The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Arnold)/Chapter VIII

by Isaac N. Arnold

Let us now turn back and notice some important events which occurred at Washington. When Congress met in December, 1855, the slavery conflict was raging with increasing violence. There was a long struggle for the election of speaker. After sixty days spent in excited and fierce debate and in balloting, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, was elected over Governor Aiken, of South Carolina. In the general breaking up of parties caused by the slavery agitation, a powerful section of the democratic party, having strong convictions against slavery, was driven from its ranks. The old whig party divided; a part, made up of the more aged and conservative, went into a new organization, which called itself the American party, the leading principle of which was opposition to the influence of foreign-born citizens in American politics; a much larger portion became "free soilers," and went into the republican party.

It was obvious that the time had come for the organization of a new party, on the basis of opposition to the extension of slavery. Into this party went the life, vigor, enthusiasm, and genuine democratic principles of the old democracy--the democracy of Jefferson. Among its representatives were Wilmot, the author of the Wilmot proviso, the Blairs, Fremont, Bryant, Bissell, and Trumbull. With them were the old liberty party, the abolitionists, and the anti-slavery whigs. Up to this time the democratic party, with its attractive name and professions, had secured nearly all the foreign-born vote of the country. But a large and intelligent class of Germans, Swedes, and Norwegians, and some Irish, were so hostile to slavery that they were now ready to join any party which should oppose it, and especially its leading principle, that of extension. It was apparent that, if these elements could be combined and consolidated, an organization would be formed having every element of success. Still there were difficulties, great difficulties, growing out of prejudice of race, former associations, and diversity of opinion, in the way of a cordial union. The new party needed a great leader, an organizer, and at length found such a leader in Abraham Lincoln. He was selected by the instincts of the people, and was, of all others, the representative man of this new organization. Perhaps the greatest difficulty was that of harmonizing the native American whigs with the foreign-born voters. Lincoln had the sagacity to make a simple and single issue, that of hostility to the extension of slavery, and prohibition in all the territories, and to fight the battle on that issue. A triumph upon this issue would be the triumph over slavery, and all else would follow.

The leaders called a convention to meet at Pittsburgh on the anniversary of Washington's birthday, the 22d of February, 1856. The venerable Francis P. Blair was an active member of the convention. It prepared the way for a national convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President.

On the 29th of May, 1856, a convention of the people of Illinois, who were opposed to the extension of slavery, met at Bloomington and organized the republican party. It was made up of elements which had never before acted together, and which stood for very conflicting opinions. The committee on resolutions found themselves, after hours of discussion, unable to agree, and at last they sent for Lincoln. He suggested that all could unite on the principles of the Declaration of Independence and hostility to the extension of slavery. "Let us," said he, "in building our new party, let us make our corner-stone the Declaration of Independence--let us build on this rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against us." The problem was mastered, and the convention adopted the following:

"Resolved, That we hold, in accordance with the opinions and practices of all the great statesmen of all parties for the first sixty years of the administration of the government, that, under the Constitution, Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in the territories; and that while we will maintain all constitutional rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the principles of freedom, as expressed in our Declaration of Independence and our National Constitution, and the purity and perpetuity of our government require that that power should be exerted, to prevent the extension of slavery into territories heretofore free."

Thus was organized the party which, against the potent influence of Douglas, revolutionized the state of Illinois, and elected Lincoln to the Presidency. Lincoln's speech to this convention has rarely been equalled. "Never," says one of the delegates, "was an audience more completely electrified by human eloquence. Again and again, during the delivery, the audience sprang to their feet, and by long-continued cheers, expressed how deeply the speaker had roused them." It fused the mass of incongruous elements into harmony and union.

Delegates were appointed to the national convention, which was to meet in Philadelphia, to nominate candidates for President and Vice-President. The convention then nominated as its candidate for Governor, the gallant soldier and eloquent statesman, Colonel William H. Bissell. He had distinguished himself for his courage on the field of Buena Vista, and elsewhere, in the war against Mexico. Returning to his home at Belleville, a grateful people elected him to Congress. At the session of 1850, the Illinois soldiers who had been in that battle, were assailed by a distinguished member of Congress from Virginia.^[1] Bissell, on the 21st of July, 1850, replied in a speech in which he discussed the slavery question, and defended the Illinois soldiers with an eloquence and spirit which created a sensation throughout the Union, and which gave him a great personal popularity in the Northwest. For this manly defense he was challenged by Jefferson Davis, and promptly accepted the challenge. They were to fight with rifles. Intelligence of the challenge reached President Taylor, whose daughter Davis had married; he and other friends interfered, and the difficulty was adjusted.

