The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

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Important and exciting as was the war question of 1812, it never so
alarmed the sagacious statesmen of the country for the safety of the
Republic as afterward did the Missouri question. This sprang from that
unfortunate source of discord--negro slavery. When our Federal
Constitution was adopted, we owned no territory beyond the limits or
ownership of the States, except the territory northwest of the River Ohio
and east of the Mississippi. What has since been formed into the States
of Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits of or
owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina. As to the
Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even before the adoption
of the Constitution that slavery should never go there. On the admission
of States into the Union, carved from the territory we owned before the
Constitution, no question, or at most no considerable question, arose
about slavery--those which were within the limits of or owned by the old
States following respectively the condition of the parent State, and
those within the Northwest Territory following the previously made
provision. But in 1803 we purchased Louisiana of the French, and it
included with much more what has since been formed into the State of
Missouri. With regard to it, nothing had been done to forestall the
question of slavery. When, therefore, in 1819, Missouri, having formed a
State constitution without excluding slavery, and with slavery already
actually existing within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for
admission, almost the entire representation of the non-slaveholding
States objected. A fearful and angry struggle instantly followed. This
alarmed thinking men more than any previous question, because, unlike all
the former, it divided the country by geographical lines. Other questions
had their opposing partisans in all localities of the country and in
almost every family, so that no division of the Union could follow such
without a separation of friends to quite as great an extent as that of
opponents. Not so with the Missouri question. On this a geographical line
could be traced, which in the main would separate opponents only. This
was the danger. Mr. Jefferson, then in retirement, wrote:

"I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any attention
to public affairs, confident they were in good hands and content to be a
passenger in our bark to the shore from which I am not distant. But this
momentous question, like a firebell 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 the 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 passions of men,
will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it deeper and
deeper. I can say with conscious truth that there is not a man on earth
who would sacrifice more than I would to relieve us from this heavy
reproach in any practicable way.

"The cession of that kind of property--for it is so misnamed--is a
bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that way a
general emancipation and expatriation could be effected, and gradually
and with due sacrifices I think it might be. But as it is, we have the
wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once engaged his
whole energies to avert it. It began, as I have said, in 1819; and it did
not terminate till 1821. Missouri would not yield the point; and Congress
that is, a majority in Congress--by repeated votes showed a determination
not to admit the State unless it should yield. After several failures,
and great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question that a
majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote rejected, and,
as all seemed to think, finally. A sullen gloom hung over the nation. All
felt that the rejection of Missouri was equivalent to a dissolution of
the Union, because those States which already had what Missouri was
rejected for refusing to relinquish would go with Missouri. All
deprecated and deplored this, but none saw how to avert it. For the
judgment of members to be convinced of the necessity of yielding was not
the whole difficulty; each had a constituency to meet and to answer to.
Mr. Clay, though worn down and exhausted, was appealed to by members to
renew his efforts at compromise. He did so, and by some judicious
modifications of his plan, coupled with laborious efforts with individual
members and his own overmastering eloquence upon that floor, he finally
secured the admission of the State. Brightly and captivating as it had
previously shown, it was now perceived that his great eloquence was a
mere embellishment, or at most but a helping hand to his inventive genius
and his devotion to his country in the day of her extreme peril.

After the settlement of the Missouri question, although a portion of the
American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a majority even appear
generally to have been opposed to him on questions of ordinary
administration, he seems constantly to have been regarded by all as the
man for the crisis. Accordingly, in the days of nullification, and more
recently in the reappearance of the slavery question connected with our
territory newly acquired of Mexico, the task of devising a mode of
adjustment seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent--and
his performance of the task in each case was little else than a literal
fulfilment of the public expectation.

Mr. Clay's efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and afterward in
behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their respective struggles for
civil liberty, are among the finest on record, upon the noblest of all
themes, and bear ample corroboration of what I have said was his ruling
passion--a love of liberty and right, unselfishly, and for their own
sakes.

Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently already, I am
unwilling to close without referring more particularly to Mr. Clay's
views and conduct in regard to it. He ever was on principle and in
feeling opposed to slavery. The very earliest, and one of the latest,
public efforts of his life, separated by a period of more than fifty
years, were both made in favor of gradual emancipation. He did not
perceive that on a question of human right the negroes were to be
excepted from the human race. And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves.
Cast into life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated,
he did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it could
be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil even to the cause
of human liberty itself. His feeling and his judgment, therefore, ever
led him to oppose both extremes of opinion on the subject. Those who
would shiver into fragments the Union of these States, tear to tatters
its now venerated Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible,
rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all
their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving, their
just execration; and the name and opinions and influence of Mr. Clay are
fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against them.
But I would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence
against the opposite extreme--against a few but an increasing number of
men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail
and to ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that
"all men are created free and equal." So far as I have learned, the first
American of any note to do or attempt this was the late John C. Calhoun;
and if I mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the
messages of the Governor of South Carolina. We, however, look for and are
not much shocked by political eccentricities and heresies in South
Carolina. But only last year I saw with astonishment what purported to be
a letter of a very distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia,
copied, with apparent approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing
the following to me very unsatisfactory language:

"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in
mine. Professional abolitionists have made more use of it than of any
passage in the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint
Voltaire, and was baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost
universally regarded as canonical authority`All men are born free and
equal.'

"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am
sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I
must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not
dogmatically say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism."

This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in
the fresher days of the republic. Let us contrast with it the language of
that truly national man whose life and death we now commemorate and
lament: I quote from a speech of Mr. Clay delivered before the American
Colonization Society in 1827:

"We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this
question. The society goes into no household to disturb its domestic
tranquillity. It addresses itself to no slaves to weaken their
obligations of obedience. It seeks to affect no man's property. It
neither has the power nor the will to affect the property of any one
contrary to his consent. The execution of its scheme would augment
instead of diminishing the value of property left behind. The society,
composed of free men, conceals itself only with the free. Collateral
consequences we are not responsible for. It is not this society which has
produced the great moral revolution which the age exhibits. What would
they who thus reproach us have done? If they would repress all tendencies
toward liberty and ultimate emancipation, they must do more than put down
the benevolent efforts of this society. They must go back to the era of
our liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its
annual joyous return. They must renew the slave trade, with all its train
of atrocities. They must suppress the workings of British philanthropy,
seeking to meliorate the condition of the unfortunate West Indian slave.
They must arrest the career of South American deliverance from thraldom.
They must blow out the moral lights around us and extinguish that
greatest torch of all which America presents to a benighted
world--pointing the way to their rights, their liberties, and their
happiness. And when they have achieved all those purposes their work will
be yet incomplete. They must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the
light of reason and the love of liberty. Then, and not till then, when
universal darkness and despair prevail, can you perpetuate slavery and
repress all sympathy and all humane and benevolent efforts among free men
in behalf of the unhappy portion of our race doomed to bondage."

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816. Mr. Clay, though
not its projector, was one of its earliest members; and he died, as for
many preceding years he had been, its president. It was one of the most
cherished objects of his direct care and consideration, and the
association of his name with it has probably been its very greatest
collateral support. He considered it no demerit in the society that it
tended to relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the
free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation. In the same speech from which we have quoted he says:

"There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her
children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless hand of
fraud and violence. Transplanted in a foreign land, they will carry back
to their native soil the rich fruits of religion, civilization, law, and
liberty. May it not be one of the great designs of the Ruler of the
universe, whose ways are often inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus
to transform an original crime into a signal blessing to that most
unfortunate portion of the globe?"

This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the African race
and African continent was made twenty-five years ago. Every succeeding
year has added strength to the hope of its realization. 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. And if to such a consummation the efforts of
Mr. Clay shall have contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished,
and none of his labors will have been more valuable to his country and
his kind.

But Henry Clay is dead. His long and eventful life is closed. Our country
is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been quite all it has been,
and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay? Such a man the times have
demanded, and such in the providence of God was given us. But he is gone.
Let us strive to deserve, as far as mortals may, the continued care of
Divine Providence, trusting that in future national emergencies He will
not fail to provide us the instruments of safety and security.

NOTE. We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy of Major
Wm. H. Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of the Illinois State
Journal.




