The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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Together with his reputation and influence as a politician grew his law
practice, especially after he had removed from New Salem to Springfield,
and associated himself with a practitioner of good standing. He had now
at last won a fixed position in society. He became a successful lawyer,
less, indeed, by his learning as a jurist than by his effectiveness as an
advocate and by the striking uprightness of his character; and it may
truly be said that his vivid sense of truth and justice had much to do
with his effectiveness as an advocate. He would refuse to act as the
attorney even of personal friends when he saw the right on the other
side. He would abandon cases, even during trial, when the testimony
convinced him that his client was in the wrong. He would dissuade those
who sought his service from pursuing an obtainable advantage when their
claims seemed to him unfair. Presenting his very first case in the United
States Circuit Court, the only question being one of authority, he
declared that, upon careful examination, he found all the authorities on
the other side, and none on his. Persons accused of crime, when he
thought them guilty, he would not defend at all, or, attempting their
defence, he was unable to put forth his powers. One notable exception is
on record, when his personal sympathies had been strongly aroused. But
when he felt himself to be the protector of innocence, the defender of
justice, or the prosecutor of wrong, he frequently disclosed such
unexpected resources of reasoning, such depth of feeling, and rose to
such fervor of appeal as to astonish and overwhelm his hearers, and make
him fairly irresistible. Even an ordinary law argument, coming from him,
seldom failed to produce the impression that he was profoundly convinced
of the soundness of his position. It is not surprising that the mere
appearance of so conscientious an attorney in any case should have
carried, not only to juries, but even to judges, almost a presumption of
right on his side, and that the people began to call him, sincerely
meaning it, "honest Abe Lincoln."

In the meantime he had private sorrows and trials of a painfully
afflicting nature. He had loved and been loved by a fair and estimable
girl, Ann Rutledge, who died in the flower of her youth and beauty, and
he mourned her loss with such intensity of grief that his friends feared
for his reason. Recovering from his morbid depression, he bestowed what
he thought a new affection upon another lady, who refused him. And
finally, moderately prosperous in his worldly affairs, and having
prospects of political distinction before him, he paid his addresses to
Mary Todd, of Kentucky, and was accepted. But then tormenting doubts of
the genuineness of his own affection for her, of the compatibility of
their characters, and of their future happiness came upon him. His
distress was so great that he felt himself in danger of suicide, and
feared to carry a pocket-knife with him; and he gave mortal offence to
his bride by not appearing on the appointed wedding day. Now the
torturing consciousness of the wrong he had done her grew unendurable.
He won back her affection, ended the agony by marrying her, and became a
faithful and patient husband and a good father. But it was no secret to
those who knew the family well that his domestic life was full of trials.
The erratic temper of his wife not seldom put the gentleness of his
nature to the severest tests; and these troubles and struggles, which
accompanied him through all the vicissitudes of his life from the modest
home in Springfield to the White House at Washington, adding untold
private heart-burnings to his public cares, and sometimes precipitating
upon him incredible embarrassments in the discharge of his public duties,
form one of the most pathetic features of his career.

He continued to "ride the circuit," read books while travelling in his
buggy, told funny stories to his fellow-lawyers in the tavern, chatted
familiarly with his neighbors around the stove in the store and at the
post-office, had his hours of melancholy brooding as of old, and became
more and more widely known and trusted and beloved among the people of
his State for his ability as a lawyer and politician, for the uprightness
of his character and the overflowing spring of sympathetic kindness in
his heart. His main ambition was confessedly that of political
distinction; but hardly any one would at that time have seen in him the
man destined to lead the nation through the greatest crisis of the
century.

