WRITINGS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN VOLUME II.



1843-1858




FIRST CHILD

TO JOSHUA F. SPEED.
SPRINGFIELD, May 18, 1843.

DEAR SPEED:--Yours of the 9th instant is duly received, which I
do not meet as a "bore," but as a most welcome visitor.  I will
answer the business part of it first.

In relation to our Congress matter here, you were right in
supposing I would support the nominee.  Neither Baker nor I,
however, is the man, but Hardin, so far as I can judge from
present appearances.  We shall have no split or trouble about the
matter; all will be harmony.  In relation to the "coming events"
about which Butler wrote you, I had not heard one word before I
got your letter; but I have so much confidence in the judgment of
Butler on such a subject that I incline to think there may be
some reality in it.  What day does Butler appoint?  By the way,
how do "events" of the same sort come on in your family?  Are you
possessing houses and lands, and oxen and asses, and men-servants
and maid-servants, and begetting sons and daughters?  We are not
keeping house, but boarding at the Globe Tavern, which is very
well kept now by a widow lady of the name of Beck.  Our room (the
same that Dr. Wallace occupied there) and boarding only costs us
four dollars a week.  Ann Todd was married something more than a
year since to a fellow by the name of Campbell, and who, Mary
says, is pretty much of a "dunce," though he has a little money
and property.  They live in Boonville, Missouri, and have not
been heard from lately enough for me to say anything about her
health.  I reckon it will scarcely be in our power to visit
Kentucky this year.  Besides poverty and the necessity of
attending to business, those "coming events," I suspect, would be
somewhat in the way.  I most heartily wish you and your Fanny
would not fail to come.  Just let us know the time, and we will
have a room provided for you at our house, and all be merry
together for a while.  Be sure to give my respects to your mother
and family; assure her that if ever I come near her, I will not
fail to call and see her.  Mary joins in sending love to your
Fanny and you.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1844



TO Gen. J. J. HARDIN.

SPRINGFIELD, May 21, 1844.

DEAR HARDIN:
Knowing that you have correspondents enough, I have forborne to
trouble you heretofore; and I now only do so to get you to set a
matter right which has got wrong with one of our best friends.
It is old Uncle Thomas Campbell of Spring Creek--(Berlin P.O.).
He has received several documents from you, and he says they are
old newspapers and documents, having no sort of interest in them.
He is, therefore, getting a strong impression that you treat him
with disrespect.  This, I know, is a mistaken impression; and you
must correct it.  The way, I leave to yourself.  Rob't W.
Canfield says he would like to have a document or two from you.

The Locos (Democrats) here are in considerable trouble about Van
Buren's letter on Texas, and the Virginia electors.  They are
growing sick of the Tariff question; and consequently are much
confounded at V.B.'s cutting them off from the new Texas
question.  Nearly half the leaders swear they won't stand it.  Of
those are Ford, T.  Campbell, Ewing, Calhoun and others.  They
don't exactly say they won't vote for V.B., but they say he will
not be the candidate, and that they are for Texas anyhow.

As ever yours,

A. LINCOLN.




1845



SELECTION OF CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES

TO Gen. J. J. HARDIN, SPRINGFIELD, Jany. 19, 1845.

DEAR GENERAL:

I do not wish to join in your proposal of a new plan for the
selection of a Whig candidate for Congress because:

1st.  I am entirely satisfied with the old system under which you
and Baker were successively nominated and elected to Congress;
and because the Whigs of the district are well acquainted with
the system, and, so far as I know or believe, are well satisfied
with it.  If the old system be thought to be vague, as to all the
delegates of the county voting the same way, or as to
instructions to them as to whom they are to vote for, or as to
filling vacancies, I am willing to join in a provision to make
these matters certain.

2d.  As to your proposals that a poll shall be opened in every
precinct, and that the whole shall take place on the same day, I
do not personally object.  They seem to me to be not unfair; and
I forbear to join in proposing them only because I choose to
leave the decision in each county to the Whigs of the county, to
be made as their own judgment and convenience may dictate.

3d.  As to your proposed stipulation that all the candidates
shall remain in their own counties, and restrain their friends in
the same it seems to me that on reflection you will see the fact
of your having been in Congress has, in various ways, so spread
your name in the district as to give you a decided advantage in
such a stipulation.  I appreciate your desire to keep down
excitement; and I promise you to "keep cool" under all
circumstances.

4th.  I have already said I am satisfied with the old system
under which such good men have triumphed and that I desire no
departure from its principles.  But if there must be a departure
from it, I shall insist upon a more accurate and just
apportionment of delegates, or representative votes, to the
constituent body, than exists by the old, and which you propose
to retain in your new plan.  If we take the entire population of
the counties as shown by the late census, we shall see by the old
plan, and by your proposed new plan,

Morgan County, with a population 16,541, has but ....... 8 votes
While Sangamon with 18,697--2156 greater has but ....... 8   "
So Scott with 6553 has ................................. 4   "
While Tazewell with 7615 1062 greater has but .......... 4   "
So Mason with 3135 has ................................. 1 vote
While Logan with 3907, 772 greater, has but ............ 1   "

And so on in a less degree the matter runs through all the
counties, being not only wrong in principle, but the advantage of
it being all manifestly in your favor with one slight exception,
in the comparison of two counties not here mentioned.

Again, if we take the Whig votes of the counties as shown by the
late Presidential election as a basis, the thing is still worse.

It seems to me most obvious that the old system needs adjustment
in nothing so much as in this; and still, by your proposal, no
notice is taken of it.  I have always been in the habit of
acceding to almost any proposal that a friend would make and I am
truly sorry that I cannot in this.  I perhaps ought to mention
that some friends at different places are endeavoring to secure
the honor of the sitting of the convention at their towns
respectively, and I fear that they would not feel much
complimented if we shall make a bargain that it should sit
nowhere.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO _________ WILLIAMS,

SPRINGFIELD, March 1, 1845.

FRIEND WILLIAMS:

The Supreme Court adjourned this morning for the term.  Your
cases of Reinhardt vs. Schuyler, Bunce vs. Schuyler, Dickhut vs.
Dunell, and Sullivan vs. Andrews are continued.  Hinman vs. Pope
I wrote you concerning some time ago.  McNutt et al. vs. Bean and
Thompson is reversed and remanded.

Fitzpatrick vs. Brady et al. is reversed and remanded with leave
to complainant to amend his bill so as to show the real
consideration given for the land.

Bunce against Graves the court confirmed, wherefore, in
accordance with your directions, I moved to have the case
remanded to enable you to take a new trial in the court below.
The court allowed the motion; of which I am glad, and I guess you
are.

This, I believe, is all as to court business.  The canal men have
got their measure through the Legislature pretty much or quite in
the shape they desired.  Nothing else now.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




ABOLITION MOVEMENT

TO WILLIAMSON DURLEY.

SPRINGFIELD, October 3, 1845

When I saw you at home, it was agreed that I should write to you
and your brother Madison.  Until I then saw you I was not aware
of your being what is generally called an abolitionist, or, as
you call yourself, a Liberty man, though I well knew there were
many such in your country.

I was glad to hear that you intended to attempt to bring about,
at the next election in Putnam, a Union of the Whigs proper and
such of the Liberty men as are Whigs in principle on all
questions save only that of slavery.  So far as I can perceive,
by such union neither party need yield anything on the point in
difference between them.  If the Whig abolitionists of New York
had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be President,
Whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed; whereas,
by the division, all that either had at stake in the contest was
lost.  And, indeed, it was extremely probable, beforehand, that
such would be the result.  As I always understood, the Liberty
men deprecated the annexation of Texas extremely; and this being
so, why they should refuse to cast their votes [so] as to prevent
it, even to me seemed wonderful.  What was their process of
reasoning, I can only judge from what a single one of them told
me.  It was this: "We are not to do evil that good may come."
This general proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply?
If by your votes you could have prevented the extension, etc., of
slavery would it not have been good, and not evil, so to have
used your votes, even though it involved the casting of them for
a slaveholder?   By the fruit the tree is to be known.  An evil
tree cannot bring forth good fruit.  If the fruit of electing Mr.
Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could
the act of electing have been evil?

But I will not argue further.  I perhaps ought to say that
individually I never was much interested in the Texas question.
I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as
they were already a free republican people on our own model.  On
the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation
would augment the evil of slavery.  It always seemed to me that
slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or
without annexation.  And if more were taken because of
annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left
where they were taken from.  It is possibly true, to some extent,
that, with annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and
continued in slavery that otherwise might have been liberated.
To whatever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil.
I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free States, due to
the Union of the States, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox
though it may seem), to let the slavery of the other States
alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear
that we should never knowingly lend ourselves, directly or
indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death--
to find new places for it to live in when it can no longer exist
in the old.  Of course I am not now considering what would be our
duty in cases of insurrection among the slaves.  To recur to the
Texas question, I understand the Liberty men to have viewed
annexation as a much greater evil than ever I did; and I would
like to convince you, if I could, that they could have prevented
it, if they had chosen.  I intend this letter for you and Madison
together; and if you and he or either shall think fit to drop me
a line, I shall be pleased.

Yours with respect,

A. LINCOLN.




1846


REQUEST FOR POLITICAL SUPPORT

TO Dr. ROBERT BOAL.
SPRINGFIELD, January 7, 1846.

Dr. ROBERT BOAL, Lacon, Ill.

DEAR DOCTOR:--Since I saw you last fall, I have often thought of
writing to you, as it was then understood I would, but, on
reflection, I have always found that I had nothing new to tell
you.  All has happened as I then told you I expected it would--
Baker's declining, Hardin's taking the track, and so on.

