The sectional agitation then at its height was measurably the result of the proposed disposition of territory acquired by the then recent treaty with Mexico. The advocates and opponents of slavery extension were at once in bitter antagonism, and the intensity of feeling such as the country had rarely known.
The compromise measures—proposed by Mr. Clay in a general bill —embraced the establishment of Territorial Governments for Utah and New Mexico, the settlement of the Texas boundary, an amendment to the Fugitive Slave Law, and the admission of California as a free State. In entire accord with each proposition, Douglas had—by direction of the Committee on Territories, of which he was the chairman—reported a bill providing for the immediate admission of California under its recently adopted free State Constitution. Separate measures embracing the other propositions of the general bill were likewise duly reported. These measures were advocated by the Illinois Senator in a speech that at once won him recognized place among the great debaters of that illustrious assemblage. After many weeks of earnest, at times vehement, debate, the bills in the form last mentioned were passed, and received the approval of the President. Apart from the significance of these measures as a peace offering to the country, their passage closed a memorable era in our history. During their discussion Clay, Calhoun, and Webster —"the illustrious triumvirate"—were heard for the last time in the Senate. Greatest of the second generation of our statesmen, associated in the advocacy of measures that in the early day of the Republic had given us exalted place among the nations, within brief time of each other, "shattered by the contentions of the Great Hall, they passed to the chamber of reconciliation and of silence."
Chief in importance of his public services to his State was that of Senator Douglas in procuring from Congress a land grant to aid in the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad. It is but justice to the memory of his early colleague, Senator Breese, to say that he had been the earnest advocate of a similar measure in a former Congress. The bill, however, which after persistent opposition finally became a law, was introduced and warmly advocated by Senator Douglas. This act ceded to the State of Illinois—subject to the disposal of the Legislature thereof—"for the purpose of aiding in the construction of a railroad from the southern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to a point at or near the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, with a branch of the same to Chicago, and another to Dubuque, Iowa, every alternate section of land designated by even numbers for six sections in width on each side of said road, and its branches." It is difficult at this day to realize the importance of this measure to the then sparsely settled State. The grant in aggregate was near three million acres, and was directly to the State. After appropriate action by the State Legislature, the Illinois Central Railroad Company was duly organized—and the road eventually constructed.
A recent historian has truly said:
"For this, if for no other public service to his State, the name of Douglas was justly entitled to preservation by the erection of that splendid monumental column which, overlooking the blue waters of Lake Michigan, also overlooks for long distance that iron highway which was in no small degree the triumph of his legislative forecast and genius."
The measure now to be mentioned aroused deeper attention—more anxious concern—throughout the entire country than any with which the name of Douglas had yet been closely associated. It pertained directly to slavery, the "bone of contention" between the North and the South, the one dangerous quantity in our national politics from the establishment of the Government. Beginning with its recognition—though not in direct terms—in the Federal Constitution, it had through two generations, in the interest of peace, been the subject of repeated compromise.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, Douglas in the early days of 1854 reported a bill providing for the organization of the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas. This measure, which so suddenly arrested public attention, is known in our political history as the "Kansas-Nebraska Bill." Among its provisions was one repealing the Missouri Compromise or restriction of 1820. The end sought by the repeal was, as stated by Douglas, to leave the people of said Territories respectively to determine the question of the introduction or exclusion of slavery for themselves; in other words, "to regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." The principle strenuously contended for was that of "popular sovereignty" or non-intervention by Congress, in the affairs of the Territories. In closing the protracted and exciting debate just prior to the passage of the bill in the Senate, he said:
"There is another reason why I desire to see this principle recognized as a rule of action in all time to come. It will have the effect to destroy all sectional parties and sectional agitation. If you withdraw the slavery question from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and commit it to the arbitrament of those who are immediately interested in and alone responsible for its consequences, there is nothing left out of which sectional parties can be organized. When the people of the North shall all be rallied under one banner, and the whole South marshalled under another banner, and each section excited to frenzy and madness by hostility to the institutions of the other, then the patriot may well tremble for the perpetuity of the Union. Withdraw the slavery question from the political arena and remove it to the States and Territories, each to decide for itself, and such a catastrophe can never happen."
These utterances of little more than half a century ago, fall strangely upon our ears at this day. In the light of all that has occurred in the long reach of years, how significant the words, "No man is wiser than events"! Likewise, "The actions of men are to be judged by the light surrounding them at the time—not by the knowledge that comes after the fact." The immediate effect of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was directly the reverse of that so confidently predicted by Douglas. The era of concord between the North and the South did not return. The slavery question—instead of being relegated to the recently organized Territories for final settlement—at once assumed the dimensions of a great national issue. The country at large—instead of a single Territory—became the theatre of excited discussion. The final determination was to be not that of a Territory, but of the entire people.
One significant effect of the passage of the bill was the immediate disruption of the Whig party. As a great national organization —of which Clay and Webster had been eminent leaders, and Harrison and Taylor successful candidates for the Presidency—it now passes into history. Upon its ruins, the Republican party at once came into being. Under the leadership of Fremont as its candidate, and opposition by Congressional intervention to slavery extension as its chief issue, it was a formidable antagonist to the Democratic party, in the Presidential contest of 1856. Mr. Buchanan had defeated Douglas in the nominating convention of his party that year. His absence from the country as Minister to England, during the exciting events just mentioned, it was thought would make him a safer candidate than his chief competitor, Douglas. He had been in no manner identified with the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, or the stormy events which immediately followed its passage. In his letter of acceptance, however, Mr. Buchanan had given his unqualified approval of his party platform, which recognized and adopted "the principle contained in the organic law establishing the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas as embodying the only sound and safe solution of the slavery question." Upon the principle here declared, issue was joined by his political opponents, and the battle fought to the bitter end.
Although Douglas had met personal defeat in his aspiration to the Presidency, the principle of non-intervention by Congress in the affairs of the Territories, for which he had so earnestly contended, had been triumphant both in the convention of the party, and at the polls. This principle, in its application to Kansas, was soon to be put to the test. From its organization, that Territory had been a continuous scene of disorder, often of violence. In rapid succession three Governors appointed by the President had resigned and departed the Territory, each confessing his inability to maintain public order. The struggle for mastery between the Free State advocates and their adversaries arrested the attention of the entire country. It vividly recalled the bloody forays read of in the old chronicles of hostile clans upon the Scottish border.
