To the work of the statesmen and jurists, the agitators and orators, must now be added the contribution of the editors. A loaf of bread represents many elements united in a single body. The sun lends heat, the clouds lend rain, the soil its chemical elements, the air its rich dust, and the result is the wheaten loaf. Not otherwise is it with the moral and political treasure named the Union and the Emancipation of slaves. The soldier boys at the front stayed the advancing tide of rebellion, and flung back from Pennsylvania waves all tipped with fire. With not less heroism farmer boys at home toiled in the fields to feed and support the boys in blue. Physicians in the hospitals, nurses at the front, lived also and died, caring for crippled heroes. Mothers and daughters, sisters, sweethearts and wives wrought innumerable garments and hospital supplies, while from full hearts giving inspiration or courageously bearing the miseries of bereavement. Orators went forth to incite, ministers brought divine sanctions to inspire men towards patriotism and self-sacrifice. Statesmen supported the leaders by war measures, manufacturers and bankers stood behind the government. But to all these workers must be added the work of the correspondents at the front, with the editors who consecrated the press to liberty.
The power and wealth of the newspaper of to-day is explained, in no small measure, by the battles of the Civil War, that kindled the interest of millions who had never before read the daily newspaper, but who became after the first battle students of God's book of daily events. During those terrible days men slept in dread and wakened in fear as to what might have happened on the Potomac or the Mississippi. Out of these tumultuous conditions the Sunday newspaper was born. Before the battle of Bull Run people of New York and Chicago frowned upon the Sunday newspaper, just as the people of London and Edinburgh to-day will have none of it. But when there were a million men in arms and the whole land trembled with the thunder of cannon and the stroke of battle, anxious parents, fearful wives, knowing that the conflict was on, when Saturday's sun set felt that they could not wait till Monday morning for news from the front.
But if the war did much for the press, newspaper men did much for liberty. To supply the people of the country with news from the field, a veritable army of war correspondents was organized, a telegraphic service was organized and built up, plans were laid that developed into the Associated Press. This telegraphic service became a vast and shining web lying all over this land, with wires that trembled by night and day, flashing out now despair, and now hope, to innumerable hearts. Liberty owes a great debt to the press, for it assembled all the people in one vast speaking chamber, and told them how events were going with the slave and the Union.
If we are to appreciate fully the place of the press during the anti-slavery epoch, we must recall the conditions of American life in the olden time. When the colonies revolted and published their Declaration there were in the United States only forty-three newspapers, most of them weeklies. There were fourteen papers in New England, four in New York State, two in Virginia, two in Carolina and nine in Pennsylvania. The entire forty-three papers, however, held less printed matter than any ten pages of our morning journals. The papers of that time contained no editorials, and were strictly purveyors of the gossip and news of the week, with rude advertisements—now a cut of a horse that had strayed, an apprentice that had escaped, a slave that had run away, enlivened, indeed, by frantic and pathetic appeals for the subscribers to pay up their dues. There were no public libraries, no reading rooms, no inns where men could go on winter evenings and read the papers.
That which starved the newspaper was the lack of facilities for distribution. It cost twenty-five cents to send a letter. Most of the correspondents were widely separated lovers. Romeo, knowing that Juliet would not be able to pay twenty-five cents for his weekly effusion, learned the use of the cypher, and by means of a large circle on the outside of the letter and a pink spot within it succeeded in conveying certain mystic symbols of osculation, that told the story of undying fidelity without paying the postman for the letter that was left in his hands. The old postman who jogged along between Philadelphia and New York spent three days on the trip, and put in his time knitting stockings. John Adams tells us that it took him six days on the coach from Boston to New York, and that he rose every morning long before day, took his seat in the cold, dark coach, and listened to the creaking of the wheels on the snow until two hours after dark until late Saturday night, cold and exhausted, he entered the little inn near Castle Garden. For these reasons no newspaper had any circulation beyond its own county.
The first railroads that helped distribute the newspapers began to be built about 1836, and the first ship to carry our newspapers to England sailed in 1838. The first telegraphic message was sent from Washington to Baltimore in 1844. The first cablegram in the interest of the press was sent in 1858. Meanwhile the people were isolated, starved, being fully conscious that they were like peasants shut in between mountain walls, while they longed to be citizens of the universe. A single illustration from history will explain the isolation of communities at that time:—the news that Jackson had been elected President in early November did not reach his own State of Tennessee until after New Year's Day!
Horace Greeley entered the scene at a great crisis for the people, and was raised up to fill a national need. God had prepared the soldiers to fight for the people, the orators to speak to the people, the physicians to heal the people, the educators to instruct the people. He had raised up the statesmen to make the laws, but the world waited for men to cause knowledge to run up and down the land. The common people found a friend in Horace Greeley. He was born in 1811, in Amherst, Massachusetts, near the very cabin in which his forefathers had settled. God gave him a hungry mind, which literally consumed facts of nature and life. Not John Stuart Mill himself was more precocious than Horace Greeley. He was reading without difficulty at three years of age, and read any ordinary book at five. There never was an hour when he was not the best scholar in the little log schoolhouse, where he suffered the long winter through, scorched if he was on the inside circle next to the fire, or freezing if he was on the outer rim.
Reading was the boy's master passion. Like the locust, he consumed every dry twig and green branch of knowledge. Before he was ten years of age he believed he had read every book that could be borrowed within a radius of six miles. He read the Bible through, every word, when he was five years old; at eleven he had read Shakespeare and Byron. Spelling was at once a taste and an acquisition. The people of his neighbourhood put the child up against other crack spellers in the school districts. It is said that in the old evening spelling-bees, his school-teacher, who had him in charge, had to wake the child up when his turn came around to spell. The trustees of Bedford Academy passed a resolution permitting Horace Greeley, although outside of the district, to enter their school, while a few teachers raised a purse, and made an offer to his father to send the boy to Phillips Exeter Academy. But pride prevented. Horace Greeley's childhood fell on evil days. Men were miserably poor. It was one long warfare with hunger and cold. The ravages of disease among children were really the result of insufficient food in those poverty-stricken times. Although the mortgage on the farm was a mere bagatelle, the father lost the homestead, and became a hired man on fifty cents a day, on which amount he had to feed and clothe his family. This boy worked by day and studied by night. History and politics, poetry and science, formed the staples of his reading and reflection. For two years he pleaded with his father to apprentice him to a printer; the day that the printer refused the boy and showed the poor farmer and his son the door, brought black gloom to his heart, for when the door of the printing office closed before him, the gates of paradise seemed shut forever.
