The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

A >> Abraham Lincoln >> The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete


Lincoln opened the campaign on his side at the convention which nominated
him as the Republican candidate for the senatorship, with a memorable
saying which sounded like a shout from the watchtower of history: "A
house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the
Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I expect it
will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and
place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the
course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward,
till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,--old as well as new,
North as well as South." Then he proceeded to point out that the
Nebraska doctrine combined with the Dred Scott decision worked in the
direction of making the nation "all slave." Here was the "irrepressible
conflict" spoken of by Seward a short time later, in a speech made famous
mainly by that phrase. If there was any new discovery in it, the right
of priority was Lincoln's. This utterance proved not only his
statesmanlike conception of the issue, but also, in his situation as a
candidate, the firmness of his moral courage. The friends to whom he had
read the draught of this speech before he delivered it warned him
anxiously that its delivery might be fatal to his success in the
election. This was shrewd advice, in the ordinary sense. While a
slaveholder could threaten disunion with impunity, the mere suggestion
that the existence of slavery was incompatible with freedom in the Union
would hazard the political chances of any public man in the North. But
Lincoln was inflexible. "It is true," said he, "and I will deliver it as
written.... I would rather be defeated with these expressions in my
speech held up and discussed before the people than be victorious without
them." The statesman was right in his far-seeing judgment and his
conscientious statement of the truth, but the practical politicians were
also right in their prediction of the immediate effect. Douglas
instantly seized upon the declaration that a house divided against itself
cannot stand as the main objective point of his attack, interpreting it
as an incitement to a "relentless sectional war," and there is no doubt
that the persistent reiteration of this charge served to frighten not a
few timid souls.

Lincoln constantly endeavored to bring the moral and philosophical side
of the subject to the foreground. "Slavery is wrong" was the keynote of
all his speeches. To Douglas's glittering sophism that the right of the
people of a Territory to have slavery or not, as they might desire, was
in accordance with the principle of true popular sovereignty, he made the
pointed answer: "Then true popular sovereignty, according to Senator
Douglas, means that, when one man makes another man his slave, no third
man shall be allowed to object." To Douglas's argument that the
principle which demanded that the people of a Territory should be
permitted to choose whether they would have slavery or not "originated
when God made man, and placed good and evil before him, allowing him to
choose upon his own responsibility," Lincoln solemnly replied: "No;
God--did not place good and evil before man, telling him to make his
choice. On the contrary, God did tell him there was one tree of the
fruit of which he should not eat, upon pain of death." He did not,
however, place himself on the most advanced ground taken by the radical
anti-slavery men. He admitted that, under the Constitution, "the
Southern people were entitled to a Congressional fugitive slave law,"
although he did not approve the fugitive slave law then existing. He
declared also that, if slavery were kept out of the Territories during
their territorial existence, as it should be, and if then the people of
any Territory, having a fair chance and a clear field, should do such an
extraordinary thing as to adopt a slave constitution, uninfluenced by the
actual presence of the institution among them, he saw no alternative but
to admit such a Territory into the Union. He declared further that,
while he should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the
District of Columbia, he would, as a member of Congress, with his present
views, not endeavor to bring on that abolition except on condition that
emancipation be gradual, that it be approved by the decision of a
majority of voters in the District, and that compensation be made to
unwilling owners. On every available occasion, he pronounced himself in
favor of the deportation and colonization of the blacks, of course with
their consent. He repeatedly disavowed any wish on his part to have
social and political equality established between whites and blacks. On
this point he summed up his views in a reply to Douglas's assertion that
the Declaration of Independence, in speaking of all men as being created
equal, did not include the negroes, saying: "I do not understand the
Declaration of Independence to mean that all men were created equal in
all respects. They are not equal in color. But I believe that it does
mean to declare that all men are equal in some respects; they are equal
in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

With regard to some of these subjects Lincoln modified his position at a
later period, and it has been suggested that he would have professed more
advanced principles in his debates with Douglas, had he not feared
thereby to lose votes. This view can hardly be sustained. Lincoln had
the courage of his opinions, but he was not a radical. The man who
risked his election by delivering, against the urgent protest of his
friends, the speech about "the house divided against itself" would not
have shrunk from the expression of more extreme views, had he really
entertained them. It is only fair to assume that he said what at the
time he really thought, and that if, subsequently, his opinions changed,
it was owing to new conceptions of good policy and of duty brought forth
by an entirely new set of circumstances and exigencies. It is
characteristic that he continued to adhere to the impracticable
colonization plan even after the Emancipation Proclamation had already
been issued.