If Hardin and I stood precisely equal, if neither of us had been
to Congress, or if we both had, it would only accord with what I
have always done, for the sake of peace, to give way to him; and
I expect I should do it.  That I can voluntarily postpone my
pretensions, when they are no more than equal to those to which
they are postponed, you have yourself seen.  But to yield to
Hardin under present circumstances seems to me as nothing else
than yielding to one who would gladly sacrifice me altogether.
This I would rather not submit to.  That Hardin is talented,
energetic, usually generous and magnanimous, I have before this
affirmed to you and do not deny.  You know that my only argument
is that "turn about is fair play." This he, practically at least,
denies.

If it would not be taxing you too much, I wish you would write
me, telling the aspect of things in your country, or rather your
district; and also, send the names of some of your Whig
neighbors, to whom I might, with propriety, write.  Unless I can
get some one to do this, Hardin, with his old franking list, will
have the advantage of me.  My reliance for a fair shake (and I
want nothing more) in your country is chiefly on you, because of
your position and standing, and because I am acquainted with so
few others.  Let me hear from you soon.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan. 15, 1846.

JOHN BENNETT.

FRIEND JOHN:

Nathan Dresser is here, and speaks as though the contest between
Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County.  I know he is
candid and this alarms me some.  I asked him to tell me the names
of the men that were going strong for Hardin, he said Morris was
about as strong as any-now tell me, is Morris going it openly?
You remember you wrote me that he would be neutral.  Nathan also
said that some man, whom he could not remember, had said lately
that Menard County was going to decide the contest and that made
thL, contest very doubtful.  Do you know who that was?  Don't
fail to write me instantly on receiving this, telling me all-
particularly the names of those who are going strong against me.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO N. J. ROCKWELL.

SPRINGFIELD, January 21, 1846.

DEAR SIR:--You perhaps know that General Hardin and I have a
contest for the Whig nomination for Congress for this district.

He has had a turn and my argument is "turn about is fair play."

I shall be pleased if this strikes you as a sufficient
argument.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JAMES BERDAN.

SPRINGFIELD, April 26, 1846.

DEAR SIR:--I thank you for the promptness with which you answered
my letter from Bloomington.  I also thank you for the frankness
with which you comment upon a certain part of my letter; because
that comment affords me an opportunity of trying to express
myself better than I did before, seeing, as I do, that in that
part of my letter, you have not understood me as I intended to be
understood.

In speaking of the "dissatisfaction" of men who yet mean to do no
wrong, etc., I mean no special application of what I said to the
Whigs of Morgan, or of Morgan & Scott.  I only had in my mind the
fact that previous to General Hardin's withdrawal some of his
friends and some of mine had become a little warm; and I felt,
and meant to say, that for them now to meet face to face and
converse together was the best way to efface any remnant of
unpleasant feeling, if any such existed.

I did not suppose that General Hardin's friends were in any
greater need of having their feelings corrected than mine were.
Since I saw you at Jacksonville, I have had no more suspicion of
the Whigs of Morgan than of those of any other part of the
district.  I write this only to try to remove any impression that
I distrust you and the other Whigs of your country.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JAMES BERDAN.

SPRINGFIELD, May 7, 1866.

DEAR SIR:--It is a matter of high moral obligation, if not of
necessity, for me to attend the Coles and Edwards courts.  I have
some cases in both of them, in which the parties have my promise,
and are depending upon me.  The court commences in Coles on the
second Monday, and in Edgar on the third.  Your court in Morgan
commences on the fourth Monday; and it is my purpose to be with
you then, and make a speech.  I mention the Coles and Edgar
courts in order that if I should not reach Jacksonville at the
time named you may understand the reason why.  I do not, however,
think there is much danger of my being detained; as I shall go
with a purpose not to be, and consequently shall engage in no new
cases that might delay me.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




VERSES WRITTEN BY LINCOLN AFTER A VISIT TO HIS OLD HOME IN
INDIANA-(A FRAGMENT).

[In December, 1847, when Lincoln was stumping for Clay, he
crossed into Indiana and revisited his old home.  He writes:
"That part of the country is within itself as unpoetical as any
spot on earth; but still seeing it and its objects and
inhabitants aroused feelings in me which were certainly poetry;
though whether my expression of these feelings is poetry, is
quite another question."]


Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.

Where many were, but few remain
Of old familiar things;
But seeing them to mind again
The lost and absent brings.

The friends I left that parting day,
How changed, as time has sped!
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray,
And half of all are dead.

I hear the loved survivors tell
How naught from death could save,
Till every sound appears a knell,
And every spot a grave.

I range the fields with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I 'm living in the tombs.




VERSES WRITTEN BY LINCOLN CONCERNING A SCHOOL-FELLOW
WHO BECAME INSANE--(A FRAGMENT).

And when at length the drear and long
Time soothed thy fiercer woes,
How plaintively thy mournful song
Upon the still night rose

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed,
Far distant, sweet and lone;
The funeral dirge it ever seemed
Of reason dead and gone.

Air held her breath; trees with the spell
Seemed sorrowing angels round,
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell
Upon the listening ground.


But this is past, and naught remains
That raised thee o'er the brute;
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strains
Are like, forever mute.

Now fare thee well! More thou the cause
Than subject now of woe.
All mental pangs by time's kind laws
Hast lost the power to know.

O Death! thou awe-inspiring prince
That keepst the world in fear,
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence,
And leave him lingering here?




SECOND CHILD

TO JOSHUA P. SPEED

SPRINGFIELD, October 22, 1846.

DEAR SPEED:--You, no doubt, assign the suspension of our
correspondence to the true philosophic cause; though it must be
confessed by both of us that this is rather a cold reason for
allowing a friendship such as ours to die out by degrees.  I
propose now that, upon receipt of this, you shall be considered
in my debt, and under obligations to pay soon, and that neither
shall remain long in arrears hereafter.  Are you agreed?

Being elected to Congress, though I am very grateful to our
friends for having done it, has not pleased me as much as I
expected.

We have another boy, born the 10th of March.  He is very much
such a child as Bob was at his age, rather of a longer order.
Bob is "short and low," and I expect always will be.  He talks
very plainly,--almost as plainly as anybody.  He is quite smart
enough.  I sometimes fear that he is one of the little rare-ripe
sort that are smarter at about five than ever after.  He has a
great deal of that sort of mischief that is the offspring of such
animal spirits.  Since I began this letter, a messenger came to
tell me Bob was lost; but by the time I reached the house his
mother had found him and had him whipped, and by now, very
likely, he is run away again.  Mary has read your letter, and
wishes to be remembered to Mrs.  Speed and you, in which I most
sincerely join her.

As ever yours,

A. LINCOLN.




TO MORRIS AND BROWN

SPRINGFIELD,
October 21, 1847.

MESSRS. MORRIS AND BROWN.

GENTLEMEN:--Your second letter on the matter of Thornton and
others, came to hand this morning.  I went at once to see Logan,
and found that he is not engaged against you, and that he has so
sent you word by Mr. Butterfield, as he says.  He says that some
time ago, a young man (who he knows not) came to him, with a copy
of the affidavit, to engage him to aid in getting the Governor to
grant the warrant; and that he, Logan, told the man, that in his
opinion, the affidavit was clearly insufficient, upon which the
young man left, without making any engagement with him.  If the
Governor shall arrive before I leave, Logan and I will both
attend to the matter, and he will attend to it, if he does not
come till after I leave; all upon the condition that the Governor
shall not have acted upon the matter, before his arrival here.  I
mention this condition because, I learned this morning from the
Secretary of State, that he is forwarding to the Governor, at
Palestine, all papers he receives in the case, as fast as he
receives them.  Among the papers forwarded will be your letter to
the Governor or Secretary of, I believe, the same date and about
the same contents of your last letter to me; so that the Governor
will, at all events have your points and authorities.  The case
is a clear one on our side; but whether the Governor will view it
so is another thing.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H.  HERNDON

WASHINGTON, December 5, 1847.

DEAR WILLIAM:--You may remember that about a year ago a man by
the name of Wilson (James Wilson, I think) paid us twenty dollars
as an advance fee to attend to a case in the Supreme Court for
him, against a Mr. Campbell, the record of which case was in the
hands of Mr. Dixon of St.  Louis, who never furnished it to us.
When I was at Bloomington last fall I met a friend of Wilson, who
mentioned the subject to me, and induced me to write to Wilson,
telling him I would leave the ten dollars with you which had been
left with me to pay for making abstracts in the case, so that the
case may go on this winter; but I came away, and forgot to do it.
What I want now is to send you the money, to be used accordingly,
if any one comes on to start the case, or to be retained by you
if no one does.

There is nothing of consequence new here.  Congress is to
organize to-morrow.  Last night we held a Whig caucus for the
House, and nominated Winthrop of Massachusetts for speaker,
Sargent of Pennsylvania for sergeant-at-arms, Homer of New Jersey
door-keeper, and McCormick of District of Columbia postmaster.
The Whig majority in the House is so small that, together with
some little dissatisfaction, [it] leaves it doubtful whether we
will elect them all.

This paper is too thick to fold, which is the reason I send only
a half-sheet.

Yours as ever,
A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, December 13, 1847

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter, advising me of the receipt of our fee
in the bank case, is just received, and I don't expect to hear
another as good a piece of news from Springfield while I am away.
I am under no obligations to the bank; and I therefore wish you
to buy bank certificates, and pay my debt there, so as to pay it
with the least money possible.  I would as soon you should buy
them of Mr. Ridgely, or any other person at the bank, as of any
one else, provided you can get them as cheaply.  I suppose, after
the bank debt shall be paid, there will be some money left, out
of which I would like to have you pay Lavely and Stout twenty
dollars, and Priest and somebody (oil-makers) ten dollars, for
materials got for house-painting.  If there shall still be any
left, keep it till you see or hear from me.

