American Men of Action

by Burton Egbert Stevenson

Thomas Lincoln soon married again and, strangely enough, made a wise choice, for his new wife not only possessed furniture enough to fill a four-horse wagon, but, what was of more importance, was endowed with a thrifty and industrious temperament. That she should have consented to marry the ne'er-do-well is a mystery; perhaps he was not without his redeeming virtues, after all. She made him put a floor and windows in his cabin, and she was a better mother to his children than their real one had ever been. For the first time, young Abraham got some idea of the comforts and decencies of life, and, as his step-mother put it, "began to look a little human." He was not an attractive object, even at best, for he was lanky and clumsy, with great hands and feet, and a skin prematurely wrinkled and shrivelled. By the time he was seventeen, he was six feet tall, and he soon added two more inches to his stature. Needless to say, his clothes never caught up with him, but were always too small.

His schooling was of the most meagre description; in fact, in his whole life, he went to school less than one year. Yet there soon awakened within the boy a trace of unusual spirit. He actually liked to read. He saw few books, but such as he could lay his hands on, he read over and over. That one fact alone set him apart at once from the other boys of his class. To them reading was an irksome labor.

All this reading had its effect. He acquired a vocabulary. That is to say, instead of the few hundred words which were all the other boys knew by which to express their thoughts, he soon had twice as many; besides that, he soon got a reputation as a wit and story-teller, and his command of words made him fond of speechmaking. He resembled most boys in liking to "show off." He had learned, too, that there were comforts in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, and so, as soon as he was of age, he left that unattractive dwelling-place and struck out for himself, making a livelihood in various ways—by splitting rails, running a river boat, managing a store, enlisting for the Black Hawk war—doing anything, in a word, that came to hand and would serve to put a little money in his pocket. He came to know a great many people and so, in 1832, he proclaimed himself a candidate for the state legislature for Sangamon County, Illinois, where he had made his home for some years. No doubt to most people, his candidacy must have seemed in the nature of a joke, and though he stumped the county thoroughly and entertained the crowds with his stories and flashes of wit, he was defeated at the polls.

That episode ended, he returned to store-keeping; but he had come to see that the law was the surest road to political preferment, and so he spent such leisure as he had in study, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. As has been remarked before, the requirements for admission were anything but prohibitory, most lawyers sharing the oft-quoted opinion of Patrick Henry that the only way to learn law was to practise it. Lincoln decided to establish himself at Springfield, opened an office there, and for the next twenty years, practised law with considerable success, riding from one court to another, and gradually extending his circle of acquaintances. He even became prosperous enough to marry, and in 1842, after a courtship of the most peculiar description, married a Miss Mary Todd—a young woman somewhat above him in social station, and possessed of a sharp tongue and uncertain temper which often tried him severely.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should become interested again in politics, and he threw in his fortunes with the Whig Party, serving two or three terms in the state legislature and one in Congress, All of this did much to temper and chasten his native coarseness and uncouthness, but he was still just an average lawyer and politician, with no evidence of greatness about him, and many evidences of commonness. Then, suddenly, in 1858, he stood forth as a national figure, in a contest with one of the most noteworthy men in public life, Stephen A. Douglas.

Douglas was an aggressive, tireless and brilliant political leader, the acknowledged head of the Democratic party, and had represented Illinois in the Senate for many years. He had a great ambition to be President, had missed the nomination in 1852 and 1856, but was determined to secure it in 1860, and was carefully building to that end. His term as senator expired in 1858, and his re-election seemed essential to his success. Of his re-election he had no doubt, for Illinois had always been a Democratic state, though it was becoming somewhat divided in opinion. The southern part was largely pro-slavery, but the northern part, including the rapidly-growing city of Chicago, was inclined the other way. This division of opinion made Douglas's part an increasingly difficult one, for pro-slave and anti-slave sentiment were as irreconcilable as fire and water.

Lincoln, meanwhile, had been active in the formation of the new Republican party in the state, had made a number of strong speeches, and, on June 16, 1858, the Republican convention resolved that: "Hon. Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office." A month later, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. Douglas at once accepted, never doubting his ability to overwhelm his obscure opponent, and the famous duel began which was to rivet national attention and give Lincoln a national prominence.

The challenge on Lincoln's part was a piece of superb generalship. In such a contest, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Whatever the result, the fact that he had crossed swords with so renowned a man as Stephen A. Douglas would give him a kind of reflected glory. But in addition to that, he had the better side of the question. His course was simple; he was seeking the support of anti-slavery people; Douglas's task was much more complex, for he wished to offend neither northern nor southern Democrats, and he soon found himself offending both. To carry water on both shoulders is always a risky thing to attempt, and Douglas soon found himself fettered by the awkward position he was forced to maintain; while Lincoln, free from any such handicap, could strike with all his strength.

His stand from the first was a bold one—so bold that many of his followers regarded it with consternation and disapproval. In his speech accepting the nomination, he had said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other," and he pursued this line of argument in the debates alleging that the purpose of the pro-slavery men was to make slavery perpetual and universal, and pointing to recent history in proof of the assertion. When asked by Douglas whether he considered the negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." He was not an abolitionist, and declared more than once that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists," that he had "no lawful right to do so," but only to prohibit it in "any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of the evil."

Even so skillful a debater as Douglas soon found himself hard put to it to answer Lincoln's arguments, without offending one or the other of the powerful factions whose support he must have to reach the presidency. At the beginning, his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage, which, however, Lincoln's earnestness and directness soon overcame. Tens of thousands of people gathered to hear the debates, they were printed from end to end of the country, and Lincoln loomed larger than ever before the nation; but so far as the immediate result was concerned, Douglas was the victor, for the election gave him a majority of the legislature, and he was chosen to succeed himself in the Senate.