Part 14 (2/2)
The selection of b.u.t.terfield for the General Land Office did not shake the efforts of the friends of Lincoln to secure recognition of his valiant services in the Whig ranks. He was tendered the governors.h.i.+p of Oregon by Fillmore. The new land held forth enticing political promises, it was soon to become a state and a senators.h.i.+p was a fair prospect.
Close a.s.sociates advised acceptance. Lamon says that Lincoln saw it all, and would have accepted ”if his wife consented,” but she refused to do so; and that time has shown that she was right.[264] What part Lincoln would have played in history if he had become a senator from Oregon may be interesting but none the less vain speculation. If the Lincoln and Douglas debates had been s.h.i.+fted from the prairies of Illinois to the national arena at Was.h.i.+ngton, who can say that Lincoln and Douglas might not have become rivals for the Presidency? It has been quite the fas.h.i.+on to a.s.sume that the Senate would have been destructive to the future of Lincoln, overlooking the plain fact that the National a.s.sembly was the home of the renown of Douglas and his ladder to the Presidential nomination. Lincoln was not spoiled by the highest office in the land and there is no surety that the senate would have proved the grave of his career.
[264] Lamon, 334.
Two scant years of Congressional life worked a change in the politician from Illinois. He had come in a subdued mood to mingle in national affairs. Shrinkingly, he measured his humble equipment with that of ill.u.s.trious legislators in Was.h.i.+ngton. While he left a respectable, but not an eminent record of achievement, he departed with a store of confidence in his worth. His intimate a.s.sociation with northern and southern leaders, his sure, inner knowledge of national legislative methods, his insight into the uncompromising character of the slavery controversy were not wasted in the part he was soon to play in events that would shake the very foundation of the nation.
Still, he returned to Springfield unhonored. In the opinion of his const.i.tuency, he made a series of blunders. His att.i.tude on the war lost the district to the Whig party. His ”Spot Resolutions” had become a by-word in the community, they were liberally satired in song and story.
The political career of Lincoln had seemingly come to an inglorious conclusion.
CHAPTER X
THE SCHOOL OF SOLITUDE
Upon his return from Was.h.i.+ngton, Abraham Lincoln attended to a growing legal practice. He apparently lost his interest in communal matters, having tasted the allurements and bitterness of public service. He had largely outgrown the pa.s.sion for ordinary official distinction. He was ready to go back to the circuit with its hards.h.i.+ps and rudeness. To win renown as a lawyer now seemed his sole ambition.
Still as the compromise measures of 1850 ended another national crisis, he readily renewed his interest in the march of events. A loyal Whig, still, he acceded to the Clay and Webster solution of the perturbed political conditions with some misgiving. He poorly tolerated the burdens added to the yoke of the fugitive slave--the premium placed upon bondage rather than freedom. During this stormy period of general controversy, in his lonely way he settled the main issue. A story told by a close friend is significant of the seriousness of the struggle. As they were coming down a hill, Herndon said to Lincoln that the time was coming when they should all have to be either Abolitionists or Democrats. Lincoln thought a moment and then answered ruefully that when that time came his mind would be made up, for he believed the slavery question could never be successfully compromised.[265]
[265] Herndon, 2, 31.
Though zealous for action, for a time, he was in the gloom of despair.
Most men were lost in their own affairs. The furtive Abolitionist raised his voice as in a wilderness. The busy world took mean note of the cry of anguished slave. About this time Herndon states that Lincoln was speculating with him about the deadness of things, and deeply regretted that his human strength was limited by his nature to rouse the world, and despairingly exclaimed that it was hard to die and to leave one's country no better than if one had never lived for it.[266] Here is again communion with the soul whose thoughts were of the despised and the lowly. To Lamon and other men who cannot rise to kins.h.i.+p with him in such an hour, he must forever remain a mystery. It is for this reason that some who were near him seldom comprehended the extensiveness of his sympathy, seldom knew the divinity of his hopes, and his surpa.s.sing love of kind.