Trained in the school of experience, and a graduate of the university of hard-knocks, at twenty years of age the boy determined to seek his fortune in New York. There are few scenes more pathetic than the spectacle of this friendless boy starting to walk from Erie, Pa., to this metropolis, then a city of only two hundred thousand people. He had a tow head, a bent form, a singular dress, and carried his entire belongings in a little bundle, supported by a walking stick thrown over his shoulder. Partly on foot, partly on the wagon of some farmer, who gave the traveller a lift, partly on the canal boats, Horace Greeley made his way until, after many days, in August, 1831, he landed at the foot of Wall Street.
Not Benjamin Franklin, landing on the wharves of Philadelphia, and buying a fresh roll on which he breakfasted while he went about looking for work, is so fascinating a figure as this simple-hearted, unworldly, artless, unsophisticated youth, with the step of a clodhopper and the face of an angel. Counting his coin, the boy found he had ten dollars left, and straightway took lodgings on West Street, for which he promised to pay two dollars and a half a week. He soon found a job and began to set type on an edition of the New Testament, with marginal notes in Greek and Latin. In two years he had his own printing office, and in 1834 the youth found his place as the editor of the New Yorker, a weekly that first of all took stories and the name of Charles Dickens to the people of New York. He soon carried the newspaper up to nine thousand subscribers, and a gross income of $25,000. Genius makes its own way. The world is always looking for unique ability. Horace Greeley had the art of putting things. He could make a statement that would go to the intellect like an arrow to the bull's-eye. There is always plenty of room for the man who has a gift and can do a thing better than any one else.
But the panic of 1837 bankrupted Greeley, who knew nothing about the business end of his enterprise. He had 9,000 subscribers, but none of them would pay their bills, and the more his paper grew the worse off he was. One day he struck from the roll the names of 2,500 subscribers. A little later he offered to give the entire establishment to a friend, and pay him $2,000 for taking it off his hands, agreeing to work out by typesetting the large debt. Then came an overture from Thurlow Weed and Benedict, and Greeley founded the Log Cabin, a campaign paper advocating the election of General Harrison as president, and sent out the slogan "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too." Politics was his passion and delight. An ardent Whig, he loved Henry Clay as an enthusiast, and worshipped him like a disciple. The death of Harrison in 1841, therefore, brought another crisis into Greeley's life. Then he founded the New York Tribune. In later years Horace Greeley used to say that the first half of his life was preparatory to founding the Tribune, and the other half to building up the newspaper that was his pride.
On April 3, 1841, the Log Cabin contained an announcement of the appearance of "a morning journal of politics, literature and general intelligence." It was to be sold for one penny, was to be free from all immoral reports, to be accurate in its statements, impartial in its judgments, unbiassed and unfettered in its opinions. The New Yorker and the Log Cabin were merged in the new journal. The expenses for the first week of the Tribune's existence were $525, and its income $92. Greeley was thirty years old, full of health and vigour, pluck and determination. He never knew when he was defeated, and when events knocked him down, he quietly got up again. In seven weeks the Tribune had a circulation of 11,000. Fertile in resources, full of plans to advertise his journal, he gained 20,000 during a single political campaign. Later he sent carrier pigeons to Halifax to bring home special news. When Daniel Webster was to make an important speech in Albany, he sent a case of type up by the night boat, and when the Albany boat reached New York the report of the speech was all ready to be locked up for the press. When the heart sings, the hand works easily. Work for the Tribune was literally food and medicine for Greeley. His daily stint was three or four columns, besides his correspondence, lectures and addresses. For twenty years he had no vacation and no rest. His one ideal was to make the Tribune an accurate and trustworthy guide for the political thinking of the common people.
What literature was to Burke, what patriotism was to Webster, what all mankind was to Paul, that politics and political writing were to Horace Greeley. Dr. Bacon once said of a secretary of the State Association of Connecticut that he was "possessed of a statistical devil." And Horace Greeley's Tribune Almanac became so great a power that an envious competitor once said that Horace Greeley was possessed of a political devil, who helped him in his statistics on Protection. At last the Tribune became a national organ, an acknowledged power. Horace Greeley began to make history, and in 1860 prevented Seward's nomination for the presidency. It was Greeley's personal preference for Governor Bates of Missouri that made possible the nomination of Abraham Lincoln.
As a reformer, Greeley was an extremist in politics. Whatever he wanted, he wanted on the moment, and had no patience in waiting. He was as uncompromising as Garrison, as insistent as Wendell Phillips, and as bitter in his criticism of Lincoln for postponing emancipation as Theodore Parker himself could have been. When the South seceded Greeley said that we must "let the erring sisters go." He thought that the North could do without the South quite as well as the South could do without the North; that is no true marriage that binds husband and wife together with chains when love has fled away. He urged that if any six States would send their representatives to Washington and say: "We wish to withdraw from the Union," the North had better let those States depart. It was not that Greeley felt it was best to dissolve the Union, but that he loathed the idea of compelling States by force to remain in it.
For a long time he carried the head-lines "On to Richmond" and roused the North into such a frenzy of feeling that he goaded the President, the Cabinet and General Winfield Scott into action before they were ready. Scott was at the head of the army. He was a Virginian, and loved the Old Dominion State with every drop of blood in his veins. The great men of the South on their knees begged Scott to join the South and lead the host of rebellion. Scott answered that he had sworn a solemn oath to defend the Constitution and the country, and made himself an outcast that he might be true to God and the Union. But the cry "On to Richmond" became the cry of an unreasoning multitude of editors and their readers. All unprepared, the advance was ordered and Bull Run was the result. Greeley, being the leading editor of the land, was made the scapegoat—the target of universal criticism. The barbed arrows found his brain, and becoming excited, sleepless and overwrought, Greeley went into an attack of brain fever, from which he recovered only after long time, to register a vow that he would never again discuss the management of the army. Then came his editorials urging emancipation, illustrated by "The prayer of twenty millions," and Lincoln's wonderful reply, written to Greeley, "in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always found to be right." It is honour enough for any editor to have called out Lincoln's letter (August 22, 1862), a letter that placed the President in the first rank as a master of epigrammatic speech, and put in a nutshell the whole position of the government in relation to the war.
Greeley was wrong again in 1864, when he met certain representatives of the South at Niagara Falls and suggested a plan of adjustment for the ending of the war. These so-called peace commissioners, without doubt, used Greeley as a convenient tool, and exhibited him as Don Quixote, riding forth upon a windmill enterprise. But Greeley had the courage of his opinions; threats could not cow him nor blows terrify him, nor scorn and hate drive him from a position which he had taken upon grounds of conscience and sound reasoning.
During the draft riots, in 1863, the mob attacked the Tribune, smashing the windows and doors, and it seemed a miracle that Greeley was not killed. When his friends rescued him the great editor seemed quite unwilling to be forced into a place of safety. "Well, it doesn't matter; I have done my work; I may as well be killed by the mob as die in my bed; between now and the next time is only a little while."
