Ida Tarbell contends that at this time Lincoln first experienced the full meaning of the "Free Soil" sentiment, as Massachusetts was then quivering under the impassioned protests of the great Abolitionists, and Sumner was beginning to devote his life to freedom and was speaking often at riotous meetings. Miss Tarbell further maintains Lincoln was sensitive to every shade of popular feeling in New England, and was stirred as never before on the question of slavery; that he heard Seward's speech in Tremont Temple, and that night, as the two men sat talking, said gravely to the great anti-slavery advocate:
"Governor Seward, I have been thinking about what you said in your speech. I reckon you are right. We have got to deal with this slavery question, and got to give much more attention to it hereafter than we have been doing."[250]
This evidence does not prove that Lincoln then began to take radical ground on the slavery question. Ten years before in the Illinois Legislature, he made his protest, and later at every opportunity when circumstances favored. His hatred to slavery had long been kindled. He needed little inspiration from the New York orator on New England soil to start his indignation. His statement to Seward shows that he was ready for radical conduct as soon as the event permitted the onslaught. He rejoiced at the growth of the public opinion that betokened the doom of the artificial institution. But he did not need to sit at the feet of eastern teachers. The New England trip was an incident, not an epoch in his career.
The second session of this Congress was rather free from turbulence. Lincoln was a silent spectator. He went with his party on the main issues and voted for the Wilmot Proviso "about 42 times."[251] The Northern Democrats in the House returned in a resentful spirit at the support rendered Taylor by eight slave states. They were not backward in supporting legislation to exclude slavery from California and New Mexico.[252] The Senate, true to its love of vested interests speedily disposed of the proposal.
During the session a New York representative let loose a resolution with the clanging preamble of a "law rooting out the slave trade in the District of Columbia."[253] Lincoln was one of three or four northern Whigs who voted to lay this exuberant measure on the table.[254]
As the sole Whig representative of his State, coming from a constituency hardly distinguished for its anti-slavery sentiments, while most Whigs even from the New England states were silent; no external duty beckoned him; no powerful organization called him to ride the storm by branding the jealous institution. Selfish ambition whispered prudence and calmed the voice of protest.
But within the very shade of the Capitol, the slave girl was coined into drachmas. He felt the world shame that had come upon the nation by this blot on its professions. The desire to strike another blow grew strong in him. As he tried a decade before in the legislative halls of Illinois, so now in the national assembly, in a very home of slavery, he rang forth his hate of the old injustice. Still he did not give way to an outburst of vengeance; he husbanded his anger; thought only of the consequence, planned with wisdom the most effective stab at the national disgrace.
The politician walked hand in hand with the patriot. He gathered discordant elements to the support of a common cause calling forth admiration at the unrivalled policy. He consecrated to the high purpose of dedicating the national Capitol to a free citizenship, a devotion and sagacity that made him the peer of any strategist of his day. He conceived and carried out a daring plan of securing the support to his astounding proposal of the Mayor of Washington, a representative of the intelligent slave-holding citizens of that community. With equal skill, he secured the reinforcement of the radical Giddings, who says in his diary that Lincoln's bill to abolish slavery was approved by all; that he believed it as good a bill as we could get at this time, and was willing to pay for slaves in order to save them from the southern market, as he supposed every man in the District would sell his slaves if he saw that slavery was to be abolished.[255] Lincoln held together two such leaders in advocacy of the same measure affecting the sore subject, thus revealing the supreme tactician, who in later years held to the public service a Seward, a Stanton and a Chase in the same cabinet.
He persuaded the slave holder that it was wiser to adopt his measure than in later years confront the danger of more exacting legislation. He convinced the Abolitionists that his law was the best then attainable. His alarming proposition was as innocent in expression as patience and wisdom could make it. It provided for the ultimate emancipation of all slaves born after 1850 and the manumission of existing slaves on full payment to willing owners. After soberly providing for the return of all fugitive slaves the whole plan was made dependent upon the approval of a popular vote.[256]
The slaveholders were more illiberal than the Abolitionists. They spurned all compromise. They would admit no suggestion that laid bare the injustice of their institution. They knew that when an inroad was once made, its days would be numbered; that compromise was the dawn of the end. They brought all their power into being. The social influences of Washington were called into polite requisition and the Mayor, under this duress, withdrew his sanction.[257] The biographers, who knew Lincoln in the days of trial, have given expression to a splendid tribute to his constancy. "Fifteen years afterwards, in the stress and tempest of a terrible war, it was Mr. Lincoln's strange fortune to sign a bill sent him by Congress for the abolition of slavery in Washington; and perhaps the most remarkable thing about the whole transaction was that while we were looking politically upon a new heaven and a new earth,—for the vast change in our moral and economical condition might justify so audacious a phrase,—when there was scarcely a man on the continent who had not greatly shifted his point of view in a dozen years, there was so little change in Mr. Lincoln. The same hatred of slavery, the same sympathy with the slave, the same consideration for the slaveholder as the victim of a system he had inherited, the same sense of divided responsibility between the South and the North, the same desire to effect great reforms with as little individual damage and injury, as little disturbance of social conditions as possible, were equally evident when the raw pioneer signed the protest with Dan Stone of Vandalia, when the mature man moved the resolution of 1849 in the Capitol and when the President gave the sanction of his bold signature of the act which swept away the slave shambles from the City of Washington."[258]