[Sidenote: "Ford's History," p. 184.]
These demands were pressed upon a not reluctant Legislature. They addressed themselves at once to the work required of them, and soon devised, with reckless and unreasoning haste, a scheme of railroads covering the vast uninhabited prairies as with a gridiron. There was to be a rail-road from Galena to the mouth of the Ohio River; from Alton to Shawneetown; from Alton to Mount Carmel; from Alton to the eastern State boundary—by virtue of which lines Alton was to take the life of St. Louis without further notice; from Quincy to the Wabash River; from Bloomington to Pekin; from Peoria to Warsaw;—in all, 1350 miles of railway. Some of these terminal cities were not in existence except upon neatly designed surveyor's maps. The scheme provided also for the improvement of every stream in the State on which a child's shingle-boat could sail; and to the end that all objections should be stifled on the part of those neighborhoods which had neither railroads nor rivers, a gift of two hundred thousand dollars was voted to them, and with this sop they were fain to be content and not trouble the general joy. To accomplish this stupendous scheme, the Legislature voted eight million dollars, to be raised by loan. Four millions were also voted to complete the canal. These sums, monstrous as they were, were still ridiculously inadequate to the purpose in view. But while the frenzy lasted there was no consideration of cost or of possibilities. These vast works were voted without estimates, without surveys, without any rational consideration of their necessity. The voice of reason seemed to be silent in the Assembly; only the utterances of fervid prophecy found listeners. Governor Ford speaks of one orator who insisted, amid enthusiastic plaudits, that the State could well afford to borrow one hundred millions for internal improvements. The process of reasoning, or rather predicting, was easy and natural. The roads would raise the price of land; the State could enter large tracts and sell them at a profit; foreign capital would be invested in land, and could be heavily taxed to pay bonded interest; and the roads, as fast as they were built, could be operated at a great profit to pay for their own construction. The climax of the whole folly was reached by the provision of law directing that work should be begun at once at the termini of all the roads and the crossings of all rivers.
It is futile and disingenuous to attempt, as some have done, to fasten upon one or the other of the political parties of the State the responsibility of this bedlam legislation. The Governor and a majority of the Legislature were elected as Jackson Democrats, but the Whigs were as earnest in passing these measures as their opponents; and after they were adopted, the superior wealth, education, and business capacity of the Whigs had their legitimate influence, and they filled the principal positions upon the boards and commissions which came into existence under the acts. The bills were passed,—not without opposition, it is true, but by sufficient majorities,—and the news was received by the people of the State with the most extravagant demonstrations of delight. The villages were illuminated; bells were rung in the rare steeples of the churches; "fire-balls,"—bundles of candle-wick soaked in turpentine,—were thrown by night all over the country. The day of payment was far away, and those who trusted the assurances of the sanguine politicians thought that in some mysterious way the scheme would pay for itself.
Mr. Lincoln is continually found voting with his friends in favor of this legislation, and there is nothing to show that he saw any danger in it. He was a Whig, and as such in favor of internal improvements in general and a liberal construction of constitutional law in such matters. As a boy, he had interested himself in the details of local improvements of rivers and roads, and he doubtless went with the current in Vandalia in favor of this enormous system. He took, however, no prominent part in the work by which these railroad bills were passed. He considered himself as specially commissioned to procure the removal of the State capital from Vandalia to Springfield, and he applied all his energies to the accomplishment of this work. The enterprise was hedged round with difficulties; for although it was everywhere agreed, except at Vandalia, that the capital ought to be moved, every city in the State, and several which existed only on paper, demanded to be made the seat of government. The question had been submitted to a popular vote in 1834, and the result showed about as many cities desirous of opening their gates to the Legislature as claimed the honor of being the birthplace of Homer. Of these Springfield was only third in popular estimation, and it was evident that Mr. Lincoln had need of all his wits if he were to fulfill the trust confided to him. It is said by Governor Ford that the "Long Nine" were not averse to using the hopes and fears of other members in relation to their special railroads to gain their adherence to the Springfield programme, but this is by no means clear. We are rather inclined to trust the direct testimony of Jesse K. Dubois, that the success of the Sangamon County delegation in obtaining the capital was due to the adroit management of Mr. Lincoln—first in inducing all the rival claimants to unite in a vote to move the capital from Vandalia, and then in carrying a direct vote for Springfield through the joint convention by the assistance of the southern counties. His personal authority accomplished this in great part. Mr. Dubois says: "He made Webb and me vote for the removal, though we belonged to the southern end of the State. We defended our vote before our constituents by saying that necessity would ultimately force the seat of government to a central position. But in reality we gave the vote to Lincoln because we liked him, because we wanted to oblige our friend, and because we recognized him as our leader." To do this, they were obliged to quarrel with their most intimate associates, who had bought a piece of waste land at the exact geographical center of the State and were striving to have the capital established there in the interest of their own pockets and territorial symmetry.
The bill was passed only a short time before the Legislature adjourned, and the "Long Nine" came back to their constituents wearing their well-won laurels. They were complimented in the newspapers, at public meetings, and even at subscription dinners. We read of one at Springfield, at the "Rural Hotel," to which sixty guests sat down, where there were speeches by Browning, Lincoln, Douglas (who had resigned his seat in the Legislature to become Register of the Land Office at the new capital), S. T. Logan, Baker, and others, whose wit and wisdom were lost to history through the absence of reporters. Another dinner was given them at Athens a few weeks later. Among the toasts on these occasions were two which we may transcribe: "Abraham Lincoln: He has fulfilled the expectations of his friends, and disappointed the hopes of his enemies"; and "A. Lincoln: One of Nature's noblemen."
CHAPTER VIII
THE LINCOLN-STONE PROTEST
[Sidenote: 1837.]
On the 3rd of March, the day before the Legislature adjourned, Mr. Lincoln caused to be entered upon its records a paper which excited but little interest at the time, but which will probably be remembered long after the good and evil actions of the Vandalia Assembly have faded away from the minds of men. It was the authentic record of the beginning of a great and momentous career. The following protest was presented to the House, which was read and ordered to be spread on the journals, to wit:
Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of the same.
They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils.
They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.
They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the people of the District.
The difference between these opinions and those contained in the above resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.
(Signed)
DAN STONE,
A. LINCOLN,
Representatives from the county of Sangamon.
It may seem strange to those who shall read these pages that a protest so mild and cautious as this should ever have been considered either necessary or remarkable. We have gone so far away from the habits of thought and feeling prevalent at that time that it is difficult to appreciate such acts at their true value. But if we look a little carefully into the state of politics and public opinion in Illinois in the first half of this century, we shall see how much of inflexible conscience and reason there was in this simple protest.
[Sidenote: Edwards, "History of Illinois," p. 179.]
[Sidenote: Edwards, p. 180.]