In May, 1867, Greeley signed the bail bond for Jefferson Davis, ex-president of the Confederacy. Burning with anger his friends in the Union League Club of New York called a meeting to expel him. He returned a defiant answer: "Gentlemen, I shall not attend your meeting; I have an engagement out of town and I shall keep it. I do not recognize you as capable of judging me. You evidently regard me as a weak sentimentalist, misled by a maudlin philosophy. I arraign you as narrow-minded blockheads, who would like to be useful to a great and good cause but don't know how. Your attempt to base a great and enduring party on the hate and wrath engendered by a bloody civil war is as though you should plant a colony on an iceberg which had somehow drifted into a tropical ocean. I tell you here that out of a life earnestly devoted to the good of human kind, your children will select my going to Richmond and signing that bail bond as the wisest act of my life, and will feel that it did more for freedom and humanity than all of you were competent to do though you lived to the age of Methuselah. Understand, once for all, that I dare you and defy you. So long as any man was seeking to overthrow our government he was my enemy; from the hour when he laid down his arms he was my formerly erring countryman."
In 1872, Greeley became the Republican who was a candidate of the Democratic party for the presidency, and was defeated by Grant. Doubtless he was actuated by the highest sense of duty. He took the stump and spoke in every great city in the North and South, without swerving a hair's breadth in his pacific attitude towards the South, or in his championship of the coloured race. His great work, "The American Conflict," on which he spent ten hours a day for many, many months, had made Greeley a master of all the facts bearing upon the reconciliation of the North and South. He showed almost superhuman endurance during that intense campaign. But Grant had captured the imagination of the people. The old soldiers voted as one solid band, the Republican party was looked upon as the saviour of the nation, and the people doubted Mr. Greeley's fitness for the presidency in a national crisis. He was defeated in November, and went home to watch over his wife during her illness and death. Just before she died, he wrote a friend saying: "I am a broken old man; I have not slept one hour in twenty-four; if she lasts, poor soul, another week, I shall go before her." Sleeplessness brought on brain fever, his old enemy, and on November 29th, the worn-out editor fell on sleep.
His fellow countrymen wakened to realize that the great tribune of the people had left the country poor. His own city rose as one man, in mood of profound grief and affectionate admiration and sympathy. His body lay in state in our city hall the long day through. The poor poured by in unending column, to pay their last tribute to a man who had never betrayed the people. The funeral services were attended by the president and vice-president of the United States, the president-elect, and numerous officials and citizens of distinction. Mr. Beecher made one address and then Greeley's pastor, Dr. Chapin, spoke. Men forgot the wreck of his political fortunes and the tragedy of his later career. He expressed the ambition of his life in the wish "that the stone which covers my ashes may bear to future eyes the still intelligible inscription: 'Founder of the New York Tribune.'"
A Universalist in his religious faith, Horace Greeley believed that right was stronger than wrong, good more powerful than evil, and that there will be in eternal ages no endless perdition for the evil ones of earth, but that God and all the resources of His power and love will here or there compel every knee to bow and every will surrender to the will divine. He earned the right to say at the end of his noble career, "I have been spared to see the end of giant wrongs that I once deemed invincible in this country, and to note the silent upspringing and growth of principles and influences which I hail as destined to root out some of the most flagrant and pervading influences that remain. So, looking calmly, yet humbly, for that close of my mortal career which cannot be far distant, I reverently thank God for the blessings vouchsafed me in the past; and with an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, await the opening before my steps of the gates of the Eternal World."
About 1850, as the result of the long agitation of the editors and orators, preachers and poets, the people of this country entered upon a heated mood, when excitement dwelt like fire in the intellect and conscience. For thinking men, it was becoming clear that civil war was inevitable, and that commercial relations between North and South would soon be broken off. But the North had goods to sell, and the South had money with which to buy; so the word was passed that every one must keep silence about slavery, lest discussion bring on a financial panic. It was the era of imprisoned moral sense. In the ocean, some waves are tidal waves, and on land sometimes the soil is heaved by an earthquake; at this time God began to heave the conscience of the people as the full moon heaves the sea. And although we now see that God was behind the movement, foolish men then tried to stay these moral forces. Northern merchants and politicians cried, "Peace!" and the Southern successors of Calhoun lifted the old club, the threat of secession; but the agitation went on all over the North. Toombs, the Southern senator, tried sheer bombast, and said he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. Timid men in the North began to cry: "Conciliate, conciliate!" But there can be warfare, and only warfare between darkness and light, between sickness and health, between wrong and right. At length Phillips and Greeley took up the cry: "Let the South go!" But the answer was: "Shall a strong man who has hold of a mad dog let the beast go into a crowd of little children?" Compromise did something for a time, as a safety valve, relieving men's pent-up feelings. But God had His own counsels. Plainly, "every drop of blood shed by the lash was to be paid for by blood shed by the sword," for "the judgments of God are true and righteous altogether."
During those heated days of 1850, when the men of light and leading began to see their way clearly, the masses were still timid, hesitant and vacillating in their judgments on slavery. Scholars and thinking men had already been reached by poets, authors and editors, while the preachers and lecturers had driven their message home to the conviction of the ruling classes. Later on was to come the revival of 1857 that should stir the conscience, but preparatory to that movement it was necessary to inform the intellect and rouse the affections of the millions. Then it was that God raised up an author to touch the heart of the people.
Wonderful the power of the novel in social reform! The novels of "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey and Son," were what roused the English people to a realization of the woes and wrongs of chimney sweeps, of children in the factories and mines of Great Britain. It was a novel, "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," that later built People's Palace in the Whitechapel district of London. And it was a novel, named "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that created the atmosphere of sympathy in which the flowers of self-sacrifice and heroism unfolded.
The authoress was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, who had seven sons and four daughters, each one of whom was either a preacher or reformer in some field. His daughter, Harriet, married Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where, on the border between the free soil of Ohio and the slave soil of Kentucky, people were in a state of constant excitement and upheaval. The old Blue Grass State exhibited slavery in its very best condition and also in its worst form. The harrowing tales and incidents that were afterwards worked up into literary form by the gifted authoress were all matters of observation, conversation and experience. One of the earliest incidents of the Stowes' life in Cincinnati was an experience of Professor Stowe with one of the Beecher boys. While travelling in Kentucky, the two young men witnessed the flight of a negro woman, who was running away with her little child, whom they helped across the Ohio River, to be sent on by the Underground Railway to Oberlin, on the shore of Lake Erie. And the similar incident, Eliza's flight across the ice, her son Charles[1] writes in his recent story of her life, "was an actual occurrence. She had known and had often talked with the very man who helped Eliza up the bank of the river."