The parting of the ways between Senator Douglas and President Buchanan was now reached. The latter had received the cordial support of Douglas in the election which elevated him to the Presidency. His determined opposition to the re-election of Douglas became apparent as the Senatorial canvass progressed. The incidents now to be related will explain this hostility, as well as bring to the front one of the distinctive questions upon which much stress was laid in the subsequent debates between Douglas and Lincoln.
A statesman of national reputation, the Hon. Robert J. Walker, was at length appointed Governor of Kansas. During his brief administration a convention assembled without his co-operation at Lecompton, and formulated a Constitution under which application was soon made for the admission of Kansas into the Union. This convention was in part composed of non-residents, and in no sense reflected the wishes of the majority of the bona fide residents of the Territory. The salient feature of the Constitution was that establishing slavery. The Constitution was not submitted to the convention to popular vote, but in due time forwarded to the President, and by him laid before Congress, accompanied by a recommendation for its approval, and the early admission of the new State into the Union.
When the Lecompton Constitution came before the Senate, it at once encountered the formidable opposition of Senator Douglas. In unmeasured terms he denounced it as fraudulent, as antagonistic to the wishes of the people of Kansas, and subversive of the basic principle upon which the Territory had been organized. In the attitude just assumed, Douglas at once found himself in line with the Republicans, and in opposition to the administration he had helped place in power. The breach thus created was destined to remain unhealed. Moreover, his declaration of hostility to the Lecompton Constitution was the beginning of the end of years of close political affiliation with Southern Democratic statesmen. From that moment Douglas lost prestige as a national leader of his party. In more than one-half of the Democratic States he ceased to be regarded as a probable or even possible candidate for the Presidential succession. The hostility thus engendered followed him to the Charleston convention of 1860, and throughout the exciting Presidential contest which followed. But the humiliation of defeat —brought about, as he believed, by personal hostility to himself— was yet in the future. In the attempted admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution, Douglas was triumphant over the administration and his former political associates from the South. Under what was known as the "English Amendment," the obnoxious Constitution was referred to the people of Kansas, and by them overwhelmingly rejected.
The close of this controversy in the early months of 1858 left Douglas in a position of much embarrassment. He had incurred the active hostility of the President, and in large measure of his adherents, without gaining the future aid of his late associates in the defeat of the Lecompton Constitution. His Senatorial term was nearing its close, and his political life depended upon his re-election. With a united and aggressive enemy, ably led, in his front; his own party hopelessly divided—one faction seeking his defeat—it can readily be seen that his political pathway was by no means one of peace. Such, in brief outline, were the political conditions when, upon the adjournment of Congress, Douglas returned to Illinois in July, 1858, and made public announcement of his candidacy for re-election.
In his speech at Springfield, June 17, accepting the nomination of his party for the Senate, Mr. Lincoln had uttered the words which have since become historic. They are quoted at length, as they soon furnished the text for his severe arraignment by Douglas in debate. The words are:
"We are now far into this fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this country 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 do 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 until it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South."
This, at the time, was a bold utterance, and, it was believed by many, would imperil Mr. Lincoln's chances for election. Mr. Blaine in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says:
"Mr. Lincoln had been warned by intimate friends to whom he had communicated the contents of his speech in advance of its delivery, that he was treading on dangerous ground, that he would be misinterpreted as a disunionist, and that he might fatally damage the Republican party by making its existence synonymous with a destruction of the Government."
The opening speech of Senator Douglas at Chicago a few days later— sounding the keynote of his campaign—was in the main an arraignment of his opponent for an attempt to precipitate an internecine conflict, and array in deadly hostility the North against the South. He said:
"In other words, Mr. Lincoln advocates boldly and clearly a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free States against the slave States—a war of extermination—to be continued relentlessly until the one or the other shall be subdued, and all the States shall either become free or become slave."
The two speeches, followed by others of like tenor, aroused public interest in the State as it had never been before. The desire to hear the candidates from the same platform became general. The proposal for a joint debate came from Mr. Lincoln on July 24 and was soon thereafter accepted. Seven joint meetings were agreed upon, the first to be at Ottawa, August 21, and the last at Alton, October 15. The meetings were held in the open, and at each place immense crowds were in attendance. The friends of Mr. Lincoln largely preponderated in the northern portion of the State, those of Douglas in the southern, while in the centre the partisans of the respective candidates were apparently equal in numbers. The interest never flagged for a moment from the beginning to the close. The debate was upon a high plane; each candidate enthusiastically applauded by his friends, and respectfully heard by his opponents. The speakers were men of dignified presence, their bearing such as to challenge respect in any assemblage. There was nothing of the "grotesque" about the one, nothing of the "political juggler" about the other. Both were deeply impressed with the gravity of the questions at issue, and of what might prove their far-reaching consequence to the country.
Kindly reference by each speaker to the other characterized the debates from the beginning. "My friend Lincoln," and "My friend the Judge," were expressions of constant occurrence during the debate. While each mercilessly attacked the political utterances of the other, good feeling in the main prevailed. Something being pardoned to the spirit of debate, the amenities were well observed. They had been personally well known to each other for many years; had served together in the Legislature when the State Capitol was at Vandalia, and at a later date, Lincoln had appeared before the Supreme Court when Douglas was one of the judges. The amusing allusions to each other were taken in good part. Mr. Lincoln's profound humor is now a proverb. It never appeared to better advantage than during these debates. In criticising Mr. Lincoln's attack upon Chief Justice Taney and his associates for the Dred Scott decision, Douglas declared it to be an attempt to secure a reversal of the high tribunal by an appeal to a town meeting. It reminded him of the saying of Colonel Strode that the judicial system of Illinois was perfect, except that "there should be an appeal allowed from the Supreme Court to two justices of the peace." Lincoln replied, "That was when you were on the bench, Judge." Referring to Douglas's allusion to him as a kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, he said:
"Then as the Judge has complimented me with these pleasant titles, I was a little taken, for it came from a great man. I was not very much accustomed to flattery and it came the sweeter to me. I was like the Hoosier with the gingerbread, when he said he reckoned he loved it better and got less of it than any other man."
