Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865 / Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865

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Title: Speeches and Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865

Author: Abraham Lincoln

Release Date: January 17, 2005  [eBook #14721]

Language: English

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SPEECHES & LETTERS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 1832-1865

Edited by

MERWIN ROE

London: Published
by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd
and in New York
by E.P. Dutton & Co

First issue of this Edition 1907; Reprinted 1909, 1910, 1912

Mr. Bryce's Introduction to 'Lincoln's Speeches' is printed from plates
made and type set by the University Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

Taken by permission from 'The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln,'
Century Company, 1894







[Illustration: WHEN HE SENT HIS GREAT VOICE FORTH OUT OF HIS BREAST, &
HIS WORDS FELL LIKE THE WINTER SNOWS, NOR THEN WOULD ANY MORTAL CONTEND
WITH ULYSSES--HOMER. ILIAD.]





INTRODUCTION


No man since Washington has become to Americans so familiar or so
beloved a figure as Abraham Lincoln. He is to them the representative
and typical American, the man who best embodies the political ideals of
the nation. He is typical in the fact that he sprang from the masses of
the people, that he remained through his whole career a man of the
people, that his chief desire was to be in accord with the beliefs and
wishes of the people, that he never failed to trust in the people and to
rely on their support. Every native American knows his life and his
speeches. His anecdotes and witticisms have passed into the thought and
the conversation of the whole nation as those of no other statesman have
done.

He belongs, however, not only to the United States, but to the whole of
civilized mankind. It is no exaggeration to say that he has, within the
last thirty years, grown to be a conspicuous figure in the history of
the modern world. Without him, the course of events not only in the
Western hemisphere but in Europe also would have been different, for he
was called to guide at the greatest crisis of its fate a State already
mighty, and now far more mighty than in his days, and the guidance he
gave has affected the march of events ever since. A life and a character
such as his ought to be known to and comprehended by Europeans as well
as by Americans. Among Europeans, it is especially Englishmen who ought
to appreciate him and understand the significance of his life, for he
came of an English stock, he spoke the English tongue, his action told
upon the progress of events and the shaping of opinion in all British
communities everywhere more than it has done upon any other nation
outside America itself.

This collection of Lincoln's speeches seeks to make him known by
his words as readers of history know him by his deeds. In
popularly-governed countries the great statesman is almost of necessity
an orator, though his eminence as a speaker may be no true measure
either of his momentary power or of his permanent fame, for wisdom,
courage and tact bear little direct relation to the gift for speech. But
whether that gift be present in greater or in lesser degree, the
character and ideas of a statesman are best studied through his own
words. This is particularly true of Lincoln, because he was not what may
be called a professional orator. There have been famous orators whose
speeches we may read for the beauty of their language or for the wealth
of ideas they contain, with comparatively little regard to the
circumstances of time and place that led to their being delivered.
Lincoln is not one of these. His speeches need to be studied in close
relation to the occasions which called them forth. They are not
philosophical lucubrations or brilliant displays of rhetoric. They are a
part of his life. They are the expression of his convictions, and derive
no small part of their weight and dignity from the fact that they deal
with grave and urgent questions, and express the spirit in which he
approached those questions. Few great characters stand out so clearly
revealed by their words, whether spoken or written, as he does.

Accordingly Lincoln's discourses are not like those of nearly all the
men whose eloquence has won them fame. When we think of such men as
Pericles, Demosthenes, AEschines, Cicero, Hortensius, Burke, Sheridan,
Erskine, Canning, Webster, Gladstone, Bright, Massillon, Vergniaud,
Castelar, we think of exuberance of ideas or of phrases, of a command of
appropriate similes or metaphors, of the gifts of invention and of
exposition, of imaginative flights, or outbursts of passion fit to stir
and rouse an audience to like passion. We think of the orator as gifted
with a powerful or finely-modulated voice, an imposing presence, a
graceful delivery. Or if--remembering that Lincoln was by profession a
lawyer and practised until he became President of the United States--we
think of the special gifts which mark the forensic orator, we should
expect to find a man full of ingenuity and subtlety, one dexterous in
handling his case in such wise as to please and capture the judge or the
jury whom he addresses, one skilled in those rhetorical devices and
strokes of art which can be used, when need be, to engage the listener's
feelings and distract his mind from the real merits of the issue.

Of all this kind of talent there was in Lincoln but little. He was not
an artful pleader; indeed, it was said of him that he could argue well
only those cases in the justice of which he personally believed, and was
unable to make the worse appear the better reason. For most of the
qualities which the world admires in Cicero or in Burke we should look
in vain in Lincoln's speeches. They are not fine pieces of exquisite
diction, fit to be declaimed as school exercises or set before students
as models of composition.

What, then, are their merits? and why do they deserve to be valued and
remembered? How comes it that a man of first-rate powers was deficient
in qualities appertaining to his own profession which men less
remarkable have possessed?

To answer this question, let us first ask what were the preparation and
training Abraham Lincoln had for oratory, whether political or forensic.

Born in rude and abject poverty, he had never any education, except what
he gave himself, till he was approaching manhood. Not even books
wherewith to inform and train his mind were within his reach. No school,
no university, no legal faculty had any part in training his powers.
When he became a lawyer and a politician, the years most favourable to
continuous study had already passed, and the opportunities he found for
reading were very scanty. He knew but few authors in general literature,
though he knew those few thoroughly. He taught himself a little
mathematics, but he could read no language save his own, and can have
had only the faintest acquaintance with European history or with any
branch of philosophy.

The want of regular education was not made up for by the persons among
whom his lot was cast. Till he was a grown man, he never moved in any
society from which he could learn those things with which the mind of an
orator or a statesman ought to be stored. Even after he had gained some
legal practice, there was for many years no one for him to mix with
except the petty practitioners of a petty town, men nearly all of whom
knew little more than he did himself.

Schools gave him nothing, and society gave him nothing. But he had a
powerful intellect and a resolute will. Isolation fostered not only
self-reliance but the habit of reflection, and, indeed, of prolonged and
intense reflection. He made all that he knew a part of himself. He
thought everything out for himself. His convictions were his own--clear
and coherent. He was not positive or opinionated, and he did not deny
that at certain moments he pondered and hesitated long before he decided
on his course. But though he could keep a policy in suspense, waiting
for events to guide him, he did not waver. He paused and reconsidered,
but it was never his way either to go back upon a decision once made, or
to waste time in vain regrets that all he expected had not been
attained. He took advice readily, and left many things to his ministers;
but he did not lean upon his advisers. Without vanity or ostentation, he
was always independent, self-contained, prepared to take full
responsibility for his acts.

That he was keenly observant of all that passed under his eyes, that his
mind played freely round everything it touched, we know from the
accounts of his talk, which first made him famous in the town and
neighbourhood where he lived. His humour, and his memory for anecdotes
which he could bring out to good purpose, at the right moment, are
qualities which Europe deems distinctively American, but no great man of
action in the nineteenth century, even in America, possessed them in the
same measure. Seldom has so acute a power of observation been found
united to so abundant a power of sympathy.

These remarks may seem to belong to a study of his character rather than
of his speeches, yet they are not irrelevant, because the interest of
his speeches lies in their revelation of his character. Let us, however,
return to the speeches and to the letters, some of which, given in this
volume, are scarcely less noteworthy than are the speeches.

What are the distinctive merits of these speeches and letters? There is
less humour in them than his reputation as a humorist would have led us
to expect. They are serious, grave, practical. We feel that the man does
not care to play over the surface of the subject, or to use it as a way
of displaying his cleverness. He is trying to get right down to the very
foundation of the matter and tell us what his real thoughts about it
are. In this respect he sometimes reminds us of Bismarck's speeches,
which, in their rude, broken, forth-darting way, always go straight to
their destined aim; always hit the nail on the head. So too, in their
effort to grapple with fundamental facts, Lincoln's bear a sort of
likeness to Cromwell's speeches, though Cromwell has far less power of
utterance, and always seems to be wrestling with the difficulty of
finding language to convey to others what is plain, true and weighty to
himself. This difficulty makes the great Protector, though we can
usually see what he is driving at, frequently confused and obscure.
Lincoln, however, is always clear. Simplicity, directness and breadth
are the notes of his thought. Aptness, clearness, and again, simplicity,
are the notes of his diction. The American speakers of his generation,
like most of those of the preceding generation, but unlike those of that
earlier generation to which Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Marshall and
Madison belonged, were generally infected by a floridity which made them
a by-word in Europe. Even men of brilliant talent, such as Edward
Everett, were by no means free from this straining after effect by
highly-coloured phrases and theatrical effects. Such faults have to-day
virtually vanished from the United States, largely from a change in
public taste, to which perhaps the example set by Lincoln himself may
have contributed. In the forties and fifties florid rhetoric was
rampant, especially in the West and South, where taste was less polished
than in the older States. That Lincoln escaped it is a striking mark of
his independence as well as of his greatness. There is no superfluous
ornament in his orations, nothing tawdry, nothing otiose. For the most
part, he addresses the reason of his hearers, and credits them with
desiring to have none but solid arguments laid before them. When he does
appeal to emotion, he does it quietly, perhaps even solemnly. The note
struck is always a high note. The impressiveness of the appeal comes not
from fervid vehemence of language, but from the sincerity of his own
convictions. Sometimes one can see that through its whole course the
argument is suffused by the speaker's feeling, and when the time comes
for the feeling to be directly expressed, it glows not with fitful
flashes, but with the steady heat of an intense and strenuous soul.

The impression which most of the speeches leave on the reader is that
their matter has been carefully thought over even when the words have
not been learnt by heart. But there is an anecdote that on one occasion,
early in his career, Lincoln went to a public meeting not in the least
intending to speak, but presently being called for by the audience, rose
in obedience to the call, and delivered a long address so ardent and
thrilling that the reporters dropped their pencils and, absorbed in
watching him, forgot to take down what he said. It has also been stated,
on good authority, that on his way in the railroad cars, to the
dedication of the monument on the field of Gettysburg, he turned to a
Pennsylvanian gentleman who was sitting beside him and remarked, "I
suppose I shall be expected to say something this afternoon; lend me a
pencil and a bit of paper," and that he thereupon jotted down the notes
of a speech which has become the best known and best remembered of all
his utterances, so that some of its words and sentences have passed into
the minds of all educated men everywhere.