Later during their Cincinnati residence, Mrs. Stowe conducted a small private school and made a practice of allowing a few coloured children to attend it. One evening the mother of one of these coloured children came to the Stowes' house in a frenzy of terror, saying that her little girl had been seized and carried to the river, to be sold as a slave in Kentucky. Mrs. Stowe raised the money to ransom the beautiful child.
It was during this period that the Kentucky editor, Bailey, moved across the river and began to publish a paper in Cincinnati. One night the editor knocked at the door of the Stowe home, seeking refuge from a mob that had smashed in his doors and windows, looted his printing-office, and flung his type into the river.
On another occasion a Kentuckian named Van Zandt freed his slaves and carried them across the river into Ohio. His old friends counted him a traitor, and charges were trumped up that he had used his new home in Ohio as an underground station for the receiving of runaway slaves. Professor Stowe was asked to assist in Van Zandt's defense. When other lawyers were afraid of the mob spirit, a young attorney named Salmon P. Chase volunteered his services without pay. As the courts were then entirely under the influence of the Fugitive Slave law, young Chase lost his case; but that no dramatic note might be wanting, this young attorney later became chief justice of the United States Supreme Court and wrote a decision that reversed the former action. All these and many other facts and events went into Mrs. Stowe's mind as raw silk, and came out tapestry and brocade. The fuel of events fed the flames of enthusiasm. It was a great age, when men had to speak. The time was ripe, the soil was ready, God gave the good seed of liberty, and the sower went forth to sow.
Mrs. Stowe tells us how she came to write the last chapter of the book, the death of "Uncle Tom." She had a coloured woman in her family whose husband was a slave, living in Kentucky. This black man had invented a simple tool, was a good salesman, and was permitted to travel from town to town, and even to cross the river into the Ohio, under no bond save his solemn pledge to his master not to run away. Mrs. Stowe wrote the letters for her servant, to this black man in Covington, Ky. One day, while visiting his wife, in the Stowe home, he said that he would rather cut off his right hand than break the word he had given to his master. What white man could boast a more delicate sense of truth? How keen and delicate the conscience! What weight of manhood in a slave! What reserves of morality! What latent heroism! The slave's story captured the imagination of the authoress, and kindled her mind into a creative mood.
Out of the incident Mrs. Stowe evolved the character of "Uncle Tom." One Sunday morning, as she sat at the communion table, the picture of Tom's death rose and passed before her mind. "At the same time," writes her son, "the words of Jesus were sounding in her ears: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.' It seemed as if the crucified but now risen and glorified Christ were speaking to her through the poor black man, cut and bleeding under the blows of the slave whip." Long afterwards some one asked Mrs. Stowe how she came to write the death of Uncle Tom, and she answered that she did not write it, that God gave it to her in a vision, that she saw the overseer flog him to death, and heard his dying words, and merely wrote down the vision as she saw it. At the time, she had no idea of writing more: it was a year later when she began the tale of which this incident became the crisis.
For nearly two years the story ran in the National Era, published in Washington. The book was completed on March 20, 1852, and in spite of Mrs. Stowe's despondency and apprehension of failure, it sold 3,000 copies the first day, 10,000 in a week, and 300,000 in a year. Save "Pilgrim's Progress" alone, perhaps no book ever had a wider circulation, the Bible, of course, and "The Imitation of Christ," by à Kempis, always excepted. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was translated into German, French, Italian and Spanish, and later appeared in almost every known language. Written for the people at large, the book struck a chord of universal human nature, and aroused the learned as well as the simple. Soon letters began to pour in from the most distinguished men in foreign countries. Charles Dickens wrote that he had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with the deepest interest and sympathy. Lord Carlisle sent a message of "deep and solemn thanks to Almighty God, who has enabled you to write this book." Charles Kingsley expressed the judgment that the story would take away the reproach of slavery from the great and growing nation. Men like Shaftesbury, Arthur Helps, women like George Sand and Frederika Bremer added their tribute of praise. Eighteen different publishing houses in England were issuing the book at one time, and a million and a half copies were sold in Great Britain.
Even Heinrich Heine, the poet, the cynic, who carried more power of sarcasm and irony than any man of his generation, was so moved by the book that he seems to have returned to the reading of the Bible, and to Christ the Consoler, in the hour when night and death were falling. "Astonishing! That after I have whirled about all my life, over all the dance floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all the orgies of the intellect, and paid my addresses to all possible systems, without satisfaction, like Messalina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands—on that of the Bible. I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer. What a humiliation! With all my sense I have come no farther than the poor ignorant negro who has just learned to spell. Poor Tom indeed seems to have seen deeper things in the holy book than I, but I, who used to make citations from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does!" Praise can go no farther than this, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has shown how the love of God can support a slave, under the lash, in the hour when he is flogged to death, and fill his heart with pity while he cries, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" It was this that conquered the intellect of the scholar, and broke his heart, and flooded his eyes with tears.
Perhaps the most striking testimony to the influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" grew out of a suggestion of Lord Shaftesbury's that the women of England and Europe send their signatures to a testimonial to be presented to Mrs. Stowe, for, when this testimonial came in, it filled twenty-six thick folio volumes, solidly bound in morocco, and it held the names of 562,448 women, representing every rank, from the throne of England to the wives of the humblest artisans in Wales or the peasants in Italy.
The message of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is so simple that he who runs may read. It was not written for literary critics, for scholars or for college graduates. George Eliot wrote her "Romola" with the historian and the philosopher and the editor of reviews ever in mind. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for farmers, factory men, merchants and clerks, the miscellaneous mass that make up the millions, to rouse them to the wrongs of slavery.
In it she tried to prove two things. First, that slavery, as a system, reacted upon the loftiest natures, distorting and injuring them. Witness the Kentucky gentleman, Mr. Shelby. His wife was a patrician, the very embodiment of courtesy and good-will, affection and sympathy. Her husband was a man of honour, a representative of the bluest blood of the old Lexington families, with a heart so gentle that the sight of a young bird that had fallen out of the nest in the tree moved him to tears; but, little by little, pressed by his necessities and hardened by the spectacle of slaves bought and slaves sold, he himself sells the woman who has been a nurse to his children, and Uncle Tom who has been like a saviour to his own boys in the hour of their peril in forest and river, sends both of the slaves into the cotton plantations of Louisiana, breaking his solemn pledge to his wife and his family, in the hope that he could escape from debt, that like a millstone weighed him into the abyss.
Then, the book tries to show how slavery develops the worst men, of the stamp of Simon Legree, the brutal overseer. Legree pours out the vials of his wrath upon the slaves about him, debauching a young octaroon to the level of his mistress, hunting his slaves with bloodhounds, killing them without trial before a jury. Power is dangerous; there is the czar spirit in every man. Slavery made a brute still more brutal—made the sensual man more sensual, and finally debased Legree to the level of the demon.
