CHAPTER XIII.

THE RAIL-SPLITTER ENTERS CONGRESS.

Abraham Lincoln’s professional success did not fill the measure of his ambition. It certainly was a great step upward from the raw-boned, ragged, barefooted lad to the prosperous lawyer, and our hero, if I may so call him, doubtless felt complacent when he considered the change in his position and surroundings. I may take occasion to say here that Abe—to return to the name which he did not wholly lay aside when he emerged from boyhood and youth—never put on airs because of his elevation, nor looked down upon the humble relatives whom he had left behind. Whenever in his journeyings he found himself near the residence of any of his poorer relations, he took special pains to visit them, and, if possible, to stay with them. Often he pressed upon them money when they appeared to need it—not with the air of a liberal patron, but with straight-forward friendliness and cordiality. Once when he was urged to remain at the hotel with his professional friends, instead of making a call upon an aged aunt, he said:

“Why, aunt’s heart would be broken if I should leave town without calling upon her.”

Let me add that this call required something more than ordinary good-natured consideration, for the aunt in question lived several miles away, and her nephew had no horse at his command, but walked all the way. I am very glad to call the attention of all my young friends to this admirable trait in the character of President Lincoln. I wish it were more common. I am sure we all admire the boy or girl who is always thoughtful of the feelings and happiness of older relatives.

But to return from this digression, let me repeat that Mr. Lincoln had other aspirations than to succeed as a lawyer. It has been said that nine out of ten American boys cherish a vague ambition to become President. This is plainly an exaggeration, but it is certain that a large number entertain the hope of some day entering public life, either as legislator or Congressman, or at any rate as a salaried officer. That is one reason why there is such a horde of office-seekers swarming to our National or State capitals, ambitious to earn a living at the expense of the Government. Some throw up good mercantile positions and spend months in the attempt to secure a position as department clerk, foreign consul, or poorly-paid postmaster.

Abraham Lincoln’s ambition was of a more elevated character. He had a pardonable ambition to take part in the government of his country, not for the sake of the position so much, as because he felt within himself the capacity to shape legislation to worthy ends. He was not alone in this idea. His fellow-citizens had gauged him and felt that he was fit to represent them. I have already spoken of his service in the State Legislature; but he was only preparing himself there for a wider arena. In 1846 he received the nomination for Congress from the Sangamon district. Now it was not the fashion in those days for a candidate to remain quietly at home pursuing his business as usual while waiting for the popular verdict. It is perhaps the more dignified course to pursue, but it would not have elected Mr. Lincoln. He understood at once that he would have to “stump” the district. I need hardly explain to my young readers what this means. He must visit the principal towns and villages, and address public meetings of the people on political subjects of present interest, explaining clearly how he stood, and how he proposed to vote if elected.

For this service Lincoln was very well fitted. He had a vigorous Saxon style, and he knew how to make things clear even to the humblest intellect. Then, again, he possessed a fund of homely, but pertinent stories, which often produced more effect than a protracted argument. However, he was not limited to such means of influencing his audiences. He had a logical mind and a happy faculty of stating things clearly and precisely, so as to convince the reason as well as to persuade the judgment.

There was no lack of topics on which to speak. The country was in an excited state. Texas had been admitted to the Union, war with Mexico had succeeded, and opinions were divided as to the wisdom of entering upon it. The Whig party, of which Mr. Lincoln was a member, considered it unnecessary and unjustifiable. So also did the Anti-Slavery party, then coming into existence. Many of my young readers have doubtless read the “Biglow Papers,” by our eminent poet and diplomatist, James Russell Lowell, and have enjoyed the quaint and pungent sarcasm with which he assails those who were instrumental in bringing on this ill-advised war. I speak of it as ill-advised, for, though some of the results, notably the acquisition of California, have proved beneficial, the object for which the war was commenced and waged was far from commendable. The tariff also had been recently repealed, and the result was a disturbance of the business interests of the country. Clearly, Congress and the country had plenty to talk about and plenty to legislate about.

Mr. Lincoln’s speeches in this “stumping” tour have not been preserved, but we have every reason to believe that he did himself credit, and maintained the reputation he had already acquired as a strong and forcible speaker. The best evidence we can adduce is his triumphant election by much more than the usual party vote. Even Mr. Clay, with all his popularity as a Presidential candidate in 1844, received a majority less by about six hundred than were given to Abraham Lincoln in his contest for a seat in Congress.

