Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

He noted that there were about six hundred thousand men non-slaveholding whites in Kentucky to about thirty-three thousand slave holders; that when a convention recently assembled, there was not a single representative of the non-slaveholding class. He told a friend that the thing was spreading like wildfire over the country and that in a few years Illinois would be ready to accept the institution. When asked to what he attributed the change that was going on in public opinion, he said that he had put that question to a Kentuckian shortly before, who answered by saying that one might have any amount of land, money or bank-stock, and while travelling around, nobody would be wiser; but, if one had a darky trudging at his heels, everybody would see him, and know that he owned a slave; that if a young man went courting, the only inquiry was, how many negroes he or she owned. He added, that the love for slave property was swallowing up every other mercenary possession; that its ownership betokened, not only the possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure, who was above and scorned labor.[275]

It has been a historical fashion to brand Douglas as the author of all the ills that came in the course of the Kansas-Nebraska agitation. He has suffered more than any other northern leader for participation therein. He did not inaugurate; he reluctantly adopted radical action to maintain his leadership in the Democratic party. The abolitionists were growing more resolute and exacting in their demands, startling the northern conscience. No compromise could still their protests; they would not tolerate constitutional obligations that stood in the way of immediate emancipation. At the South, the slave dynasty was daily growing more restless under the real or assumed danger from northern agitation. New enactments were deemed indispensable, as if legislation could stay the rising tide of sentiment against the return of fugitive slaves. The South was, under the educational tutelage of Calhoun, prepared to demand the right to carry slaves throughout every inch of the national territory without restraint from Congress.

Compromise could delay but not settle such a contest. When moral instincts were aroused on one side and fear on the other, the inevitable clash could not be permanently avoided. Dixon of Kentucky, through his far-reaching statement upon the question of slavery he knew no "Whiggery" and no Democracy,[276] decisively noted the new era in American politics, and showed the desperate chasm that daily grew more divisive, not to be covered over until the blood of a million men was offered up as a sacrifice to the most momentous martyrdom in history. Atchison of Missouri, who declared he would sacrifice everything but his hope of heaven for slavery,[277] was anxious for the place of Douglas that he might champion the legislation that would secure the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. To gain this position, he would relinquish his distinction as Acting President pro tem of the Senate.

For twenty years, Douglas had fought in the party ranks until he stood fair to become its leader. He had either to become champion of the new policy, or as he saw it, to sacrifice the work of a lifetime. In the party councils he contested the wisdom of the policy and eloquently portrayed its far-reaching consequences. He loved his country but not all of his kind. Patriot but not humanitarian, he would not peer behind the curtain of a clashing North and South. The nature of the bitter conflict through which Douglas passed before he submitted to the southern policy, appears from his counsel to a young student and friend never to go into politics; that if he did, no matter how clear it might be to him that the present was an inheritance from the past, no matter how conscientiously he might feel that his hands were tied, with loyalty to ancient institutions rather than what he might prefer to do if free to choose, still he would be vilified, traduced, and finally sacrificed to some local interest or unreasoning passion like Adams, Webster and Clay. He continued that he was surprised that the proposal to repeal came from the South and dreaded the effect, and said so; still for nearly twenty years he had fought for a place among the leaders of the party which seemed to him most likely to promote the prosperity of his country, and had won it.... If he retained his leadership, he argued that he might help to guide the party aright in some graver crisis, and if he threw it away, he not only destroyed himself, but he became powerless for good forever after.

He then impetuously contended that an individual ought not to oppose his judgment to that of a great party, and besides though surprised at its source, he believed that the repeal would work to the advancement of freedom rather than otherwise, as his vilifiers charged. He finally pleaded that he was politically right in keeping within the pale of the Constitution; and right as to the moral effect, and right as a party leader anxious to help in keeping his party true to the whole country.[278] Thus Douglas made his way to the sons of the South and became the father of the Nebraska controversy and of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.

Douglas had not trained himself in the school of political defeat and hesitated to forego his prestige of leadership. To gain the South, he risked his hold on the North. Had he had the courage to dare, the wisdom to know, the moral heroism to do, he might have become the foremost personality in American politics, honoring instead of shadowing the history of his time. In a solemn moment he took counsel of his fears rather than his integrity, and doubted the triumph of the one cause that has revolutionized history. With all his political sagacity, he lacked the supreme instinct that transcends the shrewdness of the day and links itself to the final triumphing movement.

During the spring and summer of 1854 when the whole North quivered with the hurrying march of events following the Nebraska agitation, and thundered its protests into Washington, Lincoln grew to the demands of the hour with his wonted sureness. He turned over and over the whole issue. He did not halt at the injustice of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but went beyond its consideration to the problems of the age, of which that act was only a grave symptom.

Now and then in small meetings, he spoke out of the fullness of his feelings. His friends scanned a strange change. Coming to listen to his quaint stories, they returned, exalted by hearing a speaker who raised the controversy above the shifting events of the hour to the broad tableland where right and wrong meet on the field of battle. They beheld a man who lifted the discussion into the pure realms of eternal justice, above all questions of policy, into the arena of the higher humanity. Prejudices of a lifetime trembled in the balance. Men were baptised with a new political faith. They instinctively turned to the master and yielded, to the power of a personality speaking in the name of immortal righteousness. He was no longer in his former haunts, the tavern or the grocery. He was seen "mousing" around libraries. He was communing with the Fathers of the Republic, seeking wisdom from them.

These five years following his Congressional experience are noteworthy in his life, though scantily known. Now and then a chance remark, the eulogy on Clay, a letter to a friend, reveal a strong man struggling with a giant problem. During all this time, he was thinking out the portentous question that was agitating a tempest. The greatest contests of the world are not fought on the battlefield, in the presence of vast armies, when the drum beats or the bugle calls to action. The sublimest battles in history are waged in the lonely soul. There, the destiny of nations is determined before its formal expression in legislative discussion, judicial decision or national controversy.

The grasping disposition of slavery convinced Lincoln that the encounter was inevitable. Before the formation of the Republican party, he sanctioned the statement that the time was approaching when it would be necessary to take a determined stand either for or against slavery. During this period, he waited and bided his time; all these years he saw with joy, clouded with occasional despair, the day approaching when another blow could be struck for freedom, for the principles of the fathers and for the spreading of democratic influence. These were splendid years of preparation.