It is a book full of pathos and tears. Remembering that the book was written for the miscellaneous millions, to rouse the nation at large to moral indignation, it is doubtful whether any book was ever more perfectly adapted to the end aimed at. Literary artists have criticized "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and contrasted it with "Henry Esmond," "Vanity Fair" and "Adam Bede." But if Thackeray, Dickens and George Eliot achieved unique success in creating books that should reach their set, one thing is certain,—the boys, who afterwards became the soldiers of the Civil War, read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with dim eyes and indignant hearts, because the book found their judgment and their conscience, and lifted them to the point where they were made ready in the day of God's power, to fight the battle for freedom.
When all the school children had read the death of little Eva and of Uncle Tom, and all the farmers and working men—the dwellers in city and country, from seaboard to mountains and prairie—had followed the career of these slaves to the end, and the people of the North were fully awake to the horror of the slave traffic, the multitudes began to look with questioning eyes into each other's faces, asking, "What can be done? What is the next step?" And then it was that a fanatic entered the scene.
His name was John Brown, descended from Peter Brown, a Pilgrim of the Mayflower. He had been cattle-drover, tanner and wool-merchant. When about forty years of age he was living in Springfield, Massachusetts. One night, in 1849, a runaway slave knocked at his door and told Brown the story of his flight, of the weeks he had spent hiding in the swamps, of his escape to the fastnesses of the mountains, of his life in the forest, and how he finally reached New York and Springfield. It was a story of starvation, hunger, cold, blows and piercing anguish. Long after the children had gone to bed at midnight, while the slave was sleeping in a blanket beside the fire, John Brown sat musing over the national infamy. All the next day and night the conference continued with this runaway, who was also a negro preacher. The following night John Brown assembled his sons. He closed the door and told his family his decision. He was a tall man, over six feet, straight and lithe, slightly gray, with thin lips and smooth face. The Bible was almost the only book in the house, and no sound was so familiar as the voice of prayer. Brown was lifted into the prophetic mood. He told his family that he had decided to give himself, and to consecrate them, to righting the wrongs of the slaves; that he had heard a voice calling him to the work of the deliverer; that he would be killed, and that they must expect also to die the martyr's death, and that henceforth they must expect only crusts, wounds, bitter enmity, and finally martyrdom. A little later and Brown had moved the younger children of his family to North Elba, in the Adirondack woods, that the slaves on the underground route might be able to hide in the forest, in the event of the pursuers overtaking them. Brown then began to travel along Mason and Dixon's line from the city of Washington through to Topeka, Kan. From time to time he would cross the line, take charge of a little group of slaves, and hiding by day and travelling by night, carry them from one underground station to another. It was said that he had personally conducted runaway slaves along every route for a thousand miles from East to West, between the Atlantic and the Missouri River.
One of the friends of Brown's childhood was the Hon. James B. Grinnell, who founded the town and college in Iowa. This congressman loved to tell the story of the night when John Brown knocked at his door. Outside was a wagon, packed with slaves, whom Brown had carried across the line from Missouri. He had driven four horses at their limit of speed for a hundred miles and had no defenders, save two or three men and as many guns. "I am a dealer in wool," said the stranger, "and my name is Captain John Brown of Kansas." The first thing Mr. Grinnell did was to find a shelter for these slaves, with food and beds. The next thing was to hide the wagon and the horses in the thick grove near by. Early the next morning the news spread like wild-fire, and the settlers began to pour in. John Brown made a speech to the farmers and justified his act. The villagers were terrified lest the pursuers come any moment and burn their houses. The three Congregational ministers offered prayers, asked for help, and started out to raise money. When the night fell the slaves were rushed to the terminus of the railway and carried through to Chicago, being shipped in a freight car as sheep, to distinguish their woolly heads from the goats, named white men.
In 1855 John Brown led his five sons and their families into Kansas, to help preëmpt the State for freedom. When at length the free state voters won an election and enthroned their governor, two thousand pro-slavery men from Missouri crossed the State line, burned the little town of Lawrence, and at the point of the pistol compelled the State officials to resign; issued writs for a new election, put in a slavery governor, captured the government, and started back into Missouri. On their way they passed through Pottawatamie. It was a guerrilla warfare. When John Brown reached his son's cabin, he found the settlers preparing for flight. He denounced them as cowards, and when one urged caution, answered, "I am tired of that word Caution. It is nothing but cowardice!" Either the border ruffians had to go, or else the settlers must leave without striking a single blow in defense of their homes. A man's cabin was his castle. Without waiting for the next attack to be made, John Brown pointed the settlers to the smoking ashes of cabins already burned and to the bodies that the Missouri guerrillas had left on the ground, and took the aggressive himself. He seized five of the outlaws and killed them for their crime.
The deed fired Kansas, some say freed Kansas, while others think it opened the Civil War. Withdrawing to the forest, hiding in the cottonwood swamps, John Brown organized his company. A reporter of the New York Tribune finally penetrated the thicket. "Near the edge of the creek a dozen horses were tied, already saddled for a ride for life. A dozen rifles were stacked against the trees. In an open space was a blazing fire with a pot above it. Three or four armed men were lying on red and blue blankets on the grass. John Brown himself stood near the fire with his shirt sleeves rolled up and a piece of pork in his hand. He was poorly clad, and his toes protruded from his boots. The old man received me with great cordiality, and the little band gathered about me. He respectfully, but firmly, forbade conversation on the Pottawatamie affair. After the meal, thanks were returned to the bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old man would retire to the densest solitudes to wrestle with his God in prayer. He said he was fighting God's battles for his children's sake: 'Give me men of good principles, God-fearing men, men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose a hundred such men as these border ruffians.' I remained in the camp about an hour. Never before had I met such a band of men. They were not earnest, but earnestness incarnate."
After several years of bloody conflict and political struggles between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties, in 1859 the Constitution prohibiting slavery was passed, and freedom had won in Kansas. In January of that year John Brown returned to the mountains of Virginia, and "The Great Black Way," and the dark shadows of the night following the North Star to liberty. For many years he had been planning an uprising of the slaves, and an attack upon Virginia. Some biographers think he conceived the plan as early as 1849. Away back in 1834 Brown wrote to his brother his determination to war on slavery; but at first only through educating the blacks. As time went on he came into sterner conflict with it.
Brown, in fact, became a fanatic who really believed that the millions of slaves would rise at his call, and that he could lead his host as a new Moses, out of the land of bondage. He intended to operate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, because the paths into the black belt of slavery were easily followed. Men like Douglas and other escaped slaves who were living in the North did not see their way clear to join the movement.