In opening the debate at Ottawa, Douglas said:
"In the remarks I have made on the platform and the position of Mr. Lincoln, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have known him for twenty-five years. There were many points of sympathy between us when we first got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, and both struggling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school-teacher in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper in the town of Salem. He was more successful in his occupation than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this world's goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who perform with admirable skill everything which they undertake. I made as good a school-teacher as I could, and when a cabinet-maker I made a good bedstead and table, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than anything else. I met him in the Legislature and had a sympathy with him because of the up-hill struggle we both had in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. He could beat any of the boys wrestling or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits or tossing a copper, and the dignity and impartiality with which he presided at a horse-race or a fist-fight, excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody. I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I."
To which Lincoln replied:
"The Judge is woefully at fault about his friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper. I don't know as it would be a sin if I had been; but he is mistaken. Lincoln never kept a grocery anywhere in the world. It is true that Lincoln did work the latter part of one Winter in a little still house up at the head of a hollow."
The serious phases of the debates will now be considered. The opening speech was by Mr. Douglas. That he possessed rare power as a debater, all who heard him can bear witness. Mr. Blaine in his history says:
"His mind was fertile in resources. He was master of logic. In that peculiar style of debate which in its intensity resembles a physical combat, he had no equal. He spoke with extraordinary readiness. He used good English, terse, pointed, vigorous. He disregarded the adornments of rhetoric. He never cited historic precedents except from the domain of American politics. Inside that field, his knowledge was comprehensive, minute, critical. He could lead a crowd almost irresistibly to his own conclusions."
Douglas was, in very truth, imbued with little of mere sentiment. He gave little time to discussions belonging solely to the realm of the speculative or the abstract. He was in no sense a dreamer. What Coleridge has defined wisdom—"common sense, in an uncommon degree"—was his. In phrase the simplest and most telling, he struck at once at the very core of the controversy. Possibly no man was ever less inclined "to darken counsel with words without knowledge." Positive, and aggressive to the last degree, he never sought "by indirections to find directions out." In statesmanship— in all that pertained to human affairs—he was intensely practical. With him, in the words of Macaulay, "one acre in Middlesex is worth a principality in Utopia."
It is a pleasure to recall—after the lapse of half a century—the two men as they shook hands upon the speaker's stand, just before the opening of the debates that were to mark an epoch in American history. Stephen A. Douglas! Abraham Lincoln! As they stood side by side and looked out upon "the sea of upturned faces"—it was indeed a picture to live in the memory of all who witnessed it. The one stood for the old ordering of things, in an emphatic sense for the Government as established by the fathers—with all its compromises. The other, recognizing equally with his opponent the binding force of Constitutional obligation, yet looking, away from present surroundings, "felt the inspiration of the coming of the grander day." As has been well said, "The one faced the past; the other, the future."
The name of Lincoln is now a household word. But little can be written of him that is not already known to the world. Nothing that can be uttered or withheld can add to, or detract from, his imperishable fame. But it must be remembered that his great opportunity and fame came after the stirring events separated from us by the passing of fifty years. It is not the Lincoln of history, but Lincoln the country lawyer, the debater, the candidate of his party for political office, with whom we have now to do. Born in Kentucky, much of his early life was spent in Indiana, and all his professional and public life up to his election to the Presidency, in Illinois. His early opportunities for study, like those of Douglas, were meagre indeed. Neither had had the advantage of the thorough training of the schools. Of both it might truly have been said, "They knew men rather than books." From his log-cabin home upon the Sangamon, Mr. Lincoln had in his early manhood volunteered, and was made captain of his company, in what was so well known to the early settlers of Illinois as the Black Hawk War. Later on, he was surveyor of his county, and three times a member of the State Legislature. At the time of the debates with Senator Douglas, Mr. Lincoln had for many years been a resident of Springfield, and a recognized leader of the bar. As an advocate, he had probably no superior in the State. During the days of the Whig party he was an earnest exponent of its principles, and an able champion of its candidates. As such, he had in successive contests eloquently presented the claims of Harrison, Clay, Taylor, and Scott to the Presidency. In 1846, he was elected a Representative in Congress, and upon his retirement he resumed the active practice of his profession. Upon the dissolution of the Whig party, he cast in his fortunes with the new political organization, and was in very truth one of the builders of the Republican party. At its first national convention, in 1856, he received a large vote for nomination to the Vice-Presidency, and during the memorable campaign of that year canvassed the State in advocacy of the election of Fremont and Dayton, the candidates of the Philadelphia convention.
In the year 1858—that of the great debates—Douglas was the better known of the opposing candidates in the country at large. In a speech then recently delivered in Springfield, Mr. Lincoln said:
"There is still another disadvantage under which we labor and to which I will ask your attention. It arises out of the relative positions of the two persons who stand before the State as candidates for the Senate. Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party have been looking upon him as certainly at no distant day to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his ruddy, jolly, fruitful face, postoffices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. On the contrary, nobody has ever seen in my poor lank face that any cabbages were sprouting out."
Both, however, were personally well known in Illinois. Each was by unanimous nomination the candidate of his party. Douglas had known sixteen years of continuous service in one or the other House of Congress. In the Senate, he had held high debate with Seward, Sumner, and Chase from the North, and during the last session—since he had assumed a position of antagonism to the Buchanan administration—had repeatedly measured swords with Tombs, Benjamin, and Jefferson Davis, chief among the great debaters of the South.
Mr. Lincoln's services in Congress had been limited to a single term in the lower house, and his great fame was yet to be achieved, not as a legislator, but as Chief Executive during the most critical years of our history.
Such, in brief, were the opposing candidates as they entered the lists of debate at Ottawa, on the twenty-first day of August, 1858. Both were in the prime of manhood, thoroughly equipped for the conflict, and surrounded by throngs of devoted friends. Both were gifted with remarkable forensic powers and alike hopeful as to the result. Each recognizing fully the strength of his opponent, his own powers were constantly at their tension.