But in this contest Lincoln proved himself not only a debater, but also a
political strategist of the first order. The "kind, amiable, and
intelligent gentleman," as Douglas had been pleased to call him, was by
no means as harmless as a dove. He possessed an uncommon share of that
worldly shrewdness which not seldom goes with genuine simplicity of
character; and the political experience gathered in the Legislature and
in Congress, and in many election campaigns, added to his keen
intuitions, had made him as far-sighted a judge of the probable effects
of a public man's sayings or doings upon the popular mind, and as
accurate a calculator in estimating political chances and forecasting
results, as could be found among the party managers in Illinois. And now
he perceived keenly the ugly dilemma in which Douglas found himself,
between the Dred Scott decision, which declared the right to hold slaves
to exist in the Territories by virtue of the Federal Constitution, and
his "great principle of popular sovereignty," according to which the
people of a Territory, if they saw fit, were to have the right to exclude
slavery therefrom. Douglas was twisting and squirming to the best of his
ability to avoid the admission that the two were incompatible. The
question then presented itself if it would be good policy for Lincoln to
force Douglas to a clear expression of his opinion as to whether, the
Dred Scott decision notwithstanding, "the people of a Territory could in
any lawful way exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of
a State constitution." Lincoln foresaw and predicted what Douglas would
answer: that slavery could not exist in a Territory unless the people
desired it and gave it protection by territorial legislation. In an
improvised caucus the policy of pressing the interrogatory on Douglas was
discussed. Lincoln's friends unanimously advised against it, because the
answer foreseen would sufficiently commend Douglas to the people of
Illinois to insure his re-election to the Senate. But Lincoln persisted.
"I am after larger game," said he. "If Douglas so answers, he can never
be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this." The
interrogatory was pressed upon Douglas, and Douglas did answer that, no
matter what the decision of the Supreme Court might be on the abstract
question, the people of a Territory had the lawful means to introduce or
exclude slavery by territorial legislation friendly or unfriendly to the
institution. Lincoln found it easy to show the absurdity of the
proposition that, if slavery were admitted to exist of right in the
Territories by virtue of the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it
could be kept out or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a
territorial Legislature. Again the judgment of the politicians, having
only the nearest object in view, proved correct: Douglas was reelected to
the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved correct also: Douglas, by
resorting to the expedient of his "unfriendly legislation doctrine,"
forfeited his last chance of becoming President of the United States. He
might have hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from the
South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution; but that he
taught the people of the Territories a trick by which they could defeat
what the proslavery men considered a constitutional right, and that he
called that trick lawful, this the slave power would never forgive. The
breach between the Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth
irremediable and fatal.

The Presidential election of 1860 approached. The struggle in Kansas,
and the debates in Congress which accompanied it, and which not
unfrequently provoked violent outbursts, continually stirred the popular
excitement. Within the Democratic party raged the war of factions. The
national Democratic convention met at Charleston on the 23d of April,
1860. After a struggle of ten days between the adherents and the
opponents of Douglas, during which the delegates from the cotton States
had withdrawn, the convention adjourned without having nominated any
candidates, to meet again in Baltimore on the 18th of June. There was no
prospect, however, of reconciling the hostile elements. It appeared very
probable that the Baltimore convention would nominate Douglas, while the
seceding Southern Democrats would set up a candidate of their own,
representing extreme proslavery principles.