So we chronicle one more step in the upward progress of the young rail-splitter. On the 6th of December, 1847, he took his seat in the Thirtieth Congress, as a Representative from his adopted State of Illinois. At the same time his future rival, Stephen A. Douglas, took his seat in the United States Senate, representing the same State. Lincoln was the tallest man among the nearly three hundred who sat in the House. Douglas was the shortest man in the Senate. Both were to achieve high distinction, and to fill a remarkable place in the history of their country. To Lincoln distinction came with slower steps, but he was destined to mount higher and achieve a more enduring fame. Of the two, Douglas was more of a politician, and he was more ready to sacrifice principle in the interest of personal ambition. Years later they were to stump the State as competitors for Senatorial honors in a memorable canvass, and still later to be rival candidates for the Presidency. In the first, Douglas secured the election; in the second, Lincoln. It is to the credit of Douglas that when the last contest was decided, and his competitor, who had secured the prize for which he had labored earnestly for years, was about to take his seat, at a time when the first faint rumblings of the Civil War were being heard, and well-grounded fears were entertained for the safety of the President-elect, he laid aside all the bitterness of personal feelings and disappointed ambition, and rode with his old rival to the capital on Inauguration Day, content to share any personal risk in which he might be placed.

The closing period of the life of Douglas does him great credit. It shows him in the character of patriot, rather than as politician. In former years he had been willing to make concessions to the slave power, in order to further his own chances of the Presidential succession. Now, when civil war was imminent and the integrity of the Government was menaced, he forgot the politician and stood side by side with Lincoln for the preservation of the Government which he had so long served. It was a source of sincere regret to Abraham Lincoln that Douglas should have been removed by death so early in the Civil War. It removed from him a staunch friend and supporter, whose influence was all the greater because he was perhaps the most prominent member of the opposition.

I have a personal remembrance of Mr. Douglas, to whom I was introduced on the occasion of a visit to Massachusetts. Short as he was, he had a dignified and impressive presence, and his massive figure well entitled him to the name by which he was so commonly known, “The Little Giant.” He was not destined to achieve the object of his ambition, but he will long be remembered as an influential actor in our political history.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FIRST SPEECH IN CONGRESS.

In the Speaker’s chair sits a dignified-looking man, an accomplished parliamentarian, whom friends and opponents alike concede to be amply competent to discharge the duties of his high place—this is Robert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts, living still in a dignified and honored old age. Among the notable members of this Congress were John Quincy Adams, who had already been President, but who was willing notwithstanding to serve his country in an humble place; George Ashmun, also representing Massachusetts; Jacob Collamer; Alexander H. Stephens, afterward Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy; Robert Toombs; Andrew Johnson, afterward associated with Mr. Lincoln as Vice-President, and upon whose shoulders fell the mantle of his lamented chief; Marsh, Truman Smith, Wilmot, Rhett, Giddings, and others, whose names were already conspicuous. This will give some idea of the personnel of the House; while in the Senate chamber, at the other end of the Capitol, Webster, Calhoun, Dix, Dickinson, Hale, Crittenden, and Corwin lent weight and dignity to that co-ordinate legislative branch of the Government.

Such were the men with whom the young Western member was to share the labors of legislation. Time has given to some of them a fame which they did not then possess. Their successors of our day may, after the lapse of a generation, bear names as weighty; but I am afraid we shall look in vain for successors of Webster, Calhoun, John Quincy Adams, A. H. Stephens, and Crittenden.

The question will occur to my young readers, What part did Abraham Lincoln take in the national councils? Was he a cipher, an obscure member, simply filling his seat and drawing his pay, or did he take an active part in the business of the session? I will say in answer, that he was by no means a cipher. Though he did not aspire to be a leader—for in a new member that would have been in bad taste—he was always ready to take part when he felt called upon to do so, and his vote and words were such as he would not in after years have felt it necessary to recall or apologize for.

It is interesting to know that he arrayed himself with Mr. Giddings in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Giddings little suspected that the plain member from Illinois, whose co-operation he had secured, was to be the instrument under Providence of abolishing slavery, not only in the District of Columbia, but throughout the land.

But slavery was not at that time the leading political question of the day. Parties were divided upon the subject of the Mexican war. While opposed to the war, Mr. Lincoln was in favor of voting for the necessary supplies and appropriations, and he took care, in an elaborate speech, to explain his position. He felt that it was his duty as a citizen and a patriot to see that the army which had been sent to Mexico should be properly sustained; but he did not for a moment concede that the war was just or necessary. As President Polk saw fit to construe such a vote as a formal approval of his action and of the war, Mr. Lincoln made an elaborate speech in arraignment of his interpretation. As this was Mr. Lincoln’s first speech in Congress, I shall make considerable quotations from it, partly to show where he stood on this important question, and partly to prove to my readers that he was no novice, but well qualified for the high position to which he had been elected by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. I am quite aware that many of my young readers will skip this portion as uninteresting; but I hope that if in after years they are led to read this biography once more, they will count it worth while to read it.