That famous Gettysburg speech is the best example one could desire of
the characteristic quality of Lincoln's eloquence. It is a short speech.
It is wonderfully terse in expression. It is quiet, so quiet that at the
moment it did not make upon the audience, an audience wrought up by a
long and highly-decorated harangue from one of the prominent orators of
the day, an impression at all commensurate to that which it began to
make as soon as it was read over America and Europe. There is in it not
a touch of what we call rhetoric, or of any striving after effect. Alike
in thought and in language it is simple, plain, direct. But it states
certain truths and principles in phrases so aptly chosen and so
forcible, that one feels as if those truths could have been conveyed in
no other words, and as if this deliverance of them were made for all
time. Words so simple and so strong could have come only from one who
had meditated so long upon the primal facts of American history and
popular government that the truths those facts taught him had become
like the truths of mathematics in their clearness, their breadth, and
their precision.

The speeches on Slavery read strange to us now, when slavery as a living
system has been dead for forty years, dead and buried hell deep under
the detestation of mankind. It is hard for those whose memory does not
go back to 1865 to realize that down till then it was not only a
terrible fact, but was defended--defended by many otherwise good men,
defended not only by pseudo-scientific anthropologists as being in the
order of nature, but by ministers of the Gospel, out of the sacred
Scriptures, as part of the ordinances of God. Lincoln's position, the
position of one who had to induce slave-owning fellow-citizens to listen
to him and admit persuasion into their heated and prejudiced minds, did
not allow him to denounce it with horror, as we can all so easily do
to-day. But though his language is calm and restrained, he never
condescends to palter with slavery. He shows its innate evils and
dangers with unanswerable force. The speech on the Dred Scott decision
is a lucid, close and cogent piece of reasoning which, in its wide view
of Constitutional issues, sometimes reminds one of Webster, sometimes
even of Burke, though it does not equal the former in weight nor the
latter in splendour of diction.

Among the letters, perhaps the most impressive is that written to Mrs.
Bixley, the mother of five sons who had died fighting for the Union in
the armies of the North. It is short, and it deals with a theme on which
hundreds of letters are written daily. But I do not know where the
nobility of self-sacrifice for a great cause, and of the consolation
which the thought of a sacrifice so made should bring, is set forth with
such simple and pathetic beauty. Deep must be the fountains from which
there issues so pure a stream.

The career of Lincoln is often held up to ambitious young Americans as
an example to show what a man may achieve by his native strength, with
no advantages of birth or environment or education. In this there is
nothing improper, nothing fanciful. The moral is one which may well be
drawn, and in which those on whose early life Fortune has not smiled may
find encouragement. But the example is, after all, no great
encouragement to ordinary men, for Lincoln was an extraordinary man.

He triumphed over the adverse conditions of his early years because
Nature had bestowed on him high and rare powers. Superficial observers
who saw his homely aspect and plain manners, and noted that his
fellow-townsmen, when asked why they so trusted him, answered that it
was for his common-sense, failed to see that his common-sense was a part
of his genius. What is common-sense but the power of seeing the
fundamentals of any practical question, and of disengaging them from the
accidental and transient features that may overlie these
fundamentals--the power, to use a familiar expression, of getting down
to bed rock? One part of this power is the faculty for perceiving what
the average man will think and can be induced to do. This is what keeps
the superior mind in touch with the ordinary mind, and this is perhaps
why the name of "common-sense" is used, because the superior mind seems
in its power of comprehending others to be itself a part of the general
sense of the community. All men of high practical capacity have this
power. It is the first condition of success. But in men who have
received a philosophical or literary education there is a tendency to
embellish, for purposes of persuasion, or perhaps for their own
gratification, the language in which they recommend their conclusions,
or to state those conclusions in the light of large general principles,
a tendency which may, unless carefully watched, carry them too high
above the heads of the crowd. Lincoln, never having had such an
education, spoke to the people as one of themselves. He seemed to be
saying not only what each felt, but expressing the feeling just as each
would have expressed it. In reality, he was quite as much above his
neighbours in insight as was the polished orator or writer, but the
plain directness of his language seemed to keep him on their level. His
strength lay less in the form and vesture of the thought than in the
thought itself, in the large, simple, practical view which he took of
the position. And thus, to repeat what has been said already, the
sterling merit of these speeches of his, that which made them effective
when they were delivered and makes them worth reading to-day, is to be
found in the justness of his conclusions and their fitness to the
circumstances of the time. When he rose into higher air, when his words
were clothed with stateliness and solemnity, it was the force of his
conviction and the emotion that thrilled through his utterance, that
printed the words deep upon the minds and drove them home to the hearts
of the people.

What is a great man? Common speech, which after all must be our guide to
the sense of the terms which the world uses, gives this name to many
sorts of men. How far greatness lies in the power and range of the
intellect, how far in the strength of the will, how far in elevation of
view and aim and purpose,--this is a question too large to be debated
here. But of Abraham Lincoln it may be truly said that in his greatness
all three elements were present. He had not the brilliance, either in
thought or word or act, that dazzles, nor the restless activity that
occasionally pushes to the front even persons with gifts not of the
first order. He was a patient, thoughtful, melancholy man, whose
intelligence, working sometimes slowly but always steadily and surely,
was capacious enough to embrace and vigorous enough to master the
incomparably difficult facts and problems he was called to deal with.
His executive talent showed itself not in sudden and startling strokes,
but in the calm serenity with which he formed his judgments and laid his
plans, in the undismayed firmness with which he adhered to them in the
face of popular clamour, of conflicting counsels from his advisers,
sometimes, even, of what others deemed all but hopeless failure. These
were the qualities needed in one who had to pilot the Republic through
the heaviest storm that had ever broken upon it. But the mainspring of
his power, and the truest evidence of his greatness, lay in the nobility
of his aims, in the fervour of his conviction, in the stainless
rectitude which guided his action and won for him the confidence of the
people. Without these things neither the vigour of his intellect nor the
firmness of his will would have availed.

There is a vulgar saying that all great men are unscrupulous. Of him it
may rather be said that the note of greatness we feel in his thinking
and his speech and his conduct had its source in the loftiness and
purity of his character. Lincoln's is one of the careers that refute
this imputation on human nature.

JAMES BRYCE


The following is a list of Lincoln's published works:

SELECTIONS.--Letters on Questions of National Policy, etc., 1863;
Dedicatory Speech of President Lincoln, etc., at the Consecration of
Gettysburg Cemetery, Nov. 19th, 1863, 1864; The Last Address of
President Lincoln to the American People, 1865; The Martyr's Monument,
1865; In Memoriam, 1865; Gems from A. Lincoln, 1865; The President's
Words, 1866; Emancipation Proclamation--Second Inaugural
Address--Gettysburg Speech, 1878; Two Inaugural Addresses and Gettysburg
Speech, 1889; The Gettysburg Speech and other Papers, with an essay on
Lincoln by J.R. Lowell (Riverside Literature Series, 32), 1888; The
Table Talk of Abraham Lincoln, ed. W.O. Stoddard, 1894; Political
Debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas in the celebrated
campaign of 1858 in Illinois, etc. Also the two great speeches of
Abraham Lincoln at Ohio in 1859, 1894; Political Speeches and Debates of
Abraham Lincoln and S.A. Douglas, 1854-1861, edited by A.T. Jones, 1895;
Lincoln, Passages from his Speeches and Letters, with Introduction by
R.W. Gilder, 1901.

COMPLETE EDITIONS OF WORKS, LETTERS, AND SPEECHES.--H.J. Raymond,
History of the Administration of Abraham Lincoln (Speeches, Letters,
etc.), 1864; Abraham Lincoln, Pen and Voice, being a Complete
Compilation of his Letters, Public Addresses, Messages to Congress, ed.
G.M. Van Buren, etc., 1890; Complete Works, ed. J.G. Nicolay and J. Hay,
2 vols., 1894; enlarged edition, with Introduction by R.W. Gilder, etc.,
1905, etc.; A. Lincoln's Speeches, compiled by L.E. Chittenden, 1895;
The Writings of A. Lincoln, ed. A.B. Lapsley, with an Introduction by
Theodore Roosevelt, and a life by Noah Brooks, etc. (Federal Edition),
1905; etc.

LIFE.--H.J. Raymond; The Life and Public Services of A.L., etc., with
Anecdotes and Personal Reminiscences, by F.B. Carpenter, 1865; J.H.
Barrett, 1865; J.G. Holland, 1866; W.H. Lamon, 1872; W.O. Stoddard,
1884; I.N. Arnold, 1885; J.G. Nicolay and J. Hay, 1890; Condensed
Edition, 1902; Recollections of President Lincoln and his
Administration, 1891; C.C. Coffin, 1893; J.T. Morse, 1893; J. Hay (The
Presidents of the United States), 1894; C.A. Dana, Lincoln and his
Cabinet, etc., 1896; J.H. Choate, 1900; Address delivered before the
Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, Nov. 13, 1900; I.M. Tarbell, 1900;
W.E. Curtis, The True Abraham Lincoln, 1903; J.H. Barrett, A. Lincoln
and his Presidency, 1904; J. Baldwin, 1904. A. Rothschild, Lincoln,
Master of Men, 1906; F.T. Hill, Lincoln the Lawyer, 1906.

Among those who have written short lives are: Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe,
D.W. Bartlett, C.G. Leland, J.C. Power, etc.