Meanwhile, the national Republican convention assembled at Chicago on the
16th of May, full of enthusiasm and hope. The situation was easily
understood. The Democrats would have the South. In order to succeed in
the election, the Republicans had to win, in addition to the States
carried by Fremont in 1856, those that were classed as "doubtful,"--New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, or Illinois in the place of either New
Jersey or Indiana. The most eminent Republican statesmen and leaders of
the time thought of for the Presidency were Seward and Chase, both
regarded as belonging to the more advanced order of antislavery men. Of
the two, Seward had the largest following, mainly from New York, New
England, and the Northwest. Cautious politicians doubted seriously
whether Seward, to whom some phrases in his speeches had undeservedly
given the reputation of a reckless radical, would be able to command the
whole Republican vote in the doubtful States. Besides, during his long
public career he had made enemies. It was evident that those who thought
Seward's nomination too hazardous an experiment would consider Chase
unavailable for the same reason. They would then look round for an
"available" man; and among the "available" men Abraham Lincoln was easily
discovered to stand foremost. His great debate with Douglas had given
him a national reputation. The people of the East being eager to see the
hero of so dramatic a contest, he had been induced to visit several
Eastern cities, and had astonished and delighted large and distinguished
audiences with speeches of singular power and originality. An address
delivered by him in the Cooper Institute in New York, before an audience
containing a large number of important persons, was then, and has ever
since been, especially praised as one of the most logical and convincing
political speeches ever made in this country. The people of the West had
grown proud of him as a distinctively Western great man, and his
popularity at home had some peculiar features which could be expected to
exercise a potent charm. Nor was Lincoln's name as that of an available
candidate left to the chance of accidental discovery. It is indeed not
probable that he thought of himself as a Presidential possibility, during
his contest with Douglas for the senatorship. As late as April, 1859, he
had written to a friend who had approached him on the subject that he did
not think himself fit for the Presidency. The Vice-Presidency was then
the limit of his ambition. But some of his friends in Illinois took the
matter seriously in hand, and Lincoln, after some hesitation, then
formally authorized "the use of his name." The matter was managed with
such energy and excellent judgment that, in the convention, he had not
only the whole vote of Illinois to start with, but won votes on all sides
without offending any rival. A large majority of the opponents of Seward
went over to Abraham Lincoln, and gave him the nomination on the third
ballot. As had been foreseen, Douglas was nominated by one wing of the
Democratic party at Baltimore, while the extreme proslavery wing put
Breckinridge into the field as its candidate. After a campaign conducted
with the energy of genuine enthusiasm on the antislavery side the united
Republicans defeated the divided Democrats, and Lincoln was elected
President by a majority of fifty-seven votes in the electoral colleges.

The result of the election had hardly been declared when the disunion
movement in the South, long threatened and carefully planned and
prepared, broke out in the shape of open revolt, and nearly a month
before Lincoln could be inaugurated as President of the United States
seven Southern States had adopted ordinances of secession, formed an
independent confederacy, framed a constitution for it, and elected
Jefferson Davis its president, expecting the other slaveholding States
soon to join them. On the 11th of February, 1861, Lincoln left
Springfield for Washington; having, with characteristic simplicity, asked
his law partner not to change the sign of the firm "Lincoln and Herndon"
during the four years unavoidable absence of the senior partner, and
having taken an affectionate and touching leave of his neighbors.

