The Battle of Principles / A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict

by Newell Dwight Hillis

The Civil War was really fought over the question whether a constitutionally formed nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal could permanently endure. The whole period from 1789 to 1865 was a critical period, during which the Constitution was being tested and tried out.

During this testing many forms of secession were planned, and several actual rebellions took place. In 1787 there was a Massachusetts rebellion under Shays, over the question of taxation. In 1794 there was what was known as the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. In 1830 to 1835 there was a secession movement on in South Carolina, and President Jackson put down that rebellion over the tariff. Then Daniel Webster marked out the final lines of battle, entrenching the Constitution against rebellious attempts. Webster fired the first shot of the war, whose last shot was fired at Appomattox. Webster carried the flag that Grant followed at Vicksburg, and shook out the folds of the banner that was crimsoned with blood at Gettysburg. It was Webster's banner that Anderson pulled down at Fort Sumter, under the stress of fire, and it was Webster's banner that, four years later to an hour, the same General Anderson pulled up on the same flagstaff at the same Fort Sumter.

During the period of the thirties and the forties, the conflict was a conflict of words and arguments between men like Webster and Calhoun and Garrison and Phillips. Later, the strife took on the form of a guerrilla warfare, and here and there leaders like Lovejoy were martyred. At last the strife entered into politics, when Douglas and Lincoln struggled for the supremacy of their principles,—but always it was a question of Constitutional interpretation, against whatever interest attacked the "supreme law."

Soon the conflict entered the Church, and the American Tract Society, to hold the gifts of slave owners, forbade the distributions of Testaments to slaves, while the Bishop of New Jersey destroyed an edition of the Prayer Book because it contained a picture of Ary Scheffer's picture of "Christ the Emancipator," who was engaged in striking the shackles from slaves. The bishop was quite willing that Christ should open the eyes of the blind, make the deaf to hear and the lame to walk, but as for Jesus freeing the slaves—well, that was too much. Over the question of the Constitutional power of Congress to resist the further extension of slavery in newly opened territories, the whole land rocked with excitement. Liberty and Slavery, like two giants, grappled for the death struggle. In such an era God raised up Abraham Lincoln, to lead the people out of the wilderness, and into the Promised Land of Union, of Liberty, and of Peace.

Never was a candidate for universal fame born under so unfriendly a sky. His annals are "the short and simple annals of the poor." His home was a log cabin that had but three sides, the fourth one being a buffalo robe, swaying to and fro in the wind. When the biting wind of poverty became unbearable in Kentucky, the scant possessions were loaded upon a horse, carried across the Ohio, and the child walked barefooted through the forests of Indiana, where a new shack was built in the wilderness. There Lincoln's "angel mother" sickened and died—that mother to whom Lincoln said he owed all that he was or hoped to be. Then when the winter of poverty and discontent settled down blacker than ever, the father removed to another State, where the mud was deeper, and the winters colder, where nature was less propitious. Lying on his face, before blazing logs, the boy committed to memory the four Gospels, "Æsop's Fables," and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." At nineteen he went to New Orleans, and standing in the slave market saw a young girl sold at public auction, and told his brother, Dennis Hanks, that if he ever had a chance he would hit slavery the hardest blow he could. At twenty he split 1,200 rails for a farmer, whose wife wove for him three yards of cloth, dyed in walnut juice, with which he had a new suit of clothes. He started a little store, failed in business, became a surveyor, bought a copy of the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence; was made postmaster; several years later returned to the government agent the exact silver quarters and copper cents that he had kept tied up in a bag, because honesty meant that the identical coins must be returned to the government; entered upon the study and the practice of the law; was elected to the legislature, and reflected; was sent to Congress, and on a second campaign for the United States senatorship from Illinois met his competitor, Stephen A. Douglas, in the great debate. Beginning this contest, he delivered the "house divided against itself cannot stand" speech; and in the course of his marvellous debate made the issue between liberty and slavery so clear that a wayfaring man, though a fool, could not misunderstand; declared that if slavery was not wrong, there was nothing that was wrong. Soon he came to be looked upon as one who each year would coin the happy phrase and the rhythmical watchword that would be taken upon the lips of 30,000,000 of people; was made the leader of the new "party of freedom," and President.

