might choose to grant them. They had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior grade-- so far inferior that they possessed no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his (the white man's) benefit. The negro race by common consent had been excluded from civilized governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery. The unhappy black race was separated from the whites by indelible marks long before established, and was never thought of or spoken of except as property.

The Chief-Justice further annulled the Missouri restriction, by a.s.serting that ”the act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding property of this kind north of the line therein mentioned is not warranted by the Const.i.tution, and is therefore void.”

Benton said that it was ”no longer the exception, with freedom the rule; but slavery was the rule, with freedom the exception.”

It was a year of financial distress in America, which recalled the hard times of twenty years before. The United States treasury was empty.

Early in this year (1856) a Legislature had met at Topeka, Kansas, and was immediately dissolved by the United States marshals. A Territorial Legislature also met at Lecompton and provided for a State Const.i.tution. The people of Kansas utterly refused to recognize the latter body which had been chosen by the Missouri invaders, and both parties continued to hold their elections.

Thus it may be seen that these episodes were the culmination of a long series of events leading to a new alignment of the country's political forces. The Republican party was the child of this ferment of unrest. The formation of a new political party, or the regeneration of an old one, is always due to events, and not to the schemes and purposes of men except as events sometimes originate in such purposes and schemes. In this case the steps in the course of events which had rendered the formation of an anti-slavery party inevitable were: The pro-slavery provisions of the Const.i.tution, the foreign slave trade, the acquisition of the Territory of Louisiana, the invention of the cotton-gin and its effects, the Missouri Compromise, the nullification schemes of South Carolina, the colonization and annexation of Texas, the Mexican War, the contest over the admission of California, the Compromise Measure of 1850, and finally the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854.

The name of the party was an incident only, and not an essential or very important incident; its principles and purposes were the vital facts. When events demand a new party, or the reorganization of an old one, all resistance is usually borne down speedily. On the other hand, it is a wasteful exhibition of human power to attempt the creation of a new party by the force of combined will and resolutions formulated in public meetings. Abraham Lincoln's great experience or keener penetration, or both, guided him at the outset of the realignments on political issues, and at the opening of the Congressional campaign of 1858, I followed him firmly and without mental reservation into the ranks of the Republican party.

Hence it was that I was present on that historic occasion when the Republican party of the State of Illinois held a convention at Springfield, June 17 of the year named, and nominated Lincoln for the seat in the United States Senate, then held by Stephen A.

Douglas, who at that time was usually affectionately referred to by his partisan followers as ”The Little Giant.” This nomination was antic.i.p.ated, and Mr. Lincoln had prepared a speech, which he then delivered, in which he set forth, in a manner now universally recognized as masterly, the doctrines of the Republican party. He arraigned the administration of Mr. Buchanan and denounced the repeal of the Missouri Compromise under the lead of Senator Douglas.

In that speech he made the declaration, which I remember as clearly as though an event of yesterday, then characterized as extravagant but long since accepted as prophetic: ”I believe this Government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.”

That address inaugurated a discussion which has no exact parallel in history--certainly no equal in American political history. It introduced Mr. Lincoln to the country at large, and prepared the way for his nomination to the Presidency two years later. On the declaration above quoted Mr. Douglas based many arguments, in vain attempts to prove that Mr. Lincoln was a disunionist.

During this period Douglas addressed an enthusiastic a.s.semblage at Chicago, and in the course of his speech adverted to the arraignment of himself by Mr. Lincoln. He took direct issue with that gentleman on his proposition that, as to Freedom and Slavery, ”the Union will become _all_ one thing or _all_ the other,” and maintained strenuously that ”it is neither desirable nor possible that there should be uniformity in the local inst.i.tutions and domestic regulations of the different States of this Union.”

An announcement that Mr. Lincoln would reply to Mr. Douglas on the following evening brought out another a.s.semblage, July 10, which was awakened, before the speaker had concluded, to an enthusiasm at least equal to that which the eloquence of Douglas had aroused.

The issues involved in this famous series of debates are too familiar to all students of our Nation's political history to be considered at length in these pages. Mr. Lincoln a.n.a.lyzed and answered the various arguments advanced by Mr. Douglas the evening before; and the closing paragraphs of his reply to the insistent reminders ”that this Government was made for white men,” were memorable:

”Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their conditions will allow.

What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of kingcraft were of this cla.s.s; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says: 'You work, and I eat; you toil, and I will enjoy the fruits of it.'”

Six days thereafter, July 16, Senator Douglas in a great speech again tried to break the force of his opponent's facts and logic.

This was at Bloomington, and Mr. Lincoln was again a careful listener. On the evening following, July 17, at Springfield, before an enthusiastic audience, he proceeded to dissect the matters so plausibly presented.

At the same hour Douglas was addressing a Springfield audience of his own, ridiculing especially Mr. Lincoln's alleged att.i.tude toward the Supreme Court.

Contrasting the disadvantages under which, by reason of an unfair apportionment of State Legislature representation and otherwise, the Republicans labored in that campaign, Mr. Lincoln on that occasion said in the course of his talk:

”Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who have been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshals.h.i.+ps, and cabinet appointments, _charge_-s.h.i.+ps and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they cannot, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but with greedier anxiety they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what even in the days of his highest prosperity they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, n.o.body has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face, n.o.body has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out.”

He affirmed that Popular Sovereignty, ”the great staple” of the Douglas campaign, was ”the most arrant Quixotism that was ever enacted before a community.”

As a result of these preliminary speeches of the Congressional campaign it was generally conceded that, at last, the ”Little Giant”

had met his match, and the intellectual and political appet.i.tes of the public called for more. In recognition of this demand, Mr.

Lincoln opened a correspondence which led to an agreement with Mr.

Douglas for a series of joint discussions, seven in number, on fixed dates in August, September, and October. Alternately they were, in succession, to open the discussion and speak for an hour, with another half-hour at the close after the other had spoken for an hour and a half continuously. My friend and schoolmate, the late Mr. R. R. Hitt, an efficient stenographer, was employed to report the whole series, and thus we have a full record of the most remarkable debate, viewed from all points, that has ever occurred in American history--possibly without a parallel in the world's history. Vast a.s.semblages gathered from far and near and listened with breathless attention to these absorbingly interesting discussions.

<script>