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Selected American history
The Life of Abraham Lincoln
By Henry Ketcham
CHAPTER XVII.
THE BACKWOODSMAN AT THE CENTER OF EASTERN CULTURE.
Lincoln's modesty made it impossible for him to be ambitious. He
appreciated honors, and he desired them up to a certain point. But they
did not, in his way of looking at them, seem to belong to him. He was
slow to realize that he was of more than ordinary importance to the
community.
At the first republican convention in 1856, when Fremont was nominated
for President, 111 votes were cast for Lincoln as the nominee for vice-
president. The fact was published in the papers. When he saw the item
it did not enter his head that he was the man. He said "there was a
celebrated man of that name in Massachusetts; doubtless it was he."
In 1858, when he asked Douglas the fatal question at Freeport, he was
simply killing off Douglas's aspirations for the presidency. It was
with no thought of being himself the successful rival.
Douglas had twice been a candidate for nomination before the democratic
convention. Had it not been for this question he would have been
elected at the next following presidential election.
As late as the early part of 1860, Lincoln vaguely desired the
nomination for the vice-presidency. He would have been glad to be the
running-mate of Seward, nothing more. Even this honor he thought to be
beyond his reach, so slowly did he come to realize the growth of his
fame.
The reports of the Lincoln-Douglas debates had produced a profound
sensation in the West. They were printed in large numbers and scattered
broadcast as campaign literature. Some Eastern men, also, had been
alert to observe these events. William Cullen Bryant, the scholarly
editor of the New York Evening Post, had shown keen interest in
the debates.
Even after the election Lincoln did not cease the vigor of his
criticisms. It will be remembered that before the formal debate Lincoln
voluntarily went to Chicago to hear Douglas and to answer him. He
followed him to Springfield and did the same thing. He now, after the
election of 1858, followed him to Ohio and answered his speeches in
Columbus and Cincinnati.
The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, who was always watchful of the
development of the anti-slavery sentiment, now invited Lincoln to
lecture in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. The invitation was accepted with
the provision that the lecture might be a political speech.
J. G. Holland, who doubtless knew whereof he wrote, declares that it
was a great misfortune that Lincoln was introduced to the country as a
rail-splitter. Americans have no prejudice against humble beginnings,
they are proud of self-made men, but there is nothing in the ability to
split rails which necessarily qualifies one for the demands of
statesmanship. Some of his ardent friends, far more zealous than
judicious, had expressed so much glory over Abe the rail-splitter, that
it left the impression that he was little more than a rail-splitter who
could talk volubly and tell funny stories. This naturally alienated the
finest culture east of the Alleghanies. "It took years for the country
to learn that Mr. Lincoln was not a boor. It took years for them to
unlearn what an unwise and boyish introduction of a great man to the
public had taught them. It took years for them to comprehend the fact
that in Mr. Lincoln the country had the wisest, truest, gentlest,
noblest, most sagacious President who had occupied the chair of state
since Washington retired from it."
When he reached New York he found that there had been a change of plan,
and he was to speak in Cooper Institute, New York, instead of Beecher's
church. He took the utmost care in revising his speech, for he felt
that he was on new ground and must not do less than his best.
But though he made the most perfect intellectual preparation, the
esthetic element of his personal appearance was sadly neglected. He was
angular and loose-jointed,--he could not help that. He had provided
himself, or had been provided, with a brand-new suit of clothes,
whether of good material or poor we cannot say, whether well-fitting or
ill-fitting we do not know, though we may easily guess. But we do know
that it had been crowded into a small carpet-bag and came out a mass of
wrinkles. And during the speech the collar or lappel annoyed both
speaker and audience by persisting in rising up unbidden.
These details are mentioned to show the difficulty of the task before
the orator. In the audience and on the platform were many of the most
brilliant and scholarly men of the metropolis. There were also large
numbers who had come chiefly to hear the westerner tell a lot of funny
stories. The orator was introduced by Bryant.
