The story of Abraham Lincoln

by Mary Agnes Hamilton

For the last half-century almost the Democratic party had been in power. They had been strong because they were united: they united the people of the South and those people in the North who thought that it was waste of time to discuss slavery, since slavery was part of the Constitution. Their policy on slavery had been to leave it alone. As long as they did this there was nothing to create another party in the North strong enough to oppose them. But when Douglas, in order to make his own position strong in the South, made slavery practical politics by bringing in a bill to allow Kansas to have slaves; and when the judges in the Dred Scott case roused sympathy with the negroes by declaring that slaves were not men but property, then the question united the divided North into a strong Republican party in which all were agreed. There was to be no slavery north of Mason and Dixon’s line. The attempt to force slavery on Kansas split the Democratic party. One section was led by Douglas, who had gone as far as he could: he was not ready to force Kansas to have slaves, if she did not want them, because people from Missouri wanted her to have them. He saw that to force slavery on the North in this way would mean division and war, and therefore he refused to go any further. By this refusal Douglas lost his supporters in the South. They joined the section led by Jefferson Davis—the Southern candidate for the presidentship.

Jefferson Davis was the true leader of the South. Douglas as well as Lincoln had begun life as the child of a poor pioneer: each had risen by his own abilities and by constant hard work. Jefferson Davis was a true aristocrat. He was the son of rich and educated parents. All his life he had been waited on by slaves and surrounded by every comfort. While Lincoln was ploughing or hewing wood, while Douglas was working hard at the bar, Davis went first to the university at Kentucky and then to the military academy at West Point, from which he passed to the army. He served as a lieutenant at the time of the Black Hawk war, and it is very likely that he came across Lincoln, who was serving as a volunteer. After serving seven years in the army he married and settled down as a cotton planter in Mississippi. His estates were worked by slaves, of course. To him the negro was an animal, quite different from the white man, meant by nature to be under him and to serve him. Black men, unlike white, did not exist for themselves, with the equal right to live possessed by a man, an insect, or a tree, but had been created solely to be useful to white men.

No two men could be more unlike than Lincoln and Davis. The groundwork of Davis’ nature was an intense pride. A friend described him as “as ambitious as Lucifer and as cold as a lizard.” He was cold in manner and seldom laughed. Lincoln was entirely humble-minded, full of passionate longing to help the weak. To Lincoln what was common was therefore precious. Jefferson Davis said the minority, and not the majority, ought to rule. And their looks were as unlike as their minds. Jefferson Davis, with his beautiful proud face, as cold and as handsome as a statue, expressed the utter contempt and scorn of the aristocrat for everything and every one beneath him.

When the Democratic party met at Charleston to nominate their candidate for the presidentship, they were hopelessly divided. Douglas’s Freeport speech had set the South against him. For the last four years there had been a growing section which said that, as long as the South was fastened to the North, slavery was not safe. Now seven states, led by South Carolina, left the Democratic meeting and nominated Davis as their candidate.

The Republican party met at Chicago. There was only one man strong, reasonable, and sane enough for every section of the party to accept. This was Abraham Lincoln. At the time of his nomination, Lincoln was playing barnball with his children in the field behind his house. When told that he had been chosen, he said, “You must be able to find some better man than me.” But he was ready to take up the difficult task. He knew that he could serve his country, and he was not afraid. He had a clear ideal before him—to preserve America as one united whole. He saw that war might come. As he had said, five years before, America could not endure for ever half slave and half free—it must be all free: and the South would not let slavery go without war.

The election came in November. The result was that Lincoln was elected President. For four years the destiny of his country was in his hands.

CHAPTER VI
THE NEW PRESIDENT AND SECESSION

Lincoln’s election was a thunderbolt to the South. It meant that the great question of slavery would have to be decided one way or another. Lincoln was a man who had opinions, and opinions in which he believed, for which he would fight; he would not let things drift as Buchanan did. Buchanan’s policy would have ended in allowing the South to separate itself from the North; the Southern politicians knew this, and they wanted Buchanan’s policy carried on, so as to make that separation possible.

Few men in the North, although many in the South, understood as clearly as Lincoln did the position of affairs. He saw that the time had come when active measures must be taken, a strong and decided policy maintained, if the Union was to be held together. He was a true patriot. He believed in the Union; he thought it a great and glorious thing. That North and South should be separated was to him like separating husband and wife; their strength and happiness lay in each other; they had grown together for eighty-four years; if they parted now, each must lose something it could never regain. He loved his country. He loved the South as well as the North. He believed that if the South tried to separate, the North would be justified, in the true interests of the American nation, in compelling her to remain.

The great problem was now, as he saw: Could America hold together as one nation, half slave and half free? Could the Union be a real Union while there was this deep division, a division which it was now clear could not be got rid of, as the Northerners had hoped for so long, by the slow passage of time? Time alone would not induce the South to give up slavery. Slavery was a barbarous institution, degrading to the slaves and to those who owned them; the North could not accept it. If North and South were to hold together slavery must go. The great thing was to keep North and South united. This and this only was Lincoln’s great purpose. He hated slavery, but he would not have compelled the South to give up slavery if he had believed that the Union could have been maintained without that. North and South must hold together whatever it cost; only so could each part of the nation, and the nation as a whole, attain the best that was possible for it.