CHALLENGED VOTERS

OPINION ON THE ILLINOIS ELECTION LAW.

SPRINGFIELD, November 1, 1852

A leading article in the Daily Register of this morning has induced some
of our friends to request our opinion on the election laws as applicable
to challenged voters. We have examined the present constitution of the
State, the election law of 1849, and the unrepealed parts of the election
law in the revised code of 1845; and we are of the opinion that any
person taking the oath prescribed in the act of 1849 is entitled to vote
unless counter-proof be made satisfactory to a majority of the judges
that such oath is untrue; and that for the purpose of obtaining such
counter-proof, the proposed voter may be asked questions in the way of
cross-examination, and other independent testimony may be received. We
base our opinion as to receiving counter-proof upon the unrepealed
Section nineteen of the election law in the revised code.

A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EDWARDS
S. T. LOGAN.
S. H. TREAT




1853
LEGAL OFFICE WORK
TO JOSHUA R. STANFORD.
PEKIN, MAY 12, 1853

Mr. JOSHUA R. STANFORD.

SIR:--I hope the subject-matter of this letter will appear a sufficient
apology to you for the liberty I, a total stranger, take in addressing
you. The persons here holding two lots under a conveyance made by you, as
the attorney of Daniel M. Baily, now nearly twenty-two years ago, are in
great danger of losing the lots, and very much, perhaps all, is to depend
on the testimony you give as to whether you did or did not account to
Baily for the proceeds received by you on this sale of the lots. I,
therefore, as one of the counsel, beg of you to fully refresh your
recollection by any means in your power before the time you may be called
on to testify. If persons should come about you, and show a disposition
to pump you on the subject, it may be no more than prudent to remember
that it may be possible they design to misrepresent you and embarrass the
real testimony you may ultimately give. It may be six months or a year
before you are called on to testify.

Respectfully,
A. LINCOLN.




1854
TO O. L. DAVIS.

SPRINGFIELD, June 22, 1854.
O. L. DAVIS, ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--You, no doubt, remember the enclosed memorandum being handed
me in your office. I have just made the desired search, and find that no
such deed has ever been here. Campbell, the auditor, says that if it were
here, it would be in his office, and that he has hunted for it a dozen
times, and could never find it. He says that one time and another, he has
heard much about the matter, that it was not a deed for Right of Way, but
a deed, outright, for Depot-ground--at least, a sale for Depot-ground,
and there may never have been a deed. He says, if there is a deed, it is
most probable General Alexander, of Paris, has it.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




NEBRASKA MEASURE

TO J. M. PALMER

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, Sept. 7, 1854.
HON. J. M. PALMER.

DEAR SIR:--You know how anxious I am that this Nebraska measure shall be
rebuked and condemned everywhere. Of course I hope something from your
position; yet I do not expect you to do anything which may be wrong in
your own judgment; nor would I have you do anything personally injurious
to yourself. You are, and always have been, honestly and sincerely a
Democrat; and I know how painful it must be to an honest, sincere man to
be urged by his party to the support of a measure which in his conscience
he believes to be wrong. You have had a severe struggle with yourself,
and you have determined not to swallow the wrong. Is it not just to
yourself that you should, in a few public speeches, state your reasons,
and thus justify yourself? I wish you would; and yet I say, don't do it,
if you think it will injure you. You may have given your word to vote for
Major Harris; and if so, of course you will stick to it. But allow me to
suggest that you should avoid speaking of this; for it probably would
induce some of your friends in like manner to cast their votes. You
understand. And now let me beg your pardon for obtruding this letter upon
you, to whom I have ever been opposed in politics. Had your party omitted
to make Nebraska a test of party fidelity, you probably would have been
the Democratic candidate for Congress in the district. You deserved it,
and I believe it would have been given you. In that case I should have
been quite happy that Nebraska was to be rebuked at all events. I still
should have voted for the Whig candidate; but I should have made no
speeches, written no letters; and you would have been elected by at least
a thousand majority.

Yours truly,
A. LINCOLN.




TO A. B. MOREAU.

SPRINGFIELD, September 7, 1854
A. B. MOREAU, ESQ.