The speech was strictly intellectual from beginning to end. Though
Lincoln was not known in New York, Douglas was. So he fittingly took
his start from a quotation of Douglas. The speech cannot be epitomized,
but its general drift may be divined from its opening and closing
sentences.
The quotation from Douglas was that which had been uttered at Columbus
a few months before: "Our fathers, when they framed the government
under which we live, understood this question (the question of slavery)
just as well, and even better, than we do now." To this proposition the
orator assented. That raised the inquiry, What was their understanding
of the question? This was a historical question, and could be answered
only by honest and painstaking research.
Continuing, the speaker said: "Does the proper division of local from
Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal
government to control as to slavery in our Federal territories? Upon
this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative and the republicans the
negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue, and this issue--
this question--is precisely what the text declares our fathers
understood 'better than we.'
"I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever
did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost
say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century),
declare that in his understanding any proper division of local from
Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal
government to control as to slavery in the Federal territories. To
those who now so declare, I give, not only 'our fathers who framed the
government under which we live,' but with them all other living men
within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and
they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing
with them."
One paragraph is quoted for the aptness of its illustration: "But you
will not abide the election of a republican President! In that supposed
event, you say you will destroy the Union; and then you say, the great
crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! That is cool. A
highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth,
'Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a
murderer!' To be sure, what the robber demanded of me--my money--was my
own, and I had a clear right to keep it; but it was no more my own than
my vote is my own; and the threat of death to me to extort my money,
and the threat of destruction to the Union to extort my vote, can
scarcely be distinguished in principle."
The speech reached its climax in its closing paragraph: "Wrong as we
think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is,
because that so much is due to the necessity arising from its actual
presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it,
allow it to spread into the national territories, and to overrun us
here in the free states? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us
stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by
none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so
industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for
some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search
for a man who would be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a
policy of 'don't care' on a question about which all true men do care;
such as Union appeals to beseech all true Union men to yield to
Disunionists; reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners,
but the righteous, to repentance; such as invocations to Washington,
imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and undo what Washington
did.
"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against
us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government,
nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might,
and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we
understand it."
This speech placed Lincoln in the line of the presidency. Not only was
it received with unbounded enthusiasm by the mass of the people, but it
was a revelation to the more intellectual and cultivated. Lincoln
afterwards told of a professor of rhetoric at Yale College who was
present. He made an abstract of the speech and the next day presented
it to the class as a model of cogency and finish. This professor
followed Lincoln to Meriden to hear him again. The _Tribune_ gave
to the speech unstinted praise, declaring that "no man ever before made
such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience."
The greatest compliment, because the most deliberate, was that of the
committee who prepared the speech for general distribution. Their
preface is sufficiently explicit:
"No one who has not actually attempted to verify its details can
understand the patient research and historical labors which it
embodies. The history of our earlier politics is scattered through
numerous journals, statutes, pamphlets, and letters; and these are
defective in completeness and accuracy of statement, and in indices and
tables of contents. Neither can any one who has not traveled over this
precise ground appreciate the accuracy of every trivial detail, or the
self-denying impartiality with which Mr. Lincoln has turned from the
testimony of 'the fathers' on the general question of slavery, to
present the single question which he discusses. From the first line to
the last, from his premises to his conclusion, he travels with a swift,
unerring directness which no logician ever excelled, an argument
complete and full, without the affectation of learning, and without the
stiffness which usually accompanies dates and details. A single, easy,
simple sentence of plain Anglo-Saxon words, contains a chapter of
history that, in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify, and
which must have cost the author months of investigation to acquire."
Surely Mr. Bryant and Mr. Beecher and the rest had every reason for
gratification that they had introduced this man of humble beginnings to
so brilliant a New York audience.
Lincoln went to Exeter, N.H., to visit his son who was in Phillips
Academy preparing for Harvard College. Both going and returning he made
several speeches, all of which were received with more than ordinary
favor. By the time he returned home he was no longer an unknown man. He
was looked on with marked favor in all that portion of the country
which lies north of Mason and Dixon's line.
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