I do not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do
not expect the house to fall ; but I do expect that
it will cease to be divided. It will become all the
one thing or all the other. Either the opponents
of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and
Elace it where the public mind shall rest in the be-
ef that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or
its advocates will push it forward until it shall be-
come alike lawful in all the states, old as well as
new, north as well as south." This bold utterance
excited the fears of his timid friends, and laid him
open to the hackneyed and conventional attacks of
the supporters of slavery ; but throughout the con-
test, while he did not for an instant lower this
lofty tone of opposition to slavery and hope of its
extinction, he refused to be crowded by the fears of
his friends or the denunciations of his enemies away
from the strictly constitutional ground upon which
his opposition was made. The debates between
him and Senator Douglas aroused extraordinary
interest throughout the state and the country. The
men were perhaps equally matched in oratorical
ability and adroitness in debate, but Lincoln's su-
periority in moral insight, and especially in far-
seeing political sagacity, soon became apparent.
The most important and significant of the debates
was that which took place at Freeport. Mr. Doug-
las had previously asked Mr. Lincoln a series of
questions intended to embarrass him, which Lin-
coln without the slightest reserve answered by a
categorical yes or no. At Freeport. Lincoln, tak-
ing his turn, inquired of Douglas whether the peo-
ple of a territory could in any lawful way. against
the wish of any citizen of the United States, ex-
clude slavery from its limits prior to the formation
of a state constitution. By his reply, intimating
that slavery might be excluded by unfriendly ter-
ritorial legislation, Douglas gained a momentary
advantage in the anti-slavery region in which he
spoke, but dealt a fatal blow' to his popularity in
the south, the result of which was seen two years
afterward at the Charleston convention. The
ground assumed by Senator Douglas was, in fact,
utterly untenable, and Lincoln showed this in one
of histerse sentences. " Judge Douglas holds," he
said, "that a thing may lawfully be driven away
from a place where it has a lawful right to go."
This debate established the reputation of Mr. Lincoln as one of the leading orators of the Repub- lican party of the Union, and a speech that he de- livered at Cooper Institute, in New York, on 27 Feb., 1860, in which he showed that the unbroken record of the founders of the republic was in favor of the restriction of slavery and against its exten- sion, widened and confirmed his reputation ; so that when the Republican convention came together in Chicago in May, 1860, he was nominated for the presidency on the third ballot, over William H. Seward, who was his principal competitor. The Democratic convention, which met in Charleston, S. C., broke up after numerous fruitless ballotings, and divided into two sections. The southern half, unable to trust Mr. Douglas with the interests of slavery after his Freeport speech, first adjourned to Richmond, but again joined the other half at Baltimore, where a second disruption took place, after which the southern half nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and the northern por- tion nominated Mr. Douglas. John Bell, of Ten- nessee, was nominated by the so-called Constitu- / tional Union party. Lincoln, therefore, supported by the entire anti-slavery sentiment of the north, ¥ lined an easy victory over the three other parties, he election took place on 6 Nov., and when the electoral college cast their votes Lincoln was found to have 180, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, and Doug- las 12. The popular vote stood : for Lincoln, 1.866- 462; for Douglas, 1,375,157; for Breckinridge, 847,953 ; for Bell, 590,631.
The extreme partisans of slavery had not even waited for the election of Lincoln, to begin their preparations for an insurrection, and as soon as the result was declared a movement for separation was begun in South Carolina, and it carried along with her the states of Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Missis- sippi, Louisiana, and Texas. A provisional govern- ment, styled the " Confederate States of America," of which Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, was made president, was promptly organized, and seized, with few exceptions, all the posts, arsenals, and public property of the United States within their limits. Confronted by this extraordinary crisis, Mr. Lin- coln kept his own counsel, and made no public ex- pression of his intentions or his policy until he was inaugurated on 4 March, 1861.
He called about him a cabinet of the most promi- nent members of the anti-slavery parties of the nation, giving no preference to any special faction. His secretary of state was William H. Seward, of New York, who had been his principal rival for the nomination, and whose eminence and abili- ties designated him as the leading member of the administration ; the secretary of the treasury was Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, whose pre-eminence in the west was as unquestioned as Seward's in the east ; of war, Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, the most influential politician of that state ; of the navv,Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; of the interior, Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana : the border slave-states were represented in the government by Edward Bates, of Missouri, attorney -general, and Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, postmaster-general — both of them men of great distinction of character and high standing as lawyers. Seward, Smith, and Bates were of Whig antecedents ; all the rest of Democratic. The cabinet underwent, in the course of Mr. Lincoln's term, the following modifications : Sec. Chase, after a brilliant administration of the finances, resigned in 1864 from personal reasons, and was succeeded by William P. Fessenden, of Maine ; Sec. Cameron left the war department at the close of the yearl861,and was appoint- ed minister to Russia, and his place was taken by Ed- win M. Stan- ton, a war Democrat of singular en- ergy and vig- or, and equal
ability and
 | An image should appear at this position in the text. A high-res raw scan of the page is available. To use it as-is, as a placeholder, edit this page and replace "{{missing image}}" with "{{raw image|Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1892, volume 3).djvu/755}}". If it needs to be edited first (e.g. cropped or rotated), you can do so by clicking on the image and following the guidance provided. [Show image] .djvu-755.png) | |
devotion ; Sec. Smith, accepting a judgeship, gave way to John P. Usher, of Indiana ; Attorney-General Bates resigned in the last year of the administration, and was succeeded by James Speed, of Kentucky : and Postmaster -General Blair about the same time gave way to William Dennison, of Ohio. In his inaugural address President Lincoln treated the acts of secession as a nullity. He declared the Union perpetual and inviolate, and announced with perfect firmness, though with the greatest moderation of speech and feeling, the intention of the government to maintain its authority and to hold the places under its jurisdiction. He made an elaborate and unanswerable argument against the legality as well as the justice of secession, and further
