Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

Abolitionism as a gospel showed rather paltry results for thirty years of unceasing labor. Still its essential dogma, hatred to human bondage, slowly but steadily held a larger place in the public thought. Mistakes of the South and its Northern friends hurried on a crisis. The Kansas controversy made the issue of a remorseless conflict clearer by a concrete example of the incompatibility of freedom and slavery. The nation was thus educated for aggressive action on the long mooted question. The time was becoming ripe for the translation of public sentiment into party platform, statute and decision. The Abolitionist with relentless gospel even of war on the Constitution was altogether too radical for the general mind. The slowly dying Whig party had not kept pace with the advanced public thought, it was too conservative. The democratic party kept on its path either of indifference to the slavery issue or ardent support of the southern view and was the refuge of those who were dead to the sweep of events. Hence the necessity of a new party, with a platform that should sturdily proclaim resistance to the spread of slavery in the territories; that should register a rising spirit in the North, growing restless and sensitive as it contemplated the increasing demands of the Southern institutions, as it grasped the significance of the issue involving the continued existence in their primal integrity of cherished principles of the Republic, a grappling for political supremacy of the free labor of the North and the slave power of the South. Mingled with the essential spirit of justice pervading Abolitionism was the growth of the opinion that slavery was a social and political evil. The public wrath at the repeal of a venerated Compromise, the increasing discontent at the violent manifestations of the friends of slavery in Kansas, prepared the public for the formation of a radical party.

Lincoln being a man of power, was beset by three parties. He was urged to remain a Whig by the conservatives, to become a Know-nothing by those drifting on the political waters. Others sought to baptise him in the spirit of Abolitionism. Lincoln had long since made his resolution to array himself on the side of freedom. He was awaiting the right moment. He saw the time for leadership was coming, that events were rapidly sweeping forward to a climax. In the perturbed political condition he was anxious not to go ahead of events and still not play the laggard. Among all politicians in American history he was the wisest student of the public mind.

With true vision, Lincoln foreshadowed the solemn consequences of the Kansas struggle. He asked if there could be a more apt invention to bring about collision and violence on the slavery question than the "Nebraska project," and whether "the first drop of blood so shed would not be the real knell of the Union."[305] Behind the fair form of the Douglas doctrine of popular sovereignty, he saw the lurking serpent. He was not deceived by fine, smooth words. In the beginning, he beheld the gaping wounds of Kansas, the hypocrisy of the policy professing the name of peace and bringing in its train the devildom of discord, the curse of a broken, plighted compact. A letter to his friend Speed in 1855 illumines the whole subject, and is a contribution to the political history of the time—unsurpassed in statement, in clearness of understanding, in subdued calmness of judgment:

"You know I dislike slavery, and you fully admit the abstract wrong of it. So far there is no cause of difference. But you say that sooner than yield your legal right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those who are not themselves interested, you would see the Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bidding you yield that right; very certainly I am not. I leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down and caught and carried back to their stripes and unrequited toil; but I bite my lips and keep quiet.... It is not fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."[306]

He then bared with remorseless logic the common southern attitude: "You say, if you were President, you would send an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages among the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes herself a slave State she must be admitted or the Union must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a slave State unfairly, that is, by the very means for which you say you would hang men? Must she still be admitted, or the Union dissolved? That will be the phase of the question when it first becomes a practicable one."[307]

The same letter shows he was aware of the potency of the partisan lash, was an observer of the methods of securing results, of the cowardice and timidity of leaders where political policy appeared on the horizon. He confessed that in their opposition to the admission of Kansas, they would probably be beaten; that the Democrats standing as a unit among themselves, could, directly or indirectly, bribe enough men to carry the day as they could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy; that by getting hold of some man in the North whose position and ability was such that he could make the support of the measure, whatever it might be, a party necessity, the thing would be done.[308]

Then came a biting comment on the pretenses and practices of those who were spreading the national disease, of those who had one doctrine in public and another in private, who worshipped the God of Liberty with speech and Mammon with their deeds. In the same letter Lincoln said that although in a private letter or conversation the slaveholders would express their preference that Kansas should be free, they would not vote for a man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly and no such man could be elected from any district in a slave State; that slave-breeders and slave-traders were a small, detested class among them; and yet in politics they dictated the course of the Southerners, and were as completely their masters as they were the master of their own negroes.[309]

A vivid picture of party uncertainty is seen in his answer to the inquiry of Speed as to where he then stood. "I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs, and say that I am an Abolitionist. When I was at Washington, I voted for the Wilmot proviso as good as forty times; and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery. I am not a Know-nothing; that is certain. How could I be? How could any one who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring 'that all men are created equal.' We now practically read it, 'all men are created equal except negroes.' When the Know-nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty,—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."[310]

To him "Know-nothingism" transcended all questions of policy, denied the very mission of Democracy, turned back the hour hand of political progress and was traitor and recreant to its teachings. He was not sure of his standing in the transitional period of party dissolution and showed something in his mental attitude of the spirit of unrest abroad in the nation and hardly knew whither the trend of events would carry the American people. Cautious in moving forward on matters involving method, he was unwedgeable when the principles of the Republic were at stake. His note of scorn rings clear and loud to these who, in selfishness and bigotry, sought exceptions to and a narrow interpretation of the Declaration of Independence.

By nature Lincoln was a friend of peace. He would have rejoiced at any plan that produced a peaceful solution of the vexed problem. No matter how slow the march of freedom, he would have bridled his wrath. But the aggressiveness of the South in the Kansas struggle opened his vision to the fatuity of gradual emancipation. He grew bitter as Garrison in statement as he contemplated the hypocritic limits on freedom, the spread of an institution hostile to democracy with an ever widening promise of future abatement: "On the question of liberty as a principle," he wrote a friend, "we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that 'all men are created equal,' a self evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim 'a self evident lie.' The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day—for burning fire-crackers!!!"[311]