After reviewing and controverting the reasons assigned by the President for the statement that Mexico had invaded our soil, and that therefore “by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists between that Government and the United States,” Mr. Lincoln proceeds:

“I am now through the whole of the President’s evidence; and it is a singular fact, that if any one should declare the President sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby the first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the President has said which would either admit or deny the declaration. In this strange omission chiefly consists the deception of the President’s evidence—an omission which it does seem to me could scarcely have occurred but by design. My way of living leads me to be about the courts of justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer struggling for his client’s neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words some position pressed upon him by the prosecution, which he dared not admit and yet could not deny. Party bias may help to make it appear so; but, with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does appear to me that just such, and from such necessity, are the President’s struggles in this case.

“Some time after my colleague (Mr. Richardson) introduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogatories, intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one from that of the other, was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande; then neither river was the boundary, but the uninhabited country between the two was. The extent of our territory in that region depended not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on revolution. Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing Government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right—a right which, we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing Government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled, or near about them, who may oppose their movements. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones. As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803 and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President’s statement. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later, Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her revolution by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling, submission of the people, so far the country was hers and no further.

“Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly; let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat; and, so remembering, let him answer as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation; and if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the first blood of the war was shed—that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown—then I am with him for his justification. In that case, I shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish notion for desiring that the President may do this; I expect to give some votes in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety, in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt, if he does so.

“But if he can not or will not do this—if on any pretense, or no pretense, he shall refuse or omit it—then I shall be fully convinced of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him; that he ordered General Taylor into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, purposely to bring on war; that originally having some strong motive—what I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning—to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye that charms to destroy—he plunged into it, and has swept on and on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where. How like the half-insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole war part of the last message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever that we can get but territory; at another showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions on Mexico; at one time urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us that ‘to reject indemnity by refusing to accept a cession of territory would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a purpose or definite object.’

“So then, the national honor, security of the future, and everything but territorial indemnity, may be considered no purposes and indefinite objects of the war! But having it now settled that territorial indemnity is the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the war—to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on. Again the President is resolved, under all circumstances, to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value

of the whole of the Mexican territory. So, again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions I here suggest be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not.

“The war has gone on some twenty months, for the expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the President now claims about one-half of the Mexican territory, and that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to make anything out of it. It is comparatively uninhabited, so that we could establish land offices in it, and raise money in that way. But the other half is already inhabited, as I understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country; and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated as private property. How, then, are we to make anything out of these lands with this incumbrance on them, or how remove the incumbrance? I suppose no one will say we should kill the people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or even confiscate their property? How, then, can we make much out of this part of the territory? If the prosecution of the war has, in expenses, already equalled the better half of the country, how long its future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is not a speculative but a practical question, pressing closely upon us, and yet it is a question which the President seems never to have thought of.

“As to the mode of terminating the war and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us ‘that, with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to obtain a satisfactory peace.’ Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protection, to set up a government from which we can obtain a satisfactory peace, telling us that ‘this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.’ But soon he falls into doubt of this too, and then drops back on to the already abandoned ground of ‘more vigorous prosecution.’ All this shows that the President is in no wise satisfied with his own positions. First, he takes up one, and, in attempting to argue us into it, he argues himself out of it; then seizes another, and goes through the same process; and then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off. His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

“Again, it a singular omission in the message, that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, General Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes—every department and every part, land and water, officers and privateers, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought that men could not do; after all this, this same President gives us a long message without showing us that, as to the end, he has himself even an imaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show that there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity?”

It will be seen that, new as he is to the halls of Congress, Mr. Lincoln speaks with the freedom, and in the assured tone, of a veteran member. I have nothing to say as to the sentiments contained in these extracts. I wished my readers to see what sort of a speech the Illinois Congressman, trained in the backwoods, and almost absolutely without educational advantages, was able to make. It will be conceded that the result, all things considered, is remarkable. When, twelve years later, he was nominated for the post of Chief Magistrate, it was a fashion among many, in both political parties, to speak of him as an obscure member of Congress, who had never attracted any attention during his service in the House. This was not correct. He took a prominent part in legislation of all kinds, and made himself acquainted with whatever subjects came up for consideration.

It has often been said that fact is stranger than fiction, and I am tempted to remark that the new Congressman who so boldly criticised President Polk for his management of the war, was far from dreaming that he himself would be subject to similar attacks when, as President, the management of a far more important war devolved upon him.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. LINCOLN’S FAMILY.