The whole of the North-west territory had, it is true, been dedicated to freedom by the ordinance of 1787, but in spite of that famous prohibition, slavery existed in a modified form throughout that vast territory wherever there was any considerable population. An act legalizing a sort of slavery by indenture was passed by the Indiana territorial Legislature in 1807, and this remained in force in the Illinois country after its separation. Another act providing for the hiring of slaves from Southern States was passed in 1814, for the ostensible reason that "mills could not be successfully operated in the territory for want of laborers, and that the manufacture of salt could not be successfully carried on by white laborers." Yet, as an unconscious satire upon such pretenses, from time to time the most savage acts were passed to prohibit the immigration of free negroes into the territory which was represented as pining for black labor. Those who held slaves under the French domination, and their heirs, continued to hold them and their descendants in servitude, after Illinois had become nominally a free territory and a free State, on the ground that their vested rights of property could not have been abrogated by the ordinance, and that under the rule of the civil law partus sequitur ventrem.
But this quasi-toleration of the institution was not enough for the advocates of slavery. Soon after the adoption of the State Constitution, which prohibited slavery "hereafter," it was evident that there was a strong under-current of desire for its introduction into the State. Some of the leading politicians, exaggerating the extent of this desire, imagined they saw in it a means of personal advancement, and began to agitate the question of a convention to amend the Constitution. At that time there was a considerable emigration setting through the State from Kentucky and Tennessee to Missouri. Day by day the teams of the movers passed through the Illinois settlements, and wherever they halted for rest and refreshment they would affect to deplore the short-sighted policy which, by prohibiting slavery, had prevented their settling in that beautiful country. When young bachelors came from Kentucky on trips of business or pleasure, they dazzled the eyes of the women and excited the envy of their male rivals with their black retainers. The early Illinoisans were perplexed with a secret and singular sense of inferiority to even so new and raw a community as Missouri, because of its possession of slavery. Governor Edwards, complaining so late as 1829 of the superior mail facilities afforded to Missouri, says: "I can conceive of no reason for this preference, unless it be supposed that because the people of Missouri have negroes to work for them they are to be considered as gentlefolks entitled to higher consideration than us plain 'free-State' folks who have to work for ourselves."
The attempt was at last seriously made to open the State to slavery by the Legislature of 1822-3. The Governor, Edward Coles, of Virginia, a strong antislavery man, had been elected by a division of the pro- slavery party, but came in with a Legislature largely against him. The Senate had the requisite pro-slavery majority of two-thirds for a convention. In the House of Representatives there was a contest for a seat upon the result of which the two-thirds majority depended. The seat was claimed by John Shaw and Nicholas Hansen, of Pike County. The way in which the contest was decided affords a curious illustration of the moral sense of the advocates of slavery. They wanted at this session to elect a senator and provide for the convention. Hansen would vote for their senator and not for the convention. Shaw would vote for the convention, but not for Thomas, their candidate for senator. In such a dilemma they determined not to choose, but impartially to use both. They gave the seat to Hansen, and with his vote elected Thomas; they then turned him out, gave the place to Shaw, and with his vote carried the act for submitting the convention question to a popular vote. They were not more magnanimous in their victory than scrupulous in the means by which they had gained it. The night after the vote was taken they formed in a wild and drunken procession, and visited the residences of the Governor and the other free-State leaders, with loud and indecent demonstrations of triumph.
They considered their success already assured; but they left out of view the value of the moral forces called into being by their insolent challenge. The better class of people in the State, those heretofore unknown in politics, the schoolmasters, the ministers, immediately prepared for the contest, which became one of the severest the State has ever known. They established three newspapers, and sustained them with money and contributions. The Governor gave his entire salary for four years to the expenses of this contest, in which he had no personal interest whatever. The antislavery members of the Legislature made up a purse of a thousand dollars. They spent their money mostly in printer's ink and in the payment of active and zealous colporteurs. The result was a decisive defeat for the slave party. The convention was beaten by 1800 majority, in a total vote of 11612, and the State saved forever from slavery.
[Illustration: MARTIN VAN BUREN.]
But these supreme efforts of the advocates of public morals, uninfluenced by considerations of personal advantage, are of rare occurrence, and necessarily do not survive the exigencies that call them forth. The apologists of slavery, beaten in the canvass, were more successful in the field of social opinion. In the reaction which succeeded the triumph of the antislavery party, it seemed as if there had never been any antislavery sentiment in the State. They had voted, it is true, against the importation of slaves from the South, but they were content to live under a code of Draconian ferocity, inspired by the very spirit of slavery, visiting the immigration of free negroes with penalties of the most savage description. Even Governor Coles, the public-spirited and popular politician, was indicted and severely fined for having brought his own freedmen into the State and having assisted them in establishing themselves around him upon farms of their own. The Legislature remitted the fine, but the Circuit Court declared it had no constitutional power to do so, though the Supreme Court afterwards overruled this decision. Any mention of the subject of slavery was thought in the worst possible taste, and no one could avow himself opposed to it without the risk of social ostracism. Every town had its one or two abolitionists, who were regarded as harmless or dangerous lunatics, according to the energy with which they made their views known.
From this arose a singular prejudice against New England people. It was attributable partly to the natural feeling of distrust of strangers which is common to ignorance and provincialism, but still more to a general suspicion that all Eastern men were abolitionists. Mr. Cook, who so long represented the State in Congress, used to relate with much amusement how he once spent the night in a farmer's cabin, and listened to the honest man's denunciations of "that—— Yankee Cook." Cook was a Kentuckian, but his enemies could think of no more dreadful stigma to apply to him than that of calling him a Yankee. Senator James A. McDougall once told us that although he made no pretense of concealing his Eastern nativity, he never could keep his ardent friends in Pike County from denying the fact and fighting any one who asserted it. The great preacher, Peter Cartwright, used to denounce Eastern men roundly in his sermons, calling them "imps who lived on oysters" instead of honest corn-bread and bacon. The taint of slavery, the contagion of a plague they had not quite escaped, was on the people of Illinois. They were strong enough to rise once in their might and say they would not have slavery among them. But in the petty details of every day, in their ordinary talk, and in their routine legislation, their sympathies were still with the slave-holders. They would not enlist with them, but they would fight their battles in their own way.