I shall begin sending documents so soon as I can get them.  I
wrote you yesterday about a "Congressional Globe." As you are all
so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do
so before long.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RESOLUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF
REPRESENTATIVES, DECEMBER 22, 1847

Whereas, The President of the United States, in his message of
May 11, 1846, has declared that "the Mexican Government not only
refused to receive him [the envoy of the United States], or to
listen to his propositions, but, after a long-continued series of
menaces, has at last invaded our territory and shed the blood of
our fellow-citizens on our own soil";

And again, in his message of December 8, 1846, that "we had ample
cause of war against Mexico long before the breaking out of
hostilities; but even then we forbore to take redress into our
own hands until Mexico herself became the aggressor, by invading
our soil in hostile array, and shedding the blood of our
citizens";

And yet again, in his message of December 7, 1847, that "the
Mexican Government refused even to hear the terms of adjustment
which he [our minister of peace] was authorized to propose, and
finally, under wholly unjustifiable pretexts, involved the two
countries in war, by invading the territory of the State of
Texas, striking the first blow, and shedding the blood of our
citizens on our own soil";

And whereas, This House is desirous to obtain a full knowledge of
all the facts which go to establish whether the particular spot
on which the blood of our citizens was so shed was or was not at
that time our own soil: therefore,

Resolved, By the House of Representatives, that the President of
the United States be respectfully requested to inform this House:

First.  Whether the spot on which the blood of our citizens was
shed, as in his message declared, was or was not within the
territory of Spain, at least after the treaty of 1819, until the
Mexican revolution.

Second.  Whether that spot is or is not within the territory
which was wrested from Spain by the revolutionary government of
Mexico.

Third.  Whether that spot is or is not within a settlement of
people, which settlement has existed ever since long before the
Texas revolution, and until its inhabitants fled before the
approach of the United States army.

Fourth.  Whether that settlement is or is not isolated from any
and all other settlements by the Gulf and the Rio Grande on the
south and west, and by wide uninhabited regions on the north and
east.

Fifth.  Whether the people of that settlement, or a majority of
them, or any of them, have ever submitted themselves to the
government or laws of Texas or of the United States, by consent
or by compulsion, either by accepting office, or voting at
elections, or paying tax, or serving on juries, or having process
served upon them, or in any other way.

Sixth.  Whether the people of that settlement did or did not flee
from the approach of the United States army, leaving unprotected
their homes and their growing crops, before the blood was shed,
as in the message stated; and whether the first blood, so shed,
was or was not shed within the inclosure of one of the people who
had thus fled from it.

Seventh.  Whether our citizens, whose blood was shed, as in his
message declared, were or were not, at that time, armed officers
and soldiers, sent into that settlement by the military order of
the President, through the Secretary of War.

Eighth.  Whether the military force of the United States was or
was not so sent into that settlement after General Taylor had
more than once intimated to the War Department that, in his
opinion, no such movement was necessary to the defence or
protection of Texas.




REMARKS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 5, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln said he had made an effort, some few days since, to
obtain the floor in relation to this measure [resolution to
direct Postmaster-General to make arrangements with railroad for
carrying the mails--in Committee of the Whole], but had failed.
One of the objects he had then had in view was now in a great
measure superseded by what had fallen from the gentleman from
Virginia who had just taken his seat.  He begged to assure his
friends on the other side of the House that no assault whatever
was meant upon the Postmaster-General, and he was glad that what
the gentleman had now said modified to a great extent the
impression which might have been created by the language he had
used on a previous occasion.  He wanted to state to gentlemen who
might have entertained such impressions, that the Committee on
the Post-office was composed of five Whigs and four Democrats,
and their report was understood as sustaining, not impugning, the
position taken by the Postmaster-General.  That report had met
with the approbation of all the Whigs, and of all the Democrats
also, with the exception of one, and he wanted to go even further
than this.  [Intimation was informally given Mr. Lincoln that it
was not in order to mention on the floor what had taken place in
committee.]  He then observed that if he had been out of order in
what he had said he took it all back so far as he could.  He had
no desire, he could assure gentlemen, ever to be out of order--
though he never could keep long in order.

Mr. Lincoln went on to observe that he differed in opinion, in
the present case, from his honorable friend from Richmond [Mr.
Botts].  That gentleman, had begun his remarks by saying that if
all prepossessions in this matter could be removed out of the
way, but little difficulty would be experienced in coming to an
agreement.  Now, he could assure that gentleman that he had
himself begun the examination of the subject with prepossessions
all in his favor.  He had long and often heard of him, and, from
what he had heard, was prepossessed in his favor.  Of the
Postmaster-General he had also heard, but had no prepossessions
in his favor, though certainly none of an opposite kind.  He
differed, however, with that gentleman in politics, while in this
respect he agreed with the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Botts],
whom he wished to oblige whenever it was in his power.  That
gentleman had referred to the report made to the House by the
Postmaster-General, and had intimated an apprehension that
gentlemen would be disposed to rely, on that report alone, and
derive their views of the case from that document alone.  Now it
so happened that a pamphlet had been slipped into his [Mr.
Lincoln's] hand before he read the report of the Postmaster-
General; so that, even in this, he had begun with prepossessions
in favor of the gentleman from Virginia.

As to the report, he had but one remark to make: he had carefully
examined it, and he did not understand that there was any dispute
as to the facts therein stated the dispute, if he understood it,
was confined altogether to the inferences to be drawn from those
facts.  It was a difference not about facts, but about
conclusions.  The facts were not disputed.  If he was right in
this, he supposed the House might assume the facts to be as they
were stated, and thence proceed to draw their own conclusions.

The gentleman had said that the Postmaster-General had got into a
personal squabble with the railroad company.  Of this Mr. Lincoln
knew nothing, nor did he need or desire to know anything, because
it had nothing whatever to do with a just conclusion from the
premises.  But the gentleman had gone on to ask whether so great
a grievance as the present detention of the Southern mail ought
not to be remedied.  Mr. Lincoln would assure the gentleman that
if there was a proper way of doing it, no man was more anxious
than he that it should be done.  The report made by the committee
had been intended to yield much for the sake of removing that
grievance.  That the grievance was very great there was no
dispute in any quarter.  He supposed that the statements made by
the gentleman from Virginia to show this were all entirely
correct in point of fact.  He did suppose that the interruptions
of regular intercourse, and all the other inconveniences growing
out of it, were all as that gentleman had stated them to be; and
certainly, if redress could be rendered, it was proper it should
be rendered as soon as possible.  The gentleman said that in
order to effect this no new legislative action was needed; all
that was necessary was that the Postmaster-General should be
required to do what the law, as it stood, authorized and required
him to do.

We come then, said Mr. Lincoln, to the law.  Now the Postmaster-
General says he cannot give to this company more than two hundred
and thirty-seven dollars and fifty cents per railroad mile of
transportation, and twelve and a half per cent. less for
transportation by steamboats.  He considers himself as restricted
by law to this amount; and he says, further, that he would not
give more if he could, because in his apprehension it would not
be fair and just.




1848


DESIRE FOR SECOND TERM IN CONGRESS

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, January 8, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of December 27 was received a day or
two ago.  I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have
taken, and promise to take in my little business there.  As to
speech making, by way of getting the hang of the House I made a
little speech two or three days ago on a post-office question of
no general interest.  I find speaking here and elsewhere about
the same thing.  I was about as badly scared, and no worse as I
am when I speak in court.  I expect to make one within a week or
two, in which I hope to succeed well enough to wish you to see
it.

It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are some who
desire that I should be reelected.  I most heartily thank them
for their kind partiality; and I can say, as Mr. Clay said of the
annexation of Texas, that "personally I would not object" to a
reelection, although I thought at the time, and still think, it
would be quite as well for me to return to the law at the end of
a single term.  I made the declaration that I would not be a
candidate again, more from a wish to deal fairly with others, to
keep peace among our friends, and to keep the district from going
to the enemy, than for any cause personal to myself; so that if
it should so happen that nobody else wishes to be elected, I
could not refuse the people the right of sending me again.  But
to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to authorize any
one so to enter me is what my word and honor forbid.


I got some letters intimating a probability of so much difficulty
amongst our friends as to lose us the district; but I remember
such letters were written to Baker when my own case was under
consideration, and I trust there is no more ground for such
apprehension now than there was then.  Remember I am always glad
to receive a letter from you.

Most truly your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH ON DECLARATION OF WAR ON MEXICO
SPEECH IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JANUARY 12, 1848.