My young readers are aware that President Taylor died about a year after his inauguration, and was succeeded by Millard Fillmore, the Vice-President. Mr. Fillmore offered Lincoln the position of Governor of Oregon, then a Territory. The offer was considered, and might have been accepted but for the opposition of Mrs. Lincoln, who naturally objected to going so far from home and friends. So, for the time, Mr. Lincoln retired from politics, though he by no means ceased to feel an interest in the state of the country. He, like other sagacious statesmen, saw that slavery was to be the rock in the way of national harmony, and we are told by Mr. Lamon, that when coming home to Springfield from the Fremont Court in company with Mr. Stuart, he said: “The time will come when we must all be Democrats or Abolitionists. When that time comes my mind is made up. The slavery question can’t be compromised.”

About this time his father, who had lived to see the first political success of his son, was drawing near the end of his life. His latter years had been made comfortable by the pecuniary help freely tendered by his son, who gave, but not out of his abundance. Anxious that his father should have every comfort which his case required, he wrote the following letter, which I quote, because it illustrates not only his solicitude for his family, but also exhibits his faith in his Maker:

The money expended for his father and mother we may be sure that Mr. Lincoln gave cheerfully, and I should have a very poor opinion of him if it were otherwise; but he was also called upon to assist another member of the family who was far less deserving. His step-brother, John Johnston, was a rolling-stone, idle, shiftless, and always hard up. I am going to quote here the greater part of a letter written to this step-brother, because it contains some very practical advice, which most of my young readers will not need, but it may fall under the eye of some one who will be benefited by it. It appears that John had made application for a loan of eighty dollars. Mr. Lincoln writes:

“Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it best to comply with now. At the various times when I have helped you a little, you have said to me, ‘We can get along very well now’; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. Now this can only happen by some defect in your conduct; what that defect is, I think I know. You are not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have done a good whole day’s work in any one day. You do not very much dislike to work, and still you do not work much, merely because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; and it is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children, that you should break the habit. It is more important to them because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit before they are in it easier than they can get out after they are in.

“You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that you should go to work ‘tooth and nail’ for somebody who will give you money for it. Let father and your boys take charge of things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you go to work for the best money, wages, or in discharge of any debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward for your labor, I now promise you that, for every dollar you will, between this and the first of next May, get for your own labor, either in money or your own indebtedness, I will then give you one other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California; but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get close to home, in Coles County. Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that will keep you from getting into debt again. But, if I should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost give your place in heaven for seventy or eighty dollars. Then you value your place in heaven very cheap; for I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months’ work. You say, if I will furnish you the money, you will deed me the land, and, if you don’t pay me the money back, you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can’t now live with the land, how will you then live without it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than eighty times eighty dollars to you.”

This was certainly excellent advice, and the offer was a kind and generous one. But it does not seem to have convinced the one who received it, for we find him nursing plans of emigration. Shiftless people are very apt to think they can earn a living away from home better than at home. But the trouble is in themselves, not in their surroundings. Abraham Lincoln finds it necessary, under date of November 4, 1851, to combat this fancy of his step-brother. I shall not apologize for copying a second letter, and I hope all my young readers will carefully read and consider it.

“When I came into Charleston day before yesterday, I learned that you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to Missouri. I have been thinking of this ever since, and can not but think such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work? Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you? If you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you can not get along anywhere.

“Squirming and crawling about from place to place can do no good. You have raised no crop this year; and what you really want is to sell the land, get the money, and spend it. Part with the land you have, and my life upon it, you will never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece of foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, and particularly on mother’s account. The eastern forty acres I intend to keep for mother while she lives; if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least it will rent for something. Her dower in the other two forties she can let you have, and no thanks to me. Now, do not misunderstand this letter; I do not write it in any unkindness—I write it, in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away all your time. Your thousand pretences for not getting along better are all nonsense: they deceive nobody but yourself. Go to work is the only cure in your case.”

Nothing can be plainer, or more in accordance with common sense than this advice. Though it was written for the benefit of one person only, I feel that I am doing my young, and possibly some older, readers a service in transferring it to my pages, and commending them to heed it. In my own experience, which is by no means exceptional, I have known many who have been willing to move anywhere, and make any change, for the chance of earning a living more easily. About thirty years ago, a great wave of emigration flowed toward the far Pacific, and men of all callings and professions, including not a few college graduates, put on the miner’s humble garb and delved for gold among the mountains and by the river-courses of California. Some came back rich, but in many cases had they been willing to work as hard and live as frugally at the East, they would have fared as well. In this case, perhaps, it was as well to remove where the incentives to work overcame their natural indolence, and awakened their ambition.