Their readiness to do what came to be called later, in a famous speech, the "dirty work" of the South was seen in the tragic death of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, in this very year of 1837. He had for some years been publishing a religious newspaper in St. Louis, but finding the atmosphere of that city becoming dangerous to him on account of the freedom of his comments upon Southern institutions, he moved to Alton, in Illinois, twenty-five miles further up the river. His arrival excited an immediate tumult in that place; a mob gathered there on the day he came—it was Sunday, and the good people were at leisure—and threw his press into the Mississippi. Having thus expressed their determination to vindicate the law, they held a meeting, and cited him before it to declare his intentions. He said they were altogether peaceful and legal; that he intended to publish a religious newspaper and not to meddle with politics. This seemed satisfactory to the people, and he was allowed to fish out his press, buy new types, and set up his paper. But Mr. Lovejoy was a predestined martyr. He felt there was a "woe" upon him if he held his peace against the wickedness across the river. He wrote and published what was in his heart to say, and Alton was again vehemently moved. A committee appointed itself to wait upon him; for this sort of outrage is usually accomplished with a curious formality which makes it seem to the participants legal and orderly. The preacher met them with an undaunted front and told them he must do his duty as it appeared to him; that he was amenable to law, but nothing else; he even spoke in condemnation of mobs. Such language "from a minister of the gospel" shocked and infuriated the committee and those whom they represented. "The people assembled," says Governor Ford, "and quietly took the press and types and threw them into the river." We venture to say that the word "quietly" never before found itself in such company. It is not worth while to give the details of the bloody drama that now rapidly ran to its close. There was a fruitless effort at compromise, which to Lovejoy meant merely surrender, and which he firmly rejected. The threats of the mob were answered by defiance; from the little band that surrounded the abolitionist. A new press was ordered, and arrived, and was stored in a warehouse, where Lovejoy and his friends shut themselves up, determined to defend it with their lives. They were there besieged by the infuriated crowd, and after a short interchange of shots Lovejoy was killed, his friends dispersed, and the press once more—and this time finally—thrown into the turbid flood.
These events took place in the autumn of 1837, but they indicate sufficiently the temper of the people of the State in the earlier part of the year.
[Sidenote: Law approved Dec. 26, 1831.]
The vehemence with which the early antislavery apostles were conducting their agitation in the East naturally roused a corresponding violence of expression in every other part of the country. William Lloyd Garrison, the boldest and most aggressive non- resistant that ever lived, had, since 1831, been pouring forth once a week in the "Liberator" his earnest and eloquent denunciations of slavery, taking no account of the expedient or the possible, but demanding with all the fervor of an ancient prophet the immediate removal of the cause of offense. Oliver Johnson attacked the national sin and wrong, in the "Standard," with zeal and energy equally hot and untiring. Their words stung the slave-holding States to something like frenzy. The Georgia Legislature offered a reward of five thousand dollars to any one who should kidnap Garrison, or who should bring to conviction any one circulating the "Liberator" in the State. Yet so little known in their own neighborhoods were these early workers in this great reform that when the Mayor of Boston received remonstrances from certain Southern States against such an incendiary publication as the "Liberator," he was able to say that no member of the city government and no person of his acquaintance had ever heard of the paper or its editor; that on search being made it was found that "his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors." But the leaven worked continually, and by the time of which we are writing the antislavery societies of the North-east had attained a considerable vitality, and the echoes of their work came back from the South in furious resolutions of legislatures and other bodies, which, in their exasperation, could not refrain from this injudicious advertising of their enemies. Petitions to Congress, which were met by gag-laws, constantly increasing in severity, brought the dreaded discussion more and more before the public. But there was as yet little or no antislavery agitation in Illinois.
[Sidenote: Jan 25, 1837.]
There was no sympathy with nor even toleration for any public expression of hostility to slavery. The zeal of the followers of Jackson, although he had ceased to be President, had been whetted by his public denunciations of the antislavery propaganda; little more than a year before he had called upon Congress to take measures to "prohibit under severe penalties" the further progress of such incendiary proceedings as were "calculated to stimulate the slaves to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of civil war." But in spite of all this, people with uneasy consciences continued to write and talk and petition Congress against slavery, and most of the State legislatures began to pass resolutions denouncing them. In the last days of 1836 Governor Duncan sent to the Illinois Legislature the reports and resolutions of several States in relation to this subject. They were referred to a committee, who in due time reported a set of resolves "highly disapproving abolition societies"; holding that "the right of property in slaves is secured to the slave-holding States by the Federal Constitution"; that the general Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District, without a manifest breach of good faith; and requesting the Governor to transmit to the States which had sent their resolutions to him a copy of those tranquilizing expressions. A long and dragging debate ensued of which no record has been preserved; the resolutions, after numberless amendments had been voted upon, were finally passed, in the Senate, unanimously, in the House with none but Lincoln and five others in the negative. [Footnote: We are under obligations to John M. Adair for transcripts of the State records bearing on this matter.] No report remains of the many speeches which prolonged the debate; they have gone the way of all buncombe; the sound and fury of them have passed away into silence; but they woke an echo in one sincere heart which history will be glad to perpetuate.
There was no reason that Abraham Lincoln should take especial notice of these resolutions, more than another. He had done his work at this session in effecting the removal of the capital. He had only to shrug his shoulders at the violence and untruthfulness of the majority, vote against them, and go back to his admiring constituents, to his dinners and his toasts. But his conscience and his reason forbade him to be silent; he felt a word must be said on the other side to redress the distorted balance. He wrote his protest, saying not one word he was not ready to stand by then and thereafter, wasting not a syllable in rhetoric or feeling, keeping close to law and truth and justice. When he had finished it he showed it to some of his colleagues for their adhesion; but one and all refused, except Dan Stone, who was not a candidate for reelection, having retired from politics to a seat on the bench. The risk was too great for the rest to run. Lincoln was twenty-eight years old; after a youth, of singular privations and struggles he had arrived at an enviable position in the politics and the society of the State. His intimate friends, those whom he loved and honored, were Browning, Butler, Logan, and Stuart—Kentuckians all, and strongly averse to any discussion of the question of slavery. The public opinion of his county, which was then little less than the breath of his life, was all the same way. But all these considerations could not withhold him from performing a simple duty—a duty which no one could have blamed him for leaving undone. The crowning grace of the whole act is in the closing sentence: "The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest." Reason enough for the Lincolns and Luthers.
He had many years of growth and development before him. There was a long distance to be traversed between the guarded utterances of this protest and the heroic audacity which launched the proclamation of emancipation. But the young man who dared declare, in the prosperous beginning of his political life, in the midst of a community imbued with slave-State superstitions, that "he believed the institution of slavery was founded both on injustice and bad policy,"—attacking thus its moral and material supports, while at the same time recognizing all the constitutional guarantees which protected it,—had in him the making of a statesman and, if need be, a martyr. His whole career was to run in the lines marked out by these words, written in the hurry of a closing session, and he was to accomplish few acts, in that great history which God reserved for him, wiser and nobler than this.
CHAPTER IX
COLLAPSE OF THE SYSTEM
Mr. Lincoln had made thus far very little money—nothing more, in fact, than a subsistence of the most modest character. But he had made some warm friends, and this meant much among the early Illinoisans. He had become intimately acquainted, at Vandalia, with William Butler, who was greatly interested in the removal of the capital to Springfield, and who urged the young legislator to take up his residence at the new seat of government. Lincoln readily fell in with this suggestion, and accompanied his friend home when the Legislature adjourned, sharing the lodging of Joshua F. Speed, a young Kentucky merchant, and taking his meals at the house of Mr. Butler for several years.