MR CHAIRMAN:--Some if not all the gentlemen on the other side of
the House who have addressed the committee within the last two
days have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly
understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago
declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and
unconstitutionally commenced by the President.  I admit that such
a vote should not be given in mere party wantonness, and that the
one given is justly censurable if it have no other or better
foundation.  I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did
so under my best impression of the truth of the case.  How I got
this impression, and how it may possibly be remedied, I will now
try to show.  When the war began, it was my opinion that all
those who because of knowing too little, or because of knowing
too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the
President in the beginning of it should nevertheless, as good
citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till
the war should be ended.  Some leading Democrats, including ex-
President Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand
them; and I adhered to it and acted upon it, until since I took
my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it were it not
that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so.
Besides the continual effort of the President to argue every
silent vote given for supplies into an indorsement of the justice
and wisdom of his conduct; besides that singularly candid
paragraph in his late message in which he tells us that Congress
with great unanimity had declared that "by the act of the
Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that government
and the United States," when the same journals that informed him
of this also informed him that when that declaration stood
disconnected from the question of supplies sixty-seven in the
House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it; besides this
open attempt to prove by telling the truth what he could not
prove by telling the whole truth-demanding of all who will not
submit to be misrepresented, in justice to themselves, to speak
out, besides all this, one of my colleagues [Mr. Richardson] at a
very early day in the session brought in a set of resolutions
expressly indorsing the original justice of the war on the part
of the President.  Upon these resolutions when they shall be put
on their passage I shall be compelled to vote; so that I cannot
be silent if I would.  Seeing this, I went about preparing myself
to give the vote understandingly when it should come.  I
carefully examined the President's message, to ascertain what he
himself had said and proved upon the point.  The result of this
examination was to make the impression that, taking for true all
the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his
justification; and that the President would have gone further
with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the
truth would not permit him.  Under the impression thus made I
gave the vote before mentioned.  I propose now to give concisely
the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the
conclusion I did.  The President, in his first war message of
May, 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities
were commenced by Mexico, and he repeats that declaration almost
in the same language in each successive annual message, thus
showing that he deems that point a highly essential one.  In the
importance of that point I entirely agree with the President.  To
my judgment it is the very point upon which he should be
justified, or condemned.  In his message of December, 1846, it
seems to have occurred to him, as is certainly true, that title-
ownership-to soil or anything else is not a simple fact, but is a
conclusion following on one or more simple facts; and that it was
incumbent upon him to present the facts from which he concluded
the soil was ours on which the first blood of the war was shed.

Accordingly, a little below the middle of page twelve in the
message last referred to he enters upon that task; forming an
issue and introducing testimony, extending the whole to a little
below the middle of page fourteen.  Now, I propose to try to show
that the whole of this--issue and evidence--is from beginning to
end the sheerest deception.  The issue, as he presents it, is in
these words: "But there are those who, conceding all this to be
true, assume the ground that the true western boundary of Texas
is the Nueces, instead of the Rio Grande; and that, therefore, in
marching our army to the east bank of the latter river, we passed
the Texas line and invaded the territory of Mexico."  Now this
issue is made up of two affirmatives and no negative. The main
deception of it is that it assumes as true that one river or the
other is necessarily the boundary; and cheats the superficial
thinker entirely out of the idea that possibly the boundary is
somewhere between the two, and not actually at either.  A further
deception is that it will let in evidence which a true issue
would exclude.  A true issue made by the President would be about
as follows: "I say the soil was ours, on which the first blood
was shed; there are those who say it was not."

I now proceed to examine the President's evidence as applicable
to such an issue.  When that evidence is analyzed, it is all
included in the following propositions

(1) That the Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana as
we purchased it of France in 1803.

(2) That the Republic of Texas always claimed the Rio Grande as
her eastern boundary.

(3) That by various acts she had claimed it on paper.

(4) That Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recognized the Rio
Grande as her boundary.

(5) That Texas before, and the United States after, annexation
had exercised jurisdiction beyond the Nueces--between the two
rivers.

(6) That our Congress understood the boundary of Texas to extend
beyond the Nueces.

Now for each of these in its turn.  His first item is that the
Rio Grande was the western boundary of Louisiana, as we purchased
it of France in 1803; and seeming to expect this to be disputed,
he argues over the amount of nearly a page to prove it true, at
the end of which he lets us know that by the treaty of 1803 we
sold to Spain the whole country from the Rio Grande eastward to
the Sabine.  Now, admitting for the present that the Rio Grande
was the boundary of Louisiana, what under heaven had that to do
with the present boundary between us and Mexico?  How, Mr.
Chairman, the line that once divided your land from mine can
still be the boundary between us after I have sold my land to you
is to me beyond all comprehension.  And how any man, with an
honest purpose only of proving the truth, could ever have thought
of introducing such a fact to prove such an issue is equally
incomprehensible. His next piece of evidence is that "the
Republic of Texas always claimed this river [Rio Grande] as her
western boundary."  That is not true, in fact.  Texas has claimed
it, but she has not always claimed it.  There is at least one
distinguished exception.  Her State constitution the republic's
most solemn and well-considered act, that which may, without
impropriety, be called her last will and testament, revoking all
others-makes no such claim.  But suppose she had always claimed
it.  Has not Mexico always claimed the contrary?  So that there
is but claim against claim, leaving nothing proved until we get
back of the claims and find which has the better foundation.
Though not in the order in which the President presents his
evidence, I now consider that class of his statements which are
in substance nothing more than that Texas has, by various acts of
her Convention and Congress, claimed the Rio Grande as her
boundary, on paper.  I mean here what he says about the fixing of
the Rio Grande as her boundary in her old constitution (not her
State constitution), about forming Congressional districts,
counties, etc.  Now all of this is but naked claim; and what I
have already said about claims is strictly applicable to this.
If I should claim your land by word of mouth, that certainly
would not make it mine; and if I were to claim it by a deed which
I had made myself, and with which you had had nothing to do, the
claim would be quite the same in substance--or rather, in utter
nothingness.  I next consider the President's statement that
Santa Anna in his treaty with Texas recognized the Rio Grande as
the western boundary of Texas.  Besides the position so often
taken, that Santa Anna while a prisoner of war, a captive, could
not bind Mexico by a treaty, which I deem conclusive--besides
this, I wish to say something in relation to this treaty, so
called by the President, with Santa Anna.  If any man would like
to be amused by a sight of that little thing which the President
calls by that big name, he can have it by turning to Niles's
Register, vol. 1, p. 336. And if any one should suppose that
Niles's Register is a curious repository of so mighty a document
as a solemn treaty between nations, I can only say that I learned
to a tolerable degree of certainty, by inquiry at the State
Department, that the President himself never saw it anywhere
else.  By the way, I believe I should not err if I were to
declare that during the first ten years of the existence of that
document it was never by anybody called a treaty--that it was
never so called till the President, in his extremity, attempted
by so calling it to wring something from it in justification of
himself in connection with the Mexican War.  It has none of the
distinguishing features of a treaty.  It does not call itself a
treaty.  Santa Anna does not therein assume to bind Mexico; he
assumes only to act as the President--Commander-in-Chief of the
Mexican army and navy; stipulates that the then present
hostilities should cease, and that he would not himself take up
arms, nor influence the Mexican people to take up arms, against
Texas during the existence of the war of independence.  He did
not recognize the independence of Texas; he did not assume to put
an end to the war, but clearly indicated his expectation of its
continuance; he did not say one word about boundary, and, most
probably, never thought of it.  It is stipulated therein that the
Mexican forces should evacuate the territory of Texas, passing to
the other side of the Rio Grande; and in another article it is
stipulated that, to prevent collisions between the armies, the
Texas army should not approach nearer than within five leagues--
of what is not said, but clearly, from the object stated, it is
of the Rio Grande. Now, if this is a treaty recognizing the Rio
Grande as the boundary of Texas, it contains the singular feature
of stipulating that Texas shall not go within five leagues of her
own boundary.

Next comes the evidence of Texas before annexation, and the
United States afterwards, exercising jurisdiction beyond the
Nueces and between the two rivers.  This actual exercise of
jurisdiction is the very class or quality of evidence we want.
It is excellent so far as it goes; but does it go far enough?  He
tells us it went beyond the Nueces, but he does not tell us it
went to the Rio Grande. He tells us jurisdiction was exercised
between the two rivers, but he does not tell us it was exercised
over all the territory between them.  Some simple-minded people
think it is possible to cross one river and go beyond it without
going all the way to the next, that jurisdiction may be exercised
between two rivers without covering all the country between them.
I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction
over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi; and
yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers
that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet long by fifty feet
wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He
has a neighbor between him and the Mississippi--that is, just
across the street, in that direction--whom I am sure he could
neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which
nevertheless he could certainly annex, if it were to be done by
merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or
even sitting down and writing a deed for it.

But next the President tells us the Congress of the United States
understood the State of Texas they admitted into the Union to
extend beyond the Nueces.  Well, I suppose they did.  I certainly
so understood it.  But how far beyond?  That Congress did not
understand it to extend clear to the Rio Grande is quite certain,
by the fact of their joint resolutions for admission expressly
leaving all questions of boundary to future adjustment.  And it
may be added that Texas herself is proven to have had the same
understanding of it that our Congress had, by the fact of the
exact conformity of her new constitution to those resolutions.

I am now through the whole of the President's evidence; and it is
a singular fact that if any one should declare the President sent
the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had
never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of
Texas or of the United States, and that there and thereby the
first blood of the war was shed, there is not one word in all the
which would either admit or deny the declaration.  This strange
omission it does seem to me could not have occurred but by
design.  My way of living leads me to be about the courts of
justice; and there I have sometimes seen a good lawyer,
struggling for his client's neck in a desperate case, employing
every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up with many words
some point arising in the case which he dared not admit and yet
could not deny.  Party bias may help to make it appear so, but
with all the allowance I can make for such bias, it still does
appear to me that just such, and from just such necessity, is the
President's struggle in this case.

Sometime after my colleague [Mr. Richardson] introduced the
resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble,
resolution, and interrogations, intended to draw the President
out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground.  To show
their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true
rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico.  It
is that wherever Texas was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and
wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction was hers; and that
whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one
from that of the other was the true boundary between them.  If,
as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the
western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along
the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the
boundary: but the uninhabited country between the two was.  The
extent of our territory in that region depended not on any
treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it), but on
revolution.  Any people anywhere being inclined and having the
power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing
government, and form a new one that suits them better.  This is a
most valuable, a most sacred right--a right which we hope and
believe is to liberate the world.  Nor is this right confined to
cases in which the whole people of an existing government may
choose to exercise it.  Any portion of such people that can may
revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as
they inhabit.  More than this, a majority of any portion of such
people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled
with or near about them, who may oppose this movement.  Such
minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own
revolution.  It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old
lines or old laws, but to break up both, and make new ones.