On Sunday, October 16, 1859, John Brown, with sixteen men, started out to capture Harper's Ferry and redeem three million slaves. Brown rode in a one-horse wagon, that held provisions, pikes, one sledge-hammer and one crowbar; his sixteen men, with guns, followed on foot. Without a single shot they captured the armoury and the rifle factory, and at daylight, without the snap of a gun or any violence whatsoever, they were in possession of Harper's Ferry. On Monday morning the panic spread like wild-fire. The rumour went abroad of an uprising of all the slaves of the South. In a few hours the governor called out the militia, Jefferson guards marched down the Potomac, and two local companies took positions on the heights. The assault began in the afternoon. One by one Brown's handful were killed, his two sons, Oliver and Watson, were shot down, and Brown, badly wounded, was captured.
The trial and examination of the old fanatic makes a fascinating story. At noon of Tuesday, the governor of Virginia bent over him as he lay wounded and blood-stained upon the floor. "Who are you?" asked the governor. "My name is John Brown; I have been well known as old John Brown of Kansas. Two of my sons were killed here to-day, and I am dying too. I came here to liberate slaves, and was to receive no reward. I have acted from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate. I am an old man. If I had succeeded in running off slaves this time, I could have raised twenty times as many men as I have now for a similar expedition; but I have failed."
Then Governor Wise said, "The silver of your hair is reddened by the blood of crime. You should think upon eternity."
John Brown replied, "Governor, I have not more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you to that eternity, and I am prepared to go. There is an eternity behind and an eternity before, and this little speck in the centre is but a minute. The difference between your time and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you—be prepared. I am prepared—you have a heavy responsibility. It behooves you to prepare, and more than it does me."
Friends in the North tried to secure Brown's release, but he answered them: "I think I cannot now better serve the cause I love so much than to die for it, and in my death I may do more than in my life. I believe that for me, at this time, to seal my testimony for God and humanity through my blood will do vastly more towards advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavoured to promote than all I have done in my life before."
When the court asked Brown if he had any reason why he should not be hung, he answered: "This court acknowledges the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible. That book teaches me to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavoured to act up to that instruction. I believe that to interfere as I have done, in behalf of God's poor, was not wrong, but right. I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done."
On the morning of his hanging he visited his doomed companions, and then kissed his wife good-bye. A thousand soldiers stood round about his scaffold. "This is a beautiful land," said Brown, as he rode, looking across the landscape. As he climbed the steps of the scaffold a negro child stood between some black men, and some say he stooped and kissed the child. And this was his prayer:
"My love to all who love their neighbours. I have asked to be spared from having any weak or hypocritical prayers said over me when I am publicly murdered, and that my only religious attendants be poor, little, dirty, ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and girls, led by some gray-headed slave mother.... Farewell, farewell." He died in the spirit of the letter written the day before, when he said, "I think I feel as happy as Paul did when he lay in prison, for men cannot chain or hang the soul."
His deed puzzled the world. For multitudes it is still an enigma. To many, John Brown seems not only a fanatic but a lunatic. To others, now that long time has passed, this white-haired old man, weltering in his blood, which he had spilled for a broken and despised race, seems right, and he seems to have died, not as a fool dies, but as martyrs die. That his enterprise was doomed to failure in advance, all knew. That it was not the wisest plan, Brown's best friends must grant. But that its fanaticism was overruled by God to release the great South from the incubus of slavery, Brown's friends and Brown's enemies alike must concede.
What other men had been writing about, John Brown did in action. The attack on Harper's Ferry was the first blow struck during the Civil War. Other men and women assembled the explosives, but John Brown dropped the spark in the magazine, which finally blew up that hindrance to progress, slavery—the Hell Gate obstruction in the passageway of the South and of all civilization.
Strictly speaking, there were three stages in the development of the anti-slavery sentiment leading up to the Civil War. There was the period of indifference, from 1759 to 1830, when the North winked at slavery, ignored the traffic and avoided the whole subject. There was the epoch of agitation, from 1831 to 1850, when Garrison and his friends insisted upon "the immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slaves on the soil," and the agitation was kept up by men who "would not retreat, who would not equivocate, who would not be silent and who would be heard." Then came the stage when men tried legislative palliatives; when all manner of political medicaments and poultices were tried as cures, which were about as effective in destroying the poison as a porous plaster would be to draw out the fire from a volcano. For more than sixty years a veil had hung before men's minds, and it was as if they saw slaves as trees walking, in an unreal world. The sea captain fears a fog more than an equinoctial storm. When the mist falls, and obscures the glass, and the ship is surrounded with white darkness, and the surf is thundering on some Nantucket, as a graveyard of the sea, the captain longs for a cold, sharp wind out of the North, to cut the fog and bring out the stars and sun. And not otherwise was it with the great debate between Lincoln and Douglas—it lifted the veil from men's eyes, it swept the fog out of the air, it made the issue clear. Then it was that for the first time the North saw that the conflict was inevitable, because the Union could not endure permanently, half slave and half free; saw that liberty and slavery were as irreconcilable as day and night.
Before considering the influence of Lincoln's clear thinking and speaking upon the eternal principles of right, we must note the general reawakening of the popular intelligence which preceded it, and which was due to two causes, the panic of 1857 and the religious revival which swept over the land during the same year. As the Northern merchant began to see that the South had determined to secede and try her fate alone, he became afraid to sell his goods to Southern customers. The Northern manufacturer, in turn, was overstocked, and if the banker called his loans there was no response, for the chain was broken; the result was the panic of 1857. Hunger and Want stalked through the land—Winter and Poverty became bosom friends. Black despair fell upon the people and in the hour of need they cried unto God, and God heard them.
When a nation prospers and grows rich, religion languishes. When nations enter upon disaster and peril, the people turn unto God. Abundance enervates. Morals always sink to a low level when men's eyes stand out with fatness.
What agitation, what the liberator and the lecture platform, what statesmen and compromisers could not achieve, was accomplished by the spirit of God working upon the hearts of men, clarifying the intellect, deepening the sympathy and lending vigour to the will.
The first thing the leader of an orchestra does is to see to it that the instruments are all unified and brought up to concert pitch, and the revival of religion made the people one in self-sacrifice and their willingness to live and die for their convictions.
Multitudes returned to the churches. Thoughtless youth discovered that there are only two great things in the universe—God and the soul. Personal religion became the supreme interest of the hour. Men went into the crucible commonplace; they came out of it heroic stuff. All over the country the churches were open every night in the week. Moving across the country the traveller saw the candles burning in the little schoolhouses, while the farmers assembled to pray and read God's word. The Fulton Street prayer-meeting in New York attracted the interest of the nation. The morning newspapers of 1858 carried columns concerning the business men's noon prayer-meeting, just as to-day they carry the column on the stock news and the stock market. In his "History of the United States" Rhodes calls attention to the fact that 230 persons joined Plymouth Church on profession of faith on a single Sunday morning. That revival all over the land put its moral stamp upon boys and girls who afterwards became the leaders of the generation.