CONTENTS


Lincoln's First Public Speech--From an Address to the People of Sangamon
     County, March 9, 1832

Letter to Col. Robert Allen, June 21, 1836

From a Letter Published in the Sangamon "Journal," June 13, 1836

From his Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Jan. 27,
     1837

Letter to Mrs. O.H. Browning, Springfield, April 1, 1838

From a Political Debate, Springfield, Dec, 1839

Letter to W.G. Anderson, Lawrenceville, Ill., Oct. 31, 1840

Extract from a Letter to John T. Stuart, Springfield, Ill., Jan. 23,
     1841

From his Address before the Springfield Washingtonian Temperance
     Society, Feb. 22, 1842

From a Circular of the Whig Committee, March 4, 1843

From a Letter to Martin M. Morris, Springfield, Ill., March 26, 1843

From a Letter to Joshua F. Speed, Springfield, Ill., Oct. 22, 1846

From a Letter to Wm. H. Herndon, Washington, Jan. 8, 1848

From a Letter to Wm. H. Herndon, Washington, June 22, 1848

From a Letter to Wm. H. Herndon, Washington, July 10, 1848

Letter to John D. Johnston, Jan. 2, 1851

Letter to John D. Johnston, Shelbyville, Nov. 4, 1851

Note for Law Lecture--Written about July 1, 1850

A Fragment--Written about July 1, 1854

A Fragment on Slavery, July 1854

From his Reply to Senator Douglas, Peoria, Oct. 16, 1854

From a Letter to the Hon. Geo. Robertson, Lexington, Ky.; Springfield,
     Ill., Aug. 15, 1855

From a Letter to Joshua F. Speed, Aug. 24, 1855

Lincoln's "Lost Speech," May 19, 1856

Speech on the Dred Scott Case, Springfield, Ill., June 26, 1857

The "Divided House" Speech, Springfield, Ill., June 17, 1858

From his Speech at Chicago in Reply to the Speech of Judge Douglas, July
     10, 1858

From a Speech at Springfield, Ill., July 17, 1858

From Lincoln's Reply to Douglas in the First Joint Debate, Ottawa, Ill.,
     Aug. 21, 1858

From Lincoln's Rejoinder to Judge Douglas at Freeport, Ill., Aug. 27,
     1858

From Lincoln's Reply to Douglas at Jonesboro', Sept. 15, 1858

From Lincoln's Reply to Douglas at Charleston, Ill., Sept. 18, 1858

From Lincoln's Reply to Judge Douglas at Galesburg, Ill., Oct. 7, 1858

Notes for Speeches--Written about Oct. 1, 1858

From Lincoln's Reply to Douglas in the Seventh and Last Joint Debate, at
     Alton, Ill., Oct. 15, 1858

From Speech at Columbus, Ohio, Sept. 16, 1859

From Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, Sept. 17, 1859

From a Letter to J.W. Fell, Dec. 20, 1859

From the Address at Cooper Institute, N.Y., Feb. 27, 1860

Lincoln's Farewell to the Citizens of Springfield, Ill., Feb. 11, 1861

Letter to Hon. Geo. Ashmun, Accepting the Nomination for Presidency, May
     23, 1860

Letter to Miss Grace Bedell, Springfield, Ill., Oct. 19, 1860

From his Address to the Legislature at Indianapolis, Feb. 12, 1861

From his Address to the Legislature at Columbus, Ohio, Feb. 13, 1861

From his Remarks at Pittsburgh, Pa., Feb. 15, 1861

From his Address at Trenton, N.J., Feb. 21, 1861

Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Feb. 22, 1861

His Reply to the Mayor of Washington, D.C., Feb. 27, 1861

First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861

Address at Utica, N.Y., Feb. 18, 1861

From his First Message to Congress, at the Special Session, July 4, 1861

From his Message to Congress at its Regular Session, Dec. 3, 1861

Letter to Gen. G.B. McClellan, Washington, Feb. 3, 1862

Proclamation Revoking Gen. Hunter's Order Setting the Slaves Free, May
     19, 1862

Appeal to the Border States in Behalf of Compensated Emancipation, July
     12, 1862

From Letter to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862

Letter to August Belmont, July 31, 1862

Letter to Horace Greeley, Aug. 22, 1862

From his Reply to the Chicago Committee of United Religious
     Denominations, Sept. 13, 1862

From the Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862

Emancipation Proclamation, Jan. 1, 1863

Letter to General Grant, July 13, 1863

Letter to ---- Moulton, Washington, July 31, 1863

Letter to Mrs. Lincoln, Washington, Aug. 8, 1863

Letter to James H. Hackett, Washington, Aug. 17, 1863

Note to Secretary Stanton, Washington, Nov. 11, 1863

Letter to James C. Conkling, Aug. 26, 1863

His Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving, Oct. 3, 1863

Remarks at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, Nov.
     19, 1863

From his Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 8, 1863

Letter to Secretary Stanton, Washington, March 1, 1864

Letter to Governor Michael Hahn, Washington, March 13, 1864

Address at a Sanitary Fair, March 18, 1864

Letter to A.G. Hodges, April 4, 1864

Address at a Sanitary Fair at Baltimore, April 18, 1864

Letter to General Grant, April 30, 1864

From Address to the 166th Ohio Regiment, Aug. 22, 1864

Reply to a Serenade, Nov. 10, 1864

Letter to Mrs. Bixley, Nov. 21, 1864

Letter to General Grant, Washington, Jan. 19, 1865

Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865

Letter to Thurlow Weed, March 15, 1865

From an Address to an Indiana Regiment, March 17, 1865

His Last Public Address, April 11, 1865

APPENDIX

Anecdotes




PUBLISHERS' NOTE


For permission to use extracts from "The Complete Works of Abraham
Lincoln," edited by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, the Publishers wish to
thank The Century Company.

They also wish to thank Mr. William H. Lambert, the owner of the
copyright, and Mrs. Sarah A. Whitney for their courtesy in allowing them
to publish "Lincoln's Lost Speech."




LINCOLN'S SPEECHES AND LETTERS


_Lincoln's First Public Speech. From an Address to the People of
Sangamon County. March 9, 1832_


Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dictate any plan or
system respecting it, I can only say that I view it as the most
important subject which we, as a people, can be engaged in. That every
man may receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be enabled to
read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly
appreciate the value of our free institutions, appears to be an object
of vital importance, even on this account alone, to say nothing of the
advantages and satisfaction to be derived from all being able to read
the Scriptures and other works, both of a religious and moral nature,
for themselves.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education--and by its means
morality, sobriety, enterprise, and industry--shall become much more
general than at present; and should be gratified to have it in my power
to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might
have a tendency to accelerate that happy period.

With regard to existing laws, some alterations are thought to be
necessary. Many respectable men have suggested that our estray laws--the
law respecting the issuing of executions, the road law, and some
others--are deficient in their present form, and require alterations.
But considering the great probability that the framers of those laws
were wiser than myself, I should prefer not meddling with them, unless
they were first attacked by others, in which case I should feel it both
a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my view, might tend
to the advancement of justice.

But, fellow-citizens, I shall conclude. Considering the great degree of
modesty which should always attend youth, it is probable I have already
been more presuming than becomes me. However, upon the subjects of which
I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in
regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is
better only to be sometimes right than at all times wrong, so soon as I
discover my opinions to be erroneous I shall be ready to renounce them.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or
not, I can say, for one, that I have no other so great as that of being
truly esteemed of my fellow-men by rendering myself worthy of their
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition is yet to be
developed. I am young and unknown to many of you; I was born and have
ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or
popular relations or friends to recommend me. My case is thrown
exclusively upon the independent voters of the county, and if elected,
they will have conferred a favour upon me for which I shall be
unremitting in my labours to compensate. But if the good people in their
wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too
familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined.

     Your friend and fellow-citizen,
       A. LINCOLN.




_Letter to Colonel Robert Allen. June 21, 1836_


Dear Colonel, I am told that during my absence last week you passed
through this place, and stated publicly that you were in possession of a
fact or facts which, if known to the public, would entirely destroy the
prospects of N.W. Edwards and myself at the ensuing election; but that,
through favour to us, you should forbear to divulge them. No one has
needed favours more than I, and, generally, few have been less unwilling
to accept them; but in this case favour to me would be injustice to the
public, and therefore I must beg your pardon for declining it. That I
once had the confidence of the people of Sangamon, is sufficiently
evident; and if I have since done anything, either by design or
misadventure, which if known would subject me to a forfeiture of that
confidence, he that knows of that thing, and conceals it, is a traitor
to his country's interest.

I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture of what fact or
facts, real or supposed, you spoke; but my opinion of your veracity will
not permit me for a moment to doubt that you at least believed what you
said. I am flattered with the personal regard you manifested for me; but
I do hope that, on more mature reflection, you will view the public
interest as a paramount consideration, and therefore determine to let
the worst come. I here assure you that the candid statement of facts on
your part, however low it may sink me, shall never break the tie of
personal friendship between us. I wish an answer to this, and you are at
liberty to publish both, if you choose.




_Lincoln's Opinion on Universal Suffrage. From a Letter published in the
Sangamon "Journal." June 13, 1836_


I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in
bearing its burdens: consequently I go for admitting all whites to the
right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms [by no means excluding
females].




_From an Address before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.
January 27, 1837_


As a subject for the remarks of the evening "The perpetuation of our
political institutions" is selected. In the great journal of things
happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account
running under the date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era.
We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of
the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and
salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system
of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of
civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former
times tells us. We, when remounting the stage of existence, found
ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings. We toiled
not in the acquirement or the establishment of them; they are a legacy
bequeathed to us by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented
and departed race of ancestors.

Theirs was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves,
and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and to rear upon its
hills and valleys a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; 'tis
ours only to transmit these,--the former unprofaned by the foot of the
invader; the latter undecayed by lapse of time. This, our duty to
ourselves and to our posterity, and love for our species in general,
imperatively require us to perform.

How, then, shall we perform it? At what point shall we expect the
approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we
expect some transatlantic military giant to step across the ocean and
crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa
combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their
military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not, by force,
take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a
trial of a thousand years.

At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer,
if it ever reaches us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from
abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and
finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die
by suicide.

There is even now something of ill omen among us. I mean the increasing
disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to
substitute wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of
courts; and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of
justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any community; and that
it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would
be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.