Now, with infinite skill and patience, he entered upon the task of proving that he was the strongest man in his Cabinet, the strongest man in the North, the strongest man in the country, and the only man who had the last fact in the case, and therefore had the right to rule. Seward, experienced politician and statesman that he was, began by delicately hinting to Lincoln that if he felt himself unequal to emergencies, he could rely upon his Secretary of State for guidance, and that he, Seward, would not evade the responsibility. Lincoln answered by reading Seward's statement of a possible measure, and then placing beside it a statement of his own that reduced Seward to the level of a schoolboy standing up beside a giant. Then Stanton entered the lists as competitor, and quietly Lincoln asserted himself until Stanton's attitude became one of almost reverent worship, as he said of Lincoln, "Henceforth he belongs with the immortals." Then Greeley put in his claim for supremacy, and after Lincoln had published his answer to Horace Greeley, in lines as clear as crystal, and in words as gentle as sunbeams, not a man in the land but saw that Lincoln was intellectually head and shoulders above Horace Greeley. One by one and step by step he ascended the hills of difficulty. Round by round he climbed the ladder of fame. Naturally, therefore, his centennial was observed by a week's celebration, when all the wheels were still, and all the stores and factories were silent, when ninety millions of people were gathered into one vast audience chamber, when one name was upon all lips—the name of Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator of the slaves, the acknowledged master of men, who gave liberty to the slaves that he might assure freedom to the free.

Thoughtless writers have talked Lincoln's ancestry down, and careless biographers have defamed him. Superficial students speak of him as a miracle, and say that his genius is surrounded with silence and mystery. But all that Abraham Lincoln was he had at the hands of his fathers and his mothers. Although their greatness was latent, his parents had as much ability in their way as their distinguished son had in his way. How do we know? Because when God wants to call a strong man He begins by calling his father and mother. There never was a great man who did not have a great ancestry, even though the greatness may have been latent and unconscious.

Every strong man stands upon the shoulders of his ancestors. When you start for the top of Pike's Peak you start at Omaha. When you reach Denver you are six thousand feet in the air, and Pike's Peak is shouldered up on the foot-hills. Socrates is a great teacher, but look at Sphroniscus, the sculptor, his father. Paganini is a great musician, but Paganini was born of musicians whose wrists had muscles that stood out like whip-cords. Bach is a great musician, but there were forty people of the name of Bach mentioned in musical dictionaries. Charles Darwin is the great scientist, but there were four generations of scientists who had made ready for Darwin, just as there were seven generations of scholars that culminated in Emerson. And standing in the shadow behind Abraham Lincoln are half a dozen generations of men and women who handed forward to him a perfect logic engine, a sound mind, in a sound body; a mental instrument that worked without fever and without friction and without flaw. At the hands of Stradivarius one piece of apple wood is fashioned into a violin. If Stradivarius passes by the other board because he has not time, let no man say the board that was undeveloped was not full of latent music. The Divine Artist and Architect shaped Abraham Lincoln's nature into a world instrument, but the same quality and the stuff were in his father and mother, who lived and died a bundle of roots that were never planted, a handful of blossoms that never fruited.

Lincoln's father and mother were like the crystal caves in their own Kentucky. There the traveller is led through a cave of crystals, newly discovered. One day a farmer ploughing thought the ground sounded hollow under his feet. Going to the barn, he brought a spade and opened up an aperture. Flinging down a rope, his friends let the explorer down, and when the torches were lighted, lo, a cave as of amethysts, sapphires and diamonds! For generations the cave had been undiscovered and the jewels unknown. Wild beasts had wandered above these flashing gems, and still more savage men had lived and fought and died there. And yet just beneath was this cave of splendid beauty. Oh, pathetic illustration of men who are big with talent, of women full of latent gifts, of fathers and mothers like Thomas Lincoln and his young wife, who struggle on without opportunity, who are denied their chance, who are imprisoned by poverty, and fettered by circumstance, who are like birds beating bloody wings against the bars of an iron cage, who die unfulfilled prophecies, and dying, transfer their ambitions to their gifted children, believing that their son shall behold what the father and mother must die without seeing. God worked no miracle in Abraham Lincoln.

There is a photograph of the signature of the grandfather upon a title deed in Culpeper County in Virginia. Now, place that signature side by side with the signature of Abraham Lincoln on the emancipation proclamation, and the strong, sinewy sweep in the signature of the grandfather comes down and repeats itself in the strong, steady clearness of the grandson. And perhaps the strong, sinewy sentence came down and repeated itself also, for all fine thinking stands with one foot on fine brain fibre. The time has come for men with a sharp knife and a hot iron to expunge from two or three of the otherwise best biographies of Abraham Lincoln these false, superficial and ignorant statements about his ancestry. Science, observation, experience, history and sifted facts all unite to tell us that whatever was great in its unfolding in the talent of Abraham Lincoln was great in the seed form in his father and mother.