Now every reform and every great war for principle proceeds along intellectual lines clearly laid out. Twenty-seven years before the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the "Tariff of Abominations" had brought up the question of the right of the Southern states to secede. Calhoun had set up his famous doctrine, and Webster, in his "Second Reply to Hayne," had knocked it down. The feeling had been intense, but Webster's wonderful oration in defense of the Constitution and the Union had succeeded in meeting the crisis, and settling for a time the vexing problem. Yet the evil of slavery continued its fatal gnawing at the heart of the nation. By 1855-6 the old question was up again in much the same form. The atmosphere was clouded, the black shroud of the approaching storm already discernible on the horizon. A hundred minor problems united in complicating the discussion of the one all-important thing. Another leader was wanted to set the battle in array, to mark out the lines of conflict. Webster and Calhoun were gone, but another was to come to preserve "liberty and union, one and inseparable." This man was Abraham Lincoln, and the opponent who was to call out his clearest expositions of the situation, and spur him on to his greatest arguments, was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.
Douglas was born in 1813, in Brandon, Vermont. His father was a physician of great promise, who fell with a stroke of apoplexy at a moment when he was carrying the child Stephen in his arms. The ambitions of the father for intellectual leadership were fulfilled in the son, who at fifteen years of age had attracted the notice of the best minds in his region. Strong men became interested in the boy, and advised his mother to take him to a relative in Canandaigua, N. Y., where there was an excellent academy. At seventeen he entered a lawyer's office, attended every trial before the justice of the peace or the county clerk, and made a local reputation as a student of politics and law. At twenty years of age, he started West, to make his fortune, but fell ill in Cleveland, O., and all but lost his life. A few months later he entered the town of Winchester, Ill., a stranger, in a strange land. He carried his coat on one arm and a little bundle of clothes on the other. There was a crowd on the corner of the street, where an auctioneer was selling the personal effects and live stock of some settler, and within a few minutes Douglas was engaged as clerk at the auction. At the end of three days he found himself the possessor of six dollars, which was the first money he had ever earned, and what was far more important, he had by his accuracy, good nature and kindliness won the hearts of the purchasers, and attracted the attention of the two or three leading men of the town. That winter he opened a private school, in which forty scholars were enrolled, while he continued his studies of law during the long evenings. Ten crowded and successful years soon swept by, and those years held remarkable achievements. He was admitted to the bar, elected to the Legislature, made Secretary of State, judge of the Supreme Court, and at thirty was sent to Congress. He spent three years in Congress; at thirty-six was chosen to fill out an unexpired term in the Senate, was reëlected to represent Illinois, and a third time was chosen senator—a career of uniform and splendid success from the material view-point.
But the career of Douglas in Washington was the career of an opportunist, at once full of good and full of evil, full of right and full of wrong. He was a born politician, an expert manager of men and a natural machine builder. Many others outranked Douglas in set speeches, but few equalled him in "catch as catch can" methods of the politician. What Douglas prided himself upon was his skill in getting through the committee measures that were difficult to pass. When it became necessary to get a man's vote for his measure, Douglas would put that man up as a leader, give him the glory, obliterate himself, and after the bill was passed, hop up like a jack in the pulpit, as the real manager who manœuvred the bill through the Senate. He spent two years on the legislation that brought about the Illinois Central Railroad, and as long a time in founding the University of Chicago.
Often Douglas did things that he believed to be morally wrong because he discovered that they were politically necessary. For example, a reaction followed upon the election of the Democrat, James K. Polk, to the presidency. When his leadership was imperilled, Polk cast about for some issue that would bring together the remnants of his party, and restore leadership, and he hit upon the device of the Mexican War. No party was ever defeated that was fighting a war for the defense of the country. Douglas criticized Polk most sharply, charged the war upon Polk as a crime against the people, and yet, under the whip of party policy, Douglas supported Polk. Slowly he deteriorated in his moral fibre. One by one the moral lights seem to have gone out. He was intoxicated by his own success. Ambition deluded him. He began to follow the will-o'-the-wisp, the light that rises from putrescence and decay in the swamp, and forgot the eternal stars in God's sky. In 1854 he entered the valley of decision, and like the rich young ruler made the great refusal, and chose compromise instead of principle. Later Douglas led his party along a false route, and became a mistaken leader.
The circumstances were these; the compromise measures of 1850 had succeeded apparently in achieving the aim of their author, Henry Clay. The close of the year 1853 was marked by political repose and calm. The slavery question seemed practically settled. As President Pierce expressed it in his message, "A sense of security" had been "restored to the public mind throughout the Confederacy." Prosperity was blessing the country, times were good, the future bright with the promise of immense industrial achievements. In Congress, a bill for the organization of the territory of Nebraska had passed the House at the previous session, and was being reported to the Senate, but the bill was in the usual form and contained no reference to slavery. Suddenly the press announced that Senator Douglas had read a report on this bill, purporting to show that the compromise measures of 1850 had established a great principle; that this principle stated the perpetual right of the residents of new States to decide all questions pertaining to slavery; and that therefore, contrary to the old Missouri Compromise, ruling slavery out of that Northwest territory, it left the slavery question entirely in the hands of the residents of the new territory of Nebraska.
The announcement created a profound sensation. Twelve days later a Kentucky senator by the name of Dixon introduced an amendment to the Nebraska Act, providing for the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The daring of this move startled even Douglas, but within a few days the Illinois senator had decided to support the Dixon Amendment. With all the skill and political engineering at his command, he steered the bill through the tempest which immediately rose against it like a tidal wave; and on the third of March, in spite of protests which poured in from every State in the North, in spite of indignation meetings held in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, in spite of the opposition of the leaders like Seward, Chase and Sumner, he actually succeeded in persuading the Senate to pass the bill. That he was able to do this, is a great tribute to his powers as a politician and as an orator. He spoke from midnight until dawn, employing every possible trick of rhetoric and logic to carry his point, and showing a courtesy and restraint in his attack which won the sympathy even of his opponents. "Never had a bad cause been more splendidly advocated."
But the victory was a costly one; he had made the Fugitive Slave Law a dead letter in the North; he had introduced a new term, "popular sovereignty," which was to rouse the nation as a red rag rouses a bull. He had started a storm, wrote Seward, "such as this country has never yet seen." Every great newspaper editor in the North,—Greeley, Dana, Raymond, Webb, Bigelow, Weed,—broke into violent protest against the bill. Not since the fight at Lexington had such a fierce and universal cry of reproach arisen in the land.
