Part 12 (2/2)

This speech should have won him a high place in the national arena of controversy and debate, were it not that the s.h.i.+fting 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 s.h.i.+rk 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 st.u.r.dy reply to the complaint on his vote on Ashmun's amendment,--”That vote affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconst.i.tutionally 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]

[226] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 110.

Later Herndon forwarded a const.i.tutional 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]

[227] Herndon, 1, 266.

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 Const.i.tution 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, the Abolitionist, 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.

[228] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 112.

[229] _Ibid._

A letter to the Editor of the _Tribune_ shows 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 the _Tribune_ in 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]

[230] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 133.

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 const.i.tuted ”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]

[231] _Ibid._, 122.

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 rare ability 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]

[232] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 111.

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.

CHAPTER IX

LINCOLN'S ATTACK ON SLAVERY IN CONGRESS

Lincoln's main a.s.signment 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 inst.i.tutions, 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]

[233] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 113.

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 p.r.o.nounced 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]

[234] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 92.

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.

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