[Sidenote: "Sangamon Journal," November 7, 1835.]
[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times" p. 237.]
In this way began Mr. Lincoln's residence in Springfield, where he was to remain until called to one of the highest of destinies intrusted to men, and where his ashes were to rest forever in monumental marble. It would have seemed a dreary village to any one accustomed to the world, but in a letter written about this time, Lincoln speaks of it as a place where there was a "good deal of flourishing about in carriages" —a town of some pretentious to elegance. It had a population of 1500. The county contained nearly 18,000 souls, of whom 78 were free negroes, 20 registered indentured servants, and six slaves. Scarcely a perceptible trace of color, one would say, yet we find in the Springfield paper a leading article beginning with the startling announcement, "Our State is threatened to be overrun with free negroes." The county was one of the richest in Illinois, possessed of a soil of inexhaustible fertility, and divided to the best advantage between prairie and forest. It was settled early in the history of the State, and the country was held in high esteem by the aborigines. The name of Sangamon is said to mean in the Pottawatomie language "land of plenty." Its citizens were of an excellent class of people, a large majority of them from Kentucky, though representatives were not wanting from the Eastern States, men of education and character.
There had been very little of what might be called pioneer life in Springfield. Civilization came in with a reasonably full equipment at the beginning. The Edwardses, in fair-top boots and ruffled shirts; the Ridgelys brought their banking business from Maryland; the Logans and Conklings were good lawyers before they arrived; another family came from Kentucky, with a cotton manufactory which proved its aristocratic character by never doing any work. With a population like this, the town had, from the beginning, a more settled and orderly type than was usual in the South and West. A glance at the advertising columns of the newspaper will show how much attention to dress was paid in the new capital. "Cloths, cassinetts, cassimeres, velvet, silk, satin, and Marseilles vestings, fine calf boots, seal and morocco pumps, for gentlemen," and for the sex which in barbarism dresses less and in civilization dresses more than the male, "silks, bareges, crepe lisse, lace veils, thread lace, Thibet shawls, lace handkerchiefs, fine prunella shoes, etc." It is evident that the young politician was confronting a social world more formidably correct than anything he had as yet seen.
[Sidenote: Ford's "History," p. 94.]
Governor Ford began some years before this to remark with pleasure the change in the dress of the people of Illinois: the gradual disappearance of leather and, linsey-woolsey, the hunting-knife and tomahawk, from the garb of men; the deerskin moccasin supplanted by the leather boot and shoe; the leather breeches tied around the ankle replaced by the modern pantaloons; and the still greater improvement in the adornment of women, the former bare feet decently shod, and homespun frocks giving way to gowns of calico and silk, and the heads tied up in red cotton turbans disappearing in favor of those surmounted by pretty bonnets of silk or straw. We admit that these changes were not unattended with the grumbling ill-will of the pioneer patriarchs; they predicted nothing but ruin to a country that thus forsook the old ways "which were good enough for their fathers." But with the change in dress came other alterations which were all for the better—a growing self-respect among the young; an industry and thrift by which they could buy good clothes; a habit of attending religious service, where they could show them; a progress in sociability, civility, trade, and morals.
The taste for civilization had sometimes a whimsical manifestation. Mr. Stuart said the members of the Legislature bitterly complained of the amount of game—venison and grouse of the most delicious quality— which was served them at the taverns in Vandalia; they clamored for bacon—they were starving, they said, "for something civilized." There was plenty of civilized nourishment in Springfield. Wheat was fifty cents a bushel, rye thirty-three; corn and oats were twenty-five, potatoes twenty-five; butter was eight cents a pound, and eggs were eight cents a dozen; pork was two and a half cents a pound.
The town was built on the edge of the woods, the north side touching the timber, the south encroaching on the prairie. The richness of the soil was seen in the mud of the streets, black as ink, and of an unfathomable depth in time of thaw. There were, of course, no pavements or sidewalks; an attempt at crossings was made by laying down large chunks of wood. The houses were almost all wooden, and were disposed in rectangular blocks. A large square had been left in the middle of the town, in anticipation of future greatness, and there, when Lincoln began his residence, the work of clearing the ground for the new State-house was already going forward. In one of the largest houses looking on the square, at the north-west corner, the county court had its offices, and other rooms in the building were let to lawyers. One of these was occupied by Stuart and Lincoln, for the friendship formed in the Black Hawk war and strengthened at Vandalia induced "Major" Stuart to offer a partnership to "Captain" Lincoln. [Footnote: It is not unworthy of notice that in a country where military titles were conferred with ludicrous profusion, and borne with absurd complacency, Abraham Lincoln, who had actually been commissioned, and had served as captain, never used the designation after he laid down his command.]
Lincoln did not gain any immediate eminence at the bar. His preliminary studies had been cursory and slight, and Stuart was then too much engrossed in politics to pay the unremitting attention to the law which that jealous mistress requires. He had been a candidate for Congress the year before, and had been defeated by W. L. May. He was a candidate again in 1838, and was elected over so agile an adversary as Stephen Arnold Douglas. His paramount interest in these canvasses necessarily prevented him from setting to his junior partner the example which Lincoln so greatly needed, of close and steady devotion to their profession. It was several years later that Lincoln found with Judge Logan the companionship and inspiration which he required, and began to be really a lawyer. During the first year or two he is principally remembered in Springfield as an excellent talker, the life and soul of the little gatherings about the county offices, a story- teller of the first rank, a good-natured, friendly fellow whom everybody liked and trusted. He relied more upon his influence with a jury than upon his knowledge of law in the few cases he conducted in court, his acquaintance with human nature being far more extensive than his legal lore.
Lincoln was not yet done with Vandalia, its dinners of game, and its political intrigue. The archives of the State were not removed to Springfield until 1839, and Lincoln remained a member of the Legislature by successive reelections from 1834 to 1842. His campaigns were carried on almost entirely without expense. Joshua Speed told the writers that on one occasion some of the Whigs contributed a purse of two hundred dollars which Speed handed to Lincoln to pay his personal expenses in the canvass. After the election was over, the successful candidate handed Speed $199.25, with the request that he return it to the subscribers. "I did not need the money," he said. "I made the canvass on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farm-hands insisted I should treat them to." He was called down to Vandalia in the summer of 1837, by a special session of the Legislature. The magnificent schemes of the foregoing winter required some repairing. The banks throughout the United States had suspended specie payments in the spring, and as the State banks in Illinois were the fiscal agents of the railroads and canals, the Governor called upon the law-makers to revise their own work, to legalize the suspension, and bring their improvement system within possible bounds. They acted as might have been expected: complied with the former suggestion, but flatly refused to touch their masterpiece. They had been glorifying their work too energetically to destroy it in its infancy. It was said you could recognize a legislator that year in any crowd by his automatic repetition of the phrase, "Thirteen hundred—fellow-citiztens!—and fifty miles of railroad!" There was nothing to be done but to go on with the stupendous folly. Loans were effected with surprising and fatal facility, and, "before the end of the year, work had begun at many points on the railroads. The whole State was excited to the highest pitch of frenzy and expectation. Money was as plenty as dirt. Industry, instead of being stimulated, actually languished. We exported nothing," says Governor Ford, "and everything from abroad was paid for by the borrowed money expended among us." Not only upon the railroads, but on the canal as well, the work was begun on a magnificent scale. Nine millions of dollars were thought to be a mere trifle in view of the colossal sum expected to be realized from the sale of canal lands, three hundred thousand acres of which had been given by the general Government. There were rumors of coming trouble, and of an unhealthy condition of the banks; but it was considered disloyal to look too curiously into such matters. One frank patriot, who had been sent as one of a committee to examine the bank at Shawneetown, when asked what he found there, replied with winning candor, "Plenty of good whisky and sugar to sweeten it."