       *       *       *       *       *

I know the American people are _much_ attached to their government. I
know they would suffer _much_ for its sake. I know they would endure
evils long and patiently before they would ever think of exchanging it
for another. Yet, notwithstanding all this, if the laws be continually
despised and disregarded, if their rights to be secure in their persons
and property are held by no better tenure than the caprice of a mob, the
alienation of their affection for the government is the natural
consequence, and to that sooner or later it must come.

Here, then, is one point at which danger may be expected. The question
recurs, how shall we fortify against it? The answer is simple. Let every
American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity,
swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least
particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their
violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support
of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the
Constitution and the Laws let every American pledge his life, his
property, and his sacred honour; let every man remember that to violate
the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the
charter of his own and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the
laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that
prattles on her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in
colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs.
Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and
enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the
political religion of the nation.

When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of all the laws, let me
not be understood as saying that there are no bad laws, or that
grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions
have been made. I mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that
although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as
possible, still, while they continue in force, for the sake of example
they should be religiously observed. So also in unprovided cases. If
such arise, let proper legal provisions be made for them with the least
possible delay, but till then let them, if not too intolerable, be borne
with.

There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law. In any
case that may arise, as, for instance, the promulgation of abolitionism,
one of two positions is necessarily true--that is, the thing is right
within itself, and therefore deserves the protection of all law and all
good citizens, or it is wrong, and therefore proper to be prohibited by
legal enactments; and in neither case is the interposition of mob law
either necessary, justifiable, or excusable....

They (histories of the Revolution) were pillars of the temple of
liberty; and now that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall
unless we, their descendants, supply their places with other pillars,
hewn from the solid quarry of sober reason. Passion has helped us, but
can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason--cold,
calculating, unimpassioned reason--must furnish all the materials for
our future support and defence. Let those materials be moulded into
general intelligence, sound morality, and, in particular, a reverence
for the Constitution and laws; and that we improved to the last, that we
remained free to the last, that we revered his name to the last, that
during his long sleep we permitted no hostile foot to pass over or
desecrate his resting-place, shall be that which to learn the last trump
shall awaken our Washington.

Upon these let the proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its
basis; and as truly as has been said of the only greater institution,
"the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Many great and good men, sufficiently qualified for any task they should
undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing
beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair. But
such belong not to the family of the lion or the brood of the eagle.
What? Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Caesar, or a
Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks
regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to
story upon the monuments of fame erected to the memory of others. It
denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to
tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It
thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it,
whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving free men. Is
it unreasonable, then, to expect that some men, possessed of the
loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its
utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such a
one does, it will require the people to be united with each other,
attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to
successfully frustrate his design.

Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as
willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet that
opportunity being passed, and nothing left to be done in the way of
building up, he would sit down boldly to the task of pulling down. Here,
then, is a probable case, highly dangerous, and such a one as could not
well have existed heretofore.

       *       *       *       *       *

All honour to our Revolutionary ancestors, to whom we are indebted for
these institutions. They will not be forgotten. In history we hope they
will be read of, and recounted, so long as the Bible shall be read. But
even granting that they will, their influence cannot be what it
heretofore has been. Even then, they cannot be so universally known, nor
so vividly felt, as they were by the generation just gone to rest. At
the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a
participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those
scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son, or a brother, a
living history was to be found in every family,--a history bearing the
indubitable testimonies to its own authenticity in the limbs mangled, in
the scars of wounds received in the midst of the very scenes related; a
history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise
and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are
gone. They can be read no more for ever. They were a fortress of
strength; but what the invading foemen could never do, the silent
artillery of time has done,--the levelling of its walls. They are gone.
They were a forest of giant oaks; but the resistless hurricane has swept
over them, and left only here and there a lonely trunk, despoiled of its
verdure, shorn of its foliage, unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a
few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs a few
more ruder storms, and then to sink and be no more.




HUMOROUS ACCOUNT OF HIS EXPERIENCES WITH A LADY HE WAS REQUESTED TO
MARRY

_A Letter to Mrs. O.H. Browning. Springfield, Illinois. April 1, 1838_


Dear Madam, Without apologising for being egotistical, I shall make the
history of so much of my life as has elapsed since I saw you the subject
of this letter. And, by the way, I now discover that in order to give a
full and intelligible account of the things I have done and suffered
since I saw you, I shall necessarily have to relate some that happened
before.

It was, then, in the autumn of 1836 that a married lady of my
acquaintance, and who was a great friend of mine, being about to pay a
visit to her father and other relatives residing in Kentucky, proposed
to me that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with her on
condition that I would engage to become her brother-in-law with all
convenient dispatch. I, of course, accepted the proposal, for you know I
could not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it; but
privately, between you and me, I was most confoundedly well pleased with
the project. I had seen the said sister some three years before, thought
her intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to plodding
life through hand-in-hand with her. Time passed on, the lady took her
journey, and in due time returned, sister in company, sure enough. This
astonished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming so readily
showed that she was a trifle too willing, but on reflection it occurred
to me that she might have been prevailed on by her married sister to
come, without anything concerning me having been mentioned to her, and
so I concluded that if no other objection presented itself, I would
consent to waive this. All this occurred to me on hearing of her arrival
in the neighbourhood--for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her,
except about three years previous, as above mentioned. In a few days we
had an interview, and, although I had seen her before, she did not look
as my imagination had pictured her. I knew she was over-size, but she
now appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was called an "old
maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth of at least half of the
appellation, but now, when I beheld her, I could not for my life avoid
thinking of my mother; and this, not from withered features,--for her
skin was too full of fat to permit of its contracting into wrinkles--but
from her want of teeth, weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a
kind of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have commenced at
the size of infancy and reached her present bulk in less than
thirty-five or forty years; and, in short, I was not at all pleased with
her. But what could I do? I had told her sister that I would take her
for better or for worse, and I made a point of honour and conscience in
all things to stick to my word, especially if others had been induced to
act on it, which in this case I had no doubt they had, for I was now
fairly convinced that no other man on earth would have her, and hence
the conclusion that they were bent on holding me to my bargain. "Well,"
thought I, "I have said it, and, be the consequences what they may, it
shall not be my fault if I fail to do it." At once I determined to
consider her my wife, and this done, all my powers of discovery were put
to work in search of perfections in her which might be fairly set off
against her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, but for her
unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. Exclusive of this, no woman
that I have ever seen has a finer face. I also tried to convince myself
that the mind was much more to be valued than the person, and in this
she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any with whom I had been
acquainted.

Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any positive
understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, when and where you first
saw me. During my stay there I had letters from her which did not change
my opinion of either her intellect or intention, but, on the contrary,
confirmed it in both.

All this while, although I was fixed "firm as the surge-repelling rock"
in my resolution, I found I was continually repenting the rashness which
had led me to make it. Through life I have been in no bondage, either
real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which I so much desired to be
free. After my return home I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in
any particular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent my time in
planning how I might get along in life after my contemplated change of
circumstances should have taken place, and how I might procrastinate the
evil day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, perhaps more, than
an Irishman does the halter.

After all my sufferings upon this deeply interesting subject, here I
am, wholly, unexpectedly, completely out of the "scrape," and I now want
to know if you can guess how I got out of it--out, clear, in every sense
of the term--no violation of word, honour, or conscience. I don't
believe you can guess, and so I might as well tell you at once. As the
lawyer says, it was done in the manner following, to wit: After I had
delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in honour do (which, by
the way, had brought me round into the last fall), I concluded I might
as well bring it to a consummation without further delay, and so I
mustered my resolution and made the proposal to her direct; but,
shocking to relate, she answered, No. At first I supposed she did it
through an affectation of modesty, which I thought but ill became her
under the peculiar circumstances of the case, but on my renewal of the
charge I found she repelled it with greater firmness than before. I
tried it again and again, but with the same success, or rather with the
same want of success.

I finally was forced to give it up, at which I very unexpectedly found
myself mortified almost beyond endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to
me, in a hundred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded by the
reflection that I had so long been too stupid to discover her
intentions, and at the same time never doubting that I understood them
perfectly; and also that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody
else would have, had actually rejected me with all my fancied greatness.
And, to cap the whole, I then for the first time began to suspect that I
was really a little in love with her. But let it all go! I'll try and
outlive it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but this can
never in truth be said of me. I most emphatically, in this instance,
made a fool of myself. I have now come to the conclusion never again to
think of marrying, and for this reason--I can never be satisfied with
any one who would be blockhead enough to have me.

When you receive this, write me a long yarn about something to amuse me.
Give my respects to Mr. Browning.




_From a Debate between Lincoln, E.D. Baker, and others against Douglas,
Lamborn, and others. Springfield. December 1839_

       *       *       *       *       *


... Mr. Lamborn insists that the difference between the Van Buren party
and the Whigs is, that although the former sometimes err in practice,
they are always correct in principle, whereas the latter are wrong in
principle; and the better to impress this proposition, he uses a
figurative expression in these words: "The Democrats are vulnerable in
the heel, but they are sound in the heart and in the head." The first
branch of the figure--that is, that the Democrats are vulnerable in the
heel--I admit is not merely figuratively but literally true. Who that
looks but for a moment at their Swartwouts, their Prices, their
Harringtons, and their hundreds of others, scampering away with the
public money to Texas, to Europe, and to every spot of the earth where a
villain may hope to find refuge from justice, can at all doubt that they
are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running
fever? It seems that this malady of their heels operates on the
sound-headed and honest-hearted creatures very much like the cork leg in
the song did on its owner, which, when he had once got started on it,
the more he tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard
of wearing this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems
to be too strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier who
was always boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who
invariably retreated without orders at the first charge of the
engagement, being asked by his captain why he did so, replied, "Captain,
I have as brave a heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but somehow or other,
whenever danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So
it is with Mr. Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their
hands for the most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts
can dictate, but before they can possibly get it out again, their
rascally vulnerable heels will run away with them....




