Part 15 (1/2)
[272] Herndon, 2, 32.
At first, he began in his office in plain speech to comment upon the virulent contest between freedom and slavery, contending that delay was intensifying the ultimate clash, that like two wild beasts in sight of each other, but chained and held apart, the deadly antagonists would some day break their bonds, and then the question would be settled.[273]
[273] _Ibid._, 35.
He spoke bitterly of the att.i.tude of the judiciary, the men who should have been in the very front of the fight; who seemed more zealous of the right of property than that of personal liberty. He said that it was singular that the Courts would hold that a man never lost his right to his property that has been stolen from him, but that he instantly lost his right to himself if he was stolen.[274] Thus his mind moved faster than public sentiment, and thus he became prepared for decisive action before the culminating Kansas and Nebraska affair threw the North into commotion. He seemed the barometer of the national conscience, and though his slow progress appeared painful to the radical yet it was genuine and far more remorseless than immature reform. When the conservative mind of Lincoln was stirred to action, it was a definite sign of progress. He saw that the steady march of slavery was slowly perverting the very principles of democracy, that it was a challenge to the integrity of the republic, that sooner or later it would subvert the government or be subverted by the government.
[274] _Ibid._, 36.
He noted that there were about six hundred thousand men non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand slave holders; that when a convention recently a.s.sembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding cla.s.s. He told a friend that the thing was spreading like wildfire over the country and that in a few years Illinois would be ready to accept the inst.i.tution. When asked to what he attributed the change that was going on in public opinion, he said that he had put that question to a Kentuckian shortly before, who answered by saying that one might have any amount of land, money or bank-stock, and while travelling around, n.o.body would be wiser; but, if one had a darky trudging at his heels, everybody would see him, and know that he owned a slave; that if a young man went courting, the only inquiry was, how many negroes he or she owned. He added, that the love for slave property was swallowing up every other mercenary possession; that its owners.h.i.+p betokened, not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure, who was above and scorned labor.[275]
[275] Lamon, 347.
It has been a historical fas.h.i.+on to brand Douglas as the author of all the ills that came in the course of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation. He has suffered more than any other northern leader for partic.i.p.ation therein. He did not inaugurate; he reluctantly adopted radical action to maintain his leaders.h.i.+p in the Democratic party. The abolitionists were growing more resolute and exacting in their demands, startling the northern conscience. No compromise could still their protests; they would not tolerate const.i.tutional obligations that stood in the way of immediate emanc.i.p.ation. At the South, the slave dynasty was daily growing more restless under the real or a.s.sumed danger from northern agitation. New enactments were deemed indispensable, as if legislation could stay the rising tide of sentiment against the return of fugitive slaves. The South was, under the educational tutelage of Calhoun, prepared to demand the right to carry slaves throughout every inch of the national territory without restraint from Congress.
Compromise could delay but not settle such a contest. When moral instincts were aroused on one side and fear on the other, the inevitable clash could not be permanently avoided. Dixon of Kentucky, through his far-reaching statement upon the question of slavery he knew no ”Whiggery” and no Democracy,[276] decisively noted the new era in American politics, and showed the desperate chasm that daily grew more divisive, not to be covered over until the blood of a million men was offered up as a sacrifice to the most momentous martyrdom in history.
Atchison of Missouri, who declared he would sacrifice everything but his hope of heaven for slavery,[277] was anxious for the place of Douglas that he might champion the legislation that would secure the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. To gain this position, he would relinquish his distinction as Acting President pro tem of the Senate.
[276] Greeley, 1, 229.
[277] Nicolay & Hay, 1, 346.
For twenty years, Douglas had fought in the party ranks until he stood fair to become its leader. He had either to become champion of the new policy, or as he saw it, to sacrifice the work of a lifetime. In the party councils he contested the wisdom of the policy and eloquently portrayed its far-reaching consequences. He loved his country but not all of his kind. Patriot but not humanitarian, he would not peer behind the curtain of a clas.h.i.+ng North and South. The nature of the bitter conflict through which Douglas pa.s.sed before he submitted to the southern policy, appears from his counsel to a young student and friend never to go into politics; that if he did, no matter how clear it might be to him that the present was an inheritance from the past, no matter how conscientiously he might feel that his hands were tied, with loyalty to ancient inst.i.tutions rather than what he might prefer to do if free to choose, still he would be vilified, traduced, and finally sacrificed to some local interest or unreasoning pa.s.sion like Adams, Webster and Clay. He continued that he was surprised that the proposal to repeal came from the South and dreaded the effect, and said so; still for nearly twenty years he had fought for a place among the leaders of the party which seemed to him most likely to promote the prosperity of his country, and had won it.... If he retained his leaders.h.i.+p, he argued that he might help to guide the party aright in some graver crisis, and if he threw it away, he not only destroyed himself, but he became powerless for good forever after.