In June, 1856, the national convention of the republican party met at Philadelphia, and nominated John C. Fremont for President, and William L. Dayton for Vice-President. The declaration of principles was substantially the same as that adopted at the Bloomington convention, and on which Lincoln and his friends had determined to fight the battle in Illinois. That Mr. Lincoln began to be appreciated as the leader of the new party in the Northwest was indicated by his receiving at this convention, on the informal ballot for Vice-President, one hundred and ten votes.

The democratic national convention met at Cincinnati, on the second of June, 1856, and on the sixteenth ballot for President, James Buchanan received one hundred and sixty-eight votes, and Douglas one hundred and twenty-one. Buchanan was finally nominated, Douglas being considered unavailable, because of his direct instrumentality in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise; and the incumbent, Pierce, being abandoned because he had been made unpopular by the outrages upon the free-state settlers in Kansas during his administration. John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, was nominated for Vice-President. The convention, although it dared not, or would not, nominate Douglas, indorsed the compromise measures of 1850, and the laws organizing Kansas and Nebraska. The Southern whigs, and the "conservative" whigs of the North, sometimes called, in consideration of their wise and venerable looks, the "Silver Greys," nominated Millard Fillmore for President. This convention laid upon the table a resolution declaring that no man should be nominated who was not in favor of prohibiting slavery north of 36° 30' by Congressional action, whereupon a large number of delegates left the convention, and supported Fremont and Dayton.

Then followed one of the most animated, earnest, and, in the free states, most closely contested political campaigns since the organization of the government. Lincoln was constantly speaking. Up to the state elections in October it seemed quite probable that the republicans would succeed, but the democratic party managed to carry, by small majorities, the close and doubtful states of Pennsylvania and Indiana, and the contest was virtually ended. Buchanan received one hundred and seventy-two electoral votes, Fremont one hundred and fourteen, and Fillmore the vote of Maryland. The slaveholders were greatly elated by their triumph in the election of Buchanan, but the republicans, so far from being discouraged, became conscious of their power, nerved themselves for still greater efforts, and began at once to prepare for the campaign of 1860.

The contest between freedom and slavery in Kansas still went on. The pro-slavery men, by fraud and trickery, and by disfranchising the free-state voters, had formed a constitution at Lecompton, which established slavery. The voters in favor of a free state, after seeing the elections repeatedly carried by non-residents and armed intruders from Missouri, refused to take part in the mock elections, and, calling a convention of actual settlers, elected delegates to a convention, which met at Topeka, and adopted a free state constitution. This they submitted to the people, and it was almost unanimously adopted. They then proceeded to elect officers under it. This brought the contending parties into direct collision, and civil war menaced Kansas. In 1856, Congress appointed an investigating committee, which, after full investigation, reported that every election held under the auspices of the United States officials had been controlled, not by actual settlers, but by non-residents from Missouri, and that every officer in the territory owed his election to these non-residents. Meanwhile the persons elected by the bonafide settlers, under the Topeka constitution, had been arrested, and the Legislature dispersed, by the regular army of the United States, acting under orders of the President. It was thus that Kansas was to be brought into the Union as a slave state.

Douglas had the sagacity to see whither this extreme course of the administration was tending, and the courage and good faith to resist it. When President Buchanan, on the 9th of December, 1857, urged Congress to admit Kansas under the fraudulent Lecompton constitution into the Union, Douglas at once announced his opposition, and followed this announcement with an elaborate and able speech against the proposed measure. "Why," said he, "force this constitution down the throats of the people, in opposition to their wishes, and in violation of our pledges?"

"The people want a fair vote, and will never be satisfied without it... If it is to be forced upon the people, under a submission that is a mockery and an insult, I will resist to the last." Douglas never exhibited more commanding ability, than when he led the opposition, in the United States Senate, to the Lecompton constitution. His opposition so exasperated the slaveholders that they sought to degrade him, by taking from him the position he had long held as chairman of the Committee on Territories.