As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in
1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President's
statements.  After this, all Mexico, including Texas,
revolutionized against Spain; and still later Texas
revolutionized against Mexico.  In my view, just so far as she
carried her resolution by obtaining the actual, willing or
unwilling, submission of the people, so far the country was hers,
and no farther.  Now, sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very
best evidence as to whether Texas had actually carried her
revolution to the place where the hostilities of the present war
commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories I
proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let
him answer fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts
and not with arguments.  Let him remember he sits where
Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer as Washington
would answer.  As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not,
be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion--no equivocation.  And
if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours where the
first blood of the war was shed,--that it was not within an
inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had
submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas or of the
United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort
Brown, then I am with him for his justification.  In that case I
shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day.  I
have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this
--I expect to gain some votes, in connection with the war, which,
without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety in my own
judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so.
But if he can not or will not do this,--if on any pretence or no
pretence he shall refuse or omit it then I shall be fully
convinced of what I more than suspect already that he is deeply
conscious of being in the wrong; that he feels the blood of this
war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to heaven against him;
that originally having some strong motive--what, I will not stop
now to give my opinion concerning to involve the two countries in
a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny by fixing the public gaze
upon the exceeding brightness of military glory,--that attractive
rainbow that rises in showers of blood, that serpent's eye that
charms to destroy,--he plunged into it, and was swept on and on
till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which
Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself he knows not where.
How like the half insane mumbling of a fever dream is the whole
war part of his late message!  At one time telling us that Mexico
has nothing whatever that we can get--but territory; at another
showing us how we can support the war by levying contributions on
Mexico.  At one time urging the national honor, the security of
the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even the
good of Mexico herself as among the objects of the war; at
another telling us that "to reject indemnity, by refusing to
accept a cession of territory, would be to abandon all our just
demands, and to wage the war, bearing all its expenses, without a
purpose or definite object."  So then this national honor,
security of the future, and everything but territorial indemnity
may be considered the no-purposes and indefinite objects of the
war!  But, having it now settled that territorial indemnity is
the only object, we are urged to seize, by legislation here, all
that he was content to take a few months ago, and the whole
province of Lower California to boot, and to still carry on the
war to take all we are fighting for, and still fight on.  Again,
the President is resolved under all circumstances to have full
territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets
to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses
shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican
territory.  So again, he insists that the separate national
existence of Mexico shall be maintained; but he does not tell us
how this can be done, after we shall have taken all her
territory.  Lest the questions I have suggested be considered
speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show
they are not.  The war has gone on some twenty months; for the
expenses of which, together with an inconsiderable old score, the
President now claims about one half of the Mexican territory, and
that by far the better half, so far as concerns our ability to
make anything out of it.  It is comparatively uninhabited; so
that we could establish land-offices in it, and raise some money
in that way.  But the other half is already inhabited, as I
understand it, tolerably densely for the nature of the country,
and all its lands, or all that are valuable, already appropriated
as private property.  How then are we to make anything out of
these lands with this encumbrance on them? or how remove the
encumbrance?  I suppose no one would say we should kill the
people, or drive them out, or make slaves of them, or confiscate
their property.  How, then, can we make much out of this part of
the territory?  If the prosecution of the war has in expenses
already equalled the better half of the country, how long its
future prosecution will be in equalling the less valuable half is
not a speculative, but a practical, question, pressing closely
upon us.  And yet it is a question which the President seems
never to have thought of.  As to the mode of terminating the war
and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and
indefinite.  First, it is to be done by a more vigorous
prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy's country;
and after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the
President drops down into a half-despairing tone, and tells us
that "with a people distracted and divided by contending
factions, and a government subject to constant changes by
successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may
fail to secure a satisfactory peace."  Then he suggests the
propriety of wheedling the Mexican people to desert the counsels
of their own leaders, and, trusting in our protestations, to set
up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace;
telling us that "this may become , the only mode of obtaining
such a peace."  But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and
then drops back on to the already half-abandoned ground of "more
vigorous prosecution."  All this shows that the President is in
nowise satisfied with his own positions.  First he takes up one,
and in attempting to argue us into it he argues himself out of
it, then seizes another and goes through the same process, and
then, confused at being able to think of nothing new, he snatches
up the old one again, which he has some time before cast off.
His mind, taxed beyond its power, is running hither and thither,
like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no
position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere
intimates when the President expects the war to terminate.  At
its beginning, General Scott was by this same President driven
into disfavor if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could
not be conquered in less than three or four months.  But now, at
the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have
given us the most splendid successes, every department and every
part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and
volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things
which it had ever before been thought men could not do--after all
this, this same President gives a long message, without showing
us that as to the end he himself has even an imaginary
conception.  As I have before said, he knows not where he is.  He
is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.  God
grant he may be able to show there is not something about his
conscience more painful than his mental perplexity.

The following is a copy of the so-called "treaty" referred to in
the speech:

     "Articles of Agreement entered into between his Excellency
David G. Burnet, President of the Republic of Texas, of the one
part, and his Excellency General Santa Anna, President-General-
in-Chief of the Mexican army, of the other part:
     "Article I. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna agrees that
he will not take up arms, nor will he exercise his influence to
cause them to be taken up, against the people of Texas during the
present war of independence.
     "Article II. All hostilities between the Mexican and Texan
troops will cease immediately, both by land and water.
     "Article III. The Mexican troops will evacuate the territory
of Texas, passing to the other side of the Rio Grande Del Norte.
     "Article IV. The Mexican army, in its retreat, shall not
take the property of any person without his consent and just
indemnification, using only such articles as may be necessary for
its subsistence, in cases when the owner may not be present, and
remitting to the commander of the army of Texas, or to the
commissioners to be appointed for the adjustment of such matters,
an account of the value of the property consumed, the place where
taken, and the name of the owner, if it can be ascertained.
     "Article V. That all private property, including cattle,
horses, negro slaves, or indentured persons, of whatever
denomination, that may have been captured by any portion of the
Mexican army, or may have taken refuge in the said army, since
the commencement of the late invasion, shall be restored to the
commander of the Texan army, or to such other persons as may be
appointed by the Government of Texas to receive them.
     "Article VI. The troops of both armies will refrain from
coming in contact with each other; and to this end the commander
of the army of Texas will be careful not to approach within a
shorter distance than five leagues.
     "Article VII. The Mexican army shall not make any other
delay on its march than that which is necessary to take up their
hospitals, baggage, etc., and to cross the rivers; any delay not
necessary to these purposes to be considered an infraction of
this agreement.
     "Article VIII. By an express, to be immediately despatched,
this agreement shall be sent to General Vincente Filisola and to
General T. J. Rusk, commander of the Texan army, in order that
they may be apprised of its stipulations; and to this end they
will exchange engagements to comply with the same.
     "Article IX. That all Texan prisoners now in the possession
of the Mexican army, or its authorities, be forthwith released,
and furnished with free passports to return to their homes; in
consideration of which a corresponding number of Mexican
prisoners, rank and file, now in possession of the Government of
Texas shall be immediately released; the remainder of the Mexican
prisoners that continue in the possession of the Government of
Texas to be treated with due humanity,--any extraordinary
comforts that may be furnished them to be at the charge of the
Government of Mexico.
     "Article X. General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna will be sent
to Vera Cruz as soon as it shall be deemed proper.

"The contracting parties sign this instrument for the
abovementioned purposes, in duplicate, at the port of Velasco,
this fourteenth day of May, 1836.

"DAVID G. BURNET, President,
"JAS. COLLINGSWORTH, Secretary of State,
"ANTONIO LOPEZ DE SANTA ANNA,
"B. HARDIMAN, Secretary o f the Treasury,
"P. W. GRAYSON, Attorney-General."




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JANUARY 19, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Post-office and Post
Roads, made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the petition of Messrs.  Saltmarsh and Fuller, report:
That, as proved to their satisfaction, the mail routes from
Milledgeville to Athens, and from Warrenton to Decatur, in the
State of Georgia (numbered 2366 and 2380), were let to Reeside
and Avery at $1300 per annum for the former and $1500 for the
latter, for the term of four years, to commence on the first day
of January, 1835; that, previous to the time for commencing the
service, Reeside sold his interest therein to Avery; that on the
a a th of May, 1835, Avery sold the whole to these petitioners,
Saltmarsh and Fuller, to take effect from the beginning, January
a 1835 ; that at this time, the Assistant Postmaster-General,
being called on for that purpose, consented to the transfer of
the contracts from Reeside and Avery to these petitioners, and
promised to have proper entries of the transfer made on the books
of the department, which, however, was neglected to be done; that
the petitioners, supposing all was right, in good faith commenced
the transportation of the mail on these routes, and after
difficulty arose, still trusting that all would be made right,
continued the service till December a 1`837; that they performed
the service to the entire satisfaction of the department, and
have never been paid anything for it except $_____ ; that the
difficulty occurred as follows:

Mr. Barry was Postmaster-General at the times of making the
contracts and the attempted transfer of them; Mr. Kendall
succeeded Mr. Barry, and finding Reeside apparently in debt to
the department, and these contracts still standing in the names
of Reeside and Avery, refused to pay for the services under them,
otherwise than by credits to Reeside ; afterward, however, he
divided the compensation, still crediting one half to Reeside,
and directing the other to be paid to the order of Avery, who
disclaimed all right to it.  After discontinuing the service,
these petitioners, supposing they might have legal redress
against Avery, brought suit against him in New Orleans; in which
suit they failed, on the ground that Avery had complied with his
contract, having done so much toward the transfer as they had
accepted and been satisfied with.  Still later the department
sued Reeside on his supposed indebtedness, and by a verdict of
the jury it was determined that the department was indebted to
him in a sum much beyond all the credits given him on the account
above stated.  Under these circumstances, the committee consider
the petitioners clearly entitled to relief, and they report a
bill accordingly; lest, however, there should be some mistake as
to the amount which they have already received, we so frame it as
that, by adjustment at the department, they may be paid so much
as remains unpaid for services actually performed by them not
charging them with the credits given to Reeside.  The committee
think it not improbable that the petitioners purchased the right
of Avery to be paid for the service from the 1st of January, till
their purchase on May 11, 1835; but, the evidence on this point
being very vague, they forbear to report in favor of allowing it.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON--LEGAL WORK

WASHINGTON, January 19, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Inclosed you find a letter of Louis W. Chandler.
What is wanted is that you shall ascertain whether the claim upon
the note described has received any dividend in the Probate Court
of Christian County, where the estate of Mr. Overbon Williams has
been administered on.  If nothing is paid on it, withdraw the
note and send it to me, so that Chandler can see the indorser of
it.  At all events write me all about it, till I can somehow get
it off my hands.  I have already been bored more than enough
about it; not the least of which annoyance is his cursed,
unreadable, and ungodly handwriting.

I have made a speech, a copy of which I will send you by next
mail.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REGARDING SPEECH ON MEXICAN WAR

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 1, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of the 19th ultimo was received last
night, and for which I am much obliged.  The only thing in it
that I wish to talk to you at once about is that because of my
vote for Ashmun's amendment you fear that you and I disagree
about the war.  I regret this, not because of any fear we shall
remain disagreed after you have read this letter, but because if
you misunderstand I fear other good friends may also.  That vote
affirms that the war was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally
commenced by the President; and I will stake my life that if you
had been in my place you would have voted just as I did.  Would
you have voted what you felt and knew to be a lie?  I know you
would not.  Would you have gone out of the House--skulked the
vote?  I expect not.  If you had skulked one vote, you would have
had to skulk many more before the end of the session.
Richardson's resolutions, introduced before I made any move or
gave any vote upon the subject, make the direct question of the
justice of the war; so that no man can be silent if he would.
You are compelled to speak; and your only alternative is to tell
the truth or a lie.  I cannot doubt which you would do.

This vote has nothing to do in determining my votes on the
questions of supplies.  I have always intended, and still intend,
to vote supplies; perhaps not in the precise form recommended by
the President, but in a better form for all purposes, except
Locofoco party purposes.  It is in this particular you seem
mistaken.  The Locos are untiring in their efforts to make the
impression that all who vote supplies or take part in the war do
of necessity approve the President's conduct in the beginning of
it; but the Whigs have from the beginning made and kept the
distinction between the two.  In the very first act nearly all
the Whigs voted against the preamble declaring that war existed
by the act of Mexico; and yet nearly all of them voted for the
supplies.  As to the Whig men who have participated in the war,
so far as they have spoken in my hearing they do not hesitate to
denounce as unjust the President's conduct in the beginning of
the war.  They do not suppose that such denunciation is directed
by undying hatred to him, as The Register  would have it
believed.  There are two such Whigs on this floor (Colonel
Haskell and Major James) The former fought as a colonel by the
side of Colonel Baker at Cerro Gordo, and stands side by side
with me in the vote that you seem dissatisfied with.  The latter,
the history of whose capture with Cassius Clay you well know, had
not arrived here when that vote was given; but, as I understand,
he stands ready to give just such a vote whenever an occasion
shall present.  Baker, too, who is now here, says the truth is
undoubtedly that way; and whenever he shall speak out, he will
say so.  Colonel Doniphan, too, the favorite Whig of Missouri,
and who overran all Northern Mexico, on his return home in a
public speech at St.  Louis condemned the administration in
relation to the war.  If I remember, G.  T.  M.  Davis, who has
been through almost the whole war, declares in favor of Mr. Clay;
from which I infer that he adopts the sentiments of Mr. Clay,
generally at least.  On the other hand, I have heard of but one
Whig who has been to the war attempting to justify the
President's conduct.  That one was Captain Bishop, editor of the
Charleston Courier, and a very clever fellow.  I do not mean this
letter for the public, but for you.  Before it reaches you, you
will have seen and read my pamphlet speech, and perhaps been
scared anew by it.  After you get over your scare, read it over
again, sentence by sentence, and tell me honestly what you think
of it.  I condensed all I could for fear of being cut off by the
hour rule, and when I got through I had spoken but forty-five
minutes.

Yours forever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 2, 1848

DEAR WILLIAM:--I just take my pen to say that Mr. Stephens, of
Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a
voice like Logan's, has just concluded the very best speech of an
hour's length I ever heard.  My old withered dry eyes are full of
tears yet.

If he writes it out anything like he delivered it, our people
shall see a good many copies of it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON THE MEXICAN WAR

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, February 15, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your letter of the 29th January was received last
night.  Being exclusively a constitutional argument, I wish to
submit some reflections upon it in the same spirit of kindness
that I know actuates you.  Let me first state what I understand
to be your position.  It is that if it shall become necessary to
repel invasion, the President may, without violation of the
Constitution, cross the line and invade the territory of another
country, and that whether such necessity exists in any given case
the President is the sole judge.

Before going further consider well whether this is or is not your
position.  If it is, it is a position that neither the President
himself, nor any friend of his, so far as I know, has ever taken.
Their only positions are--first, that the soil was ours when the
hostilities commenced; and second, that whether it was rightfully
ours or not, Congress had annexed it, and the President for that
reason was bound to defend it; both of which are as clearly
proved to be false in fact as you can prove that your house is
mine.  The soil was not ours, and Congress did not annex or
attempt to annex it.  But to return to your position.  Allow the
President to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem
it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so
whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such
purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure.  Study to see
if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after
having given him so much as you propose.  If to-day he should
choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent
the British from invading us, how could you stop him?  You may
say to him,--I see no probability of the British invading us";
but he will say to you, "Be silent: I see it, if you don't."

The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to
Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following
reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their
people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the
good of the people was the object.  This our convention
understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions,
and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man
should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.  But
your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President
where kings have always stood.  Write soon again.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MARCH 9, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Postoffice and Post Roads,
made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the resolution of the House of Representatives entitled
"An Act authorizing postmasters at county seats of justice to
receive subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals, to be paid
through the agency of the Post-office Department, and for other
purposes," beg leave to submit the following report

The committee have reason to believe that a general wish pervades
the community at large that some such facility as the proposed
measure should be granted by express law, for subscribing,
through the agency of the Post-office Department, to newspapers
and periodicals which diffuse daily, weekly, or monthly
intelligence of passing events.  Compliance with this general
wish is deemed to be in accordance with our republican
institutions, which can be best sustained by the diffusion of
knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national
spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the
medium of the public press.  The committee, however, has not been
insensible to its duty of guarding the Post-office Department
against injurious sacrifices for the accomplishment of this
object, whereby its ordinary efficacy might be impaired or
embarrassed.  It has therefore been a subject of much
consideration; but it is now confidently hoped that the bill
herewith submitted effectually obviates all objections which
might exist with regard to a less matured proposition.

The committee learned, upon inquiry, that the Post-office
Department, in view of meeting the general wish on this subject,
made the experiment through one if its own internal regulations,
when the new postage system went into operation on the first of
July, 1845, and that it was continued until the thirtieth of
September, 1847.  But this experiment, for reasons hereafter
stated, proved unsatisfactory, and it was discontinued by order
of the Postmaster-General.  As far as the committee can at
present ascertain, the following seem to have been the principal
grounds of dissatisfaction in this experiment:

(1) The legal responsibility of postmasters receiving newspaper
subscriptions, or of their sureties, was not defined.

(2) The authority was open to all postmasters instead of being
limited to those of specific offices.

(3) The consequence of this extension of authority was that, in
innumerable instances, the money, without the previous knowledge
or control of the officers of the department who are responsible
for the good management of its finances, was deposited in offices
where it was improper such funds should be placed; and the
repayment was ordered, not by the financial officers, but by the
postmasters, at points where it was inconvenient to the
department so to disburse its funds.

(4) The inconvenience of accumulating uncertain and fluctuating
sums at small offices was felt seriously in consequent
overpayments to contractors on their quarterly collecting orders;
and, in case of private mail routes, in litigation concerning the
misapplication of such funds to the special service of supplying
mails.

(5) The accumulation of such funds on draft offices could not be
known to the financial clerks of the department in time to
control it, and too often this rendered uncertain all their
calculations of funds in hand.

(6) The orders of payment were for the most part issued upon the
principal offices, such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston,
Baltimore, etc., where the large offices of publishers are
located, causing an illimitable and uncontrollable drain of the
department funds from those points where it was essential to
husband them for its own regular disbursements.  In Philadelphia
alone this drain averaged $5000 per quarter; and in other cities
of the seaboard it was proportionate.

(7) The embarrassment of the department was increased by the
illimitable, uncontrollable, and irresponsible scattering of its
funds from concentrated points suitable for its distributions, to
remote, unsafe, and inconvenient offices, where they could not be
again made available till collected by special agents, or were
transferred at considerable expense into the principal disbursing
offices again.