In this country, fortunately, there are few places where an industrious man can not get a living, if he is willing to accept such work as falls in his way. This willingness often turns the scale, and converts threatening ruin into prosperity and success. Some years since, I made one of the passengers in a small steamer on Puget Sound. My attention was drawn to a young man, apparently about twenty, who was accompanied by his wife and two young children. They were emigrating from Indiana, I believe. He was evidently an industrious man, and his brown face and hands spoke of labor in the field, and under the summer sun. I entered into conversation, and my new acquaintance told me with perfect cheerfulness that when he arrived at Seattle, he would have just ten dollars left, to keep himself and family till he could secure work.

“How should I feel,” I could not help asking myself, “if I were placed in similar circumstances, though I had myself only to provide for?”

Yet the young man appeared quite undisturbed. He had faith in himself, and in Providence, and borrowed no trouble. I have no doubt he found something to do before his money gave out. He was not one of that shiftless and restless class to whom it is very clear Mr. Lincoln’s step-brother belonged. Such men thrive in a new country, and make a living anywhere.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE SENATORIAL CAMPAIGN.

I have already spoken of Mr. Lincoln’s opposition to slavery. He was not an extreme man, and he was never classed with the Abolitionists—that intrepid band who worked early and late, and for years almost without hope, against the colossal system of wrong whose life seemed so entwined with the life of the republic that it looked as if both must fall together. Abraham Lincoln moved slowly. He was not an impulsive man, but took time to form a determination. Even in the war there were many who blamed him for what appeared to be his slowness, but after a while they were led to see that if slow he was sure, and struck only when the time had come.

The ten years before the war were years of political commotion. The “irrepressible conflict” between slavery and the spirit of freedom had commenced, and Abraham Lincoln arrayed himself among the champions of freedom. There was a desperate struggle to introduce slavery into the Territories, so that in course of time more slave States might be added to the Union, and thus the slave system might be strengthened and continue to retain the political ascendency it had possessed for years. The rapid growth of the free Northwest alarmed the slave power, and a counterpoise was required. Northern statesmen who cherished an ambition to be President had notice served upon them that they must help the slave power or forfeit its support. Among those who weakly yielded to this arrogant demand was Stephen A. Douglas. He favored the principle of “squatter sovereignty,” permitting the inhabitants of any Territory to establish slavery within its limits if so disposed. In the year 1854, Mr. Lincoln, in a public debate with Mr. Douglas held at Springfield at the State fair, used this significant language:

“My distinguished friend says it is an insult to the emigrants to Kansas and Nebraska to suppose they are not able to govern themselves. We must not slur over an argument of this kind because it tickles the ear. It must be met and answered. I admit that the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is able to govern himself, but,” the speaker rising to his full height, “I deny his right to govern any other person WITHOUT THAT PERSON’S CONSENT.”

This was but a preliminary skirmish. Four years later came the memorable series of debates between Lincoln and Douglas, each being the nominee of his party for the United States Senate. The platform on which Lincoln stood contained two significant planks, and these furnished the key-note for the speeches called forth by the campaign. I quote them both, and I hope that my young friends will not skip them.

“3. The present administration has proved recreant to the trusts committed to its hands, and by its extraordinary, corrupt, unjust, and undignified exertions, to give effect to the original intention and purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, by forcing upon the people of Kansas against their will, and in defiance of their known and earnestly-expressed wishes, a constitution recognizing slavery as one of their domestic institutions, it has forfeited all claim to the support of the friends of free men, free labor, and free rights.”

“5. While we deprecate all interference on the part of political organizations with the action of the Judiciary, if such action is limited to its appropriate sphere, yet we can not refrain from expressing our condemnation of the principles and tendencies of the extra judicial opinions of a majority of the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States in the matter of Dred Scott, wherein the political heresy is put forth that the Federal Constitution extends slavery into all the Territories of the republic, and so maintains it that neither Congress nor people, through their territorial legislature, can by law abolish it. We hold that Congress possesses sovereign power over the Territories while they remain in a territorial condition, and that it is the duty of the General Government to protect the Territories from the curse of slavery, and to preserve the public domain for the occupation of free men and free labor. And we declare that no power on earth can carry and maintain slavery in the States against the will of the people and the provisions of their constitutions and laws; and we fully endorse the recent decision of the Supreme Court of our own State which declares ‘that property in persons is repugnant to the Constitution and laws of Illinois, and that all persons within its jurisdiction are supposed to be free; and that slavery, where it exists, is a municipal regulation without any extra territorial operation.’ ”

With the other points of difference we are not concerned. Whether slavery should or should not be allowed to extend its blight over the virgin soil of the new Territories, and thus make its final extinction well-nigh impossible: that was the all-important issue, and not Illinois alone, but the country at large, was profoundly interested in the arguments of the two contestants.

Which was likely to win?