_Letter to W.G. Anderson. Lawrenceville, Illinois. October 31, 1840_


Dear Sir, Your note of yesterday is received. In the difficulty between
us of which you speak, you say you think I was the aggressor. I do not
think I was. You say my "words imported insult." I meant them as a fair
set-off to your own statements, and not otherwise; and in that light
alone I now wish you to understand them. You ask for my present
"feelings on the subject." I entertain no unkind feelings to you, and
none of any sort upon the subject, except a sincere regret that I
permitted myself to get into such an altercation.




_Extract from a Letter to John T. Stuart. Springfield Illinois. January
23, 1841_


For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon me; it is
not in my power to do so. I am now the most miserable man living. If
what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there
would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better,
I cannot tell; I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is
impossible; I must die or be better, it appears to me. The matter you
speak of on my account you may attend to as you say, unless you shall
hear of my condition forbidding it. I say this because I fear I shall be
unable to attend to any business here, and a change of scene might help
me. If I could be myself, I would rather remain at home with Judge
Logan. I can write no more.




_From an Address before the Washingtonian Temperance Society.
Springfield, Illinois. February 22, 1842_


Although the temperance cause has been in progress for nearly twenty
years, it is apparent to all that it is just now being crowned with a
degree of success hitherto unparalleled.

The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of
hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed
from a cold abstract theory to a living, breathing, active and powerful
chieftain, going forth conquering and to conquer. The citadels of his
great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temples and
his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been
performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made,
are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror's fame is
sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and
calling millions to his standard at a blast.

       *       *       *       *       *

"But," say some, "we are no drunkards, and we shall not acknowledge
ourselves such by joining a reform drunkard's society, whatever our
influence might be." Surely no Christian will adhere to this objection.

If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take
on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, to die an ignominious
death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the
infinitely lesser condescension for the temporal and perhaps eternal
salvation of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their
fellow-creatures; nor is the condescension very great. In my judgment,
such of us as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the
absence of appetite, than from any mental or moral superiority over
those who have. Indeed I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a
class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison
with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness
in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice. The demon of
intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius
and generosity. What one of us but can call to mind some relative more
promising in youth than all his fellows, who has fallen a sacrifice to
his rapacity? He ever seems to have gone forth like the Egyptian angel
of death, commissioned to slay, if not the first, the fairest born of
every family. Shall he now be arrested in his desolating career? In that
arrest all can give aid that will; and who shall be excused that can and
will not? Far around as human breath has ever blown, he keeps our
fathers, our brothers, our sons, and our friends prostrate in the chains
of moral death....

When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind,
unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true
maxim "that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall."
So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him
that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches
his heart, which, say what you will, is the great high-road to his
reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in
convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that
cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his
judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned
and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues
to his head and his heart; and though your cause be naked truth itself,
transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than
steel can be made, and though you throw it with more than herculean
force and precision, you shall be no more able to pierce him than to
penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. Such is man,
and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his
own best interests....

Another error, as it seems to me, into which the old reformers fell, was
the position that all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and
therefore must be turned adrift and damned without remedy in order that
the grace of temperance might abound, to the temperate then, and to all
mankind some hundreds of years thereafter. There is in this something so
repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so cold-blooded and feelingless,
that it never did, nor never can enlist the enthusiasm of a popular
cause. We could not love the man who taught it--we could not hear him
with patience. The heart could not throw open its portals to it, the
generous man could not adopt it--it could not mix with his blood. It
looked so fiendishly selfish, so like throwing fathers and brothers
overboard to lighten the boat for our security, that the noble-minded
shrank from the manifest meanness of the thing. And besides this, the
benefits of a reformation to be effected by such a system were too
remote in point of time to warmly engage many in its behalf. Few can be
induced to labour exclusively for posterity; and none will do it
enthusiastically. Posterity has done nothing for us; and theorize on it
as we may, practically we shall do very little for it, unless we are
made to think we are at the same time doing something for ourselves.

What an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit, to ask or expect a
whole community to rise up and labour for the temporal happiness of
others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of
which community take no pains whatever to secure their own eternal
welfare at no more distant day! Great distance in either time or space
has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind.
Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead
and gone, are but little regarded even in our own cases, and much less
in the cases of others. Still, in addition to this there is something so
ludicrous in promises of good or threats of evil a great way off as to
render the whole subject with which they are connected easily turned
into ridicule. "Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if
you don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if
ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."




_From the Circular of the Whig Committee. An Address to the People of
Illinois. March 4, 1843_


... The system of loans is but temporary in its nature, and must soon
explode. It is a system not only ruinous while it lasts, but one that
must soon fail and leave us destitute.

As an individual who undertakes to live by borrowing soon finds his
original means devoured by interest, and next, no one left to borrow
from, so must it be with a government.

We repeat, then, that a tariff sufficient for revenue, or a direct tax,
must soon be resorted to; and, indeed, we believe this alternative is
now denied by no one. But which system shall be adopted? Some of our
opponents in theory admit the propriety of a tariff sufficient for
revenue, but even they will not in practice vote for such a tariff;
while others boldly advocate direct taxation. Inasmuch, therefore, as
some of them boldly advocate direct taxation, and all the rest--or so
nearly all as to make exceptions needless--refuse to adopt the tariff,
we think it is doing them no injustice to class them all as advocates of
direct taxation. Indeed, we believe they are only delaying an open
avowal of the system till they can assure themselves that the people
will tolerate it. Let us, then, briefly compare the two systems. The
tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in
large parcels, at a few commercial points, will require comparatively
few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system the
land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going
forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass
and other green thing. And, again, by the tariff system the whole
revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods, and those chiefly the
luxuries and not the necessaries of life. By this system, the man who
contents himself to live upon the products of his own country pays
nothing at all. And surely that country is extensive enough, and its
products abundant and varied enough, to answer all the real wants of its
people. In short, by this system the burden of revenue falls almost
entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and
labouring many, who live at home and upon home products, go entirely
free. By the direct tax system, none can escape. However strictly the
citizen may exclude from his premises all foreign luxuries, fine cloths,
fine silks, rich wines, golden chains, and diamond rings,--still, for
the possession of his house, his barn, and his homespun he is to be
perpetually haunted and harassed by the tax-gatherer. With these views,
we leave it to be determined whether we or our opponents are more truly
democratic on the subject.




_From a Letter to Martin M. Morris. Springfield, Illinois. March 26,
1843_


It is truly gratifying to me to learn that while the people of Sangamon
have cast me off, my old friends of Menard, who have known me longest
and best, stick to me. It would astonish, if not amuse, the older
citizens to learn that I (a stranger, friendless, uneducated, penniless
boy, working on a flatboat at ten dollars per month) have been put down
here as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family
distinction. Yet so, chiefly, it was. There was, too, the strangest
combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and
therefore, as I suppose, with few exceptions, got all that church. My
wife has some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some with the
Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set
down as either the one or the other, while it was everywhere contended
that no Christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church,
was suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fighting a duel.
With all these things, Baker, of course, had nothing to do. Nor do I
complain of them. As to his own church going for him, I think that was
right enough, and as to the influences I have spoken of in the other,
though they were very strong, it would be grossly untrue and unjust to
charge that they acted upon them in a body, or were very near so. I only
mean that those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent. upon
my strength throughout the religious controversy. But enough of this.




_From a Letter to Joshua F. Speed. Springfield. October 22, 1846_


We have another boy, born the 10th of March. He is very much such a
child as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order. Bob is "short and
low," and I expect always will be. He talks very plainly--almost as
plainly as anybody. He is quite smart enough. I sometimes fear that he
is one of the little rare-ripe sort that are smarter at about five than
ever after. He has a great deal of that sort of mischief that is the
offspring of such animal spirits. Since I began this letter, a messenger
came to tell me Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house his
mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very likely, he is
run away again.




_From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Washington. January 8, 1848_


Dear William, Your letter of December 27th was received a day or two
ago. I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken, and
promise to take in my little business there. As to speech-making, by way
of getting the hang of the House, I made a little speech two or three
days ago on a post-office question of no general interest. I find
speaking here and elsewhere about the same thing. I was about as badly
scared, and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect to make
one within a week or two, in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish
you to see it.

It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who desire
that I should be re-elected. I most heartily thank them for their
partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas,
that "personally I would not object" to a re-election, although I
thought at the time, and still think, it would be quite as well for me
to return to the law at the end of a single term. I made the declaration
that I would not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly
with others, to keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district
from going to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that,
if it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I could
refuse the people the right of sending me again. But to enter myself as
a competitor of others, or to authorize any one so to enter me, is what
my word and honour forbid.





_From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Washington. June 22, 1848_


As to the young men. You must not wait to be brought forward by the
older men. For instance, do you suppose that I should ever have got into
notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men?
You young men get together and form a "Rough and Ready Club," and have
regular meetings and speeches. Take in everybody you can get. Harrison
Grimsley, L.A. Enos, Lee Kimball and C.W. Matheny will do to begin the
thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about
town, whether just of age or a little under age--Chris. Logan, Reddick
Ridgley, Lewis Zwizler, and hundreds such. Let every one play the part
he can play best,--some speak, some sing, and all "holler." Your
meetings will be of evenings; the older men, and the women, will go to
hear you; so that it will not only contribute to the election of "Old
Zach," but will be an interesting pastime, and improving to the
intellectual faculties of all engaged. Don't fail to do this.




_From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Washington, July 10, 1848_


The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself every way he can,
never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure
you that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation.
There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and
they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its
true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if
this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall
into it.





_Letter to John D. Johnston. January 2, 1851_


Dear Johnston, 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; 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 shall
go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will give you money for
it. Let father and your boys take charge of your 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 labour, I now promise you, that for
every dollar you will, between this and the first of May, get for your
own labour, either in money or as 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 in 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 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.




_Letter to John D. Johnston. Shelbyville. November 4, 1851_


Dear Brother, 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 cannot 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 cannot 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,
drink, and wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, I feel it
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 for your case.

