Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

The second step in the formation of the Republican party was the Convention at Bloomington. Tragic events had taken place in the State and Nation; signs of the sombre character of the approaching conflict. Sumner was struck down in the Senate by the dastard attacks of Brooks, an act which sent a shudder of anger and indignation through the North and a wave of approbation through the South. This incident alone showed the strain that the moorings of the Nation were undergoing. In Illinois, too, violence asserted its hideousness, and a delegate, Paul Selby, was treacherously assaulted by political opponents. The spread of the Civil War in Kansas heightened the magnitude of the occasion. The seriousness of the National and State situation had taken hold of the delegates. The gravity of public affairs aroused mad instincts. Many were ready for radical conduct, were ready to meet force with force, and violence with violence.

From the four corners of the State, dauntless anti-Nebraska Democrats, conservative Whig, distraught Know-nothing, bitter Abolitionist, and those drifting on the tide of events, gathered under a common impulse in opposition to the vaunting slave party. Beneath the surface there was memory of former antagonism. The problem of the hour was the uniting of these discordant elements into the homogeneity of common conviction; submerging old and cherished affiliations with a flood of fealty to a new gospel; the transmuting raw recruits; quickening the martial spirit commonly the product only of long service.

It was a time for a momentous speech. Several leaders of distinction had addressed the convention, when the audience, with instinctive wisdom, called for Lincoln to make the closing address. It was one of those rare moments in human affairs when words may turn the tide of events. He caught the wandering thoughts of troubled men and gave them continuity.[318] Those long without a political faith were rejoiced to find a home. Like an inspired giant, he was aglow with the greatness of his theme. He spoke as the spirit of the age might have spoken, if it had broken into eloquence sublime and resistless. Men were brought face to face with immortal justice, with eternal righteousness. The humblest hearer lived in the thrill of such communion. Reporters dropped their pencils and forgot their work; even Herndon, who was wont to take notes when Lincoln spoke, threw pen and paper aside, subdued and overcome by the majesty of his partner's speech.

It was not alone a triumph in immediate results, but also a triumph in moulding the abiding convictions of men. Above all the enthusiasm of the moment, there still remained his solid logic, a logic that made Republicans of life-long Democrats. John M. Palmer declared that he remembered only one expression of speech, "We will not dissolve the Union, and you shall not do it." Others dwelt on his declaration to meet the occasion with ballots and not bullets, and so the minds of men as well as the impulses were wisely educated. The address became famous as "the lost speech." Its renown grew with age. It became sacred to the memory of those who heard it and time hallowed its history.[319]

In the light of later events, the platform adopted at the Bloomington Convention seems conservative. It simply rebuked the administration for its attitude on the Kansas issue, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the extension of slavery into Territories.[320]

When the first flood of enthusiasm, after the Bloomington Convention, subsided, a mysterious apathy, a stifling indifference, met the new movement, a not unusual phenomenon in politics or human affairs. Such a time had now come. It was at this period dark and trying that Lincoln towered in lonely grandeur. It was easy enough to be brave and vaunting at a convention when thousands hung on every word. But now it took a higher heroism to be true to the cause. Then Lincoln did not flinch. With superb step, with elated soul, with increasing intrepidity, he continued the championship of the same principles that took captive the delegates at Bloomington. He spoke like one in the wilderness.

Lamon tells the story of a ratification meeting five days after the Bloomington Convention:—"Mr. Herndon got out huge posters, announcing the event, and employed a band of musicians to parade the streets and 'drum up a crowd.' As the hour of meeting drew near, he 'lit up the Court House with many blazes,' rung the bells and blew a horn. At seven o'clock the meeting should have been called to order, but it turned out to be extremely slim. There was nobody present, with all those brilliant lights, but A. Lincoln, W. H. Herndon and W. H. Pain. 'When Lincoln came into the Court-room,' says the bill-poster and horn-blower of this great demonstration, 'he came with a sadness and a sense of the ludicrous on his face. He walked to the stand, mounted it in a kind of mockery,—mirth and sadness all combined,—and said: 'Gentlemen, this meeting is larger than I knew it would be. I knew that Herndon and myself would come, but I did not know that any one else would be here; and yet another has come,—you, John Pain. These are sad times, and seem out of joint. All seems dead, dead, dead: but the age is not yet dead; it liveth as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of life and motion, the world does move nevertheless. Be hopeful. Now let us adjourn and appeal to the people.'"[321]

In June the first National Republican Convention met at Philadelphia. Young, aggressive and flushed with enthusiasm, it put forth as the standard bearer, John C. Fremont, the daring, romantic pathfinder. Lincoln received one hundred and ten votes for the vice-presidency. So little was this distinction anticipated, that at first he refused to believe that he was the recipient of the flattering compliment, saying that it must have been the great Lincoln from Massachusetts.

Like the Bloomington gathering the National Convention instinctively linked itself in strength to the impressing principles of the Declaration of Independence. It took a bolder and more advanced stand than the Illinois Convention, denying the authority of Congress to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory and that it was its right and duty to prohibit therein those "twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery."[322]

In the ensuing campaign, Lincoln, as a presidential elector and orator towered in the State as strong in his invigorating championship of the Republican policies. He made fifty speeches. Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa sent for him. The impress of his personality was humbly, but pervasively winning the hearts and minds of men. One man wrote with sure faith, "Come to our place, because in you do our people place more confidence than in any other man. Men who do not read want the story told as you only can tell it. Others may make fine speeches but it would not be 'Lincoln said so in his speech.'"[323] A college president spoke of him with reverence, as, "one providentially raised up for a time like this, and even should defeat come in the contest, it would be some consolation to remember we had Hector for a leader."[324]