The situation which confronted the new President was appalling: the
larger part of the South in open rebellion, the rest of the slaveholding
States wavering preparing to follow; the revolt guided by determined,
daring, and skillful leaders; the Southern people, apparently full of
enthusiasm and military spirit, rushing to arms, some of the forts and
arsenals already in their possession; the government of the Union, before
the accession of the new President, in the hands of men some of whom
actively sympathized with the revolt, while others were hampered by their
traditional doctrines in dealing with it, and really gave it aid and
comfort by their irresolute attitude; all the departments full of
"Southern sympathizers" and honeycombed with disloyalty; the treasury
empty, and the public credit at the lowest ebb; the arsenals ill supplied
with arms, if not emptied by treacherous practices; the regular army of
insignificant strength, dispersed over an immense surface, and deprived
of some of its best officers by defection; the navy small and antiquated.
But that was not all. The threat of disunion had so often been resorted
to by the slave power in years gone by that most Northern people had
ceased to believe in its seriousness. But, when disunion actually
appeared as a stern reality, something like a chill swept through the
whole Northern country. A cry for union and peace at any price rose on
all sides. Democratic partisanship reiterated this cry with vociferous
vehemence, and even many Republicans grew afraid of the victory they had
just achieved at the ballot-box, and spoke of compromise. The country
fairly resounded with the noise of "anticoercion meetings." Expressions
of firm resolution from determined antislavery men were indeed not
wanting, but they were for a while almost drowned by a bewildering
confusion of discordant voices. Even this was not all. Potent
influences in Europe, with an ill-concealed desire for the permanent
disruption of the American Union, eagerly espoused the cause of the
Southern seceders, and the two principal maritime powers of the Old World
seemed only to be waiting for a favorable opportunity to lend them a
helping hand.

This was the state of things to be mastered by "honest Abe Lincoln" when
he took his seat in the Presidential chair,--"honest Abe Lincoln," who
was so good-natured that he could not say "no"; the greatest achievement
in whose life had been a debate on the slavery question; who had never
been in any position of power; who was without the slightest experience
of high executive duties, and who had only a speaking acquaintance with
the men upon whose counsel and cooperation he was to depend. Nor was his
accession to power under such circumstances greeted with general
confidence even by the members of his party. While he had indeed won
much popularity, many Republicans, especially among those who had
advocated Seward's nomination for the Presidency, saw the simple
"Illinois lawyer" take the reins of government with a feeling little
short of dismay. The orators and journals of the opposition were
ridiculing and lampooning him without measure. Many people actually
wondered how such a man could dare to undertake a task which, as he
himself had said to his neighbors in his parting speech, was "more
difficult than that of Washington himself had been."

But Lincoln brought to that task, aside from other uncommon qualities,
the first requisite,--an intuitive comprehension of its nature. While he
did not indulge in the delusion that the Union could be maintained or
restored without a conflict of arms, he could indeed not foresee all the
problems he would have to solve. He instinctively understood, however,
by what means that conflict would have to be conducted by the government
of a democracy. He knew that the impending war, whether great or small,
would not be like a foreign war, exciting a united national enthusiasm,
but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon heat the animosities of party
even in the localities controlled by the government; that this war would
have to be carried on not by means of a ready-made machinery, ruled by an
undisputed, absolute will, but by means to be furnished by the voluntary
action of the people:--armies to be formed by voluntary enlistments;
large sums of money to be raised by the people, through representatives,
voluntarily taxing themselves; trust of extraordinary power to be
voluntarily granted; and war measures, not seldom restricting the rights
and liberties to which the citizen was accustomed, to be voluntarily
accepted and submitted to by the people, or at least a large majority of
them; and that this would have to be kept up not merely during a short
period of enthusiastic excitement; but possibly through weary years of
alternating success and disaster, hope and despondency. He knew that in
order to steer this government by public opinion successfully through all
the confusion created by the prejudices and doubts and differences of
sentiment distracting the popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire,
mould, organize, unite, and guide the popular will that it might give
forth all the means required for the performance of his great task, he
would have to take into account all the influences strongly affecting the
current of popular thought and feeling, and to direct while appearing to
obey.

This was the kind of leadership he intuitively conceived to be needed
when a free people were to be led forward en masse to overcome a great
common danger under circumstances of appalling difficulty, the leadership
which does not dash ahead with brilliant daring, no matter who follows,
but which is intent upon rallying all the available forces, gathering in
the stragglers, closing up the column, so that the front may advance well
supported. For this leadership Abraham Lincoln was admirably fitted,
better than any other American statesman of his day; for he understood
the plain people, with all their loves and hates, their prejudices and
their noble impulses, their weaknesses and their strength, as he
understood himself, and his sympathetic nature was apt to draw their
sympathy to him.