His time had not yet come when, in 1846, he was elected to Congress. In
a clever speech in the House of Representatives he denounced President
Polk for having unjustly forced war upon Mexico, and he amused the
Committee of the Whole by a witty attack upon General Cass. More
important was the expression he gave to his antislavery impulses by
offering a bill looking to the emancipation of the slaves in the District
of Columbia, and by his repeated votes for the famous Wilmot Proviso,
intended to exclude slavery from the Territories acquired from Mexico.
But when, at the expiration of his term, in March, 1849, he left his
seat, he gloomily despaired of ever seeing the day when the cause nearest
to his heart would be rightly grasped by the people, and when he would be
able to render any service to his country in solving the great problem.
Nor had his career as a member of Congress in any sense been such as to
gratify his ambition. Indeed, if he ever had any belief in a great
destiny for himself, it must have been weak at that period; for he
actually sought to obtain from the new Whig President, General Taylor,
the place of Commissioner of the General Land Office; willing to bury
himself in one of the administrative bureaus of the government.
Fortunately for the country, he failed; and no less fortunately, when,
later, the territorial governorship of Oregon was offered to him, Mrs.
Lincoln's protest induced him to decline it. Returning to Springfield, he
gave himself with renewed zest to his law practice, acquiesced in the
Compromise of 1850 with reluctance and a mental reservation, supported in
the Presidential campaign of 1852 the Whig candidate in some spiritless
speeches, and took but a languid interest in the politics of the day.
But just then his time was drawing near.

The peace promised, and apparently inaugurated, by the Compromise of 1850
was rudely broken by the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in
1854. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories of
the United States, the heritage of coming generations, to the invasion of
slavery, suddenly revealed the whole significance of the slavery question
to the people of the free States, and thrust itself into the politics of
the country as the paramount issue. Something like an electric shock
flashed through the North. Men who but a short time before had been
absorbed by their business pursuits, and deprecated all political
agitation, were startled out of their security by a sudden alarm, and
excitedly took sides. That restless trouble of conscience about slavery,
which even in times of apparent repose had secretly disturbed the souls
of Northern people, broke forth in an utterance louder than ever. The
bonds of accustomed party allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and
antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering
sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The
Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the
hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a
position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was
not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery
question stirred his soul in its profoundest depths; it was, as one of
his intimate friends said, "the only one on which he would become
excited"; it called forth all his faculties and energies. Yet there were
many others who, having long and arduously fought the antislavery battle
in the popular assembly, or in the press, or in the halls of Congress,
far surpassed him in prestige, and compared with whom he was still an
obscure and untried man. His reputation, although highly honorable and
well earned, had so far been essentially local. As a stump-speaker in
Whig canvasses outside of his State he had attracted comparatively little
attention; but in Illinois he had been recognized as one of the foremost
men of the Whig party. Among the opponents of the Nebraska Bill he
occupied in his State so important a position, that in 1856 he was the
choice of a large majority of the "Anti-Nebraska men" in the Legislature
for a seat in the Senate of the United States which then became vacant;
and when he, an old Whig, could not obtain the votes of the Anti-Nebraska
Democrats necessary to make a majority, he generously urged his friends
to transfer their votes to Lyman Trumbull, who was then elected. Two
years later, in the first national convention of the Republican party,
the delegation from Illinois brought him forward as a candidate for the
vice-presidency, and he received respectable support. Still, the name of
Abraham Lincoln was not widely known beyond the boundaries of his own
State. But now it was this local prominence in Illinois that put him in
a position of peculiar advantage on the battlefield of national politics.
In the assault on the Missouri Compromise which broke down all legal
barriers to the spread of slavery Stephen Arnold Douglas was the
ostensible leader and central figure; and Douglas was a Senator from
Illinois, Lincoln's State. Douglas's national theatre of action was the
Senate, but in his constituency in Illinois were the roots of his
official position and power. What he did in the Senate he had to justify
before the people of Illinois, in order to maintain himself in place; and
in Illinois all eyes turned to Lincoln as Douglas's natural antagonist.

