During the various joint discussions held between the eloquent political orators who were chosen to represent the Anti-Slavery and Democratic parties, it may fairly be asserted that Lincoln opposed, while Douglas defended, directly or indirectly, the slave interests of the country. The former always felt that slavery was wrong, and in seeking a remedy for the existing evil he followed in the footprints of Henry Clay. He advocated gradual emancipation, with the consent of the people of the slave States, and at the expense of the General Government. In his great speech against the Kansas and Nebraska bill, he said, "Much as I hate slavery, I would consent to its extension rather than see the Union dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a greater one."
The debates between Lincoln and Douglas, especially those of the year 1858, were unquestionably the most important in American history. The speeches of Mr. Lincoln, as well as of the "Little Giant" who opposed him, were circulated and read throughout the Union, and did more than any other agency to create the public opinion which prepared the way for the overthrow of slavery. As another has said, "The speeches of John Quincy Adams and of Charles Sumner were more scholarly; those of Lovejoy and Wendell Phillips were more vehement and impassioned; Senators Seward, Hale, Trumbull, and Chase spoke from a more conspicuous forum; but Lincoln's were more philosophical, while as able and earnest as any, and his manner had a simplicity and directness, a clearness of statement and felicity of illustration, and his language a plainness and Anglo-Saxon strength, better adapted than any other to reach and influence the common people,—the mass of the voters."
From 1847 to March 4, 1849, Mr. Lincoln served a term in Congress, where he acted with his party in opposing the Mexican war. In 1855 he was a prominent candidate for the United States Senate, but was defeated. From the ruins of the old Whig party and the acquisition of the Abolitionists, the Republican had been formed, and of this party, in Illinois, Mr. Lincoln became, in 1858, the senatorial candidate. Again he was defeated, by his adversary Mr. Douglas. Lincoln felt aggrieved, for he had carried the popular vote of his State by nearly 4,000 votes. When questioned by a friend upon this delicate point, he said that he felt "like the boy that stumped his toe,—it hurt him too much to laugh, and he was too big to cry."
In his speech at Springfield, with which the campaign of 1858 opened, Mr. Lincoln made the compromisers of his party tremble by enunciating a doctrine which, they claimed, provoked defeat. He said: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this Government cannot permanently endure half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other; either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in a course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States,—old as well as new, North as well as South."
These were prophetic words; and they were spoken by a man born in the slave State of Kentucky. It was the truth, the fearless truth, uttered in advance of even the acknowledged leader of the Republican party, Governor Seward, of New York. The simple assertion of that truth cost Lincoln a seat in the United States Senate; but it set other men's minds to thinking, and in 1860 the PEOPLE, following the path made through the forest of error by a pioneer in the cause of truth, came to similar conclusions, and made "Honest Old Abe" Chief Magistrate of the republic.
On the 10th of May, 1860, the Republican convention of Illinois met at Decatur, in Macon county, to nominate State officers and appoint delegates to the National Presidential Convention. Decatur was not far from where Lincoln's father had settled and worked a farm in 1830, and where young Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Hanks had split the rails for enclosing the old pioneer's first cornfield. Mr. Lincoln was present, simply as an observer, at the convention. Scarcely had he taken his seat when General Oglesby arose, and remarked that an old Democrat of Macon county desired to make a contribution to the convention. Two old fence rails were then brought in, bearing the inscription: "Abraham Lincoln, the rail candidate for the Presidency in 1860. Two rails from a lot of three thousand, made in 1830, by Thomas Hanks and Abe Lincoln, whose father was the first pioneer of Macon county."
The effect of this contribution can well be imagined: at once it became useless to talk in Illinois of any other man than Abraham Lincoln for President.
On the 16th of May the National Republican Convention was called together in Chicago. The convention met in a large building called the "Wigwam," which had been constructed specially for the occasion. The contest for the nomination lay between William H. Seward of New York and Abraham Lincoln of Illinois. On the third ballot, as we know, the latter was nominated. I was but a youth on that memorable day, but I vividly recollect that I was standing, with other urchins, nearly opposite the "Wigwam," and was startled when a man stationed on top of the building yelled out, "Fire: Lincoln is nominated!" Then followed the roar of cannon and cheers upon cheers.
When the news reached Mr. Lincoln he was chatting with some friends in the office of the "Sangamon Journal," in Springfield. He read the telegram aloud, and then said: "There is a little woman down at our house who will like to hear this. I'll go down and tell her." The "little woman" was his wife, whom, as Mary Todd, he had won in 1842, and he knew that she was more anxious that he should be President than he himself was.
On the 7th of November, 1860, it was known throughout the country that Lincoln had been elected. From that very hour dates the conspiracy which, by easy stages and successive usurpations of authority, culminated in rebellion. It is painful now to revert to the events which marked its progress. There is not a man living to-day, I trust, that does not wish they could be blotted out from our history. While watching the course of these events Mr. Lincoln chanced one day to be talking with his friend, Newton Bateman, a highly respectable and Christian gentleman, and Superintendent of Public Instruction in Illinois. I can only quote a part of the interview, as furnished by Mr. Bateman himself: "I know there is a God," said Lincoln; "and he hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming. I know that his hand is in it. If he has a place and work for me,—and I think he has,—I believe I am ready. I am nothing; but truth is everything, I know I am right, because I know that liberty is right; for Christ teaches it; and Christ is God. I have told them that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand,' and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so.