And for what had he done all this? Simply that he might increase his chances of obtaining the presidential nomination in 1856. The "solid South" had just begun to be spoken of. Douglas was an acute observer, and he saw that if he could secure the backing of the South, he would have an immense advantage over his rival Cass. It is said that his objection to the Dixon Amendment was overborne solely by the fear that Cass would be before him in supporting it, and thus win the favour of the South. It is the old story of the mess of pottage. Douglas afterwards tried to defend himself on the ground that he was offering to the Democratic party "fresh ammunition," but all knew, and none better than Douglas, that the Democratic party was in no need of a fresh issue. He had ruthlessly destroyed the peace of the whole nation, for the sake of promoting his own selfish interests,—and that, in vain; as in 1853, Douglas failed to secure the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1856, which was won by Buchanan.
The bill cost Douglas his prestige, and lost him the confidence of one half the people of Chicago and Illinois. His friends called him home in the hope that he might win back the popularity he had lost. But Chicago would have none of him. He entered the city unwelcomed, had to hire a building in which to speak, advertised his own meeting, and on the day of the meeting found the flags at half-mast, while the church bells tolled the funeral of liberty, where hitherto the bells had pealed the notes of joy.
It is impossible not to admire Douglas's courage in that trying ordeal. He found the hall filled with his opponents, yet he began by saying, "My fellow citizens, I appear before you to vindicate the Kansas-Nebraska Bill." The words evoked a perfect tumult, which continued for half an hour. He appealed to their sense of fair play and honour, but they asked him whether he had played fair with liberty in Washington. Growing angry, he tried to denounce them as cowards, afraid to listen to a discussion, and they answered that it was cowardly to desert a slave who needed a defender. At eleven o'clock he flung his arms in the air and dared them to shoot, because a man had waved a pistol. The crowd answered with a shower of eggs, while a man shouted that bullets were too valuable to be wasted on traitors. At twelve o'clock the bells rang out the midnight. Douglas pulled out his watch and shouted, "It is midnight. I am going home and to church, and you may go to Hades!" Douglas met a mob in Chicago, just as Beecher met a mob in England. But Beecher conquered his mob in Manchester; the mob in Chicago conquered Douglas. Beecher won, because he was right and the mob was wrong; Douglas lost, because he was wrong and the mob was right. "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time; you cannot fool all of the people all of the time" on the great principles of liberty. Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Bill brought on an era of civil war in Kansas, sent the guerrillas over the Sunflower State, burned Lawrence, destroyed the State government and filled the whole land with tumult and bitterness. And it cost Douglas his fame and place among the great men of the Republic.
In that critical hour for liberty, Abraham Lincoln entered upon the scene, and challenged Douglas to a debate. It was in the summer of 1858. Both men were candidates for the Senate—Lincoln, the leader of the new Republican party State ticket; Douglas, the best known figure in the land since the death of Clay and Webster. No contrast between two men could have been greater. Lincoln was tall, angular, lanky, awkward, six feet four inches in height. Douglas was short, thick-set, graceful, polished, a man of fine presence, with a great, beautiful head, a high forehead, square chin, perfectly at home on the platform, a master of all the tricks of debate, a born king of assemblies. Lincoln was the stronger man, Douglas the more polished. Lincoln was the better thinker, Douglas the better orator. Lincoln relied upon fundamental principles, Douglas wanted to win his case. Lincoln's mind was analytical, and he loved to take a theme and unfold it, peeling it like an onion, layer by layer. For Douglas, an oration was a pile of ideas, three hours high. Lincoln's voice was a high dusty tenor, with small range, and monotonous; Douglas's voice was a magnificent vocal instrument, extending from the flute-like tone to the deepest roar. Lincoln lacked every grace of the great orator; Douglas had every art that makes the speaker master of his audience. Morally, Lincoln's essential qualities were his honesty, fairness, and his spirit of good will. Intellectually, he was a thinker, slow, intense, profound, always trying to find a mother principle that would explain a concrete fact. He was reared in childhood on three works—the Bible, Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" and the Constitution of the United States. The style of the parable of Jesus and the simple words of the "Pilgrim's Progress" entered into his thinking like iron into the rich blood of the physical system. His thought was as clear as crystal, his language the simple home words, full of music and old associations. Lincoln knew what he wanted to say, said it, and sat down. Douglas stormed, threatened, cajoled, bribed, and could not stop until he had carried his audience. Lincoln wanted to get the truth out; Douglas wanted to win a crowd over. The one was a statesman, the other was an opportunist, struggling for place. Principles are eternal, and because Lincoln loved principles, Lincoln belongs to the ages. Douglas wanted office, and because the longest office is six years, when the six years were over, the people put another man in his niche; Douglas practically disappeared.
The interest of the people in the seven great joint debates arranged for this senatorial campaign was beyond all description. Douglas travelled in a special train and car, with a flat car carrying a cannon that boomed the announcement of his arrival. He had the wealth and prestige of the Illinois Central Railroad to support him. Lincoln trusted to some friend to drive him across country, or had to be contented with a seat in a caboose of a freight train, waiting on a switch at a siding, while Douglas's special went whizzing by. The people of each county made the day of the debate a great holiday. From daylight until noon all the converging roads were crowded with wagons, carts and buggies, loaded with people, while other thousands hurried on foot along the dusty road to the meeting place. From the first Douglas knew his peril, in that the eyes of the nation were fixed upon his platform, and that if Lincoln won the debate he won everything. He paid Lincoln the compliment of saying, "He is the strong man of his party, full of wit, facts, dates, and the best stump-speaker, with his droll ways and his dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd, and if I beat him my victory will be hardly won."
Very different was the praise that Lincoln gave Douglas, as he contrasted the dazzling fame of the great senator with his own unknown name. "With me," said Lincoln, "the race of ambition has been a failure, a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached; ... I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch's brow." Douglas's speeches do not read well, and there are no nuggets, proverbs, bright sayings or brilliant epigrams which one can quote. The substance of his speeches was one and the same, for he traversed the same ground in each of the seven debates, urging ever that the new Republican party was simply disguised abolitionism, that Lincoln wanted to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law, establish the equality of the blacks, that this was a threat of war against the South, and therefore revolutionary and sectional. Over against this mark consider the clarity of Lincoln's method of thinking and speaking.
In his address to the convention, accepting the senatorial nomination, he had said: "If we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far into the 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 has been reached and passed. A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other."
When the campaign opened he challenged Douglas to the debate, and the critical contest began.
After several meetings, in which the senator proved himself a slippery wrestler, Lincoln determined to force Douglas into a corner. He wrote a question, and with such skill that Douglas was compelled to answer one way or the other, either answer being fatal to his political ambition. When Lincoln read this question to his advisers, Medill, Washburne and Judd, all begged him not to ask it, saying that it would cost him the senatorship. "Yes, but my loss of the senatorship is nothing. Later on it will cost Douglas the presidency. I am killing bigger game. The battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of 1858." The question with which Douglas was confronted was this: "Can the people of any United States territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limit prior to the formation of a State constitution?"