It might have been supposed at the outset that Lincoln would find himself overmatched. He was hardly known outside his own State, though he had served two years in Congress. Douglas was a statesman of national reputation. For fifteen years he had been in the thick of the conflict. He was a recognized leader of his party, and already he was looked upon as a probable President at no distant period. In scholastic training he was far ahead of Mr. Lincoln. He was a forcible speaker, an adroit and experienced politician, and his recognized position lent a certain weight to his words which his opponent could not claim.

But, admitting all this, Mr. Douglas found himself confronted by no inferior antagonist. Abraham Lincoln had a strong logical mind, quick to detect sophistry and bold to expose it. He had a fine command of language, a clear and pleasant voice, and a power of sarcasm which he used with powerful execution at times. This is the way in which an intelligent correspondent speaks of his speech at Galesburg:

“For about forty minutes he spoke with a power which we have seldom heard equalled. There was a grandeur in his thoughts, a comprehensiveness in his arguments, and a binding force in his conclusions, which were perfectly irresistible. The vast throng was silent as death, every eye was fixed upon the speaker, and all gave him serious attention. He was the tall man eloquent; his countenance glowed with animation, and his eye glistened with an intelligence that made it lustrous. He was no longer awkward and ungainly; but graceful, bold, and commanding.

“Mr. Douglas had been quietly smoking up to this time, but here he forgot his cigar and listened with anxious attention. When he rose to reply he appeared excited, disturbed, and his second effort seemed to us vastly inferior to his first. Mr. Lincoln had given him a great task, and Mr. Douglas had not time to answer him, even if he had the ability.”

Yet there were many points of resemblance between the two contestants. Both had been cradled in poverty, and had fought their way upward from obscurity to distinction. Douglas had climbed the higher, but the topmost round of the ladder on which he had for some time fixed longing eyes, he was destined never to mount. He had sacrificed much to reach the crowning distinction, but it was not for him. His awkward, ungraceful opponent, obscure in comparison with him, was destined to stride past him and sit in the coveted seat of power. But the smaller prize—the Senatorship—was won by Douglas, though Lincoln carried the popular vote.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE TWO GIANTS.

“In the remarks I have made on this platform,” said Judge Douglas, “and the position of Mr. Lincoln upon it, I mean nothing personally disrespectful or unkind to that gentleman. I have known him for nearly 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 tables, although my old boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than with anything else; but I believe that Lincoln was always more successful in business than I, for his business enabled him to get into the Legislature. I met him there, however, 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 in wrestling, or running a foot-race, in pitching quoits, or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor than all the boys of the town together, 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 that was present and participated. I sympathized with him because he was struggling with difficulties and so was I. Mr. Lincoln served with me in the Legislature in 1836, when we both retired, and he subsided, or became submerged, and he was lost sight of as a public man for some years. In 1846, when Wilmot introduced the celebrated proviso, and the Abolition tornado swept over the country, Lincoln again turned up as a Member of Congress from the Sangamon district. I was then in the Senate of the United States, and was glad to welcome my old friend and companion. While in Congress, he distinguished himself by his opposition to the Mexican war, taking the side of our common enemy against his own country; and when he returned home he found that the indignation of the people followed him everywhere, and he was again submerged, or obliged to retire into private life, forgotten by his former friends.”

This sketch of Mr. Lincoln, though apparently friendly, was artfully calculated to stir up prejudice against him, and the backwoods statesman was not willing to leave it unanswered. Generally he was quite well able to take care of himself, and did not fail in the present instance.

This is his reply:

“The Judge is wofully at fault about his early friend Lincoln being a grocery-keeper. I don’t know as it would be a great 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. And so I think my friend, the Judge, is equally at fault when he charges me at the time when I was in Congress with having opposed our soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war. The Judge did not make his charge very distinctly, but I can tell you what he can prove by referring to the record. You remember I was an old Whig, and whenever the Democratic party tried to get me to vote that the war had been righteously begun by the President, I would not do it. But whenever they asked for any money, or land-warrants, or anything to pay the soldiers there, during all that time I gave the same vote that Judge Douglas did. You can think as you please as to whether that was consistent. Such is the truth; and the Judge has a right to make all he can out of it. But when he, by a general charge, conveys the idea that I withheld supplies from the soldiers who were fighting in the Mexican war, or did anything else to hinder the soldiers, he is, to say the least, grossly and altogether mistaken, as a consultation of the records will prove to him.”

Not content with defending himself, Mr. Lincoln essayed on his side to contrast his opponent and himself, and, like him, he indulged in personal reminiscences.

“Twenty-two years ago Judge Douglas and I first became acquainted; we were both young then—he a trifle younger than I. Even then we were both ambitious,—I perhaps quite as much so as he. With me the race of ambition has been a failure,—a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success. His name fills the nation, and is not unknown even in foreign lands. I affect no contempt for the high eminence he has reached,—so reached that the oppressed of my species might have shared with me in the elevation. I would rather stand on that eminence than wear the richest crown that ever pressed a monarch’s brow.”