[Sidenote: Ford, "History," p. 197.]
But a year of baleful experience destroyed a great many illusions, and in the election of 1838 the subject of internal improvements was treated with much more reserve by candidates. The debt of the State, issued at a continually increasing discount, had already attained enormous proportions; the delirium of the last few years was ending, and sensible people began to be greatly disquieted. Nevertheless, Mr. Cyrus Edwards boldly made his canvass for Governor as a supporter of the system of internal improvements, and his opponent, Thomas Carlin, was careful not to commit himself strongly on the other side. Carlin was elected, and finding that a majority of the Legislature was still opposed to any steps backward, he made no demonstration against the system at the first session. Lincoln was a member of this body, and, being by that time the unquestioned leader of the Whig minority, was nominated for Speaker, and came within one vote of an election. The Legislature was still stiff-necked and perverse in regard to the system. It refused to modify it in the least, and voted, as if in bravado, another eight hundred thousand dollars to extend it.
But this was the last paroxysm of a fever that was burnt out. The market was glutted with Illinois bonds; one banker and one broker after another, to whose hands they had been recklessly confided in New York and London, failed, or made away with the proceeds of sales. The system had utterly failed; there was nothing to do but repeal it, stop work upon the visionary roads, and endeavor to invent some means of paying the enormous debt. This work taxed the energies of the Legislature in 1839, and for some years after. It was a dismal and disheartening task. Blue Monday had come after these years of intoxication, and a crushing debt rested upon a people who had been deceiving themselves with the fallacy that it would somehow pay itself by acts of the Legislature.
[Illustration: "COLONEL E. D. BAKER."]
Many were the schemes devised for meeting these oppressive obligations without unduly taxing the voters; one of them, not especially wiser than the rest, was contributed by Mr. Lincoln. It provided for the issue of bonds for the payment of the interest due by the State, and for the appropriation of a special portion of State taxes to meet the obligations thus incurred. He supported his bill in a perfectly characteristic speech, making no effort to evade his share of the responsibility for the crisis, and submitting his views with diffidence to the approval of the Assembly. His plan was not adopted; it was too simple and straightforward, even if it had any other merits, to meet the approval of an assembly intent only upon getting out of immediate embarrassment by means which might save them future trouble on the stump. There was even an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of repudiation. But the payment of the interest for that year was provided for by an ingenious expedient which shifted upon the Fund Commissioners the responsibility of deciding what portion of the debt was legal, and how much interest was therefore to be paid. Bonds were sold for this purpose at a heavy loss.
This session of the Legislature was enlivened by a singular contest between the Whigs and Democrats in relation to the State banks. Their suspension of specie payments had been legalized up to "the adjournment of the next session of the Legislature." They were not now able to resume, and it was held by the Democrats that if the special session adjourned sine die the charter of the banks would be forfeited, a purpose the party was eager to accomplish. The Whigs, who were defending the banks, wished to prevent the adjournment of the special session until the regular session should begin, during the course of which they expected to renew the lease of life now held under sufferance by the banks—in which, it may be here said, they were finally successful. But on one occasion, being in the minority, and having exhausted every other parliamentary means of opposition and delay, and seeing the vote they dreaded imminent, they tried to defeat it by leaving the house in a body, and, the doors being locked, a number of them, among whom Mr. Lincoln's tall figure was prominent, jumped from the windows of the church where the Legislature was then holding its sessions. "I think," says Mr. Joseph Gillespie, who was one of those who performed this feat of acrobatic politics, "Mr. Lincoln always regretted it, as he deprecated everything that savored of the revolutionary."
Two years later the persecuted banks, harried by the demagogues and swindled by the State, fell with a great ruin, and the financial misery of the State was complete. Nothing was left of the brilliant schemes of the historic Legislature of 1836 but a load of debt which crippled for many years the energies of the people, a few miles of embankments which the grass hastened to cover, and a few abutments which stood for years by the sides of leafy rivers, waiting for their long delaying bridges and trains.
During the winter of 1840-1 occurred the first clash of opinion and principle between Mr. Lincoln and his life-long adversary, Mr. Douglas. There are those who can see only envy and jealousy in that strong dislike and disapproval with which Mr. Lincoln always regarded his famous rival. But we think that few men have ever lived who were more free from those degrading passions than Abraham Lincoln, and the personal reprobation with which he always visited the public acts of Douglas arose from his sincere conviction that, able as Douglas was, and in many respects admirable in character, he was essentially without fixed political morals. They had met for the first time in 1834 at Vandalia, where Douglas was busy in getting the circuit attorneyship away from John J. Hardin. He held it only long enough to secure a nomination to the Legislature in 1836. He went there to endeavor to have the capital moved to Jacksonville, where he lived, but he gave up the fight for the purpose of having himself appointed Register of the Land Office at Springfield. He held this place as a means of being nominated for Congress the next year; he was nominated and defeated. In 1840 he was engaged in another scheme to which we will give a moment's attention, as it resulted in giving him a seat on the Supreme Bench of the State, which he used merely as a perch from which to get into Congress.
There had been a difference of opinion in Illinois for some years as to whether the Constitution, which made voters of all white male inhabitants of six months' residence, meant to include aliens in that category. As the aliens were nearly all Democrats, that party insisted on their voting, and the Whigs objected. The best lawyers in the State were Whigs, and so it happened that most of the judges were of that complexion. A case was made up for decision and decided adversely to the aliens, who appealed it to the Supreme Court. This case was to come on at the June term in 1840, and the Democratic counsel, chief among whom was Mr. Douglas, were in some anxiety, as an unfavorable decision would lose them about ten thousand alien votes in the Presidential election in November. In this conjuncture one Judge Smith, of the Supreme Court, an ardent Democrat, willing to enhance his value in his party, communicated to Mr. Douglas two important facts: first, that a majority of the court would certainly decide against the aliens; and, secondly that there was a slight imperfection in the record by which counsel might throw the case over to the December term, and save the alien vote for Van Buren and the Democratic ticket. This was done, and when the Legislature came together with its large Democratic majority, Mr. Douglas handed in a bill "reforming" the Judiciary—for they had learned that serviceable word already. The circuit judges were turned out of office, and five new judges were added to the Supreme Court, who were to perform circuit duty also. It is needless to say that Judge Douglas was one of these, and he had contrived also in the course of the discussion to disgrace his friend Smith so thoroughly by quoting his treacherous communication of matters which took place within the court, that Smith was no longer a possible rival for political honors.
