A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln / Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History

binson-The Know-Nothings-Decatur Meeting-Bloomington Convention-Philadelphia Convention-Lincoln

he practice of law, which the growth of the State in population, and the widening of his acquaintanceshi

the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the

ly the entire South, to force the passage of that repeal through Congress, and an alarmed majority,

Douglas of Illinois, by whom the repeal was championed, and whose influence as a free-State senator and powerful Democratic leader alone made the repeal possible, had been his personal antagonist in Illinois politics for almost twenty years. The other was moral, in that the new question involved the elemental principles of the American government, the fundamental maxim of the Declaration of Independ

There is no record that Mr. Lincoln took any public part in the discussion until the month of September, but it is very clear that he not only carefully watched its progress, but that he studied its phases of development, its historical origins, and its legal bearings with close industry, and gathered from party literature and legisl

hes at once attracted a more marked attention than they had ever before done. As the canvass proceeded he was drawn to different parts of the State, outside of Mr. Yates's district.

of political tournament of speech-making broke out. In this Senator Douglas, doubly conspicuous by his championship of the Nebraska Bill in Congress, was expected to play the leading part, while the opposition, by a common impulse, called upon Lincoln to answer him. Lincoln performed the task with such aptness and force, with such freshness of argument,

ning so convincing, his language so strong and eloquent by turns, that the wonderful power he manifested in the discussions and debates of the six succeeding years does not surpass, but only amplifies this, his first examination of

and especially because it forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.... Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature-opposition to it in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into

ic as inexorable, he disposes of Do

al destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.... I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free p

vance in mental development at once becomes apparent. In this single effort Mr. Lincoln had risen from the class of the politician to the rank of the statesman. There is a well-founded tradition that Douglas, disconcerted and troubled by L

f the total membership of the legislature. The so-called Anti-Nebraska Democrats, opposing Douglas and his followers, were still too full of traditional party prejudice to help elect a pronounced Whig to the United States Senate, though as strongly "Anti-Nebraska" as themselves. Five of them brought forward, and stubbornly voted for, Lyman Trumbull, an Anti-Nebraska Democrat of ability, who had been chosen representative in Congress from the eighth Illinois District in the recent election. On the ninth ballot it became evident to Lincoln that there was danger of a new Democratic candidate, neutral on the Nebraska question, being chosen. In this contingency, he manifested a personal generosity and political sagacity far above the comprehension of the ordinary smart politician. He advised and prevailed u

e grave nature of the pending political controversy. A letter written by him about half a year later to a friend in Kentucky, is full of such s

since. So far as peaceful voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of a free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign

as President of the United States, the "Autocrat of all the Russias," Alexander II, by imperial decree emancipated his serfs; while six weeks after the i

past had called itself Native Americanism, and now assumed the name of the American Party, though it was more popularly known by the nickname of "Know-Nothings," because of its secret organization. It professed a certain hostility to foreign-born voters and to the Catholic religion, and demanded a change in the naturalization laws from a five years' to a twenty-one years' preliminary residence. This faction had gained some sporadic successes in Eastern cities, but when its national convention met in February

ts constituent elements, retained the party name, and became the party of slavery extension, having forced the repeal and supported the resulting measures; while the Whig party entirely disappeared, its members in the Nort

population contained an equally diverse local sentiment. The northern counties had at once become strongly Anti-Nebraska; the conservative Whig counties of the center inclined to t

athering of local leaders who had formerly been bitter antagonists, but who now joined their efforts to resist slavery extension. They formulated an emphatic but not radical platform, and through a committee selected a composite ticket of candidates for State offices, which the convention approved by acclamation. The occasion remains memorable because of the closing address made by Mr. Lincoln in one of

he had been elected to the United States Senate when California applied for admission as a free State, and that the resistance of the South to her admission had been the entering wedge of the slavery agitation of 1850. This

ubt very unexpectedly to himself, on the first ballot for a candidate for Vice-President he received one hundred and ten votes against two hundred and fifty-nine votes for William L. Dayton of New Jersey, upon which the choice of Mr.

outh, in an arrogant pro-slavery dictatorship, relentlessly cast aside the claims of Douglas and Pierce, who had effected the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and nominated Buchanan, in apparently sure confidence of that super-serviceable zeal in behalf of slavery which he so obediently rendered; also, that in a platform of

speeches was reported in full, but the few fragments which have been preserved show that he occupied no doubtful ground on the pending issues. Already the Democrats were raising the potent alarm cry that the Republican party was sectional, and

and at our command, you could not do it. This government would be very weak, indeed, if a majority, with a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury, could not preserve itself when

fusion, and thereby elected a Republican governor and State officers. One of the strong elements of Mr. Lincoln's leadership was the cheerful hope he was always able to inspire in his followers, and his abiding faith in the correct political instincts of popular majorities. This trait was happily exemplified in a speech he made a

a struggle by one party to discard that central idea and to substitute for it the opposite idea that slavery is right in the abstract; the workings of which as a central idea may be the perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all countries and colors.... All of us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are a majority of four hundred thousand. But in the late contest we were divided between Frémont and Fillmore. Can we not come together for the future? Let every one who really believes, and is resolved, that free society is not and shall not be a failure, and who can conscientiously declar