(8) There was a vast increase of duties thrown upon the limited
force before necessary to conduct the business of the department;
and from the delay of obtaining vouchers impediments arose to the
speedy settlement of accounts with present or retired post-
masters, causing postponements which endangered the liability of
sureties under the act of limitations, and causing much danger of
an increase of such cases.

(9) The most responsible postmasters (at the large offices) were
ordered by the least responsible (at small offices) to make
payments upon their vouchers, without having the means of
ascertaining whether these vouchers were genuine or forged, or if
genuine, whether the signers were in or out of office, or solvent
or defaulters.

(10) The transaction of this business for subscribers and
publishers at the public expense, an the embarrassment,
inconvenience, and delay of th department's own business
occasioned by it, were not justified by any sufficient
remuneration of revenue to sustain the department, as required in
every other respect with regard to its agency.

The committee, in view of these objections, has been solicitous
to frame a bill which would not be obnoxious to them in principle
or in practical effect.

It is confidently believed that by limiting the offices for
receiving subscriptions to less than one tenth of the number
authorized by the experiment already tried, and designating the
county seat in each county for the purpose, the control of the
department will be rendered satisfactory; particularly as it will
be in the power of the Auditor, who is the officer required by
law to check the accounts, to approve or disapprove of the
deposits, and to sanction not only the payments, but to point out
the place of payment.  If these payments should cause a drain on
the principal offices of the seaboard, it will be compensated by
the accumulation of funds at county seats, where the contractors
on those routes can be paid to that extent by the department's
drafts, with more local convenience to themselves than by drafts
on the seaboard offices.

The legal responsibility for these deposits is defined, and the
accumulation of funds at the point of deposit, and the repayment
at points drawn upon, being known to and controlled by the
Auditor, will not occasion any such embarrassments as were before
felt; the record kept by the Auditor on the passing of the
certificates through his hands will enable him to settle accounts
without the delay occasioned by vouchers being withheld; all
doubt or uncertainty as to the genuineness of certificates, or
the propriety of their issue, will be removed by the Auditor's
examination and approval; and there can be no risk of loss of
funds by transmission, as the certificate will not be payable
till sanctioned by the Auditor, and after his sanction the payor
need not pay it unless it is presented by the publisher or his
known clerk or agent.

The main principle of equivalent for the agency of the department
is secured by the postage required to be paid upon the
transmission of the certificates, augmenting adequately the post-
office revenue.

The committee, conceiving that in this report all the
difficulties of the subject have been fully and fairly stated,
and that these difficulties have been obviated by the plan
proposed in the accompanying bill, and believing that the measure
will satisfactorily meet the wants and wishes of a very large
portion of the community, beg leave to recommend its adoption.




REPORT IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MARCH 9, 1848.

Mr. Lincoln, from the Committee on the Postoffice and Post Roads,
made the following report:

The Committee on the Post-office and Post Roads, to whom was
referred the petition of H.  M.  Barney, postmaster at Brimfield,
Peoria County, Illinois, report: That they have been satisfied by
evidence, that on the 15th of December, 1847, said petitioner had
his store, with some fifteen hundred dollars' worth of goods,
together with all the papers of the post-office, entirely
destroyed by fire; and that the specie funds of the office were
melted down, partially lost and partially destroyed; that this
large individual loss entirely precludes the idea of
embezzlement; that the balances due the department of former
quarters had been only about twenty-five dollars; and that owing
to the destruction of papers, the exact amount due for the
quarter ending December 31, 1847, cannot be ascertained.  They
therefore report a joint resolution, releasing said petitioner
from paying anything for the quarter last mentioned.




REMARKS IN THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
MARCH 29, 1848.

The bill for raising additional military force for limited time,
etc., was reported from Committee on judiciary; similar bills had
been reported from Committee on, Public Lands and Military
Committee.

Mr. Lincoln said if there was a general desire on the part of the
House to pass the bill now he should be glad to have it done--
concurring, as he did generally, with the gentleman from Arkansas
[Mr. Johnson] that the postponement might jeopard the safety of
the proposition. If, however, a reference was to be made, he
wished to make a very few remarks in relation to the several
subjects desired by the gentlemen to be embraced in amendments to
the ninth section of the act of the last session of Congress.
The first amendment desired by members of this House had for its
only object to give bounty lands to such persons as had served
for a time as privates, but had never been discharged as such,
because promoted to office.  That subject, and no other, was
embraced in this bill.  There were some others who desired, while
they were legislating on this subject, that they should also give
bounty lands to the volunteers of the War of 1812.  His friend
from Maryland said there were no such men.  He [Mr. L.] did not
say there were many, but he was very confident there were some.
His friend from Kentucky near him, [Mr. Gaines] told him he
himself was one.

There was still another proposition touching this matter; that
was, that persons entitled to bounty lands should by law be
entitled to locate these lands in parcels, and not be required to
locate them in one body, as was provided by the existing law.

Now he had carefully drawn up a bill embracing these three
separate propositions, which he intended to propose as a
substitute for all these bills in the House, or in Committee of
the Whole on the State of the Union, at some suitable time.  If
there was a disposition on the part of the House to act at once
on this separate proposition, he repeated that, with the
gentlemen from Arkansas, he should prefer it lest they should
lose all.  But if there was to be a reference, he desired to
introduce his bill embracing the three propositions, thus
enabling the committee and the House to act at the same time,
whether favorably or unfavorably, upon all.  He inquired whether
an amendment was now in order.

The Speaker replied in the negative.




TO ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS.

WASHINGTON, April 30, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAMS:--I have not seen in the papers any evidence of a
movement to send a delegate from your circuit to the June
convention.  I wish to say that I think it all-important that a
delegate should be sent.  Mr. Clay's chance for an election is
just no chance at all.  He might get New York, and that would
have elected in 1844, but it will not now, because he must now,
at the least, lose Tennessee, which he had then, and in addition
the fifteen new votes of Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin.  I
know our good friend Browning is a great admirer of Mr. Clay, and
I therefore fear he is favoring his nomination.  If he is, ask
him to discard feeling, and try if he can possibly, as a matter
of judgment, count the votes necessary to elect him.

In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor; and we
cannot elect him without a nomination.  Therefore don't fail to
send a delegate.  Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

MAY 11, 1848.

A bill for the admission of Wisconsin into the Union had been
passed.

Mr. Lincoln moved to reconsider the vote by which the bill was
passed.  He stated to the House that he had made this motion for
the purpose of obtaining an opportunity to say a few words in
relation to a point raised in the course of the debate on this
bill, which he would now proceed to make if in order.  The point
in the case to which he referred arose on the amendment that was
submitted by the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Collamer] in
Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and which was
afterward renewed in the House, in relation to the question
whether the reserved sections, which, by some bills heretofore
passed, by which an appropriation of land had been made to
Wisconsin, had been enhanced in value, should be reduced to the
minimum price of the public lands.  The question of the reduction
in value of those sections was to him at this time a matter very
nearly of indifference.  He was inclined to desire that Wisconsin
should be obliged by having it reduced.  But the gentleman from
Indiana [Mr. C. B. Smith], the chairman of the Committee on
Territories, yesterday associated that question with the general
question, which is now to some extent agitated in Congress, of
making appropriations of alternate sections of land to aid the
States in making internal improvements, and enhancing the price
of the sections reserved, and the gentleman from Indiana took
ground against that policy.  He did not make any special argument
in favor of Wisconsin, but he took ground generally against the
policy of giving alternate sections of land, and enhancing the
price of the reserved sections.  Now he [Mr. Lincoln] did not at
this time take the floor for the purpose of attempting to make an
argument on the general subject.  He rose simply to protest
against the doctrine which the gentleman from Indiana had avowed
in the course of what he [Mr. Lincoln] could not but consider an
unsound argument.

It might, however, be true, for anything he knew, that the
gentleman from Indiana might convince him that his argument was
sound; but he [Mr. Lincoln] feared that gentleman would not be
able to convince a majority in Congress that it was sound.  It
was true the question appeared in a different aspect to persons
in consequence of a difference in the point from which they
looked at it.  It did not look to persons residing east of the
mountains as it did to those who lived among the public lands.
But, for his part, he would state that if Congress would make a
donation of alternate sections of public land for the purpose of
internal improvements in his State, and forbid the reserved
sections being sold at $1.25, he should be glad to see the
appropriation made; though he should prefer it if the reserved
sections were not enhanced in price.  He repeated, he should be
glad to have such appropriations made, even though the reserved
sections should be enhanced in price.  He did not wish to be
understood as concurring in any intimation that they would refuse
to receive such an appropriation of alternate sections of land
because a condition enhancing the price of the reserved sections
should be attached thereto.  He believed his position would now
be understood: if not, he feared he should not be able to make
himself understood.

But, before he took his seat, he would remark that the Senate
during the present session had passed a bill making
appropriations of land on that principle for the benefit of the
State in which he resided the State of Illinois.  The alternate
sections were to be given for the purpose of constructing roads,
and the reserved sections were to be enhanced in value in
consequence.  When that bill came here for the action of this
House--it had been received, and was now before the Committee on
Public Lands--he desired much to see it passed as it was, if it
could be put in no more favorable form for the State of Illinois.
When it should be before this House, if any member from a section
of the Union in which these lands did not lie, whose interest
might be less than that which he felt, should propose a reduction
of the price of the reserved sections to $1.25, he should be much
obliged; but he did not think it would be well for those who came
from the section of the Union in which the lands lay to do so.
--He wished it, then, to be understood that he did not join in
the warfare against the principle which had engaged the minds of
some members of Congress who were favorable to the improvements
in the western country. There was a good deal of force, he
admitted, in what fell from the chairman of the Committee on
Territories.  It might be that there was no precise justice in
raising the price of the reserved sections to $2.50 per acre.  It
might be proper that the price should be enhanced to some extent,
though not to double the usual price; but he should be glad to
have such an appropriation with the reserved sections at $2.50;
he should be better pleased to have the price of those sections
at something less; and he should be still better pleased to have
them without any enhancement at all.