While the Kansas question was pending, the Illinois senator called at the White House on official business. Mr. Buchanan expostulated with him for opposing the administration in its Kansas policy. At length he went so far as to warn Douglas of the personal consequences. Recalling the fact that Douglas had always been a great admirer of General Jackson, the President said: "You are an ambitious man, Mr. Douglas, and there is a brilliant future for you, if you retain the confidence of the democratic party; if you oppose it, let me remind you of the fate of those who in former times rebelled against it. Remember the fate of Senators Rives and Talmadge, who opposed General Jackson, when he removed the government deposits from the United States Bank. Beware of their fate, Mr. Douglas."

"Mr. President," replied Douglas, "General Jackson is dead. Good morning, sir!"

We have seen that the executive and legislative departments of the government had long been under the control of the slave party. The judiciary, over which, in the early days of the republic, had presided the pure and spotless abolitionist, John Jay, and the great constitutional lawyer and intellectual giant, John Marshall, had become an object of profound respect, even of reverence, to the people. It had been the forum before which the highest forensic discussions had been held, involving the most important questions of private rights and the gravest questions of constitutional power. The great lawyers and statesmen of the country, whose names are most prominent in forensic literature: Pinckney, Henry, Emmet, Ogden, Mason, Dexter, Webster, Wirt, Clay, Sargent, and others, had discussed before the Supreme Court, with matchless ability and learning, questions involving state rights and national sovereignty, as well as the law of nations, and of maritime and constitutional law. The people had learned to regard this court as the most dignified, learned, and august tribunal on earth. The period had now come when this great tribunal was to be prostituted, and our national jurisprudence disgraced, by its decision in rhe Dred Scott case.

Dred Scott, a negro, held as a slave in Missouri, had been voluntarily taken by his master into the free state of Illinois, and subsequently to Fort Snelling, in territory north of the line of 36° 30', where slavery was prohibited by law. Up to the time of the decision in this case, it had been considered a well settled principle of law, that when a master voluntarily brought a slave from a slave state into a state or territory in which slavery was prohibited, that slave became free. The case was fully argued before the Supreme Court in May, 1854. It was for decision at the following term in 1855-6, but the decision was postponed until after the Presidential election of 1856. The intense excitement which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the outrages in Kansas had created, would have been greatly increased if the decision had been announced before the election, and it is quite probable that the result of the election would thereby have been changed. The court, through Chief Justice Taney, held that Dred Scott, being descended from an African slave, was not and could not be a citizen of the United States, and therefore could not maintain a suit in the Federal Court. This disposed of the case, but as the point had been made in the argument that Scott was free by the prohibition of the Missouri Compromise, the Chief Justice and a majority of the Court eagerly seized the opportunity, in the interest of slavery, to declare the prohibition unconstitutional and void, and the Court proceeded to say that, by virtue of the Constitution, slavery existed in all the territories, and that Congress had no power to prohibit it. Justices McLean and Curtiss gave able dissenting opinions.

Thus the triumph of slavery was complete. The revolution on the subject was absolute. The government was organized on the basis that slavery was local, tolerated in the states, but prohibited in the territories, and on this principle "the government had been administered down to the Dred Scott decision."^[2] It is difficult adequately to describe the astonishment and indignation created by this decision. It everywhere roused the people to a sense of their danger. There was needed but one step further, and a much shorter step than the one taken in this case--namely, for the Court to say that the Constitution carried slavery as well into the states as into the territories, and the work would be done, for every state would thus become a slave state.

In June, 1858, the Illinois republican state convention met at Springfield, and nominated, with the greatest enthusiasm and with perfect unanimity, Lincoln as their candidate for senator. The resolution nominating him was carried by acclamation, and that there should be no slip this time, the convention declared: "Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States Senator."

Lincoln's speech to this convention was the platform of the memorable debate between him and Douglas, and is one of the most remarkable in American history. It was earnest and solemn, and gave so clear an exposition of the antagonism between liberty and slavery, that his words secured the immediate and universal attention of the nation. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Governor Seward, on the 25th of October thereafter, at Rochester, expressed the same idea, and in language, some of which was identical with that used in June by Lincoln. "It is," said he, "an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces, and it means that the United States will, sooner or later, become either a slaveholding nation, or an entirely free-labor nation." This speech, whose great importance demands its insertion, was as follows:

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently 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 the 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.