"the blood more stirs
To rouse a lion than to start a hare."
In opening, Senator Douglas made brief reference to the political condition of the country prior to the year 1854. He said:
"The Whig and the Democratic were the two great parties then in existence; both national and patriotic, advocating principles that were universal in their application; while these parties differed in regard to banks, tariff, and sub-treasury, they agreed on the slavery question which now agitates the Union. They had adopted the compromise measures of 1850 as the basis of a full solution of the slavery question in all its forms; that these measures had received the endorsement of both parties in their National Conventions of 1852, thus affirming the right of the people of each State and Territory to decide as to their domestic institutions for themselves; that this principle was embodied in the bill reported by me in 1854 for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska; in order that there might be no misunderstanding, these words were inserted in that bill: 'It is the true intent and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, or to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Federal Constitution.'"
Turning to his opponent, he said:
"I desire to know whether Mr. Lincoln to-day stands as he did in 1854 in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; whether he stands pledged to-day as he did in 1854 against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them; whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make. I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line. I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to acquisition of any more territory unless slavery is prohibited therein. I want his answer to these questions."
Douglas then addressed himself to the already quoted words of Mr. Lincoln's Springfield speech commencing: "A house divided against itself cannot stand." He declared the Government had existed for seventy years divided into free and slave States as our fathers made it; that at the time the Constitution was framed there were thirteen States, twelve of which were slave-holding, and one a free State; that if the doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln that all should be free or all slave had prevailed, the twelve would have overruled the one, and slavery would have been established by the Constitution on every inch of the Republic, instead of being left, as our fathers wisely left it, for each State to decide for itself. He then declared that:
"Uniformity in the local laws and institutions of the different States is neither possible nor desirable; that if uniformity had been adopted when the Government was established it must inevitably have been the uniformity of slavery everywhere, or the uniformity of negro citizenship and negro equality everywhere. I hold that humanity and Christianity both require that the negro shall have and enjoy every right and every privilege and every immunity consistent with the safety of the society in which he lives. The question then arises, What rights and privileges are consistent with the public good? This is a question which each State and each Territory must decide for itself. Illinois has decided it for herself."
He then said:
"Now, my friends, if we will only act conscientiously upon this great principle of popular sovereignty, it guarantees to each State and Territory the right to do as it pleases on all things local and domestic; instead of Congress interfering, we will continue at peace one with another. This doctrine of Mr. Lincoln of uniformity among the institutions of the different States is a new doctrine never dreamed of by Washington, Madison, or the framers of the Government. Mr. Lincoln and his party set themselves up as wiser than the founders of the Government, which has flourished for seventy years under the principle of popular sovereignty, recognizing the right of each State to do as it pleased. Under that principle, we have grown from a nation of three or four millions to one of thirty millions of people. We have crossed the mountains and filled up the whole Northwest, turning the prairies into a garden, and building up churches and schools, thus spreading civilization and Christianity where before there was nothing but barbarism. Under that principle we have become from a feeble nation the most powerful upon the face of the earth, and if we only adhere to that principle we can go forward increasing in territory, in power, in strength, and in glory, until the Republic of America shall be the North Star that shall guide the friends of freedom throughout the civilized world. I believe that his new doctrine preached by Mr. Lincoln will dissolve the Union if it succeeds; trying to array all the Northern States in one body against the Southern; to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States in order that one or the other may be driven to the wall."
Mr. Lincoln said in reply:
"I think and will try to show, that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is wrong—wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery into Kansas and Nebraska; wrong in its prospective principle, allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where men can be found inclined to take it. This declared indifference, but as I must think covert zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our Republic of an example of its just influence in the world—enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites. I have no prejudices against the Southern people; they are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did now exist amongst us we would not instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South. When the Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the same. I surely will not blame them for what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly powers were given me, I should not know what to do as to the existing institution."
Declaring that he did not advocate freeing the negroes, and making them our political and social equals, but suggesting that gradual systems of emancipation might be adopted by the States, he added, "But for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South. But all this to my judgment furnishes no more excuse for permitting slavery to go into our free territory than it would for reviving the African slave trade by law."
He then added:
"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so. I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. But I hold that notwithstanding all this there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral and intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man."
Referring to the quotation from his Springfield speech of the words,
"A house divided against itself cannot stand," he said:
"Does the Judge say it can stand? If he does, then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, but between the Judge and an authority of somewhat higher character. I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our Government, the institution of slavery has not only failed to be a bond of union, but on the contrary been an apple of discord and an element of division in the house. If so, then I have a right to say that in regard to this question the Union is a house divided against itself; and when the Judge reminds me that I have often said to him that the institution of slavery has existed for eighty years in some States and yet it does not exist in some others, I agree to that fact, and I account for it by looking at the position in which our fathers originally placed it—restricting it from the new Territories where it had not gone, and legislating to cut off its source by abrogation of the slave trade, thus putting the seal of legislation against its spread, the public mind did rest in the belief that it was in the course of ultimate extinction. Now, I believe if we could arrest its spread and place it where Washington and Jefferson and Madison placed it, it would be in the course of ultimate extinction, and the public mind would—as for eighty years past —believe that it was in the course of ultimate extinction."
Referring further to his Springfield speech, he declared that he had no thought of doing anything to bring about a war between the free and slave States; that he had no thought in the world that he was doing anything to bring about social and political equality of the black and white races.
Pursuing this line of argument, he insisted that the first step in the conspiracy, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, followed soon by the Dred Scott Decision—the latter fitting perfectly into the niche left by the former—"in such a case, we feel it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Franklin, Roger and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn before the first blow was struck."
In closing, Douglas, after indignant denial of the charge of conspiracy, said:
"I have lived twenty-five years in Illinois; I have served you with all the fidelity and ability which I possess, and Mr. Lincoln is at liberty to attack my public action, my votes, and my conduct, but when he dares to attack my moral integrity by a charge of conspiracy between myself, Chief Justice Taney, and the Supreme Court and two Presidents of the United States, I will repel it."