As very young men they had come to Illinois, Lincoln from Indiana,
Douglas from Vermont, and had grown up together in public life, Douglas
as a Democrat, Lincoln as a Whig. They had met first in Vandalia, in
1834, when Lincoln was in the Legislature and Douglas in the lobby; and
again in 1836, both as members of the Legislature. Douglas, a very able
politician, of the agile, combative, audacious, "pushing" sort, rose in
political distinction with remarkable rapidity. In quick succession he
became a member of the Legislature, a State's attorney, secretary of
state, a judge on the supreme bench of Illinois, three times a
Representative in Congress, and a Senator of the United States when only
thirty-nine years old. In the National Democratic convention of 1852 he
appeared even as an aspirant to the nomination for the Presidency, as the
favorite of "young America," and received a respectable vote. He had far
outstripped Lincoln in what is commonly called political success and in
reputation. But it had frequently happened that in political campaigns
Lincoln felt himself impelled, or was selected by his Whig friends, to
answer Douglas's speeches; and thus the two were looked upon, in a large
part of the State at least, as the representative combatants of their
respective parties in the debates before popular meetings. As soon,
therefore, as, after the passage of his Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Douglas
returned to Illinois to defend his cause before his constituents,
Lincoln, obeying not only his own impulse, but also general expectation,
stepped forward as his principal opponent. Thus the struggle about the
principles involved in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or, in a broader sense,
the struggle between freedom and slavery, assumed in Illinois the outward
form of a personal contest between Lincoln and Douglas; and, as it
continued and became more animated, that personal contest in Illinois was
watched with constantly increasing interest by the whole country. When,
in 1858, Douglas's senatorial term being about to expire, Lincoln was
formally designated by the Republican convention of Illinois as their
candidate for the Senate, to take Douglas's place, and the two
contestants agreed to debate the questions at issue face to face in a
series of public meetings, the eyes of the whole American people were
turned eagerly to that one point: and the spectacle reminded one of those
lays of ancient times telling of two armies, in battle array, standing
still to see their two principal champions fight out the contested cause
between the lines in single combat.

Lincoln had then reached the full maturity of his powers. His equipment
as a statesman did not embrace a comprehensive knowledge of public
affairs. What he had studied he had indeed made his own, with the eager
craving and that zealous tenacity characteristic of superior minds
learning under difficulties. But his narrow opportunities and the
unsteady life he had led during his younger years had not permitted the
accumulation of large stores in his mind. It is true, in political
campaigns he had occasionally spoken on the ostensible issues between the
Whigs and the Democrats, the tariff, internal improvements, banks, and so
on, but only in a perfunctory manner. Had he ever given much serious
thought and study to these subjects, it is safe to assume that a mind so
prolific of original conceits as his would certainly have produced some
utterance upon them worth remembering. His soul had evidently never been
deeply stirred by such topics. But when his moral nature was aroused,
his brain developed an untiring activity until it had mastered all the
knowledge within reach. As soon as the repeal of the Missouri Compromise
had thrust the slavery question into politics as the paramount issue,
Lincoln plunged into an arduous study of all its legal, historical, and
moral aspects, and then his mind became a complete arsenal of argument.
His rich natural gifts, trained by long and varied practice, had made him
an orator of rare persuasiveness. In his immature days, he had pleased
himself for a short period with that inflated, high-flown style which,
among the uncultivated, passes for "beautiful speaking." His inborn
truthfulness and his artistic instinct soon overcame that aberration and
revealed to him the noble beauty and strength of simplicity. He
possessed an uncommon power of clear and compact statement, which might
have reminded those who knew the story of his early youth of the efforts
of the poor boy, when he copied his compositions from the scraped wooden
shovel, carefully to trim his expressions in order to save paper. His
language had the energy of honest directness and he was a master of
logical lucidity. He loved to point and enliven his reasoning by
humorous illustrations, usually anecdotes of Western life, of which he
had an inexhaustible store at his command. These anecdotes had not
seldom a flavor of rustic robustness about them, but he used them with
great effect, while amusing the audience, to give life to an abstraction,
to explode an absurdity, to clinch an argument, to drive home an
admonition. The natural kindliness of his tone, softening prejudice and
disarming partisan rancor, would often open to his reasoning a way into
minds most unwilling to receive it.

