Passion does not reason; but if Brown reasoned and desired to give a public motive to his personal rancors, he probably said to himself that “the slave drivers had tried to put down freedom in Kansas by force of arms, and he would try to put down slavery by the same means.” Thus the bloody instructions which they taught return to plague the inventors. They gave, for the first time in the history of the United States, an example of the resort to arms to carry out political schemes, and, dreadful as the retaliation is which Brown has initiated, must take their share of the responsibility. They must remember that they accustomed men, in their Kansas forays, to the idea of using arms against their political opponents, that by their crimes and outrages they drove hundreds to madness, and that the feelings of bitterness and revenge thus generated have since rankled in the heart. Brown has made himself an organ of these in a fearfully significant way.
The evident terror many Southerners had of a slave insurrection filled Bryant with scorn. Buchanan wished to acquire Cuba and northern Mexico, and Southern newspapers wished Africa opened and new millions of blacks poured in; slavery was a blessed institution, and we could not have too much of it! “But while they speak the tocsin sounds, the blacks are in arms, their houses are in flames, their wives and children driven into exile or killed, and a furious servile war stretches its horrors over years. That is the blessed institution you ask us to foster, and spread, and worship, and for the sake of which you even spout your impotent threats against the grand edifice of the Union!” Pending the trial there was much interest in Brown’s carpet-bag. The Evening Post said that its incendiary contents were probably Washington’s will, emancipating his slaves; his letter of 1786 to Lafayette expressing hope that slavery would be abolished; Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, deploring slavery; his project of 1785 for emancipating the slaves; and similar documents by Patrick Henry, John Randolph, and Monroe. Bryant’s utterance when John Brown was hanged recalls that of our other great men of letters. Emerson spoke of Brown as “that new saint awaiting his martyrdom”; Thoreau called him “an angel of light”; Longfellow jotted in his diary, “The date of a new revolution, quite as much needed as the old one.” Bryant wrote:
... History, forgetting the errors of his judgment in the contemplation of his unfaltering courage, of his dignified and manly deportment in the face of death, and of the nobleness of his aims, will record his name among those of its martyrs and heroes.
Meanwhile, a new figure had arisen in the West. Like most other New York journals the Evening Post had instantly perceived the significance of the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. When they began it remarked that Illinois was the theater of the most momentous contest, whether one considered the eminence of the contestants or the consequences which might result from it, that had occurred in any State canvass since Silas Wright’s defeat for Governor in 1846. When they closed it remarked (Oct. 18): “No man of this generation has grown more rapidly before the country than Mr. Lincoln in this canvass.”
At first the paper’s reports of the Lincoln-Douglas addresses were taken from the Chicago press, but it soon had its own correspondent, Chester P. Dewey, following the debaters. This writer knew Lincoln’s capacity. “Poor, unfriended, uneducated, a day laborer, he has distanced all these disadvantages, and in the profession of the law has risen steadily to a competence, and to the position of an intelligent, shrewd, and well-balanced man,” ran his characterization. “Familiarly known as ‘Long Abe,’ he is a popular speaker, and a cautious, thoughtful politician, capable of taking a high position as a statesman and legislator.” He described the enthusiasm with which Lincoln’s supporters at Ottawa carried him from the grounds on their shoulders. He related how at Jonesboro, in the southern extremity of the State, where the crowd was overwhelmingly Democratic, Douglas came to the grounds escorted by a band and a cheering crowd, amid the discharges of a brass cannon, while Lincoln arrived with only a few friends; how when Lincoln arose “a faint cheer was elicited, followed by derisive laughter from the Douglas men”; but how he quite won his audience.
It is interesting to note that this correspondent grasped the full importance of the Freeport debate, where Lincoln asked Douglas whether the people of a territory could themselves exclude slavery from it. To answer “no” meant that Douglas repudiated his doctrine of squatter sovereignty, and to answer “yes” meant that he alienated the South. On Sept. 5 the Evening Post had published a long editorial in which it concluded that Douglas was likely to be the Southern candidate in 1860. Just two days later its correspondent foretold the effect of Douglas’s fatal “yes” at Freeport:
It was very evident that Mr. Douglas was cornered by the questions put to him by Mr. Lincoln. He claimed to be the upholder of the Dred Scott decision, and also of popular sovereignty. He was asked to reconcile the two....
When the Freeport speech of Mr. Douglas shall go forth to all the land, and be read by the men of Georgia and South Carolina, their eyes will doubtless open. Can they ... abet a man who avows these revolutionary sentiments and endorses the right to self-government of the people of a territory?... How would he appear uttering this treason of popular sovereignty at a South Carolina barbecue?
Lincoln had been anxious to visit New York, and on Feb. 27, 1860, through the invitation of the Young Men’s Central Republican Union, he made his great speech at Cooper Institute. Bryant presided. The poet had met Lincoln nearly thirty years before, when, on his first visit to Illinois, he had encountered a company of volunteers going forward to the Black Hawk War, and had been attracted by the racy, original conversation of the uncouth young captain; but this meeting he had forgotten. James A. Briggs, who made all the business arrangements for Lincoln’s speech, later told in the Evening Post (Aug. 16, 1867) some interesting facts concerning the occasion. It was Briggs who personally asked Bryant to preside. The fame of the Westerner had, although the jealous Times, a Seward organ, spoke of him as merely “a lawyer who had some local reputation in Illinois,” impressed every one. In its two issues preceding the 27th the Evening Post published prominent announcements of Lincoln’s arrival and of the meeting, and promised “a powerful assault upon the policy and principles of the pro-slavery party, and an able vindication of the Republican creed.” The hall was well filled. According to Briggs, the tickets were twenty-five cents each, and the receipts, in spite of many free admissions, $367, or just $17 in excess of the expenses, of which the fee to Lincoln represented $200. As the Tribune said, since the days of Clay and Webster no man had spoken to a larger body of the city’s culture and intellect.
Bryant, in his brief introductory speech, said that it was a grateful office to present such an eminent Western citizen; that “these children of the West form a living bulwark against the advance of slavery, and from them is recruited the vanguard of the mighty armies of liberty” (loud applause); and that he had only to pronounce the name of the great champion of Republicanism in Illinois, who would have won the victory two years before but for an unjust apportionment law, to secure the profoundest attention. The Evening Post reported that at the end of Lincoln’s speech the audience arose almost to a man, and expressed its approbation by the most enthusiastic applause, the waving of handkerchiefs and hats, and repeated cheers. It reproduced the address in full, saying editorially that when it had such a speech it was tempted to wish its columns indefinitely elastic, emphasizing Lincoln’s principal points, and praising highly the logic of the argument, its mastery of clear and impressive statement, and the originality of the closing passages. Briggs tells us that Lincoln read this eulogistic editorial:
After the return of Mr. Lincoln to New York from the East, where he had made several speeches, he said to me: “I have seen what all the New York papers said about that thing of mine in the Cooper Institute, with the exception of the New York Evening Post, and I would like to know what Mr. Bryant thought of it”; and he then added: “It is worth a visit from Springfield, Illinois, to New York to make the acquaintance of such a man as William Cullen Bryant.” At Mr. Lincoln’s request I sent him a copy of the Evening Post, with a notice of his lecture.