At Freeport, Mr. Lincoln, in opening the discussion, at once declared his readiness to answer the interrogatories propounded. He said:
"I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law; I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union; I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make; I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States; I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories."
Waiving the form of the interrogatory, as to being pledged, he said:
"As to the first one in regard to the Fugitive Slave Law, I have never hesitated to say, and I do not now hesitate to say, that I think under the Constitution of the United States the people of the Southern States are entitled to a Congressional Fugitive Slave Law. Having said that, I have had nothing to say in regard to the existing Fugitive Slave Law further than that I think it should have been framed so as to be free from some of the objections that pertain to it without lessening its efficiency. In regard to whether I am pledged to the admission of any more slave States into the Union, I would be exceedingly glad to know that there would never be another slave State admitted into the Union; but I must add that if slavery shall be kept out of the Territories during the Territorial existence of any one given Territory, and then the people shall, having a fair chance and a clear field when they come to adopt the Constitution, do such an extraordinary thing as to adopt a slavery Constitution uninfluenced by the actual presence of the institution among them, I see no alternative, if we own the country, but to admit them into the Union. I should be exceedingly glad to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia. I believe that Congress possesses Constitutional power to abolish it. Yet, as a member of Congress, I should not be in favor of endeavoring to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia unless it would be upon these conditions: First, that the abolition should be gradual; second, that it should be on a vote of the majority of qualified voters in the district; third, that compensation should be made unwilling owners. With these conditions, I confess I should be exceedingly glad to see Congress abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, and in the language of Henry Clay, 'Sweep from our Capital that foul blot upon our nation.'"
These carefully prepared answers will never cease to be of profound interest to the student of human affairs. They indicate unmistakably the conservative tendency of Mr. Lincoln, and his position at the time as to the legal status of the institution of slavery. But "courage mounteth with occasion." Five years later, and from the hand that penned the answers given came the great proclamation emancipating a race. The hour had struck—and slavery perished. The compromises upon which it rested were, in the mighty upheaval, but as the stubble before the flame.
Recurring to the Freeport debates, Mr. Lincoln propounded to his opponent four interrogatories as follows:
"First, if the people of Kansas shall by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects adopt a State Constitution and ask admission into the Union under it before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the bill—some ninety-three thousand— will you vote to admit them? Second, can the people of a United States Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution? Third, if the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action? Fourth, are you in favor of acquiring additional territory in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?"
The questions propounded reached the marrow of the controversy, and were yet to have a much wider field for discussion. This was especially true of the second of the series. Upon this widely divergent—irreconcilable—views were entertained by Northern and Southern Democrats. The evidence of this is to be found in the respective national platforms upon which Douglas and Mr. Breckenridge were two years later rival candidates of a divided party. The second interrogatory of Mr. Lincoln clearly emphasized this conflict of opinion as it existed at the time of the debates. It is but just, however, to Douglas—of whom little that is kindly has in late years been spoken—to say that there was nothing in the question to cause him surprise or embarrassment. It would be passing strange if during the protracted debates with Senators representing extreme and antagonistic views, a matter so vital as the interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act—as indicated by the interrogatory—had never been under discussion. Conclusive evidence on this point is to be found in the speech delivered by Senator Douglas at Bloomington, July 16, forty-two days before the Freeport debate, in which he said:
"I tell you, my friends, it is impossible under our institutions to force slavery on an unwilling people. If this principle of popular sovereignty, asserted in the Nebraska Bill, be fairly carried out by letting the people decide the question for themselves by a fair vote, at a fair election, and with honest returns, slavery will never exist one day or one hour in any Territory against the unfriendly legislation of an unfriendly people. Hence if the people of a Territory want slavery they will encourage it by passing affirmatory laws, and the necessary police regulations; if they do not want it, they will withhold that legislation, and by withholding it slavery is as dead as if it were prohibited by a Constitutional prohibition. They could pass such local laws and police regulations as would drive slavery out in one day or one hour if they were opposed to it, and therefore, so far as the question of slavery in the Territories is concerned in its practical operation, it matters not how the Dred Scott case may be decided with reference to the Territories. My own opinion on that point is well known. It is shown by my vote and speeches in Congress."
Recurring again to the Freeport debate, in reply to the first interrogatory, Douglas declared that in reference to Kansas it was his opinion that if it had population enough to constitute a slave State, it had people enough for a free State; that he would not make Kansas an exceptional case to the other States of the Union; that he held it to be a sound rule of universal application to require a Territory to contain the requisite population for a member of Congress before its admission as a State into the Union; that it having been decided that Kansas has people enough for a slave State, "I hold it has enough for a free State."
As to the third interrogatory, he said that only one man in the United States, an editor of a paper in Washington, had held such view, and that he, Douglas, had at the time denounced it on the floor of the Senate; that Mr. Lincoln cast an imputation upon the Supreme Court by supposing that it would violate the Constitution; that it would be an act of moral treason that no man on the bench could ever descend to. To the fourth—which he said was very "ingeniously and cunningly put"—he answered that, whenever it became necessary in our growth and progress to acquire more territory he was in favor of it without reference to the question of slavery, and when we had acquired it, he would leave the people to do as they pleased, either to make it free, or slave territory as they preferred.
The answer to the second interrogatory—of which much has been written—was given without hesitation. Language could hardly be more clear or effective. He said:
"To the next question propounded to me I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can by lawful means exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day, or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. These police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their Legislature will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska Bill."
The trend of thought, the unmeasured achievement of activities looking to human amelioration, during the fifty intervening years, must be taken into the account before uncharitable judgment upon what has been declared the indifference of Douglas to the question of abstract right involved in the memorable discussion. It must be remembered that the world has moved apace, and that a mighty gulf separates us from that eventful period, in which practical statesmen were compelled to deal with institutions as then existing. And not to be forgotten are the words of the great interpreter of the human heart,
"But know thou this, that men are as the time is."