Yet his greatest power consisted in the charm of his individuality. That
charm did not, in the ordinary way, appeal to the ear or to the eye. His
voice was not melodious; rather shrill and piercing, especially when it
rose to its high treble in moments of great animation. His figure was
unhandsome, and the action of his unwieldy limbs awkward. He commanded
none of the outward graces of oratory as they are commonly understood.
His charm was of a different kind. It flowed from the rare depth and
genuineness of his convictions and his sympathetic feelings. Sympathy was
the strongest element in his nature. One of his biographers, who knew
him before he became President, says: "Lincoln's compassion might be
stirred deeply by an object present, but never by an object absent and
unseen. In the former case he would most likely extend relief, with
little inquiry into the merits of the case, because, as he expressed it
himself, it `took a pain out of his own heart.'" Only half of this is
correct. It is certainly true that he could not witness any individual
distress or oppression, or any kind of suffering, without feeling a pang
of pain himself, and that by relieving as much as he could the suffering
of others he put an end to his own. This compassionate impulse to help
he felt not only for human beings, but for every living creature. As in
his boyhood he angrily reproved the boys who tormented a wood turtle by
putting a burning coal on its back, so, we are told, he would, when a
mature man, on a journey, dismount from his buggy and wade waist-deep in
mire to rescue a pig struggling in a swamp. Indeed, appeals to his
compassion were so irresistible to him, and he felt it so difficult to
refuse anything when his refusal could give pain, that he himself
sometimes spoke of his inability to say "no" as a positive weakness. But
that certainly does not prove that his compassionate feeling was confined
to individual cases of suffering witnessed with his own eyes. As the boy
was moved by the aspect of the tortured wood turtle to compose an essay
against cruelty to animals in general, so the aspect of other cases of
suffering and wrong wrought up his moral nature, and set his mind to work
against cruelty, injustice, and oppression in general.

As his sympathy went forth to others, it attracted others to him.
Especially those whom he called the "plain people" felt themselves drawn
to him by the instinctive feeling that he understood, esteemed, and
appreciated them. He had grown up among the poor, the lowly, the
ignorant. He never ceased to remember the good souls he had met among
them, and the many kindnesses they had done him. Although in his mental
development he had risen far above them, he never looked down upon them.
How they felt and how they reasoned he knew, for so he had once felt and
reasoned himself. How they could be moved he knew, for so he had once
been moved himself and practised moving others. His mind was much larger
than theirs, but it thoroughly comprehended theirs; and while he thought
much farther than they, their thoughts were ever present to him. Nor had
the visible distance between them grown as wide as his rise in the world
would seem to have warranted. Much of his backwoods speech and manners
still clung to him. Although he had become "Mr. Lincoln" to his later
acquaintances, he was still "Abe" to the "Nats" and "Billys" and "Daves"
of his youth; and their familiarity neither appeared unnatural to them,
nor was it in the least awkward to him. He still told and enjoyed
stories similar to those he had told and enjoyed in the Indiana
settlement and at New Salem. His wants remained as modest as they had
ever been; his domestic habits had by no means completely accommodated
themselves to those of his more highborn wife; and though the "Kentucky
jeans" apparel had long been dropped, his clothes of better material and
better make would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs. His cotton
umbrella, without a handle, and tied together with a coarse string to
keep it from flapping, which he carried on his circuit rides, is said to
be remembered still by some of his surviving neighbors. This rusticity
of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt of refinement and
comfort which self-made men sometimes carry into their more affluent
circumstances. To Abraham Lincoln it was entirely natural, and all those
who came into contact with him knew it to be so. In his ways of thinking
and feeling he had become a gentleman in the highest sense, but the
refining process had polished but little the outward form. The plain
people, therefore, still considered "honest Abe Lincoln" one of
themselves; and when they felt, which they no doubt frequently did, that
his thoughts and aspirations moved in a sphere above their own, they were
all the more proud of him, without any diminution of fellow-feeling. It
was this relation of mutual sympathy and understanding between Lincoln
and the plain people that gave him his peculiar power as a public man,
and singularly fitted him, as we shall see, for that leadership which was
preeminently required in the great crisis then coming on,--the leadership
which indeed thinks and moves ahead of the masses, but always remains
within sight and sympathetic touch of them.

He entered upon the campaign of 1858 better equipped than he had ever
been before. He not only instinctively felt, but he had convinced
himself by arduous study, that in this struggle against the spread of
slavery he had right, justice, philosophy, the enlightened opinion of
mankind, history, the Constitution, and good policy on his side. It was
observed that after he began to discuss the slavery question his speeches
were pitched in a much loftier key than his former oratorical efforts.
While he remained fond of telling funny stories in private conversation,
they disappeared more and more from his public discourse. He would still
now and then point his argument with expressions of inimitable
quaintness, and flash out rays of kindly humor and witty irony; but his
general tone was serious, and rose sometimes to genuine solemnity. His
masterly skill in dialectical thrust and parry, his wealth of knowledge,
his power of reasoning and elevation of sentiment, disclosed in language
of rare precision, strength, and beauty, not seldom astonished his old
friends.