It was useless for the Whigs to try to prevent this degradation of the bench. There was no resource but a protest, and here again Lincoln uttered the voice of the conscience of the party. He was joined on this occasion by Edward D. Baker [Footnote: Afterwards senator from Oregon, and as colonel of the 71st Pennsylvania (called the 1st California) killed at Ball's Bluff.] and some others, who protested against the act because
1st. It violates the principles of free government by subjecting the Judiciary to the Legislature.
2d. It is a fatal blow at the independence of the judges and the constitutional term of their offices.
3d. It is a measure not asked for or wished for by the people.
4th. It will greatly increase the expense of our courts or else greatly diminish their utility.
5th. It will give our courts a political and partisan character, thereby impairing public confidence in their decisions.
6th. It will impair our standing with other States and the world.
7th. It is a party measure for party purposes from which no practical good to the people can possibly arise, but which may be the source of immeasurable evils.
The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be altogether unavailing with the majority of this body. The blow has already fallen; and we are compelled to stand by, the mournful spectators of the ruin it will cause.
[Sidenote: Ford's "History," p. 221.]
It will be easy to ridicule this indignant protest as the angry outcry of beaten partisans; but fortunately we have evidence which cannot be gainsaid of the justice of its sentiments and the wisdom of its predictions. Governor Ford, himself a Democratic leader as able as he was honest, writing seven years after these proceedings, condemns them as wrong and impolitic, and adds, "Ever since this reforming measure the Judiciary has been unpopular with the Democratic majorities. Many and most of the judges have had great personal popularity—so much so as to create complaint of so many of them being elected or appointed to other offices. But the Bench itself has been the subject of bitter attacks by every Legislature since." It had been soiled by unclean contact and could not be respected as before.
CHAPTER X
EARLY LAW PRACTICE
During all the years of his service in the Legislature, Lincoln was practicing law in Springfield in the dingy little office at the corner of the square. A youth named Milton Hay, who afterwards became one of the foremost lawyers of the State, had made the acquaintance of Lincoln at the County Clerk's office and proposed to study law with him. He was at once accepted as a pupil, and his days being otherwise employed he gave his nights to reading, and as his vigils were apt to be prolonged he furnished a bedroom adjoining the office, where Lincoln often passed the night with him. Mr. Hay gives this account of the practice of the law in those days:
"In forming our ideas of Lincoln's growth and development as a lawyer, we must remember that in those early days litigation was very simple as compared with that of modern times. Population was sparse and society scarcely organized, land was plentiful and employment abundant. There was an utter absence of the abstruse questions and complications which now beset the law. There was no need of that close and searching study into principles and precedents which keeps the modern law-student buried in his office. On the contrary, the very character of this simple litigation drew the lawyer into the street and neighborhood, and into close and active intercourse with all classes of his fellow-men. The suits consisted of actions of tort and assumpsit. If a man had a debt not collectible, the current phrase was, 'I'll take it out of his hide.'
[Illustration: LINCOLN AND STUART'S LAW-OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD.]
"This would bring on an action for assault and battery. The free comments of the neighbors on the fracas or the character of the parties would be productive of slander suits. A man would for his convenience lay down an irascible neighbor's fence, and indolently forget to put it up again, and an action of trespass would grow out of it. The suit would lead to a free fight, and sometimes furnish the bloody incidents for a murder trial. Occupied with this class of business, the half-legal, half-political lawyers were never found plodding in their offices. In that case they would have waited long for the recognition of their talents or a demand for their services. Out of this characteristic of the times also grew the street discussions I have adverted to. There was scarcely a day or hour when a knot of men might not have been seen near the door of some prominent store, or about the steps of the court-house eagerly discussing a current political topic—not as a question of news, for news was not then received quickly or frequently, as it is now, but rather for the sake of debate; and the men from the country, the pioneers and farmers, always gathered eagerly about these groups and listened with open-mouthed interest, and frequently manifested their approval or dissent in strong words, and carried away to their neighborhoods a report of the debaters' wit and skill. It was in these street talks that the rising and aspiring young lawyer found his daily and hourly forum. Often by good luck or prudence he had the field entirely to himself, and so escaped the dangers and discouragements of a decisive conflict with a trained antagonist."
[Illustration: LINCOLN'S BOOKCASE AND INKSTAND. ]
Mr. Stuart was either in Congress or actively engaged in canvassing his district a great part of the time that his partnership with Lincoln continued, so that the young lawyer was thrown a good deal on his own resources for occupation. There was not enough business to fill up all his hours, and he was not at that time a close student, so that he soon became as famous for his racy talk and good-fellowship at all the usual lounging-places in Springfield as he had ever been in New Salem. Mr. Hay says, speaking of the youths who made the County Clerk's office their place of rendezvous, "It was always a great treat when Lincoln got amongst us. We were sure to have some of those stories for which he already had a reputation, and there was this peculiarity about them, that they were not only entertaining in themselves, but always singularly illustrative of some point he wanted to make." After Mr. Hay entered his office, and was busily engaged with his briefs and declarations, the course of their labors was often broken by the older man's wise and witty digressions. Once an interruption occurred which affords an odd illustration of the character of discussion then prevalent. We will give it in Mr. Hay's words: "The custom of public political debate, while it was sharp and acrimonious, also engendered a spirit of equality and fairness. Every political meeting was a free fight open to every one who had talent and spirit, no matter to which party the speaker belonged. These discussions used often to be held in the court-room, just under our office, and through a trap-door, made there when the building was used for a store-house, we could hear everything that was said in the hall below. One night there was a discussion in which E. D. Baker took part. He was a fiery fellow, and when his impulsiveness was let loose among the rough element that composed his audience there was a fair prospect of trouble at any moment. Lincoln was lying on the bed, apparently paying no attention to what was going on. Lamborn was talking, and we suddenly heard Baker interrupting him with a sharp remark, then a rustling and uproar. Lincoln jumped from the bed and down the trap, lighting on the platform between Baker and the audience, and quieted the tumult as much by the surprise of his sudden apparition as by his good-natured and reasonable words."
[Lamon p. 396.]