The great debates between Douglas and Lincoln—the like of which we shall not hear again—had ended and passed to the domain of history. To the inquiry, "Which of the participants was the victor?" there can be no absolute answer. Judged by the immediate result, the former; by consequence more remote and far-reaching, the latter. Within three years from the first meeting at Ottawa, Mr. Lincoln —having been elected and inaugurated President—was upon the threshold of mighty events which are now the masterful theme of history; and his great antagonist in the now historic debates had passed from earthly scenes.
It has been said that Douglas was ambitious.
"If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath he answered it."
We may well believe that, with like honorable ambition to the two great popular leaders of different periods—Clay and Blaine —his goal was the Presidency.
In the last three national conventions of his party preceding his death, he was presented by the Illinois delegation to be named for the great office. The last of these—the Charleston convention of 1860—is now historic. It assembled amid intense party passion, and after a turbulent session that seemed the omen of its approaching doom, adjourned to a later day to Baltimore. Senator Douglas there received the almost solid vote of the Northern, and a portion of that of the Border States, but the hostility of the extreme Southern leaders to his candidacy was implacable to the end. What had seemed inevitable from the beginning at length occurred, and the great historical party—which had administered the Government with brief intermissions from the inauguration of Jefferson—was hopelessly rent asunder. This startling event—and what it might portend— gave pause to thoughtful men of all parties. It was not a mere incident, but an epoch in history. Mr. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," says:
"The situation was the cause of solicitude and even grief with thousands to whom the old party was peculiarly endeared. The traditions of Jefferson, of Madison, of Jackson, were devoutly treasured; and the splendid achievements of the American Democracy were recounted with the pride which attaches to an honorable family inheritance. The fact was recalled that the Republic had grown to its imperial dimensions under Democratic statesmanship. It was remembered that Louisiana had been acquired from France, Florida from Spain, the independent Republic of Texas annexed, and California, with its vast dependencies, and its myriad millions of treasure, ceded by Mexico, all under Democratic administrations, and in spite of the resistance of their opponents. That a party whose history was inwoven with the glory of the Republic should now come to its end in a quarrel over the status of the negro in a country where his labor was not wanted, was to many of its members as incomprehensible as it was sorrowful and exasperating. They might have restored the party to harmony, but at the very height of the factional contest, the representatives of both sections were hurried forward to the National Convention of 1860, with principle subordinated to passion, with judgment displaced by a desire for revenge."
The withdrawal from the Baltimore Convention of a large majority of the Southern delegates and a small following, led by Caleb Cushing and Benjamin F. Butler from the North, resulted in the immediate nomination by the requisite two-thirds vote of Senator Douglas as the Presidential candidate. The platform upon the question of slavery was in substance that contended for by the candidate in the debates with Lincoln. The Democratic party divided —Breckenridge receiving the support of the South—Douglas's candidacy was hopeless from the beginning. But his iron will, and courage, that knew no faltering, never appeared to better advantage than during that eventful canvass. Deserted by former political associates, he visited distant States and addressed immense audiences in defence of the platform upon which he had been nominated, and in advocacy of his own election. His speeches in Southern States were of the stormy incidents of a struggle that has scarcely known a parallel. Interrogated by a prominent citizen at Norfolk, Virginia, "If Lincoln be elected President, would the Southern States be justified in seceding from the Union?" Douglas replied, "I emphatically answer, No. The election of a man to the Presidency in conformity with the Constitution of the United States would not justify an attempt to dissolve the Union."
Defeated in his great ambition, broken in health, the sad witness of the unmistakable portents of the coming sectional strife—the few remaining months of his mortal life were enveloped in gloom. Partisan feeling vanished—his deep concern was now only for his country. Standing by the side of his successful rival—whose wondrous career was only opening, as his own was nearing its close —he bowed profound assent to the imperishable utterances of the inaugural address: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
Yet later—immediately upon the firing of the fatal shot at Sumter that suddenly summoned millions from peaceful pursuits to arms— by invitation of the Illinois Legislature Douglas addressed his countrymen for the last time.
Broken with the storms of state, the fires of ambition forever extinguished, standing upon the threshold of the grave, his soul burdened with the calamities that had befallen his country, in tones of deepest pathos he declared:
"If war must come—if the bayonet must be used to maintain the Constitution—I can say before God, my conscience is clear. I have struggled long for a peaceful solution of the trouble. I deprecate war, but if it must come, I am with my country, and for my country, in every contingency, and under all circumstances. At all hazards our Government must be maintained, and the shortest pathway to peace is through the most stupendous preparation for war."
Who that heard the last public utterance that fell from his lips can forget his solemn invocation to all who had followed his political fortunes, until the banner had fallen from his hand,— to know only their country in its hour of peril?
The ordinary limit of human life unreached; his intellectual strength unabated; his loftiest aspirations unrealized; at the critical moment of his country's sorest need—he passed to the grave. What reflections and regrets may have been his in that hour of awful mystery, we may not know. In the words of another: "What blight and anguish met his agonized eyes, whose lips may tell? what brilliant broken plans, what bitter rending of sweet household ties, what sundering of strong manhood's friendships?"
In the light of what has been discussed, may we not believe that with his days prolonged, he would during the perilous years have been the safe counsellor—the rock—of the great President, in preserving the nation's life, and later in "binding up the nation's wounds."
Worthy of honored and enduring place in history, Stephen A. Douglas —statesman and patriot—lies buried within the great city whose stupendous development is so largely the result of his own wise forecast and endeavor,—by the majestic lake whose waves break near the base of his stately monument and chant his eternal requiem.
VIII THE FIRST POLITICAL TELEGRAM
SENATOR SILAS WRIGHT NOMINATED FOR VICE-PRESIDENT—WORD OF HIS NOMINATION SENT HIM BY THE MORSE TELEGRAPH—MORSE'S FIRST CONCEPTION OF AN ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH—OBSTACLES TO THE CARRYING OUT OF HIS INVENTION—A BILL APPROPRIATING $30,000 TO TEST THE VALUE OF HIS TELEGRAPH—EARLIER FORMS OF TELEGRAPHIC INTERCOURSE—A EULOGY ON THE INVENTOR BY MR. GARFIELD—ANOTHER, BY MR. COX—THE FIRST MESSAGE THAT EVER PASSED OVER THE WIRE—DR. PRIME'S PRAISE OF MORSE AFTER HIS DEATH.