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let anyone who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost complete legal combination-piece of machinery, so to speak--compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how well adapted, but also let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if he can, to trace, the evidences of design, and concert of action, among its chief architects from the beginning.

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than half the states by state constitutions, and from most of the national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national territory to slavery, and was the first point gained.

But so far Congress only had acted, and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable to save the point already gained and give chance for more.

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of "squatter sovereignty," otherwise called "sacred right of self-government," which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave another no third man shall be allowed to object. That article was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows: "It being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of "squatter sovereignty," and "sacred right of self-government." "But," said the opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the territory may exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure, and down they voted the amendment.

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free state, and then into a free territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Missouri; and both Nebraska bill, and law suit, were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was "Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally rendered in the case. Before the then next presidential election, the law came to, and was argued in the Supreme Court of the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a territory can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits, and the latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the endorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point gained. The endorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular majority, by nearly four hundred thousand votes. and so, perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and authority of the endorsement. The Supreme Court met again; did not announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The presidential inauguration came, and still no decision of the Court; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, whatever it might be. Then in a few days, came the decision.

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion to make a speech at this Capitol, indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained.

At length a squabble springs up between the President and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton constitution was or was not, in any just sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or up. I do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public mind--the principle for which he declares he has suffered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down like temporary scaffolding--like the mould at the foundry, it served through one blast and fell back into loose sand--helped to carry an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the republicans, against the Lecompton constitution, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point--the right of the people to make their own constitution--upon which he and the republicans have never differed.

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:

First, That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any state, in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the United States Constitution, which declares that "citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states."

Secondly, that "subject to the Constitution of the United States," neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude slavery from any United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men may fill up the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through all the future.

Thirdly, That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery, in a free state, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States Courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the negro may be forced into by the master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, if acquiesced in for awhile, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in the free state of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other free state.

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mould public opinion not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, also, whither we are tending.

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterwards come in, and declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now. The adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up? Why even a senator's individual opinion withheld, till after the presidential election? Plainly enough now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a re-argument? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These things look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by the President and others?

We cannot absolutely know that all these adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out at different times and places, and by different workmen--Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance,^[3] and when we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house, or a mill, all the tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece too many or too few--not omitting even scaffolding--or, if a single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in, in such a case, we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen, and Franklin, and Roger, and James, all understood one another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow was struck.

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a state as well as territory, were to be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a state? They were legislating for territories, and not for or about states. Certainly the people of a state are and ought to be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law? Why are the people of a territory and the people of a state therein lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any United States territory, they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a state, or the people of a state, to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can be quite sure, if Mr. McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill;--I ask who can be quite sure that it would not have been voted down in the one case as it had been in the other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a state over slavery, is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion, his exact language is, "except in cases where the power is restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the state is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the United States Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of the territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state to exclude slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected if the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted down or voted up," shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be maintained when made.

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike lawful in all the states. Welcome, or unwelcome, such decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie down, pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge or making their state free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty, is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How can we best do it?

There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, and yet whisper to us softly, that Senator Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to effect that object. They wish us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take negro slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest? And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign slave trade--how can he refuse that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free," unless he does it as a protection to the home production? And as the home producers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly without a ground of opposition.

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday--that he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular change, of which he, himself, has given no intimation? Can we safely base our action upon any such vague inference? Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. But clearly, he is not with us--he does not pretend to be--he does not promise ever to be.

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its own undoubted friends--those whose hands are free, whose hearts are in the work--who do care for the result. Two years ago the republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter now?--now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail--if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate, or mistakes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come.

Footnotes

1. Mr. Sedden.
2. George Bancroft, in his funeral oration on Lincoln, though a life-long democrat, thus characterizes this decision: "The Chief Justice of the United States, without any necessity or occasion, volunteered to come to the rescue of the theory of slavery; and from his court there lay no appeal but to the law of humanity and history. Against the Constitution, against the memory of the nation, against a previous decision, against a series of enactments, he decided that the slave is property; that the Constitution upholds it in every territory against any act of a local legislature; and even against Congress itself; or, as the President for that term tersely promulgated the saying, 'Kansas is as much a slave state as South Carolina or Georgia; slavery, by virtue of the Constitution, exists in every territory.'"
3. Stephen A. Douglas, Franklin Pierce, Roger B. Taney, and James Buchanan.