ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809-1865) On 20 December, 1859, Lincoln sent to a correspondent a brief sketch of his life. "I was born," he wrote, "February 12, 1809, in Hardin [now La Rue] County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families-second families, perhaps I should say. . . My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. . . . My father. . . grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. . . . There I grew up. . . . There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity. "I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten-the only time I have ever been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. . . . I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again." Here Lincoln's sketch ends. He had, in 1842, married Mary Todd. In 1854 he was again elected to the State Legislature. In the following year he was an unsuccessful candidate for the office of U. S. Senator. He was nominated for the same office by the new Republican party in 1858, and in his speech of acceptance declared: "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." There followed the celebrated series of debates between Lincoln and the rival candidate, Stephen A. Douglas. In those debates Lincoln was not at his best, but he did succeed in the immensely difficult task of holding his own against his accomplished opponent. In the election he was defeated, and he was hurt by the defeat, but he had through his speeches made himself nationally known. In 1860 he was nominated by the Republicans for the Presidency, and was elected. He was re-elected in 1864, only to be killed by John Wilkes Booth six weeks after his inauguration. He died on the morning of 15 April, 1865. ment. Lincoln was not precocious. Neither in youth nor in early manhood did he exhibit any signs of unusual capacity, and he always remained a slow thinker. Only in some moral traits and in a quality of persistence which fitfully showed itself did his earlier life in any way foreshadow his later developThe latter quality significantly appears, and with it one secret of the power of his later writings, in a habit of his childhood which he thus described: "When a mere child I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand. I do not think I ever got angry at anything else in my life; but that always disturbed my temper, and has ever since. I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and spending no small part of the night walking up and down trying to make out what was the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings. I could not sleep when I got on such a hunt for an idea until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy to comprehend. This was a kind of passion with me, and it has stuck by me; for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north, and bounded it south, and bounded it east, and bounded it west." On this foundation, his mind nourished by the reading of only a very few books—at first chiefly the Bible, and later also Shakespeare Lincoln built the great structure of his final style. His use of words curiously parallels his career. His writings exhibit a slow and fitful growth from commonplace beginnings to a final mastery which enabled him to produce a few pieces which are recognized as classics of the English language wherever that language is spoken or read. It was not, however, merely by conscious effort after clarity that this result was accomplished; for it was not accomplished until Lincoln's actions were dominated by a profound moral conviction. That conviction may not have been wholly unmixed with personal ambition; but, nevertheless, it did slowly become Lincoln's sincere and deep conviction that the Union must be preserved without slavery because the South and its sympathizers had come to represent a theory which exalted the rights of capital, of property, above the rights of men—a theory which denied the principles of the Declaration of Independence and led towards tyranny and oppression, and which, if not repudiated and crushed, would inevitably end in subjecting Americans everywhere to the unscrupulous and corrupt rule of the money-changers who had invaded the temple of freedom. It was because they sought to revive the principles of Jefferson and Madison against the inhuman specter of capital corrupting men that the leaders of Lincoln's party called it Republican. And when Lincoln was put to the test of waging war in defense of his conviction he rose to a selflessness which, even for isolated moments, the fewest of men ever attain. After Stanton, who once called Lincoln "the original gorilla," had become a member of his cabinet, he told a visitor that the President was a damned fool. Lincoln was informed of this, and replied: "If Stanton said I was a damned fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always right and generally says what he means." The importance of a single incident of this kind should not be exaggerated, but it was characteristic, and it shows in a small way not only the selflessness to which Lincoln could rise but also, in the charitable understanding which it exhibits, another secret of Lincoln's greatness as man and writer;-he had a strange knowledge of the human heart. COOPER UNION SPEECH 1 MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YORK: The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation. In his speech. last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in the New York Times, Senator Douglas said: "Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now." 1 In the autumn of 1859 Henry Ward Beecher and the Young Men's Republican Union invited Lincoln to make an address in Brooklyn at the Plymouth Church. It was only after his acceptance and after his arrival, several months later, in New York that he learned that he was to speak at Cooper Union. He then feared that his address was not well adapted to the audience he would have, and he carefully revised it. It was delivered on 27 February, 1860, and made a deep impression. It is a masterly statement of Lincoln's political position, and some have regarded it as the greatest of his addresses made before he became President. At any rate it was as the result of this address that Lincoln became a serious presidential possibility. This and the following selections are reprinted with the permission of the Century Company from the Complete Works of Lincoln, edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay. I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed startingpoint for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned? What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood "just as well, and even better, than we do now"? It is this: 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 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." * It is surely safe to assume that the thirtynine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed the government under which we live." And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared 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. I go step further. I defy anyone 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. Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and arguments so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we. If any man at this day sincerely believes that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. But he has no right to mislead others who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" were of the same opinion-thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this day sincerely believes "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" used and applied principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a proper division of local from Federal authority, or some part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk that responsibility by asserting that they "understood the question just as well, and even better, than we do now." But enough! Let all who believe that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask-all Republicans desire-in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers give it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be con tent. And now, if they would listen-as I suppose they will not-I would address a few words to the Southern people. I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite-license, so to speak-among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all. Now can you or not be prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring forward your charges and specifications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or justify. You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that our party has no existence in your section-gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially true; but does it prove the issue? If it does, then in case we should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to where you ought to have started to a discussion of the right or wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong your section; and so meet us as if it were possible that something may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the principle which "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand your condemnation without a moment's consider ation. Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the government upon that subject up to and at the very moment he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we should at some time have a confederacy of free states. Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands against you? Could Washington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend it to you, together with his example pointing to the right application of it. But you say you are conservative-eminently conservative-while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the sort. What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the government under which we live"; while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the foreign slave-trade; some for a congressional slave-code for the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave another, no third man should object," fantastically called "popular sovereignty"; but never a man among you is in favor of Federal prohibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the practice. of "our fathers who framed the government under which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent or an advocate in the century within which our government originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations. Again, you say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still resist, your innovation; and thence comes the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that question reduced to its former proportions? Go back to that old policy. What has been will be again, under the same conditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the old times. You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it, or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander. Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed the government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important state elections were near at hand, and you were in evident❘ glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, 1 John Brown's seizure of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry occurred on the night of 16 October, 1859. He was captured on 18 October, and executed on 2 December. and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers who framed the government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrec tion, blood, and thunder among the slaves. 66 Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton insurrection,2 twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was 'got up by Black Republicanism." In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting trains. Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the |