By all odds, the most venerable in appearance of the Representatives in the forty-sixth Congress, was Hendrick B. Wright of Pennsylvania. After a retirement of a third of a century, he had been returned to the seat he had honored while many of his present associates were in the cradle. Of massive build, stately bearing, lofty courtesy; neatly appareled in blue broadcloth, with brass buttons appropriately in evidence, he appeared indeed to belong to a past generation of statesmen.
"And thus he bore without abuse
The grand old name of gentleman."
In one of the many conversations I held with him, he told me that he was the president of the Democratic National Convention which met in Baltimore in 1844. As will be remembered, a majority of the delegates to that convention were favorable to the renomination of Mr. Van Buren, but his recently published letter opposing the annexation of Texas had rendered him extremely obnoxious to a powerful minority of his own party. After a protracted struggle, Mr. Van Buren, under the operation of the "two-thirds rule," was defeated, and Mr. Polk nominated. The convention, anxious to placate the friends of the defeated candidate, then tendered the nomination for Vice-President to Senator Silas Wright, the close friend of Mr. Van Buren.
At the time the convention was in session, Samuel F. B. Morse was conducting in a room in the Capitol the electrical experiments which have since "given his name to the ages." Under an appropriation by Congress, a telegraph line had been recently constructed from Washington to Baltimore.
Immediately upon the nomination of Senator Wright, as mentioned, the president of the convention sent him by the Morse telegraph a brief message, the first of a political character that ever passed over the wire, advising him of his nomination, and requesting his acceptance. Two hours later he read to the convention a message from Senator Wright, then in Washington, peremptorily declining the nomination.
Upon the reading of this message to the convention, it was openly declared to be a hoax, not one member in twenty believing that a message could possibly have been received. The convention adjourned till the next day, first instructing its president to communicate with Senator Wright by letter. A special messenger, by hard riding and frequent change of horse, bore the letter of the convention to Wright in Washington, and returned with his reply by the time the convention had reassembled. As will be remembered, Wright persisting in his declination, George M. Dallas was nominated and duly elected.
Later, in conversation with the Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, he told me that he was in the room of the Capitol set apart for the experiments which Mr. Morse wished to make, and distinctly remembered the fact of the transmission of the message to and from Senator Wright, as stated.
The incident mentioned recalls something of the obstacles encountered by Morse in the marvellous work with which his name is inseparably associated. He first conceived the idea of an electro-magnetic telegraph on shipboard on a homeward-bound voyage from Europe in 1832. Before landing from his long voyage, his plans for a series of experiments had been clearly thought out. Having constructed his first recording apparatus, his caveat for a patent was filed five years later; and in 1838, he applied to Congress for an appropriation to enable him to construct an experimental line from Washington to Baltimore in order to demonstrate the practicability of his invention. His proposal was at first treated with ridicule —even with contempt; and for more than three years no favorable action was taken by Congress. With abiding faith, however, in the merits of his invention, his zeal knew no abatement during years of poverty and discouragement. At length in the Twenty-seventh Congress, Representative Kennedy of Maryland—at a later day Secretary of the Navy—introduced a bill appropriating thirty thousand dollars "to test the value of Morse's Electro-Magnetic Telegraph," to be expended under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury.
By the untiring efforts of Mr. Kennedy and other Representatives, the bill was finally brought before the House for consideration near the close of the session. In the light of events, the discussion that immediately preceded the vote is of interest, and in no small degree amusing, to this generation. On February twenty-first, 1843, Mr. Johnson of Tennessee wished to say a word upon the bill. As the present Congress had done much to encourage science, he did not wish to see the science of Mesmerism neglected and overlooked. He therefore proposed that one-half of the appropriation be given to Mr. Fisk to enable him to carry on experiments as well as Professor Morse. Mr. Houston thought that Millerism should also be included in the benefits of the appropriation. Mr. Stanley said he should have no objection to the appropriation for Mesmeric experiments provided the gentleman from Tennessee was the subject. Mr. Johnson said he should have no objection provided Mr. Stanley was the operator. Several gentlemen now called for the reading of the amendment, and it was read by the clerk as follows: "Provided that one-half of the said sum shall be appropriated for trying Mesmeric experiments under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury."
Mr. Mason arose to a question of order. He maintained that the amendment was not bona fide, and that such amendments were calculated to injure the character of the House. He appealed to the Chair, the House being then in committee of the whole, to rule the amendment out of order.
The Chairman said that it was not for him to judge of the motives of members who offered amendments, and that he could not therefore undertake to pronounce the amendment not bona fide. Objection might be raised to it on the ground that it was not sufficiently analogous in character to the bill under consideration; but, in the opinion of the Chair, it would require a scientific analysis to determine how far the magnetism of mesmerism was analogous to that employed in telegraphs. He therefore ruled the amendment in order.
The amendment was rejected. The bill was subsequently reported favorably to the House, and two days later passed by the close vote of eighty-nine to eighty-three.
The bill then went to the Senate, and was placed upon the calendar. A large number of bills were ahead of it, and Mr. Morse was assured by a kindly Senator that there was no possible chance for its consideration. All hope seemed to forsake the great inventor, as, from his seat in the gallery, he was a gloomy witness of the waning hours of the session. Unable longer to endure the strain, he sought his humble dwelling an hour before final adjournment. On arising the next morning, a little girl, the daughter of a faithful friend, ran up to him with a message from her father, to the effect that in the hurry and confusion of the midnight hour, and just before the close of the session, the Senate had passed his bill, which immediately received the signature of the President.
With the sum thus appropriated at his command, Morse now earnestly resumed the experiments, which a few months later resulted so successfully. Referring to the homeward voyage from Europe, in 1832, his biographer says:
"One day Dr. Charles S. Jackson of Boston, a fellow passenger, described an experiment recently made in Paris by means of which electricity had been instantaneously transmitted through a great length of wire; to which Morse replied, 'If that be so, I see no reason why messages may not instantaneously be transmitted by electricity.'"