Neither of the two champions could have found a more formidable
antagonist than each now met in the other. Douglas was by far the most
conspicuous member of his party. His admirers had dubbed him "the Little
Giant," contrasting in that nickname the greatness of his mind with the
smallness of his body. But though of low stature, his broad-shouldered
figure appeared uncommonly sturdy, and there was something lion-like in
the squareness of his brow and jaw, and in the defiant shake of his long
hair. His loud and persistent advocacy of territorial expansion, in the
name of patriotism and "manifest destiny," had given him an enthusiastic
following among the young and ardent. Great natural parts, a highly
combative temperament, and long training had made him a debater
unsurpassed in a Senate filled with able men. He could be as forceful in
his appeals to patriotic feelings as he was fierce in denunciation and
thoroughly skilled in all the baser tricks of parliamentary pugilism.
While genial and rollicking in his social intercourse--the idol of the
"boys" he felt himself one of the most renowned statesmen of his time,
and would frequently meet his opponents with an overbearing haughtiness,
as persons more to be pitied than to be feared. In his speech opening
the campaign of 1858, he spoke of Lincoln, whom the Republicans had dared
to advance as their candidate for "his" place in the Senate, with an air
of patronizing if not contemptuous condescension, as "a kind, amiable,
and intelligent gentleman and a good citizen." The Little Giant would
have been pleased to pass off his antagonist as a tall dwarf. He knew
Lincoln too well, however, to indulge himself seriously in such a
delusion. But the political situation was at that moment in a curious
tangle, and Douglas could expect to derive from the confusion great
advantage over his opponent.

By the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, opening the Territories to the
ingress of slavery, Douglas had pleased the South, but greatly alarmed
the North. He had sought to conciliate Northern sentiment by appending
to his Kansas-Nebraska Bill the declaration that its intent was "not to
legislate slavery into any State or Territory, nor to exclude it
therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and
regulate their institutions in their own way, subject only to the
Constitution of the United States." This he called "the great principle
of popular sovereignty." When asked whether, under this act, the people
of a Territory, before its admission as a State, would have the right to
exclude slavery, he answered, "That is a question for the courts to
decide." Then came the famous "Dred Scott decision," in which the
Supreme Court held substantially that the right to hold slaves as
property existed in the Territories by virtue of the Federal
Constitution, and that this right could not be denied by any act of a
territorial government. This, of course, denied the right of the people
of any Territory to exclude slavery while they were in a territorial
condition, and it alarmed the Northern people still more. Douglas
recognized the binding force of the decision of the Supreme Court, at the
same time maintaining, most illogically, that his great principle of
popular sovereignty remained in force nevertheless. Meanwhile, the
proslavery people of western Missouri, the so-called "border ruffians,"
had invaded Kansas, set up a constitutional convention, made a
constitution of an extreme pro-slavery type, the "Lecompton
Constitution," refused to submit it fairly to a vote of the people of
Kansas, and then referred it to Congress for acceptance,--seeking thus to
accomplish the admission of Kansas as a slave State. Had Douglas
supported such a scheme, he would have lost all foothold in the North.
In the name of popular sovereignty he loudly declared his opposition to
the acceptance of any constitution not sanctioned by a formal popular
vote. He "did not care," he said, "whether slavery be voted up or down,"
but there must be a fair vote of the people. Thus he drew upon himself
the hostility of the Buchanan administration, which was controlled by the
proslavery interest, but he saved his Northern following. More than
this, not only did his Democratic admirers now call him "the true
champion of freedom," but even some Republicans of large influence,
prominent among them Horace Greeley, sympathizing with Douglas in his
fight against the Lecompton Constitution, and hoping to detach him
permanently from the proslavery interest and to force a lasting breach in
the Democratic party, seriously advised the Republicans of Illinois to
give up their opposition to Douglas, and to help re-elect him to the
Senate. Lincoln was not of that opinion. He believed that great popular
movements can succeed only when guided by their faithful friends, and
that the antislavery cause could not safely be entrusted to the keeping
of one who "did not care whether slavery be voted up or down." This
opinion prevailed in Illinois; but the influences within the Republican
party over which it prevailed yielded only a reluctant acquiescence, if
they acquiesced at all, after having materially strengthened Douglas's
position. Such was the situation of things when the campaign of 1858
between Lincoln and Douglas began.