SIR:--Stranger though I am, personally, being a brother in the faith, I
venture to write you. Yates can not come to your court next week. He is
obliged to be at Pike court where he has a case, with a fee of five
hundred dollars, two hundred dollars already paid. To neglect it would be
unjust to himself, and dishonest to his client. Harris will be with you,
head up and tail up, for Nebraska. You must have some one to make an
anti-Nebraska speech. Palmer is the best, if you can get him, I think.
Jo. Gillespie, if you can not get Palmer, and somebody anyhow, if you can
get neither. But press Palmer hard. It is in his Senatorial district, I
believe.

Yours etc.,
A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS--PEORIA SPEECH

SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS, IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS,
OCTOBER 16, 1854.

I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience to meet
me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock. It is now several minutes
past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over three hours. If you hear me
at all, I wish you to hear me through. It will take me as long as it has
taken him. That will carry us beyond eight o'clock at night. Now, every
one of you who can remain that long can just as well get his supper, meet
me at seven, and remain an hour or two later. The Judge has already
informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me. I doubt not but
you have been a little surprised to learn that I have consented to give
one of his high reputation and known ability this advantage of me.
Indeed, my consenting to it, though reluctant, was not wholly unselfish,
for I suspected, if it were understood that the Judge was entirely done,
you Democrats would leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I
felt confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.

The audience signified their assent to the arrangement, and adjourned to
seven o'clock P.M., at which time they reassembled, and Mr. Lincoln spoke
substantially as follows:

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its
restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say. As I
desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my remarks will
not be specifically an answer to Judge Douglas; yet, as I proceed, the
main points he has presented will arise, and will receive such respectful
attention as I may be able to give them. I wish further to say that I do
not propose to question the patriotism or to assail the motives of any
man or class of men, but rather to confine myself strictly to the naked
merits of the question. I also wish to be no less than national in all
the positions I may take, and whenever I take ground which others have
thought, or may think, narrow, sectional, and dangerous to the Union, I
hope to give a reason which will appear sufficient, at least to some, why
I think differently.

And as this subject is no other than part and parcel of the larger
general question of domestic slavery, I wish to make and to keep the
distinction between the existing institution and the extension of it so
broad and so clear that no honest man can misunderstand me, and no
dishonest one successfully misrepresent me.

In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise is, a
short history of the preceding kindred subjects will perhaps be proper.

When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the country
to which this compromise applies. Indeed, strictly speaking, the
Confederacy then owned no country at all; the States respectively owned
the country within their limits, and some of them owned territory beyond
their strict State limits. Virginia thus owned the Northwestern
Territory--the country out of which the principal part of Ohio, all
Indiana, all Illinois, all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been
formed. She also owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since
been formed into the State of Kentucky. North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned, in
separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama. Connecticut, I
think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio, being the same where they
now send Giddings to Congress and beat all creation in making cheese.

These territories, together with the States themselves, constitute all
the country over which the Confederacy then claimed any sort of
jurisdiction. We were then living under the Articles of Confederation,
which were superseded by the Constitution several years afterward. The
question of ceding the territories to the General Government was set on
foot. Mr. Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in Congress;
afterward, twice President; who was, is, and perhaps will continue to be,
the most distinguished politician of our history; a Virginian by birth
and continued residence, and withal a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of
taking that occasion to prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern
Territory. He prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views,
and to cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein a
condition of the deed. (Jefferson got only an understanding, not a
condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the cession with
the condition; and the first ordinance (which the acts of Congress were
then called) for the government of the Territory provided that slavery
should never be permitted therein. This is the famed "Ordinance of '87,"
so often spoken of.

Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last scrap of
this Territory came into the Union as the State of Wisconsin, all parties
acted in quiet obedience to this ordinance. It is now what Jefferson
foresaw and intended--the happy home of teeming millions of free, white,
prosperous people, and no slave among them.

Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the policy of
prohibiting slavery in new territory originated. Thus, away back to the
Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of the Revolution, the
State of Virginia and the national Congress put that policy into
practice. Thus, through more than sixty of the best years of the
republic, did that policy steadily work to its great and beneficent end.
And thus, in those five States, and in five millions of free,
enterprising people, we have before us the rich fruits of this policy.