In another connection Mr. Lincoln says: “Senator Douglas is of world-wide renown. All the anxious politicians of his party, or who had been of his party for years past, have been looking upon him as certainly, at no distant day, to be the President of the United States. They have seen in his round, jolly, fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships, and cabinet appointments, chargéships and foreign missions, bursting and sprouting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. And as they have been gazing upon this attractive picture so long, they can not, in the little distraction that has taken place in the party, bring themselves to give up the charming hope; but, with greedier anxiety, they rush about him, sustain him, and give him marches, triumphal entries, and receptions, beyond what, even in the days of his highest prosperity, they could have brought about in his favor. On the contrary, nobody has ever expected me to be President. In my poor, lean, lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting out. There are disadvantages, all taken together, that the Republicans labor under. We have to fight this battle upon principle, and upon principle alone.”

It may be said, in summing up, that Mr. Lincoln proved himself to be fully a match for Judge Douglas in this memorable campaign. I may go further and say that he overmatched him, for he adroitly propounded questions which his opponent was compelled to answer, and did answer in a way that killed him as a Presidential candidate. Though he ran in 1860, it was as an independent candidate. He had failed to retain the full confidence of his party, and could not secure the regular nomination. Indeed, he contributed indirectly to Lincoln’s election, by dividing his own party, so that Mr. Lincoln became President, though receiving considerably less than one-half of the popular vote. It is obvious that Mr. Lincoln, who admits, as we have seen, that he was quite as ambitious as Douglas, was looking farther than the Senatorship. Yet he was personally disappointed when the majority in the Legislature proved to be for Douglas, and secured the election of the latter. He expressed this in his usual quaint way when some one asked him how he felt. He said, “that he felt like the boy that stubbed his toe,—it hurt too bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry.”

It is probable that Abraham Lincoln, though he says no one had ever expected him to be President, was not without Presidential aspirations. He thought no doubt that an election as Senator would help his chances, and that the Senatorial position would prove a stepping-stone. Even the shrewdest, however, are liable to make mistakes, and we are led to believe that Mr. Lincoln was mistaken in this instance. If he had triumphed over Douglas in 1858, it is more than likely that by some word or act as Senator he would have aroused prejudices that would have made him unavailable in 1860, and the nation would never have discovered the leader who, under Providence, led it out of the wilderness, and conducted it to peace and freedom. I do not want to moralize overmuch, but can not help saying to my readers that in the lives of all there are present disappointments that lead to ultimate success and prosperity. It would not be hard to adduce convincing proofs. Washington and Garfield both desired to go to sea when they were boys. Had their wishes been gratified their after-careers might have been very different. Cromwell had made all arrangements to sail for America when still obscure. He was prevented, and remained in his own country to control its destiny, and take a position at the head of affairs. Remember this when your cherished plans are defeated. There is a higher wisdom than ours that shapes and directs our lives.

CHAPTER XVIII.

ILLINOIS DECLARES FOR THE RAIL-SPLITTER.

Henceforth Abraham Lincoln was a marked man. He had sprung into national prominence. Limited as had been his tenure of office—including only two years in the lower house of Congress—it is remarkable how suddenly he came to be recognized as a leader. But at the East he was known only by reputation. This was soon remedied. He received an invitation to lecture in New York, or rather in Mr. Beecher’s church in Brooklyn. He was well pleased to accept, but stipulated that he should be permitted to speak on a political subject. When he reached New York, he found that a change had been made in the place where he was to speak, and the Cooper Institute, where at intervals nearly every eminent man in the country has been heard, had been engaged for his début.

It was not without a feeling of modest shyness that he surveyed the immense audience gathered to hear him, and he was surprised to see the most cultivated citizens of the great metropolis upon the platform. Among them was William Cullen Bryant, who was president of the meeting, and in that capacity introduced him as “an eminent citizen of the West, hitherto known to you only by reputation.”

Mr. Lincoln commenced his address in low tones, but his voice became louder and his manner more confident as he proceeded. His speech was an elaborate argument to prove that the original framers of the American Government intended that the Federal Government should exercise absolute control of the Federal territories, so far as the subject of slavery was concerned, and had never surrendered this high privilege to local legislation. This he established by incontrovertible proof, and in so doing quite upset Senator Douglas’ theory of Squatter Sovereignty. Incidentally he vindicated the right of the Republican party to exist.

I have not room to quote from this remarkable speech. I am afraid I have already introduced more extracts from speeches than my young readers will enjoy. They are necessary, however, if we would understand what were the views of Mr. Lincoln, and what made him President.

