Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

Strange medley of the ideal and the practical,—at times he appeared the very woof of the visionary, and then stood forth as a petty politician. He was a mystery and a wonder to his contemporaries. They never beheld such a man; they had no standard by which to measure him. First, amazing some by the minuteness of his strategy, he would then startle others by a bold proclamation of immortal truth. There was something elusive in the manifoldness of his nature. The world with childlike simplicity looks for uniformity of action, for consistency. So it was that in later years time-servers called Lincoln the apostle of radicalism, and radicals named him the slave of conservatism.

The legislature instead of branding the black crime of the murder of Lovejoy in 1837, hastened to pass resolutions of sympathy with slavery. No external inducement guided Lincoln to fly in the face of the sentiment of the Legislature, the State and Nation in regard to Abolitionism. His conduct mystifies unless the abiding impress of the incident at New Orleans is fully measured. It was no idle vaunt that stirred him to the declaration that if he ever had the chance he would strike a blow for the enslaved. The testing time was at hand. His oath was "registered in Heaven." It was necessary to join the majority in their defence of slavery, or strike a lonely path in behalf of the enslaved. His soul faced that crisis. No longer helpless, he was widely known, and was distinguished for his services as a political leader. High in position, his act and word carrying weight, he proclaimed his protest. The chance being at hand, he struck slavery a stinging blow. The silence of nearly a decade was broken in words that shall echo for evermore. Only one other representative, Dan Stone, of Sangamon County, dared to sign the following signal dissent that will save him from an oblivion that has already enshrouded those who voted for the successful resolutions:

"They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate the evils.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different States.

"They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised, unless at the request of the people of the District.

"The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.

"Dan Stone,
"A. Lincoln.
"Representatives of the County of Sangamon."[124]

The resolutions that passed the General Assembly were still rather conservative for the time and place. The protest of Lincoln is therefore the more significant, as indicating its origin from some deep mental or moral sentiment. Every letter in the protest is weighed. No product of Lincoln is more native to his genius. It is as restrained as a judicial decision. Avoiding unneeded antagonism, it is framed with admirable diplomacy. Radical in thought, still so moderate in expression, it saved his power for further good, not placing him beyond fellowship with his associates. Yet with all its subdued character, with infinite wisdom it made the assault at the weakest point, declaring that slavery was founded, not only on injustice, but bad policy. In the last phrase lurked the sting that was to awaken the self-interest of the North, the same kind of selfishness that solidified the South in defending the institution. Lincoln was among the first to grasp and lay stress on the warp of the issue. He once declared that honest statesmanship was the employment of individual meanness for the public good. When self-interest became enlisted with conscience against the evil, its days were numbered. While Abolitionism was noisily tugging at one of the pillars that supported human bondage, Lincoln serenely forged an argument linking its moral and industrial weakness, an argument that finally shook its very foundation, until the peculiar institution that dominated the destiny of the nation for more than half a century tumbled to destruction. While other men were forced to change their opinions through the malignancy of slavery to keep abreast of public sentiment, Lincoln remained steadfast in his opinions and his policy. At the outset, he foresaw that no institution could last long that rested on injustice and bad policy. Only a change of external conditions separated the man who entered a solemn protest against the iniquity of slavery in a hostile community and the leader who gave life to the momentous act of the nineteenth century.

The period preceding the murder of Lovejoy was an era of unrest. The mob spirit ranged over the land. Thus in commenting upon the murder of the mulatto McIntosh, Lovejoy says: "In Charlestown it burns a Convent over the head of defenseless women; in Baltimore it desecrates the Sabbath, and works all that day in demolishing a private citizen's house; in Vicksburg it hangs up gamblers, three or four in a row; and in St. Louis it forces a man—a hardened wretch certainly, and one that deserves to die, but not thus to die—it forces him from beneath the aegis of our constitution and laws, hurries him to the stake and burns him alive!"[C]

Without doubt, the murder of Lovejoy and similar incidents drew the mind of Lincoln to the discussion of the subject of the preservation of our institutions. For Herndon has left valuable testimony as to the influence of like events on his own opinions. The cruel and uncalled-for murder aroused anti-slavery sentiments, penetrating the college at Jacksonville where he was attending, and both faculty and students were unrestrained in their denunciation. Herndon's father, believing that the college was too strongly permeated with the virus of Abolitionism, forced him to withdraw from the institution. But Herndon declares that it was too late; that the murder of Lovejoy filled him with more desperation than the slave scene in New Orleans did Lincoln. For while the latter believed in non-interference with slavery, as long as the Constitution authorized its existence, Herndon, although acting nominally with the Whig party up to 1853, struck out for Abolitionism pure and simple.[125]

In the fall of 1837, Lincoln addressed the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, Illinois, in a formal discourse bearing traces of considerable preparation. The style is fulsome and fanciful, and unlike his own crisp utterance of previous or subsequent periods. For a time he wandered from his natural self and followed the glitter of what he doubtless deemed a more cultivated form of expression. Thus it begins: "In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American people, find our account running under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. We find ourselves in the peaceful possession of the fairest portion of the earth as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us."[126]

It is especially important to take note of Lincoln's attitude of the prevailing mob spirit. His treatment of that theme, his mode and manner and thought, is so like that of the editor of the Alton Observer, that it is reasonable to assume that there was a common origin to the common sentiment. The same scenes and events that stirred the soul of Lovejoy aroused that of Lincoln. His direct onslaught on the mob spirit being largely connected with the slave issue, was an indirect attack on slavery. In this, Lincoln and the Abolitionists stood on the same ground. He extravagantly denounced the malefaction of the mobs, saying that they pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; and alike sprang up among the pleasure-hunting masters of Southern slaves, and the order-loving citizens of the land of steady habits, that this process of hanging went on from gamblers to negroes, from negroes to white citizens, and from these to strangers, till dead men were seen literally dangling from the boughs of trees upon every roadside. He further insisted that by the operation of this mobocratic spirit, the strongest bulwark of any government might effectually be broken down and destroyed—the attachment of the people. He contended that whenever the vicious portion of population should be permitted to burn churches, ravage provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons with impunity, this government could not last.[127]

Under the display of such extravagant expression there is still patriotic apprehensiveness of danger to the national existence. He fought out the solution of the problem unaided until the way seemed clear and plain. To him the remedy was simple—obedience to the law of the land.