He was often unfaithful to his Quaker traditions in those days of his youth. Those who witnessed his wonderful forbearance and self- restraint in later manhood would find it difficult to believe how promptly and with what pleasure he used to resort to measures of repression against a bully or brawler. On the day of election in 1840, word came to him that one Radford, a Democratic contractor, had taken possession of one of the polling-places with his workmen, and was preventing the Whigs from voting. Lincoln started off at a gait which showed his interest in the matter in hand. He went up to Radford and persuaded him to leave the polls without a moment's delay. One of his candid remarks is remembered and recorded: "Radford! you'll spoil and blow, if you live much longer." Radford's prudence prevented an actual collision, which, it must be confessed, Lincoln regretted. He told his friend Speed he wanted Radford to show fight so that he might "knock him down and leave him kicking."
Early in the year 1840 it seemed possible that the Whigs might elect General Harrison to the Presidency, and this hope lent added energy to the party even in the States where the majority was so strongly against them as in Illinois. Lincoln was nominated for Presidential Elector and threw himself with ardor into the canvass, traversing a great part of the State and speaking with remarkable effect. Only one of the speeches he made during the year has been preserved entire: this was an address delivered in Springfield as one of a series—a sort of oratorical tournament participated in by Douglas, Calhoun, Lamborn, and Thomas on the part of the Democrats, and Logan, Baker, Browning, and Lincoln on the part of the Whigs. The discussion began with great enthusiasm and with crowded houses, but by the time it came to Lincoln's duty to close the debate the fickle public had tired of the intellectual jousts, and he spoke to a comparatively thin house. But his speech was considered the best of the series, and there was such a demand for it that he wrote it out, and it was printed and circulated in the spring as a campaign document.
[Illustration: GLOBE TAVERN, SPRINGFIELD, WHERE LINCOLN LIVED AFTER
HIS MARRIAGE.]
It was a remarkable speech in many respects—and in none more than in this, that it represented the highest expression of what might be called his "first manner." It was the most important and the last speech of its class which he ever delivered—not destitute of sound and close reasoning, yet filled with boisterous fun and florid rhetoric. It was, in short, a rattling stump speech of the kind then universally popular in the West, and which is still considered a very high grade of eloquence in the South. But it is of no kindred with his inaugural addresses, and resembles the Gettysburg speech no more than "The Comedy of Errors" resembles "Hamlet." One or two extracts will give some idea of its humorous satire and its lurid fervor. Attacking the corruptions and defalcations of the Administration party he said: "Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party and the Whigs is that, although the former sometimes err in practice they are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in principle; and the better to impress this proposition he uses a figurative expression in these words, 'The Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, but they are sound in the heart and head.' The first branch of the figure—that is, the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel—I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their Harringtons, and their hundreds of others scampering away with the public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch? It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures, very much as the cork leg in the comic song did on its owner, which, when he once got started on it, the more he tried to stop it the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, 'Captain, I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had, but somehow or other whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it.' So with Mr. Lamborn's party—they take the public money into their hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally vulnerable heels will run away with them."
[Illustration: WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.]
The speech concludes with these swelling words: "Mr. Lamborn refers to the late elections in the States, and from their results confidently predicts every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next Presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and slaves: with the free and the brave it will affect nothing. It may be true; if it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the wave of Hell, the imps of the Evil Spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare to resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their efforts; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it, I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. It shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its almighty architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly alone, hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before Heaven, and in face of the world, I swear eternal fealty to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love. And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt that oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if after all we should fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending."
These perfervid and musical metaphors of devotion and defiance have often been quoted as Mr. Lincoln's heroic challenge to the slave power, and Bishop Simpson gave them that lofty significance in his funeral oration. But they were simply the utterances of a young and ardent Whig, earnestly advocating the election of "old Tippecanoe" and not unwilling, while doing this, to show the people of the capital a specimen of his eloquence. The whole campaign was carried on in a tone somewhat shrill. The Whigs were recovering from the numbness into which they had fallen during the time of Jackson's imperious predominance, and in the new prospect of success they felt all the excitement of prosperous rebels. The taunts of the party in power, when Harrison's nomination was first mentioned, their sneers at "hard cider" and "log-cabins," had been dexterously adopted as the slogan of the opposition, and gave rise to the distinguishing features of that extraordinary campaign. Log-cabins were built in every Western county, tuns of hard cider were filled and emptied at all the Whig mass meetings; and as the canvass gained momentum and vehemence a curious kind of music added its inspiration to the cause; and after the Maine election was over, with its augury of triumph, every Whig who was able to sing, or even to make a joyful noise, was roaring the inquiry, "Oh, have you heard how old Maine went?" and the profane but powerfully accented response, "She went, hell-bent, for Governor Kent, and Tippecanoe, and Tyler too."
It was one of the busiest and most enjoyable seasons of Lincoln's life. He had grown by this time thoroughly at home in political controversy, and he had the pleasure of frequently meeting Mr. Douglas in rough-and-tumble debate in various towns of the State as they followed Judge Treat on his circuit. If we may trust the willing testimony of his old associates, Lincoln had no difficulty in holding his own against his adroit antagonist, and it was even thought that the recollection of his ill success in these encounters was not without its influence in inducing Douglas and his followers, defeated in the nation, though victorious in the State, to wreak their vengeance on the Illinois Supreme Court.
[Sidenote: Copied from the MS. in Major Stuart's possession.]
[Sidenote: Noah W. Matheny, County Clerk.]
In Lincoln's letters to Major Stuart, then in Washington, we see how strongly the subject of politics overshadows all others in his mind. Under date of November 14, 1839, he wrote: "I have been to the Secretary's office within the last hour, and find things precisely as you left them; no new arrivals of returns on either side. Douglas has not been here since you left. A report is in circulation here now that he has abandoned, the idea of going to Washington; but the report does not come in very authentic form so far as I can learn. Though, speaking of authenticity, you know that if we had heard Douglas say that he had abandoned the contest, it would not be very authentic. There is no news here. Noah, I still think, will be elected very easily. I am afraid of our race for representative. Dr. Knapp has become a candidate; and I fear the few votes he will get will be taken from us. Also some one has been tampering with old squire Wyckoff, and induced him to send in his name to be announced as a candidate. Francis refused to announce him without seeing him, and now I suppose there is to be a fuss about it. I have been so busy that I have not seen Mrs. Stuart since you left, though I understand she wrote you by to-day's mail, which will inform you more about her than I could. The very moment a speaker is elected, write me who he is. Your friend, as ever."
Again he wrote, on New Year's Day, 1840, a letter curiously destitute of any festal suggestions: "There is a considerable disposition on the part of both parties in the Legislature to reinstate the law bringing on the Congressional elections next summer. What motive for this the Locos have, I cannot tell. The Whigs say that the canal and other public works will stop, and consequently we shall then be clear of the foreign votes, whereas by another year they may be brought in again. The Whigs of our district say that everything is in favor of holding the election next summer, except the fact of your absence; and several of them have requested me to ask your opinion on the matter. Write me immediately what you think of it.
