somewhere into the country, and stay till this thing is over;" and Lincoln did take Bob and drove away to Tazewell Court House "on business." Herndon congratulates himself upon having "saved Lincoln," since either joining, or refusing to join, the Abolitionists at that time would have been attended with "great danger." Lincoln had upon his own part a wise instinct and a strong purpose to keep hard by Douglas and to close with him as often as opportunity offered. Soon afterward the two encountered again, and on this occasion it is narrated that Lincoln gave Douglas so much trouble that Douglas cried for a truce, proposing that neither of them should make any more speeches that autumn, to which Lincoln good-naturedly assented.
During this winter Lincoln was elected to the state legislature, but contrary to his own wish. For he designed to be a candidate for the United States Senate, and there might be a question as to his eligibility if he remained a member of the electing body. Accordingly he resigned his seat, which, to his surprise and chagrin, was immediately filled by a Democrat; for there was a reaction in Sangamon County. On February 8, 1855, the legislature began voting to elect a senator. The "Douglas Democrats" wished to reelect Shields, the present incumbent. The first ballot stood, Lincoln, 45, Shields, 41, Lyman Trumbull, 5, scattering, 5 (or, according to other authority, 8). After several ballots Shields was thrown over in
favor of a more "practicable" candidate, Governor Matteson, a "quasi-independent," who, upon the ninth ballot, showed a strength of 47, while Trumbull had 35, Lincoln had run down to 15, and "scattering" caught 1. Lincoln's weakness lay in the fact that the Abolitionists had too loudly praised him and publicly counted him as one of themselves. For this reason five Democrats, disgusted with Douglas for his attack on the Missouri Compromise, but equally bitter against Abolitionism, stubbornly refused ever to vote for a Whig, above all a Whig smirched by Abolitionist applause. So it seemed that Owen Lovejoy and his friends had incumbered Lincoln with a fatal handicap. The situation was this: Lincoln could count upon his fifteen adherents to the extremity; but the five anti-Douglas Democrats were equally stanch against him, so that his chance was evidently gone. Trumbull was a Democrat, but he was opposed to the policy of Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill; his following was not altogether trustworthy, and a trifling defection from it seemed likely to occur and to make out Matteson's majority. Lincoln pondered briefly; then, subjecting all else to the great principle of "anti-Nebraska," he urged his friends to transfer their votes to Trumbull. With grumbling and reluctance they did so, and by this aid, on the tenth ballot, Trumbull was elected. In a letter to Washburne, Lincoln wrote: "I think you would have done the same under the circumstances, though Judge
Davis, who came down this morning, declares he never would have consented to the 47 men being controlled by the 5. I regret my defeat moderately, but am not nervous about it." If that was true which was afterwards so frequently reiterated by Douglas during the campaign of 1858, that a bargain had been struck between Lincoln and Trumbull, whereby the former was to succeed Shields and the latter was to succeed Douglas at the election two years later, then Lincoln certainly displayed on this occasion a "generosity" which deserves more than the very moderate praise which has been given it, of being "above the range of the mere politician's vision."[[64]]
An immediate effect of this repealing legislation of 1854 was to cast Kansas into the arena as booty to be won in fight between anti-slavery and pro-slavery. For this competition the North had the advantage that its population outnumbered that of the South in the ratio of three to two, and emigration was in accord with the habits of the people. Against this the South offset proximity, of which the peculiar usefulness soon became apparent. Then was quickly under way a fair fight, in a certain sense, but most unfairly fought. Each side contended after its fashion; Northern anti-slavery merchants subscribed money to pay the expenses of free-state immigrants. "Border ruffians" and members of "Blue Lodges" and of kindred fraternities came across the border from Missouri to
take a hand in every politico-belligerent crisis. The parties were not unequally matched; by temperament the free-state men were inclined to orderly and legitimate ways, yet they were willing and able to fight fire with fire. On the other hand, the slave-state men had a native preference for the bowie-knife and the shot-gun, yet showed a kind of respect for the ballot-box by insisting that it should be stuffed with votes on their side. Thus for a long while was waged a dubious, savage, and peculiar warfare. Imprisonments and rescues, beatings, shootings, plunderings, burnings, sieges, and lootings of towns were interspersed with elections of civil officers, with legislative enactments in ordinary form, with trials, suits at law, legal arguments, and decisions of judges. It is impossible here to sketch in detail this strange phantasmagory of arson, bloodshed, politics, and law.
Meantime other occurrences demand mention. In May, 1854, the seizure in Boston of Anthony Burns, as an escaped slave, caused a riot in which the court-house was attacked by a mob, one of the assailants was killed, and the militia were called out. Other like seizures elsewhere aroused the indignation of people who, whatever were their abstract theories as to the law, revolted at the actual spectacle of a man dragged back from freedom into slavery. May 22, 1856, Preston S. Brooks strode suddenly upon Charles Sumner, seated and unarmed at his desk in the senate-chamber, and beat him savagely over the head