A word to mother. Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him.
If I were you I would try it awhile. If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not), you can return to your own home. Chapman feels very
kindly to you, and I have no doubt he will make your situation very
pleasant.




_Note for Law Lecture. Written about July 1, 1850_


I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a
lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I
have been moderately successful. The leading rule for a lawyer, as for
the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for
to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall
behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do
all the labour pertaining to it which can then be done. When you bring a
common law-suit, if you have the facts for doing so, write the
declaration at once. If a law point be involved, examine the books, and
note the authority you rely on upon the declaration itself, where you
are sure to find it when wanted. The same of defences and pleas. In
business not likely to be litigated,--ordinary collection cases,
foreclosures, partitions, and the like,--make all examinations of
titles, and note them and even draft orders and decrees in advance. The
course has a triple advantage; it avoids omissions and neglect, saves
your labour when once done, performs the labour out of court when you
have leisure, rather than in court when you have not.

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the
lawyer's avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in
other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make
a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than
relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of
speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his
case is a failure in advance.

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to compromise whenever
you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real
loser--in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peace-maker the lawyer
has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be
business enough.

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who
does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually
overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon
to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be
infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread
and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to
both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. As a
general rule, never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a
small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common
mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case as if something was
still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack
interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence
in the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance.
Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure
to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee-note--at least not
before the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence
and dishonesty--negligence by losing interest in the case, and
dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration
to fail.

There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest.
I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and
honours are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it
appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct
and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young
man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular
belief. Resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment
you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a
lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of
which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.




_A Fragment. Written about July 1, 1854_

Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the
British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort.

We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired
labourers amongst us. How little they know whereof they speak! There is
no permanent class of hired labourers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago
I was a hired labourer. The hired labourer of yesterday labours on his
own account to-day, and will hire others to labour for him to-morrow.

Advancement--improvement in condition--is the order of things in a
society of equals. As labour is the common burden of our race, so the
effort of some to shift their share of the burden on to the shoulders of
others is the great durable curse of the race. Originally a curse for
transgression upon the whole race, when, as by slavery, it is
concentrated on a part only, it becomes the double-refined curse of God
upon his creatures.

Free labour has the inspiration of hope; pure slavery has no hope. The
power of hope upon human exertion and happiness is wonderful. The
slave-master himself has a conception of it, and hence the system of
tasks among slaves. The slave whom you cannot drive with the lash to
break seventy-five pounds of hemp in a day, if you will task him to
break a hundred, and promise him pay for all he does over, he will break
you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope for the rod.

And yet perhaps it does not occur to you that, to the extent of your
gain in the case, you have given up the slave system and adopted the
free system of labour.





_A Fragment on Slavery. July 1854_

If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B,
why may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may
enslave A? You say A is white and B is black. It is colour, then; the
lighter having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule
you are to be slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than
your own.

You do not mean colour exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually
the superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave
them? Take care again. By this rule you are to be slave to the first man
you meet with an intellect superior to your own.

But, say you, it is a question of interest, and if you make it your
interest you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can
make it his interest he has the right to enslave you.




_Lincoln's Reply to Senator Douglas at Peoria, Illinois. The Origin of
the Wilmot Proviso. October 16, 1854_


... Our war with Mexico broke out in 1846. When Congress was about
adjourning that session, President Polk asked them to place two millions
of dollars under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if found
practicable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico,
and acquiring some part of her territory. A bill was duly gotten up for
the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in the House of
Representatives, when a Democratic member from Pennsylvania by the name
of David Wilmot moved as an amendment, "Provided, that in any territory
thus acquired there shall never be slavery." _This is the origin of the
far-famed Wilmot Proviso._ It created a great flutter; but it stuck like
wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill passed with it through the
House. The Senate, however, adjourned without final action on it, and so
both the appropriation and the proviso were lost for the time.

... This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, covert zeal,
for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the
monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our
republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the
enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as
hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity,
and especially because it forces so many good men amongst 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.

Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice against
the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation.
If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If
it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. This I
believe of the masses North and South. Doubtless there are individuals
on both sides who would not hold slaves under any circumstances, and
others who would gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of
existence. We know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North
and become tip-top Abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South and
become most cruel slave-masters.

When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin
of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the
institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in
any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I
surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to
do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to
do as to the existing institution. My first impulse would be to free all
the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land. But a
moment's reflection would convince me that whatever of high hope (as I
think there is) there may be in this in the long run, its sudden
execution is impossible. If they were all landed there in a day, they
would all perish in the next ten days; and there are not surplus
shipping and surplus money enough to carry them there in many times ten
days. What then? Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is
it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not
hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for
me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them
politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of
this, and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of
whites will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound
judgment is not the sole question, if indeed it is any part of it. A
universal feeling, whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely
disregarded. We cannot then make them equals. It does seem to me that
systems of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their
tardiness in this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the
South.

Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the
extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say, that inasmuch as
you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not
object to your taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is perfectly
logical, if there is no difference between hogs and slaves. But while
you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask
whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as
much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world,
only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no
larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority, South
as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more
divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain.
These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern people manifest in many
ways their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that,
after all, there is humanity in the negro. If they deny this let me
address them a few plain questions.

In 1820 you joined the North almost unanimously in declaring the African
slave-trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of death. Why
did you do this? If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join
in providing that men should be hung for it? The practice was no more
than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy them. But
you never thought of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses,
wild buffaloes, or wild bears.

Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of native
tyrants known as the _slave-dealer_. He watches your necessities, and
crawls up to buy your slave at a speculating price. If you cannot help
it, you sell to him; but if you can help it, you drive him from your
door. You despise him utterly; you do not recognize him as a friend, or
even as an honest man. Your children must not play with his; they may
rollick freely with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children. If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get through
the job without so much as touching him. It is common with you to join
hands with the men you meet; but with the slave-dealer you avoid the
ceremony,--instinctively shrinking from the snaky contact. If he grows
rich and retires from business, you still remember him, and still keep
up the ban of non-intercourse upon him and his family. Now, why is this?
You do not so treat the man who deals in cotton, corn, or tobacco.

And yet again. There are in the United States and Territories, including
the District of Columbia, over four hundred and thirty thousand free
blacks. At five hundred dollars per head, they are worth over two
hundred millions of dollars. How comes this vast amount of property to
be running about without owners? We do not see free horses or free
cattle running at large. How is this? All these free blacks are the
descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves; and they would be
slaves now but for something that has operated on their white owners,
inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice to liberate them. What is that
something? Is there any mistaking it? In all these cases it is your
sense of justice and human sympathy continually telling you that the
poor negro has some natural right to himself,--that those who deny it
and make mere merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.

And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave, and
estimate him as only the equal of the hog? Why ask us to do what you
will not do yourselves? Why ask us to do for nothing what two hundred
millions of dollars could not induce you to do?

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come. That argument is "the sacred right of
self-government." ... Some poet has said,--

     "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this quotation, I
meet that argument,--I rush in,--I take that bull by the horns.... My
faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases
with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the
sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities
of men as well as to individuals. I so extend it because it is
politically wise as well as naturally just,--politically wise in saving
us from broils about matters which do not concern us. Here, or at
Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of Virginia,
or the cranberry laws of Indiana. The doctrine of self-government is
right,--absolutely and internally right; but it has no just application
as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has
any application here depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If
he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of
self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is a
man, is it not to that extent a total 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. If the negro is a man, then my ancient faith teaches me that
"all men are created equal," and that there can be no moral right in
connection with one man's making a slave of another.

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases
our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to
govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few
miserable negroes!"

Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to
be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the
contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another
man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading
principle,--the sheet-anchor of American republicanism.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature,--opposition to it
in his love of justice. These principles are in eternal antagonism, and
when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings
them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow. Repeal
the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the Declaration
of Independence; repeal all past history,--you still cannot repeal human
nature. It still will be the abundance of man's heart that slavery
extension is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will
continue to speak....

The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored. Slavery may or may not be
established in Nebraska. But whether it be or not, we shall have
repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit of
compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national
compromise? The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which first
gave us the Constitution, and has thrice saved the Union--we shall have
strangled and cast from us for ever. And what shall we have in lieu of
it? The South flushed with triumph and tempted to excess; the North
betrayed, as they believed, brooding on wrong and burning for revenge.
One side will provoke, the other resent. The one will taunt, the other
defy; one aggresses, the other retaliates. Already a few in the North
defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of the Fugitive
Slave Law, and even menace the institution of slavery in the States
where it exists. Already a few in the South claim the constitutional
right to take and hold slaves in the free States, demand the revival of
the slave-trade, and demand a treaty with Great Britain by which
fugitive slaves may be reclaimed from Canada. As yet they are but few on
either side. It is a grave question for lovers of the Union, whether the
final destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of
all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of these,
and fatally increase the number of both.

... Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest they
be thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me, as an
old Whig, to tell them good-humouredly that I think this is very silly?
Stand with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right,
and part with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist in
restoring the Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he
attempts to repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. In the latter case you stand
with the Southern disunionist. What of that? You are still right. In
both cases you are right In both cases you expose the dangerous
extremes. In both you stand on the middle ground and hold the ship level
and steady. In both you are national, and nothing less than national.
This is the good old Whig ground. To desert such ground because of any
company is to be less than a Whig, less than a man, less than an
American.

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 free
people--a sad evidence that, feeling over-prosperity, we forget right;
that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere. I object to it
because the Fathers of the Republic eschewed and rejected it. The
argument of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in
favour of slavery, and so far, and so far only as it carried them, did
they ever go. They found the institution existing among us, which they
could not help, and they cast the blame on the British king for having
permitted its introduction. Thus we see the plain, unmistakable spirit
of their age towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and
toleration only by necessity.

But now it is to be transformed into a _sacred right_.... Henceforth it
is to be the chief jewel of the nation,--the very figure-head of the
ship of State. Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the
grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty
years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now
from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for
some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self-government. These
principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and
Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must despise the other....

Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us purify it.
Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit if not the blood of the
Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of moral right, back
upon its existing legal rights and its arguments of necessity. Let us
return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in
peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South, let
all Americans, let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great
and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union,
but we shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for ever worthy
of the saving.




_From Letter to the Hon. Geo. Robertson, Lexington, Kentucky.
Springfield, Illinois. August 15, 1855_


My dear Sir, ... You are not a friend of slavery in the abstract. In
that speech you spoke of "the peaceful extinction of slavery" and used
other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was, at some
time, to have an end. Since then we have had thirty-six years of
experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is
no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. The signal failure
of Henry Clay and other good and great men, in 1849, to effect anything
in favour of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, together with a thousand
other signs, extinguishes that hope utterly. On the question of liberty,
as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political
slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that
"all men are created equal" a self-evident truth; but now when we have
grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have
become so greedy to be _masters_ that we call the same maxim "a
self-evident lie." The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is
still a great day for burning fire-crackers!

That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself
become extinct with the _occasion_ and the _men_ of the Revolution.
Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted
systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact that not a
single State has done the like since. So far as peaceful, voluntary
emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America,
scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of the 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 his
crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans, sooner than will our
American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation continue together
_permanently--for ever_--half slave, and half free?" The problem is too
mighty for me. May God in his mercy superintend the solution.

     Your much obliged friend, and humble servant,
       A. LINCOLN.




_Extracts from Letter to Joshua F. Speed. August 24, 1855_


You suggest that in political action now, you and I would differ. I
suppose we would; not quite so much, however, as you may think. You know
I dislike slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far
there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield your
legal right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those who are not
themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware
that any one is bidding you yield that right; very certainly I am not. I
leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights
and my obligations under the Constitution in regard to your slaves. I
confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and
carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lips
and keep quiet. In 1841, you and I had together a tedious low-water trip
on a steamboat, from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I
well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, there were on
board ten or a dozen slaves shackled together with irons. That sight was
a continued torment to me, and I see something like it every time I
touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to
assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually
exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to
appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify
their feelings in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution
and the Union. I do oppose the extension of slavery, because my judgment
and feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the contrary.
If for this you and I must differ, differ we must. You say if you were
President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri
outrages upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes
herself a slave State she must be admitted, or the Union must be
dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly; that
is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she
still be admitted, or the Union dissolved? That will be the phase of the
question when it first becomes a practical one. In your assumption that
there may be a fair decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I
plainly see that you and I would differ about the Nebraska law. I look
upon that enactment, not as a law, but as a violence from the beginning.
It was conceived in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being
executed in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, because the
destruction of the Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was
nothing less than violence. It was passed in violence, because it could
not have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence of
the known will of their constituents. It is maintained in violence,
because the elections since clearly demand its repeal, and the demand is
openly disregarded.

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the law; I
say that the way it is being executed is quite as good as any of its
antecedents. It is being executed in the precise way which was intended
from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or
condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly
enough to believe that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he
has been bravely undeceived.

That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it ask to be
admitted into the Union, I take to be already a settled question, and so
settled by the very means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle
of law ever held by any court North or South, every negro taken to
Kansas _is_ free; yet in utter disregard of this--in the spirit of
violence merely--that beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang
any man who shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights. This is
the subject and real object of the law. If, like Haman, they should hang
upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among the
mourners for their fate. In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the
restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as Kansas remains a
Territory; and when, by all these foul means, it seeks to come into the
Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it. I am very loath in any case
to withhold my assent to the enjoyment of property acquired or located
in good faith; but I do not admit that good faith in taking a negro to
Kansas to be held in slavery is a probability with any man. Any man who
has sense enough to be the controller of his own property has too much
sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole Nebraska
business. But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas, I
shall have some company, but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not,
on that account, attempt to dissolve the Union. I think it probable,
however, we shall be beaten. Standing as a unit among yourselves, you
can, directly and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day,
as you could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy. Get hold
of some man in the North whose position and ability are such that he can
make the support of your measure, whatever it may be, a Democratic-party
necessity, and the thing is done. Apropos of this, let me tell you an
anecdote. Douglas introduced the Nebraska Bill in January. In February
afterward, there was a called session of the Illinois Legislature. Of
the one hundred members composing the two branches of that body, about
seventy were Democrats. These latter held a caucus, in which the
Nebraska Bill was talked of, if not formally discussed. It was thereby
discovered that just three, and no more, were in favour of the measure.
In a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have resolutions passed
approving the bill; and they were passed by large majorities! The truth
of this is vouched for by a bolting Democratic member. The masses too,
Democratic as well as Whig, were even nearer unanimous against it; but
as soon as the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way
the Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly
astonishing.

You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a Christian
you will rejoice at it. All decent slaveholders talk that way, and I do
not doubt their candour; but they never vote that way. Although in a
private letter or conversation you will express your preference that
Kansas should be free, you would vote for no man for Congress who would
say the same thing publicly. No such man could be elected from any
district in a slave State. You think Stringfellow and company ought to
be hung.... The slave-breeders and slave-traders are a small, odious,
and detested class among you; and yet in politics they dictate the
course of all of you, and are as completely your masters as you are the
master of your own negroes. You inquire where I now stand. That is a
disputed point. I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs,
and that I am an Abolitionist. When I was at Washington, I voted for the
Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard of any one
attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the
extension of slavery. I am not a Know-nothing; that is certain. How
could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in
favour of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy
appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we began by declaring
that _all men are created equal_. We now practically read it, _all men
are created equal except negroes_. When the Know-nothings get control,
it will read, _all men are created equal except negroes_ and foreigners
and Catholics. When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some
country where they make no pretence of loving liberty--to Russia, for
instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy
of hypocrisy.... My kindest regards to Mrs. Speed. On the leading
subject of this letter I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours;
and yet let me say I am your friend for ever.

     A. LINCOLN.




_Mr. Lincoln's Speech. May 19, 1856_


Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen, I was over at [cries of "Platform!" "Take
the platform!"]--I say, that while I was at Danville Court, some of our
friends of anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield and elected me as
one delegate to represent old Sangamon with them in this convention, and
I am here certainly as a sympathizer in this movement and by virtue of
that meeting and selection. But we can hardly be called delegates
strictly, inasmuch as, properly speaking, we represent nobody but
ourselves. I think it altogether fair to say that we have no
anti-Nebraska party in Sangamon, although there is a good deal of
anti-Nebraska feeling there; but I say for myself, and I think I may
speak also for my colleagues, that we who are here fully approve of the
platform and of all that has been done [A voice: "Yes!"]; and even if we
are not regularly delegates, it will be right for me to answer your call
to speak. I suppose we truly stand for the public sentiment of Sangamon
on the great question of the repeal, although we do not yet represent
many numbers who have taken a distinct position on the question.

We are in a trying time--it ranges above mere party--and this movement
to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the help and good
counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion makes itself very
strongly felt, and a change is made in our present course, _blood will
flow on account of Nebraska, and brother's hand will be raised against
brother_! [The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive,
if not, indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over me.
Others gave a similar experience.]

I have listened with great interest to the earnest appeal made to
Illinois men by the gentleman from Lawrence [James S. Emery] who has
just addressed us so eloquently and forcibly. I was deeply moved by his
statement of the wrongs done to free-State men out there. I think it
just to say that all true men North should sympathize with them, and
ought to be willing to do any possible and needful thing to right their
wrongs. But we must not promise what we ought not, lest we be called on
to perform what we cannot; we must be calm and moderate, and consider
the whole difficulty, and determine what is possible and just. We must
not be led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober
judgments would not approve in our cooler moments. We have higher aims;
we will have more serious business than to dally with temporary
measures.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for a
right. We know that great political and moral wrongs are done, and
outrages committed, and we denounce those wrongs and outrages, although
we cannot, at present, do much more. But we desire to reach out beyond
those personal outrages and establish a rule that will apply to all, and
so prevent any future outrages.

We have seen to-day that every shade of popular opinion is represented
here, with _Freedom_ or rather _Free-Soil_ as the basis. We have come
together as in some sort representatives of popular opinion against the
extension of slavery into territory now free in fact as well as by law,
and the pledged word of the statesmen of the nation who are now no more.
We come--we are here assembled together--to protest as well as we can
against a great wrong, and to take measures, as well as we now can, to
make that wrong right; to place the nation, as far as it may be possible
now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and the
plain way to do this is to restore the Compromise, and to demand and
determine that _Kansas shall be free!_ [Immense applause.] While we
affirm, and reaffirm, if necessary, our devotion to the principles of
the Declaration of Independence, let our practical work here be limited
to the above. We know that there is not a perfect agreement of sentiment
here on the public questions which might be rightfully considered in
this convention, and that the indignation which we all must feel cannot
be helped; but all of us must give up something for the good of the
cause. There is one desire which is uppermost in the mind, one wish
common to us all--to which no dissent will be made; and I counsel you
earnestly to bury all resentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all
things work to a common purpose in which we are united and agreed about,
and which all present will agree is absolutely necessary--which _must_
be done by any rightful mode if there be such: _Slavery must be kept out
of Kansas_! [Applause.] The test--the pinch--is right there. If we lose
Kansas to freedom, an example will be set which will prove fatal to
freedom in the end. We, therefore, in the language of the _Bible_, must
"lay the axe to the root of the tree." Temporizing will not do longer;
now is the time for decision--for firm, persistent, resolute action.
[Applause.]