[266] Lamon, 335.
Lincoln was a stumbling student in the domain of eulogy. His mind scorned fanciful statement. He was no hero wors.h.i.+pper. Was.h.i.+ngton, alone, remained the shrine of his homage. He mastered indiscriminate devotion to person in his loyalty to principle. For this reason, to many, he seemed impa.s.sive and self centered. It is strange that the man so little p.r.o.ne to adulation should, himself, be the recipient of almost universal adoration. So his address in 1852 on the death of Clay shows little of the devotional element. Even in the shadow of the grave of the great Compromiser, there is no chant of an admiring friend--no speech leaping from the heart. Lincoln himself felt its limitations.[267] In this address, he called attention to the striking fact that Clay never spoke merely to be heard, that his eloquence was always directed to practical action.
[267] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 171.
It is only when Lincoln approached the discussion of the slavery question that he ceased commonplace commendation. He gave much time to that issue. That he brooded over the solemn statement of the patriots of the Republic is shown in his use of the far-famed utterance of Jefferson: ”I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any attention to public affairs, confident that they were in good hands and content to be a pa.s.senger in our bark to the sh.o.r.e from which I am not distant. But this momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed, indeed, for a moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry pa.s.sions of men, will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.”[268]
[268] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 173.
He likewise dwelt on the exulting protest of Clay against the enemies of liberty and ultimate emanc.i.p.ation, who would go back to the era of our liberty and independence and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual joyous return, who would blow out the moral light and penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty.[269]
[269] _Ibid._, 175.
We learn something of the trend of his thoughts in his discussion of the colonization proposal of Clay that there was a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her children, whose ancestors had been torn from her by the ruthless hand of fraud and violence, who, transplanted in a foreign land, would carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law and liberty. Lincoln pa.s.ses this benediction on the plan: ”May it indeed be realized. Pharaoh's country was cursed with plagues, and his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for striving to retain a captive people who had already served them more than four hundred years. May like disasters never befall us! If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and at the same time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this too so gradually that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.”[270]
[270] Lincoln's Speeches, 1, 176.
Lincoln was seeking no temporary expedient. He saw that abolitionism was only a step in the problem, that beyond freedom was the greater question that still terrifies the Union. Statesmanlike, he was not willing merely to trifle with the casual remedy. Like Clay, he would have put an end to the baffling issue by an operation t.i.tanic in contemplation and astounding in sweep. So this eulogy on Clay is largely a discussion of a looming problem of his time, a safe sign that he was awake to the gathering storm.
The campaign of 1852 was colorless. Both parties were arrayed on the side maintaining the sacredness of the Compromise Measures. All slavery agitation was severely deprecated. While the South feared and shunned the triumph of the Whig party, there was still scant surface appearance of a sectional contest. There was little in the issues involved to awaken moral vitality. Lincoln took no glowing part in the electoral contest. Lamon declares that his speeches during the campaign were coa.r.s.e, strained in humor, petulant, unworthy of the orator, and pervasive with jealousy at the success of his rival--Douglas.[271]
[271] Lamon, 341.
Though Lincoln was sure from the first, of the sin of slavery, still, even at this period, he continued in conduct with slow paced movement as if half afraid of being ahead of the sweep of events. Herndon aided in helping him keep abreast with advanced abolition literature, and sought to win him to a champions.h.i.+p of the radical school. Like Was.h.i.+ngton, he marked out his own path. Neither friend nor foe could swerve him, hasten or check his advance. Broad-minded, open to appeal, no man was less influenceable in final judgment. Herndon's weighty statement confirms this distinctiveness of Lincoln's individuality. ”I was never conscious of having made this impression on Mr. Lincoln, nor do I believe I ever changed his views. I will go further and say, that, from the profound nature of his conclusions and the labored method by which he arrived at them, no man is ent.i.tled to the credit of having either changed or greatly modified them.”[272]
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