Part 12 (1/2)

[215] Herndon, 1, 259.

A Democrat who loathed the canva.s.s 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.

[216] Lamon, 278.

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.

[217] Nicolay & Hay, 1, 236.

[218] Greeley, 1, 178.

Until this time the nation was little stirred by political unrest and strife. The battles in Congress that form so vast an a.s.set 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+elds 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 st.u.r.dy, 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.

[219] Herndon, 1, 260.

[220] Lamon, 281.

The att.i.tude of Lincoln toward the annexation of Texas is of importance, not alone for its own intrinsic interest but as ill.u.s.trating the opinion of thousands of sober, patriotic citizens throughout the land. These had no kins.h.i.+p 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 inst.i.tution.

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]

[221] Grant, 45.

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 pa.s.sage 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 as facts, 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]

[222] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 101.

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 ill.u.s.trates 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]

[E] _Ibid._, 97.

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 s.h.i.+fting, 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.

[223] _Ibid._, 96.

”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 war commenced, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton sat and so remembering, let him answer as Was.h.i.+ngton 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]

[224] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 105.

[225] _Ibid._, 107.