The next day Mr. Lincoln’s speech was printed in full in two prominent papers—the Tribune and the Evening Post, accompanied by comments of the most favorable character. The first was edited by Horace Greeley, the latter by the poet Bryant, who was nearly as conspicuous a politician as a poet. “No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience,” said the Tribune.

Robert Lincoln, Mr. Lincoln’s oldest son, was a student at Harvard, and his father travelled into New England to visit him. He was besieged by applications to speak at Republican meetings, and accepted a few invitations, being everywhere cordially received. This visit no doubt bore fruit, and drew many voters to his standard, when he had been formally presented to the country as a candidate for the Presidency. That my readers may learn how he spoke, and how he appeared, I quote from the Manchester (N. H.) Mirror, an independent paper:

“He spoke an hour and a half with great fairness, great apparent candor, and with wonderful interest. He did not abuse the South, the administration, or the Democrats, or indulge in any personalities, with the exception of a few hits at Douglas’ notions. He is far from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his voice is disagreeable; and yet he wins your attention and good-will from the start. He indulges in no flowers of rhetoric, no eloquent passages. He is not a wit, a humorist, or a clown; yet so great a vein of pleasantry and good-nature pervades what he says, gilding over a deep current of practical argument he keeps his hearers in a smiling mood, with their mouths open ready to swallow all he says. His sense of the ludicrous is very keen; and an exhibition of that is the clincher of all his arguments,—not the ludicrous acts of persons, but ludicrous ideas. Hence he is never offensive, and steals away willingly into his train of belief persons who were opposed to him. For the first half hour his opponents would agree with everything he uttered; and from that point he began to lead them off little by little, until it seemed as if he had got them all into his fold. He displays more shrewdness, more knowledge of the masses of mankind, than any public speaker we have heard since Long Jim Wilson left for California.”

On the day succeeding his speech in Norwich, he met in the cars a clergyman named Gulliver, who sought his acquaintance.

“Mr. Lincoln,” he said, “I thought your speech last evening the most remarkable I ever heard.”

“You do not mean this?” said Mr. Lincoln, incredulously.

“Indeed, sir,” said Gulliver, “I learned more of the art of public speaking last evening than I could from a whole course of lectures on rhetoric.”

Mr. Lincoln was puzzled, for he was not a man to accept extravagant compliments.

“I should like very much to know what it was in my speech which you thought so remarkable,” he said.

“The clearness of your statements,” answered Gulliver, “the unanswerable style of your reasoning, and especially your illustrations, which were romance and pathos, and fun and logic, all welded together.”

“I am much obliged to you for this,” said Mr. Lincoln. “I have been wishing for a long time to find some one who would make this analysis for me. It throws light on a subject which has been dark to me. I can understand very readily how such a power as you have ascribed to me will account for the effect which seems to be produced by my speeches. I hope you have not been too flattering in your estimate. Certainly I have had a most wonderful success for a man of my limited education.”

“Mr. Lincoln, may I say one thing to you before we separate?” asked Mr. Gulliver later.

“Certainly; anything you please.”

“You have spoken of the tendency of political life in Washington to debase the moral convictions of our representatives there, by the admixture of considerations of mere political expediency. You have become, by the controversy with Mr. Douglas, one of our leaders in this great struggle with slavery, which is undoubtedly the struggle of the nation and the age. What I would like to say is this, and I say it with a full heart: Be true to your principles, and we will be true to you, and God will be true to us all!”

“I say amen to that! amen to that!” answered Mr. Lincoln, taking his hand in both his own, while his face lighted up sympathetically.

I may as well mention here the first public occasion on which Mr. Lincoln’s name was mentioned for the Presidency.

On the 9th and 10th of May the Republican State Convention met at Decatur. Mr. Lincoln was present as a spectator, but he attracted the attention of Gov. Oglesby, who rose, and said: “I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois, and one whom Illinois will ever delight to honor, is present; and I wish to move that this body invite him to a seat on the stand.”

Public interest and curiosity were aroused. Who was this distinguished citizen?

The Governor paused a moment, and then uttered the name of Abraham Lincoln.

Instantly there was a roar of applause, there was a rush to where the astonished Lincoln sat, he was seized, and the crowd being too dense to press through, he was literally passed over the heads and shoulders of the great throng until breathless he found himself on the platform. Willing or unwilling he was literally for the time being “in the hands of his friends.”

Later on Gov. Oglesby rose once more and said: “There is an old Democrat outside who has something which he wishes to present to the Convention.”

“What is it?” “What is it?” “Receive it!” shouts the crowd.

The door of the wigwam opens, and an old man, bluff and hearty, comes forward, bearing on his shoulder two small rails, surmounted by a banner, with this inscription:—

TWO RAILS