"On the other side of this sheet I send you a copy of my Land Resolutions, which passed both branches of our Legislature last winter. Will you show them to Mr. Calhoun, informing him of the fact of their passage through our Legislature! Mr. Calhoun suggested a similar proposition last winter; and perhaps if he finds himself backed by one of the States he may be induced to take it up again."
After the session opened, January 20, he wrote to Mr. Stuart, accurately outlining the work of the winter: "The following is my guess as to what will be done. The Internal Improvement System will be put down in a lump without benefit of clergy. The Bank will be resuscitated with some trifling modifications."
State affairs have evidently lost their interest, however, and his soul is in arms for the wider fray. "Be sure to send me as many copies of the Life of Harrison as you can spare. Be very sure to send me the Senate Journal of New York for September, 1814,"—he had seen in a newspaper a charge of disloyalty made against Mr. Van Buren during the war with Great Britain, but, as usual, wanted to be sure of his facts,—"and in general," he adds, "send me everything you think will be a good war-club, The nomination of Harrison takes first-rate. You know I am never sanguine; but I believe we will carry the State. The chance for doing so appears to me twenty-five per cent, better than it did for you to beat Douglas. A great many of the grocery sort of Van Buren men are out for Harrison. Our Irish blacksmith Gregory is for Harrison…. You have heard that the Whigs and Locos had a political discussion shortly after the meeting of the Legislature. Well, I made a big speech which is in progress of printing in pamphlet form. To enlighten you and the rest of the world, I shall send you a copy when it is finished." The "big speech" was the one from which we have just quoted.
The sanguine mood continued in his next letter, March 1: "I have never seen the prospects of our party so bright in these parts as they are now. We shall carry this county by a larger majority than we did in 1836 when you ran against May. I do not think my prospects individually are very flattering, for I think it probable I shall not be permitted to be a candidate; but the party ticket will succeed triumphantly. Subscriptions to the 'Old Soldier' pour in without abatement. This morning I took from the post-office a letter from Dubois, inclosing the names of sixty subscribers, and on carrying it to Francis [Simeon Francis, editor of the 'Sangamo Journal'] I found he had received one hundred and forty more from other quarters by the same day's mail…. Yesterday Douglas, having chosen to consider himself insulted by something in the 'Journal,' undertook to cane Francis in the street. Francis caught him by the hair and jammed him back against a market-cart, where the matter ended by Francis being pulled away from him. The whole affair was so ludicrous that Francis and everybody else, Douglas excepted, have been laughing about it ever since."
Douglas seems to have had a great propensity to such rencontres, of which the issue was ordinarily his complete discomfiture, as he had the untoward habit of attacking much bigger and stronger men than himself. He weighed at that time little, if anything, over a hundred pounds, yet his heart was so valiant that he made nothing of assaulting men of ponderous flesh like Francis, or of great height and strength like Stuart. He sought a quarrel with the latter, during their canvass in 1838, in a grocery, with the usual result. A bystander who remembers the incident says that Stuart "jest mopped the floor with him." In the same letter Mr. Lincoln gives a long list of names to which he wants documents to be sent. It shows a remarkable personal acquaintance with the minutest needs of the canvass: this one is a doubtful Whig; that one is an inquiring Democrat; that other a zealous young fellow who would be pleased by the attention; three brothers are mentioned who "fell out with us about Early and are doubtful now"; and finally he tells Stuart that Joe Smith is an admirer of his, and that a few documents had better be mailed to the Mormons; and he must be sure, the next time he writes, to send Evan Butler his compliments.
It would be strange, indeed, if such a politician as this were slighted by his constituents, and in his next letter we find how groundless were his forebodings in that direction. The convention had been held; the rural delegates took all the nominations away from Springfield except two, Baker for the Senate, and Lincoln for the House of Representatives. "Ninian," he says, meaning Ninian W. Edwards, "was very much hurt at not being nominated, but he has become tolerably well reconciled. I was much, very much, wounded myself, at his being left out. The fact is, the country delegates made the nominations as they pleased, and they pleased to make them all from the country, except Baker and me, whom they supposed necessary to make stump speeches. Old Colonel Elkin is nominated for Sheriff— that's right."
Harrison was elected in November, and the great preoccupation of most of the Whigs was, of course, the distribution of the offices which they felt belonged to them as the spoils of battle. This demoralizing doctrine had been promulgated by Jackson, and acted upon for so many years that it was too much to expect of human nature that the Whigs should not adopt it, partially at least, when their turn came, But we are left in no doubt as to the way in which Lincoln regarded the unseemly scramble. It is probable that he was asked to express his preference among applicants, and he wrote under date of December 17: "This affair of appointments to office is very annoying—more so to you than to me doubtless. I am, as you know, opposed to removals to make places for our friends. Bearing this in mind, I express my preference in a few cases, as follows: for Marshal, first, John Dawson, second, B. F. Edwards; for postmaster here, Dr. Henry; at Carlinville, Joseph C. Howell."
The mention of this last post-office rouses his righteous indignation, and he calls for justice upon a wrong-doer. "There is no question of the propriety of removing the postmaster at Carlinville, I have been told by so many different persons as to preclude all doubt of its truth, that he boldly refused to deliver from his office during the canvass all documents franked by Whig members of Congress."
Once more, on the 23d of January, 1841, he addresses a letter to Mr. Stuart, which closes the correspondence, and which affords a glimpse of that strange condition of melancholia into whose dark shadow he was then entering, and which lasted, with only occasional intervals of healthy cheerfulness, to the time of his marriage. We give this remarkable letter entire, from the manuscript submitted to us by the late John T. Stuart:
DEAR STUART: Yours of the 3d instant is received, and I proceed to answer it as well as I can, though from the deplorable state of my mind at this time I fear I shall give you but little satisfaction. About the matter of the Congressional election, I can only tell you that there is a bill now before the Senate adopting the general ticket system; but whether the party have fully determined on its adoption is yet uncertain. There is no sign of opposition to you among our friends, and none that I can learn among our enemies; though of course there will be if the general ticket be adopted. The Chicago "American," Peoria "Register," and Sangamo "Journal" have already hoisted your flag upon their own responsibility; and the other Whig papers of the district are expected to follow immediately. On last evening there was a meeting of our friends at Butler's, and I submitted the question to them and found them unanimously in favor of having you announced as a candidate. A few of us this morning, however, concluded that as you were already being announced in the papers we would delay announcing you, as by your authority, for a week or two. We thought that to appear too keen about it might spur our opponents on about their general ticket project. Upon the whole I think I may say with certainty that your reelection is sure, if it be in the power of the Whigs to make it so.
For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me. The matter you speak of on my account you may attend to as you say, unless you shall hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene might help me. If I could be myself, I would rather remain at home with Judge Logan. I can write no more. Your friend as ever.