The key-note was struck, and before his ship reached New York the invention of the telegraph was virtually made, and even the essential features of the electro-magnetic transmitting and recording apparatus were sketched on paper. Of necessity, in reaching this result, Morse made use of the ideas and discoveries of many other minds. As stated by his biographer:
"Various forms of telegraphic intercourse had been devised before; electro-magnetism had been studied by savants for many years; Franklin even had experimented with the transmission of electricity through great lengths of wire. It was reserved for Morse to combine the results of many fragmentary and unsuccessful attempts, and put them, after many years of trial, to a practical use; and though his claims to the invention have been many times attacked in the press and in the courts, they have been triumphantly vindicated alike by the law and the verdict of the people, both at home and abroad. The Chief Justice of the United States in delivering the opinion of the Supreme Court in one of the Morse cases, said: 'It can make no difference whether the inventor derived his information from books or from conversation with men skilled in the science; and the fact that Morse sought and obtained the necessary information and counsel from the best sources and acted upon it, neither impairs his right as an inventor, nor detracts from his merits.'"
It will be remembered that soon after his first successful experiment, Morse was harassed by protracted litigation, and that many attempts were made to deprive him of the just rewards of his great invention. True, he had been preceded along the same lines by great discoveries. This fact no man recognized more unreservedly than himself. He was the inventor, his work, that of gathering up and applying the marvellous discoveries of others to the practical purposes of human life. As stated by Mr. Garfield:
"His to interpret to the world that subtle and mysterious element with which the thinkers of the human race had so long been occupied. As Franklin had exhibited the relation between lightning and the electric fluid, so Oersted exhibited the relation between magnetism and electricity. From 1820 to 1825, his discovery was further developed by Davy and Sturgeon of England, and Arago and Ampere of France. The electro-magnetic telegraph is the embodiment, I might say the incarnation, of many centuries of thought, of many generations of effort to elicit from Nature one of her deepest mysteries. No one man, no one century, could have achieved it. It is the child of the human race, the heir of all ages. How wonderful are the steps that led to its creation! The very name of this telegraphic instrument bears record of its history—Electric, Magnetic.
"The first, named from the bit of yellow amber whose qualities of attraction and repulsion were discovered by a Grecian philosopher twenty-four centuries ago, and the second, from Magnesia, the village of Asia Minor where first was found the lodestone, whose touch turned the needle forever toward the north. These were the earliest forms in which that subtle, all-pervading force revealed itself to men. In the childhood of the race men stood dumb in the presence of its more terrible manifestations. When it gleamed in the purple aurora, or shot dusky-red from the clouds, it was the eye-flash of an angry God before whom mortals quailed in helpless fear."
More than three centuries ago, Shakespeare put into the mouth of one of his creations the words,
"I'll put a girdle round about the earth
In forty minutes."
The words spoken in jest were in the nature of a prophecy. After the passing of many generations, in a country unknown to the great bard, Morse, in the words of Mr. Cox, one of the most eloquent of his eulogists—
"Gave to the universal people the means of speedy and accurate intelligence, and so stormed at once the castles of the terrible Giant Doubt and Giant Despair. He has saved time, shortened the hours of toil, accumulated and intensified thought by the rapidity and terseness of electric messages. He has celebrated treaties. Go to the uttermost parts of the earth; go beneath the deep sea; to the land where snows are eternal, or to the tropical realms where the orange blooms in the air of mid-winter, and you will find this clicking, persistent, sleepless instrument ready to give its tireless wing to your purpose."
It was my good fortune to serve in the House of Representatives with Mr. Stephens of Georgia, and Mr. Wood of New York, both of whom more than a third of a century before had given their votes in favor of the appropriation that made it possible for Morse to prosecute experiments fraught with such stupendous blessing to our race. The member who reported back the bill from the Committee on Commerce, with favorable recommendations, and then supported it by an eloquent speech upon the floor of the House, was Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts. No public man I have ever known impressed me more favorably than did Mr. Winthrop. He had been the close friend of Everett, Choate, Webster, and Clay. He was the last survivor of as brilliant a coterie of party leaders and statesmen as our country has ever known. On a visit he made to the House of Representatives, of which he had many years before been the Speaker, business was at once suspended, and the members from all parts of the Great Hall gathered about him. In a letter to the Morse Memorial meeting in Boston, Mr. Winthrop stated that he was present in the Capitol while the first formal messages were passing along the magic cords between Washington and Baltimore. He referred to the declination read by Senator Wright in his presence, of the nomination to the Vice-Presidency tendered him, and added:
"All this gave us the most vivid impression, not only that a new kind of wire-pulling had entered into politics, but that a mysterious and marvellous power of the air had at length been subdued and trained to the service of mankind."
It is an interesting fact in this connection, to note that the little girl, Miss Ellsworth, who brought to Mr. Morse the joyful tidings of the passage of the bill on that early May morning in 1843, was rewarded by being requested by the great inventor to write the first message that ever passed over the wire. When she selected,
"What hath God wrought,"
words to find utterance by all tongues—she builded better than she knew, for in the words of Speaker Blaine:
"The little thread of wire placed as a timid experiment between the national capital and a neighboring city grew, and lengthened, and multiplied with almost the rapidity of the electric current that darted along its iron nerves, until, within his own lifetime, continent was bound to continent, hemisphere answered through ocean's depths to hemisphere, and an encircled globe dashed forth his eulogy in the unmatched eloquence of a grand achievement."
Words of praise, spoke by Dr. Prime, of the great inventor just after he had passed from the world, to which he left such a heritage, can never lose their interest:
"Morse in his coffin is a recollection never to fade. He lay like an ancient prophet or sage such as the old masters painted for Abraham, or Isaiah. His finely chiselled features, classical in their mould and majestic in repose, and heavy flowing beard; the death calm upon the brow that for eighty years had concealed a teeming brain, and that placid beauty that lingers upon the face of the righteous dead, as if the freed spirit had left a smile upon its forsaken home—these are the memories that remain of the most illustrious and honored private citizen that the New World has yet given to mankind."