He then impetuously contended that an individual ought not to oppose his judgment to that of a great party, and besides though surprised at its source, he believed that the repeal would work to the advancement of freedom rather than otherwise, as his vilifiers charged. He finally pleaded that he was politically right in keeping within the pale of the Const.i.tution; and right as to the moral effect, and right as a party leader anxious to help in keeping his party true to the whole country.[278] Thus Douglas made his way to the sons of the South and became the father of the Nebraska controversy and of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
[278] Illinois State Historical Society, IV. 49.
Douglas had not trained himself in the school of political defeat and hesitated to forego his prestige of leaders.h.i.+p. To gain the South, he risked his hold on the North. Had he had the courage to dare, the wisdom to know, the moral heroism to do, he might have become the foremost personality in American politics, honoring instead of shadowing the history of his time. In a solemn moment he took counsel of his fears rather than his integrity, and doubted the triumph of the one cause that has revolutionized history. With all his political sagacity, he lacked the supreme instinct that transcends the shrewdness of the day and links itself to the final triumphing movement.
During the spring and summer of 1854 when the whole North quivered with the hurrying march of events following the Nebraska agitation, and thundered its protests into Was.h.i.+ngton, Lincoln grew to the demands of the hour with his wonted sureness. He turned over and over the whole issue. He did not halt at the injustice of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but went beyond its consideration to the problems of the age, of which that act was only a grave symptom.
Now and then in small meetings, he spoke out of the fullness of his feelings. His friends scanned a strange change. Coming to listen to his quaint stories, they returned, exalted by hearing a speaker who raised the controversy above the s.h.i.+fting events of the hour to the broad tableland where right and wrong meet on the field of battle. They beheld a man who lifted the discussion into the pure realms of eternal justice, above all questions of policy, into the arena of the higher humanity. Prejudices of a lifetime trembled in the balance. Men were baptised with a new political faith. They instinctively turned to the master and yielded, to the power of a personality speaking in the name of immortal righteousness. He was no longer in his former haunts, the tavern or the grocery. He was seen ”mousing” around libraries. He was communing with the Fathers of the Republic, seeking wisdom from them.
These five years following his Congressional experience are noteworthy in his life, though scantily known. Now and then a chance remark, the eulogy on Clay, a letter to a friend, reveal a strong man struggling with a giant problem. During all this time, he was thinking out the portentous question that was agitating a tempest. The greatest contests of the world are not fought on the battlefield, in the presence of vast armies, when the drum beats or the bugle calls to action. The sublimest battles in history are waged in the lonely soul. There, the destiny of nations is determined before its formal expression in legislative discussion, judicial decision or national controversy.
The grasping disposition of slavery convinced Lincoln that the encounter was inevitable. Before the formation of the Republican party, he sanctioned the statement that the time was approaching when it would be necessary to take a determined stand either for or against slavery.
During this period, he waited and bided his time; all these years he saw with joy, clouded with occasional despair, the day approaching when another blow could be struck for freedom, for the principles of the fathers and for the spreading of democratic influence. These were splendid years of preparation.
CHAPTER XI
AN EMANc.i.p.aTED POLITICIAN
The indignation that rushed through Illinois when the first news from the Capitol forecast the repeal of the Missouri Compromise had not yet abated, when Douglas dauntlessly sought to explain his course of conduct in Chicago. He was howled down and denied liberty of speech. This naturally brought on a reaction. The contention that the distinguished senator had been struck before being heard, added martyrdom to his bold conduct.
As he wandered down the State closer to the home of ardent democracy, he was met with growing enthusiasm. His ingenious sophistry turned popular sovereignty into a seeming contest for a principle and Illinois was being carried away by his triumphant oratory and logic. There is little wonder that the man who breasted the storm of debate in the Senate should make headway in the land of his friends where office holders and supporters gloried in his fame and were elated when he chanted forth his alluring doctrine as a solution to political conditions.
His main effort was made at the State Fair in October, 1854, an occasion that called together the intelligence of Illinois in days when few occasions permitted the satisfaction of social life. Enhancing its importance, this political gathering was to mark the opening of the campaign to determine the selection of a Senator. The speech of Douglas was to be almost a national event. Upon him the hopes of the State democracy centered in the conditions following the late political tempest. Douglas was equal to the occasion and his friends rejoiced.