Returning to the period preceding the Civil War, we observe that the whole nation was stirred by the conduct of a man whom most people believed to be crazy, but who in my judgment was not. He was an enthusiast, fired by an abnormal zeal, perhaps; but he filled a most important place in the development leading to the Civil War. I refer to old John Brown.
With a score of followers he seized the arsenal at Harpers Ferry in October, 1859. The nation was then on the very verge of civil war. There was tremendous excitement even in far-off Springfield when the news came over the wires that John Brown had opened war almost single-handed and alone. Under orders from General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, Colonel Robert E. Lee with a battalion of soldiers marched on Harpers Ferry, and, after a series of siege operations, summoned John Brown to surrender, the demand being borne to the besieged by J. E. B. Stuart, a young lieutenant, afterwards distinguished as the foremost cavalry leader of the Confederacy.
The story of John Brown is too familiar to be repeated here; but how strange that in so short a time his captor, Robert E. Lee, should become famous as one of the greatest leaders of force in rebellion against the government he then served.
John Brown was captured and hanged. He had but few sympathizers in the North, but his attempt to incite the slaves to rebellion greatly stirred up the entire South, and hastened secession.
Very soon the second National Republican Convention was held at Chicago. At this convention, which nominated Lincoln for the Presidency, the resolutions declared for "the maintenance inviolate of the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively," and condemned the attempt to enforce the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest (meaning the slave interest), through the intervention of Congress and the courts, by the Democratic administration. They derided the new dogma that the Constitution of its own force carried slavery into the Territories, and denied the authority of Congress, or of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individual to give leave of existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.
After the failure of the efforts to make of Kansas a Slave State, it had become plain that the South could not hope to keep its equality of representation in the Senate without reversing what appeared to be settled popular opinion concerning the status of the Northern Territories. Resolutions to this general effect were moved by Jefferson Davis early in February, 1860, and passed by the Senate. It was in effect the ultimatum presented to the Democratic party at its National Convention when it assembled, April 23, at Charleston, S. C. The warring factions failed to come to an agreement, and the convention adjourned to meet at Baltimore on the eighteenth of June. There Douglas was at last nominated. The delegates who had seceded at Charleston were joined by other seceders at Baltimore, and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for President. A month later, May 19, a third faction, calling itself the "Constitutional Union Party," assembled in convention at the same city, Baltimore, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts, on a platform whose distinguishing battle-cry was "The Constitution, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." Three days before this, May sixteenth, the Republican Convention had met at Chicago, and had nominated Lincoln and Hamlin on a platform which rang true on great principles and with high resolve.
In many particulars this platform was a contrast to, rather than a growth from, that of 1856. It asserted that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States was that of freedom; it denounced the outrages in Kansas, and demanded her immediate admission into the Union, with her Constitution, as a Free State; it branded the re-opening of the African slave-trade as a crime; and in expressing the abhorrence of the Republican party to all schemes of disunion, the Democratic party was arraigned for its silence in the presence of threats of secession made by its own members. The doctrine of encouragement to domestic industry was announced; the sale of the public lands was condemned; the coming measure of securing homesteads for the landless was approved; and a pledge of protection was given to all citizens, whether native or naturalized, and whether at home or abroad. The party was again pledged to the construction of a railway to the Pacific Ocean, and to the improvement of the rivers and harbors of the country.
During the four years preceding, the home State of Lincoln and Douglas had decreased its public debt $3,104,374. She had become the fourth State of the Union in population and wealth, having during the decade then closing outstripped Virginia, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana. In production of wheat and corn she now surpassed all other States and occupied the foremost position. She had in successful operation two thousand, nine hundred miles of railways, being surpassed in this respect by Ohio only. Chicago, her marvellous lake mart, had grown from a population of 29,963 to 109,206, an increase of nearly three hundred per cent. From nine Congressmen in 1850, she was entitled in 1860 to thirteen; and so, on every hand, might the recital of her growth be continued indefinitely.
For the first time in twenty years, during the progress of a political campaign in Illinois, the voice of Lincoln was not heard. But the record of his former speeches, printed by an enterprising Ohio publishing firm, in a volume which sold in enormous numbers, afforded the text from which the Republican stump-orators in every Free State gathered at once their logic and their inspiration. Though the orator himself remained silent, the potent echo of his eloquence resounded in countless voices from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
The political contest that followed the various nominations was a memorable one. Douglas made his last effort for the Presidency with wonderful vigor and spirit. He canvassed the whole country, and great throngs were greatly moved by his eloquent and energetic oratory. Jefferson Davis and other Southern orators canvassed portions of the Northern States in support of the nominee of the Southern wing of the Democratic party. In some parts of the North fusions were attempted among the opponents of the Republican candidate. In the South the interest in the contest was even more intense than in the North. Douglas had a good following in many portions of the South, but a majority of the ruling class there, whether they had formerly been Democrats or Whigs, were now disposed to bring the long sectional controversy to an issue. Therefore, besides the debate over the Presidential issue, there was a serious discussion also of what course the South should take in the event of Mr. Lincoln's election. In all the Cotton States the sentiment for secession was now very strong. The Alabama Legislature, early in 1860, had instructed her Governor to call a convention in case a "Black Republican" should be elected President in November. South Carolina had long been ready to join in such a movement, or to lead in it.