His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in characteristic
manner. Although yielding nothing in point of principle, it was by no
means a flaming antislavery manifesto, such as would have pleased the
more ardent Republicans. It was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing
father speaking to his wayward children. In the kindliest language he
pointed out to the secessionists how ill advised their attempt at
disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, they should desist. Almost
plaintively, he told them that, while it was not their duty to destroy
the Union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the least he could
do, under the obligations of his oath, was to possess and hold the
property of the United States; that he hoped to do this peaceably; that
he abhorred war for any purpose, and that they would have none unless
they themselves were the aggressors. It was a masterpiece of
persuasiveness, and while Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments
suggested by Seward, it was essentially his own. Probably Lincoln
himself did not expect his inaugural address to have any effect upon the
secessionists, for he must have known them to be resolved upon disunion
at any cost. But it was an appeal to the wavering minds in the North,
and upon them it made a profound impression. Every candid man, however
timid and halting, had to admit that the President was bound by his oath
to do his duty; that under that oath he could do no less than he said he
would do; that if the secessionists resisted such an appeal as the
President had made, they were bent upon mischief, and that the government
must be supported against them. The partisan sympathy with the Southern
insurrection which still existed in the North did indeed not disappear,
but it diminished perceptibly under the influence of such reasoning.
Those who still resisted it did so at the risk of appearing unpatriotic.

It must not be supposed, however, that Lincoln at once succeeded in
pleasing everybody, even among his friends,--even among those nearest to
him. In selecting his cabinet, which he did substantially before he left
Springfield for Washington, he thought it wise to call to his assistance
the strong men of his party, especially those who had given evidence of
the support they commanded as his competitors in the Chicago convention.
In them he found at the same time representatives of the different shades
of opinion within the party, and of the different elements--former Whigs
and former Democrats--from which the party had recruited itself. This
was sound policy under the circumstances. It might indeed have been
foreseen that among the members of a cabinet so composed, troublesome
disagreements and rivalries would break out. But it was better for the
President to have these strong and ambitious men near him as his
co-operators than to have them as his critics in Congress, where their
differences might have been composed in a common opposition to him. As
members of his cabinet he could hope to control them, and to keep them
busily employed in the service of a common purpose, if he had the
strength to do so. Whether he did possess this strength was soon tested
by a singularly rude trial.

There can be no doubt that the foremost members of his cabinet, Seward
and Chase, the most eminent Republican statesmen, had felt themselves
wronged by their party when in its national convention it preferred to
them for the Presidency a man whom, not unnaturally, they thought greatly
their inferior in ability and experience as well as in service. The
soreness of that disappointment was intensified when they saw this
Western man in the White House, with so much of rustic manner and speech
as still clung to him, meeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, on a
footing of equality, with the simplicity of his good nature unburdened by
any conventional dignity of deportment, and dealing with the great
business of state in an easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently somewhat
irreverent way. They did not understand such a man. Especially Seward,
who, as Secretary of State, considered himself next to the Chief
Executive, and who quickly accustomed himself to giving orders and making
arrangements upon his own motion, thought it necessary that he should
rescue the direction of public affairs from hands so unskilled, and take
full charge of them himself. At the end of the first month of the
administration he submitted a "memorandum" to President Lincoln, which
has been first brought to light by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of their
most valuable contributions to the history of those days. In that paper
Seward actually told the President that at the end of a month's
administration the government was still without a policy, either domestic
or foreign; that the slavery question should be eliminated from the
struggle about the Union; that the matter of the maintenance of the forts
and other possessions in the South should be decided with that view; that
explanations should be demanded categorically from the governments of
Spain and France, which were then preparing, one for the annexation of
San Domingo, and both for the invasion of Mexico; that if no satisfactory
explanations were received war should be declared against Spain and
France by the United States; that explanations should also be sought from
Russia and Great Britain, and a vigorous continental spirit of
independence against European intervention be aroused all over the
American continent; that this policy should be incessantly pursued and
directed by somebody; that either the President should devote himself
entirely to it, or devolve the direction on some member of his cabinet,
whereupon all debate on this policy must end.