The Nebraska bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of wholesome
legislation, but was and is an act of legislative usurpation, whose
result, if not indeed intention, is to make slavery national; and unless
headed off in some effective way, we are in a fair way to see this land
of boasted freedom converted into a land of slavery in fact.
[Sensation.] Just open your two eyes, and see if this be not so. I need
do no more than state, to command universal approval, that almost the
entire North, as well as a large following in the border States, is
radically opposed to the planting of slavery in free territory. Probably
in a popular vote throughout the nation nine-tenths of the voters in the
free States, and at least one-half in the border States, if they could
express their sentiments freely, would vote NO on such an issue; and it
is safe to say that two-thirds of the votes of the entire nation would
be opposed to it. And yet, in spite of this overbalancing of sentiment
in this free country, we are in a fair way to see Kansas present itself
for admission as a slave State. Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law
of Kansas, to deny that slavery exists there even now. By every
principle of law, a negro in Kansas is free; yet the _bogus_
legislature makes it an infamous crime to tell him that he is free!

The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and
liberty; for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and well
known by the most common experience, that men will do things under the
terror of the party lash that they would not on any account or for any
consideration do otherwise; while men who will march up to the mouth of
a loaded cannon without shrinking, will run from the terrible name of
"Abolitionist," even when pronounced by a worthless creature whom they,
with good reason, despise. For instance--to press this point a
little--Judge Douglas introduced his anti-Nebraska bill in January; and
we had an extra session of our legislature in the succeeding February,
in which were seventy-five Democrats; and at a party caucus, fully
attended, there were just three votes out of the whole seventy-five, for
the measure. But in a few days orders came on from Washington,
commanding them to approve the measure; the party lash was applied, and
it was brought up again in caucus, and passed by a large majority. The
masses were against it, but party necessity carried it; and it was
passed through the lower house of Congress against the will of the
people, for the same reason. Here is where the greatest danger
lies--that, while we profess to be a government of law and reason, law
will give way to violence on demand of this awful and crushing power.
Like the great Juggernaut--I think that is the name--the great idol, it
crushes everything that comes in its way, and makes a--or as I read
once, in a black-letter law book, "a slave is a human being who is
legally not a _person_, but a _thing_." And if the safeguards to liberty
are broken down, as is now attempted, when they have made _things_ of
all the free negroes, how long, think you, before they will begin to
make _things_ of poor white men? [Applause.] Be not deceived.
Revolutions do not go backward. The founder of the Democratic party
declared that _all_ men were created equal. His successor in the
leadership has written the word "white" before men, making it read "all
_white_ men are created equal." Pray, will or may not the Know-nothings,
if they should get in power, add the word "protestant," making it read
"_all protestant white men_"?

Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals in
other quarters. John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his respects to, you
will recollect, calls the immortal Declaration "a self-evident lie;"
while at the birth-place of freedom--in the shadow of Bunker Hill and of
the "cradle of liberty," at the home of the Adamses and Warren and
Otis--Choate, from our side of the house, dares to fritter away the
birthday promise of liberty by proclaiming the Declaration to be "a
string of glittering generalities;" and the Southern Whigs, working hand
in hand with pro-slavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories
practical. Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element
in slavery, solemnly declared that he "trembled for his country when he
remembered that God is just;" while Judge Douglas, with an insignificant
wave of the hand, "don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted
down." Now, if slavery is right, or even negative, he has a right to
treat it in this trifling manner. But if it is a moral and political
wrong, as all Christendom considers it to be, how can he answer to God
for this attempt to spread and fortify it? [Applause.]

But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can maintain a
negative, or merely neutral, position on this question; and,
accordingly, he avows that the Union was made _by_ white men and _for_
white men and their descendants. As matter of fact, the first branch of
the proposition is historically true; the government was made by white
men, and they were and are the superior race. This I admit. But the
corner-stone of the government, so to speak, was the declaration that
"_all_ men are created equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness." [Applause.]

And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were particular to
keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the reason being that
slavery would ultimately come to an end, and they did not wish to have
any reminder that in this free country human beings were ever
prostituted to slavery. [Applause.] Nor is it any argument that we are
superior and the negro inferior--that he has but one talent while we
have ten. Let the negro possess the little he has in independence; if he
has but one talent, he should be permitted to keep the little he has.
[Applause.] But slavery will endure no test of reason or logic; and yet
its advocates, like Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic, or noisy
assumption, it might better be termed, like the above, in order to
prepare the mind for the gradual, but none the less certain,
encroachments of the Moloch of slavery upon, the fair domain of freedom.
But however much you may argue upon it, or smother it in soft phrases,
slavery can only be maintained by force--by violence. The repeal of the
Missouri Compromise was by violence. It was a violation of both law and
the sacred obligations of honour, to overthrow and trample underfoot a
solemn compromise, obtained by the fearful loss to freedom of one of the
fairest of our Western domains. Congress violated the will and
confidence of its constituents in voting for the bill; and while public
sentiment, as shown by the elections of 1854, demanded the restoration
of this compromise, Congress violated its trust by refusing, simply
because it had the force of numbers to hold on to it. And murderous
violence is being used now, in order to force slavery on to Kansas; for
it cannot be done in any other way. [Sensation.]

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence--force,
instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and spread slavery,
and, in time, to make it general. We see it at both ends of the line. In
Washington, on the very spot where the outrage was started, the fearless
Sumner is beaten to insensibility, and is now slowly dying; while
senators who claim to be gentlemen and Christians stood by,
countenancing the act, and even applauding it afterward in their places
in the Senate. Even Douglas, our man, saw it all and was within helping
distance, yet let the murderous blows fall unopposed. Then, at the other
end of the line, at the very time Sumner was being murdered, Lawrence
was being destroyed for the crime of Freedom. It was the most prominent
stronghold of liberty in Kansas, and must give way to the all-dominating
power of slavery. Only two days ago, Judge Trumbull found it necessary
to propose a bill in the Senate to prevent a general civil war and to
restore peace in Kansas.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we expect
some new disaster with each newspaper we read. Are we in a healthful
political state? Are not the tendencies plain? Do not the signs of the
times point plainly the way in which we are going? [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by South
and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment about it was
not controlled by geographical lines or considerations of climate, but
by moral and philanthropic views. Petitions for the abolition of slavery
were presented to the very first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts
alike. To show the harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive
slave law was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate,
and but seven dissenting votes in the House. It was, however, a wise
law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one. Twenty-five
years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated; and
thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by Mason of
Virginia, was passed by Northern votes. I am not, just now, complaining
of this law, but I am trying to show how the current sets; for the
proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive than the present one. In
1774 the Continental Congress pledged itself, without a dissenting vote,
to wholly discontinue the slave trade, and to neither purchase nor
import any slave: and less than three months before the passage of the
Declaration of Independence, the same Congress which adopted that
declaration unanimously resolved "that _no slave be imported into any of
the thirteen United Colonies_." [Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it the
slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as "a
piratical warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and as "a
cruel war against human nature." [Applause.] All agreed on this except
South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve harmony, and from
the necessity of the case, these expressions were omitted. Indeed,
abolition societies existed as far south as Virginia; and it is a
well-known fact that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason,
and Pendleton were qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on
that subject than we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be
to-day. On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its
lands lying northwest of the Ohio River. Jefferson, Chase of Maryland,
and Howell of Rhode Island, as a committee on that and territory
thereafter _to be ceded_, reported that no slavery should exist after
the year 1800. Had this report been adopted, not only the Northwest, but
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi also would have been free;
but it required the assent of nine States to ratify it. North Carolina
was divided, and thus its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New
Jersey refused to vote. In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to
by six States. Three years later, on a square vote to exclude slavery
from the Northwest, only one vote, and that from New York, was against
it. And yet, thirty-seven years later, five thousand citizens of
Illinois out of a voting mass of less than twelve thousand,
deliberately, after a long and heated contest, voted to introduce
slavery in Illinois; and, to-day, a large party in the free State of
Illinois are willing to vote to fasten the shackles of slavery on the
fair domain of Kansas, notwithstanding it received the dowry of freedom
long before its birth as a political community. I repeat, therefore, the
question, Is it not plain in what direction we are tending? [Sensation.]
In the colonial time, Mason, Pendleton, and Jefferson were as hostile to
slavery in Virginia as Otis, Ames, and the Adamses were in
Massachusetts; and Virginia made as earnest an effort to get rid of it
as old Massachusetts did. But circumstances were against them and they
failed; but not that the good-will of its leading men was lacking. Yet
within less than fifty years Virginia changed its tune, and made
negro-breeding for the cotton and sugar States one of its leading
industries. [Laughter and applause.]

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a more
violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding would desire
to make here to-day--a speech which could not be safely repeated
anywhere on Southern soil in this enlightened year. But while there were
some differences of opinion on this subject even then, discussion was
allowed; but as you see by the Kansas slave code, which, as you know, is
the Missouri slave code, merely ferried across the river, it is a felony
to even express an opinion hostile to that foul blot in the land of
Washington and the Declaration of Independence. [Sensation.]

In Kentucky--my State--in 1849, on a test vote, the mighty influence of
Henry Clay and many other good men there could not get a symptom of
expression in favour of gradual emancipation on a plain issue of
marching toward the light of civilization with Ohio and Illinois; but
the State of Boone and Hardin and Henry Clay, with a _nigger_ under each
arm, took the black trail toward the deadly swamps of barbarism. Is
there--can there be--any doubt about this thing? And is there any doubt
that we must all lay aside our prejudices and march, shoulder to
shoulder, in the great army of Freedom? [Applause.]

Every Fourth of July our young orators all proclaim this to be "the land
of the _free_ and the home of the brave!" Well, now, when you orators
get that off next year, and, may be, this very year, how would you like
some old grizzled farmer to get up in the grove and deny it? [Laughter.]
How would you like that? But suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State,
and all the "border ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State
men come trailing back to the dishonoured North, like whipped dogs with
their tails between their legs, it is--ain't it?--evident that this is
no more the "land of the free;" and if we let it go so, we won't dare to
say "home of the brave" out loud. [Sensation and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will, slavery will
triumph through violence, unless that will be made manifest and
enforced? Even Governor Reeder claimed at the outset that the contest in
Kansas was to be fair, but he got his eyes open at last; and I believe
that, as a result of this moral and physical violence, Kansas will soon
apply for admission as a slave State. And yet we can't mistake that the
people don't wa