Part 6 (1/2)
New York--that great port where two-thirds of all our revenue is collected, and whence two-thirds of our products are exported, will not long be able to resist the temptation of taxing fifteen millions of people in the great West, when she can monopolize the resources and release her own people thereby from any taxation whatsoever.
Hence I say to you, my countrymen, from the best consideration I have been able to give to this subject, after the most mature reflection and thorough investigation, I have arrived at the conclusion that, come what may,--war if it must be, although I deplore it as a great calamity,--yet, come what may, the people of the Mississippi Valley can never consent to be excluded from free access to the ports of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.
”Hence, I repeat, that while I am not prepared to take up arms or to sanction war upon the rights of the Southern States, upon their domestic inst.i.tutions, upon their rights of person or property, but, on the contrary, would rush to their defence and protect them from a.s.sault, I will never cease to urge my countrymen to take up arms and to fight to the death in defence of our indefeasible rights.
”Hence, if a war does come, it will be a war of self-defence on our part. It will be a war in defence of our own just rights; in defence of the Government which we have inherited as a priceless legacy from our patriotic fathers; in defence of those great rights of the freedom of trade, commerce, transit, and intercourse from the centre to the circ.u.mference of our great continent. These are rights we can never surrender.
”I have struggled almost against hope to avert the calamities of war and to effect a reunion and reconciliation with our brethren of the South. I yet hope it may be done, but I am not able to point out to you how it may be effected. Nothing short of Providence can reveal to us the issue of this great struggle. b.l.o.o.d.y--calamitous --I fear it will be. May we so conduct it if a collision must come, that we will stand justified in the eyes of Him who knows our hearts and who will judge our every act. We must not yield to resentments, nor to the spirit of vengeance, much less to the desire for conquest or ambition.
”I see no path of ambition open in a b.l.o.o.d.y struggle for triumph over my own countrymen. There is no path for ambition open for me in a divided country, after having so long served a united and glorious country. Hence, whatever we may do must be the result of conviction, of patriotic duty--the duty that we owe to ourselves, to our posterity, and to the friends of const.i.tutional liberty and self-government throughout the world.
”My friends, I can say no more. To discuss these topics is the most painful duty of my life. It is with a sad heart--with a grief that I have never before experienced, that I have to contemplate this fearful struggle; but I believe in my conscience that it is a duty we owe ourselves and our children and our G.o.d, to protect this Government and that flag from every a.s.sailant, be he who he may.”
Of all the members of that joint a.s.sembly who listened to the eloquence of Senator Douglas that evening, forty-nine years ago, aside from Dr. William Jayne of Springfield, and myself, I do not know of a single one now living.
After he concluded his address, the joint session of the Legislature dissolved. He and I remained together in conversation, and I accompanied him to his hotel. During that talk he expressed to me the great anxiety which he felt for the safety of the country and the preservation of the Union. I am satisfied that it was his ambition to enter the army and possibly lead it in suppressing the Rebellion. What would have been the result in that case, no one can tell; but I am inclined to think that he would have made a very great general.
Senator Douglas's Springfield speech had a tremendous effect on public opinion. It brought his followers, and they were legion in all parts of the country, to the support of the Government and the North.
Senator Douglas went from Springfield to Chicago, where he delivered another eloquent address, along the same lines as the one delivered at Springfield, to tens of thousands of people. Very soon thereafter he was taken ill with pneumonia and pa.s.sed away.
He was a man of extraordinary intellect. He did his full part, at one of the most critical periods of our history, in saving the Nation. His speeches in and out of Congress are among the most able and eloquent delivered by any American statesman.
CHAPTER VI SPEAKER OF THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE AND A MEMBER OF CONGRESS 1860 to 1865
The election of Mr. Lincoln was made the pretext for secession.
It has always seemed to me that the South was determined to secede no matter at what cost; and it has also seemed to me that this determination was not due to the great body of the people of the South, than whom there were no better, but to the jealous politicians of that section, who saw the gradual growth in wealth and power of the Northern States threaten their domination of the National Government, which they had firmly held since the days of Was.h.i.+ngton.
They saw that domination slipping away, and they determined to form a nation of their own--in which slavery, indeed, would be paramount; but it was not so much slavery as it was their own desire for control that influenced them.
As soon, therefore, as Mr. Lincoln was elected President they began the organization of a Government of their own. President Buchanan declared in his message that the Southern States had no right to secede--”unless they wanted to,” as some one aptly expressed it; in other words, that he had no right under the Const.i.tution to keep them forcibly in the Union, and thus the const.i.tutional opinions of the President harmonized effectively with the purposes of the secessionists. Fortunate it was that Mr. Buchanan had so short a term remaining after the election of Mr. Lincoln. Had a year or two elapsed, the Confederacy would have been firmly and irrevocably established.
It has never been quite clear to my mind whether Mr. Buchanan cared to preserve the Union or not. In the heat and pa.s.sion of that day, we all thought he was a traitor. As I look back now and think of it, remembering his long and distinguished service to the country in almost every capacity--as a legislator, as a diplomat, as Secretary of State, as President, I think now he was only weak.
His term was about expiring, and he saw and feared the awful consequences of a civil war.
One State after another seceded; the United States' arms and a.r.s.enals were seized; on January 9, the _Star of the West_, carrying supplies to Fort Sumter, was fired upon and driven off. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas went out. The Confederate States of America were organized in the capital of Alabama on the fourth of February, and Jefferson Davis was elected President.
We watched with great interest the famous Peace Conference which met in Was.h.i.+ngton and over which John Tyler, ex-President of the United States, presided. It sat during the month of February, preceding Mr. Lincoln's inauguration, and recommended the adoption of seven additional articles to the Const.i.tution, which were afterwards rejected by the Senate of the United States.
But the fourth of March finally came, and new life was infused into the national councils.
Mr. Lincoln's speeches on his way East were a disappointment, in that they failed in the least to abate the rising Southern storm; the calmly firm tone of his inaugural address impressed the North, but his appeals to the South were in vain. Said he:
”I declare that I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the inst.i.tution of slavery in the States where it exists. . . . The Union of these States is perpetual. It is safe to a.s.sert that no Government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts.”
It was a notable appeal that he made, in closing, to the Southerners:
”In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not a.s.sail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.'
”I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though pa.s.sion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
At the same time that Mr. Lincoln was first elected President of the United States, I was for the second time elected to the Legislature of Illinois. I received the vote of what they called the Republicans, or Free-soil men, and of those who were previously known as Fillmore men. I was always in thorough accord with Mr.
Lincoln in political sentiment, though I had supported Fillmore rather than Fremont in 1856. I most heartily supported Lincoln's candidacy, and as candidate for the Legislature received more votes than Mr. Lincoln received in Sangamon County. Douglas carried the county as against Lincoln, and I carried it as against my opponent.