There was one portion of the argument of the gentleman from
Indiana, the chairman of the Committee on Territories [Mr.
Smith], which he wished to take occasion to say that he did not
view as unsound.  He alluded to the statement that the General
Government was interested in these internal improvements being
made, inasmuch as they increased the value of the lands that were
unsold, and they enabled the government to sell the lands which
could not be sold without them.  Thus, then, the government
gained by internal improvements as well as by the general good
which the people derived from them, and it might be, therefore,
that the lands should not be sold for more than $1.50 instead of
the price being doubled.  He, however, merely mentioned this in
passing, for he only rose to state, as the principle of giving
these lands for the purposes which he had mentioned had been laid
hold of and considered favorably, and as there were some
gentlemen who had constitutional scruples about giving money for
these purchases who would not hesitate to give land, that he was
not willing to have it understood that he was one of those who
made war against that principle.  This was all he desired to say,
and having accomplished the object with which he rose, he
withdrew his motion to reconsider.




ON TAYLOR'S NOMINATION

TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

WASHINGTON, April 30,1848.

DEAR WASHBURNE:

I have this moment received your very short note asking me if old
Taylor is to be used up, and who will be the nominee.  My hope of
Taylor's nomination is as high--a little higher than it was when
you left.  Still, the case is by no means out of doubt.  Mr.
Clay's letter has not advanced his interests any here.  Several
who were against Taylor, but not for anybody particularly,
before, are since taking ground, some for Scott and some for
McLean.  Who will be nominated neither I nor any one else can
tell.  Now, let me pray to you in turn.  My prayer is that you
let nothing discourage or baffle you, but that, in spite of every
difficulty, you send us a good Taylor delegate from your circuit.
Make Baker, who is now with you, I suppose, help about it.  He is
a good hand to raise a breeze.

General Ashley, in the Senate from Arkansas, died yesterday.
Nothing else new beyond what you see in the papers.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN




DEFENSE OF MEXICAN WAR POSITION

TO REV. J. M. PECK

WASHINGTON, May 21, 1848.

DEAR SIR:

....Not in view of all the facts.  There are facts which you have
kept out of view.  It is a fact that the United States army in
marching to the Rio Grande marched into a peaceful Mexican
settlement, and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes
and their growing crops.  It is a fact that Fort Brown, opposite
Matamoras, was built by that army within a Mexican cotton-field,
on which at the time the army reached it a young cotton crop was
growing, and which crop was wholly destroyed and the field itself
greatly and permanently injured by ditches, embankments, and the
like.  It is a fact that when the Mexicans captured Captain
Thornton and his command, they found and captured them within
another Mexican field.

Now I wish to bring these facts to your notice, and to ascertain
what is the result of your reflections upon them.  If you deny
that they are facts, I think I can furnish proofs which shall
convince you that you are mistaken.  If you admit that they are
facts, then I shall be obliged for a reference to any law of
language, law of States, law of nations, law of morals, law of
religions, any law, human or divine, in which an authority can be
found for saying those facts constitute "no aggression."

Possibly you consider those acts too small for notice.  Would you
venture to so consider them had they been committed by any nation
on earth against the humblest of our people?  I know you would
not.  Then I ask, is the precept "Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them" obsolete?  of no force?
of no application?

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON ZACHARY TAYLOR NOMINATION

TO ARCHIBALD WILLIAMS.

WASHINGTON, June 12, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAMS:--On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been
attending the nomination of "Old Rough," (Zachary Taylor) I found
your letter in a mass of others which had accumulated in my
absence.  By many, and often, it had been said they would not
abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done,
they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most
overwhelming, glorious triumph.  One unmistakable sign is that
all the odds and ends are with us--Barnburners, Native Americans,
Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord
knows what.  This is important, if in nothing else, in showing
which way the wind blows.  Some of the sanguine men have set down
all the States as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as
doubtful.  Cannot something be done even in Illinois?  Taylor's
nomination takes the Locos on the blind side.  It turns the war
thunder against them.  The war is now to them the gallows of
Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to
be hanged themselves.

Excuse this short letter.  I have so many to write that I cannot
devote much time to any one.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

JUNE 20, 1848.

In Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, on the Civil
and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill:

Mr. CHAIRMAN:--I wish at all times in no way to practise any
fraud upon the House or the committee, and I also desire to do
nothing which may be very disagreeable to any of the members.  I
therefore state in advance that my object in taking the floor is
to make a speech on the general subject of internal improvements;
and if I am out of order in doing so, I give the chair an
opportunity of so deciding, and I will take my seat.

The Chair: I will not undertake to anticipate what the gentleman
may say on the subject of internal improvements.  He will,
therefore, proceed in his remarks, and if any question of order
shall be made, the chair will then decide it.

Mr. Lincoln: At an early day of this session the President sent
us what may properly be called an internal improvement veto
message.  The late Democratic convention, which sat at Baltimore,
and which nominated General Cass for the Presidency, adopted a
set of resolutions, now called the Democratic platform, among
which is one in these words:

"That the Constitution does not confer upon the General
Government the power to commence and carry on a general system of
internal improvements."

General Cass, in his letter accepting the nomination, holds this
language:

"I have carefully read the resolutions of the Democratic national
convention, laying down the platform of our political faith, and
I adhere to them as firmly as I approve them cordially."

These things, taken together, show that the question of internal
improvements is now more distinctly made--has become more intense
--than at any former period.  The veto message and the Baltimore
resolution I understand to be, in substance, the same thing; the
latter being the more general statement, of which the former is
the amplification the bill of particulars.  While I know there
are many Democrats, on this floor and elsewhere, who disapprove
that message, I understand that all who voted for General Cass
will thereafter be counted as having approved it, as having
indorsed all its doctrines.

I suppose all, or nearly all, the Democrats will vote for him.
Many of them will do so not because they like his position on
this question, but because they prefer him, being wrong on this,
to another whom they consider farther wrong on other questions.
In this way the internal improvement Democrats are to be, by a
sort of forced consent, carried over and arrayed against
themselves on this measure of policy.  General Cass, once
elected, will not trouble himself to make a constitutional
argument, or perhaps any argument at all, when he shall veto a
river or harbor bill; he will consider it a sufficient answer to
all Democratic murmurs to point to Mr. Polk's message, and to the
Democratic platform.  This being the case, the question of
improvements is verging to a final crisis; and the friends of
this policy must now battle, and battle manfully, or surrender
all.  In this view, humble as I am, I wish to review, and contest
as well as I may, the general positions of this veto message.
When I say general positions, I mean to exclude from
consideration so much as relates to the present embarrassed state
of the treasury in consequence of the Mexican War.

Those general positions are: that internal improvements ought not
to be made by the General Government--First.  Because they would
overwhelm the treasury Second.  Because, while their burdens
would be general, their benefits would be local and partial,
involving an obnoxious inequality; and Third.  Because they would
be unconstitutional.  Fourth.  Because the States may do enough
by the levy and collection of tonnage duties; or if not--Fifth.
That the Constitution may be amended.  "Do nothing at all, lest
you do something wrong," is the sum of these positions is the sum
of this message.  And this, with the exception of what is said
about constitutionality, applying as forcibly to what is said
about making improvements by State authority as by the national
authority; so that we must abandon the improvements of the
country altogether, by any and every authority, or we must resist
and repudiate the doctrines of this message.  Let us attempt the
latter.

The first position is, that a system of internal improvements
would overwhelm the treasury.  That in such a system there is a
tendency to undue expansion, is not to be denied.  Such tendency
is founded in the nature of the subject.  A member of Congress
will prefer voting for a bill which contains an appropriation for
his district, to voting for one which does not; and when a bill
shall be expanded till every district shall be provided for, that
it will be too greatly expanded is obvious.  But is this any more
true in Congress than in a State Legislature?  If a member of
Congress must have an appropriation for his district, so a member
of a Legislature must have one for his county.  And if one will
overwhelm the national treasury, so the other will overwhelm the
State treasury.  Go where we will, the difficulty is the same.
Allow it to drive us from the halls of Congress, and it will,
just as easily, drive us from the State Legislatures.  Let us,
then, grapple with it, and test its strength.  Let us, judging of
the future by the past, ascertain whether there may not be, in
the discretion of Congress, a sufficient power to limit and
restrain this expansive tendency within reasonable and proper
bounds.  The President himself values the evidence of the past.
He tells us that at a certain point of our history more than two
hundred millions of dollars had been applied for to make
improvements; and this he does to prove that the treasury would
be overwhelmed by such a system.  Why did he not tell us how much
was granted?  Would not that have been better evidence?  Let us
turn to it, and see what it proves.  In the message the President
tells us that "during the four succeeding years embraced by the
administration of President Adams, the power not only to
appropriate money, but to apply it, under the direction and
authority of the General Government, as well to the construction
of roads as to the improvement of harbors and rivers, was fully
asserted and exercised."  This, then, was the period of greatest
enormity.  These, if any, must have been the days of the two
hundred millions.  And how much do you suppose was really
expended for improvements during that four years?  Two hundred
millions?  One hundred?  Fifty?  Ten?  Five?  No, sir; less than
two millions.  As shown by authentic documents, the expenditures
on improvements during 1825, 1826, 1827, and 1828 amounted to one
million eight hundred and seventy-nine thousand six hundred and
twenty-seven dollars and one cent.  These four years were the
period of Mr. Adams's administration, nearly and substantially.
This fact shows that when the power to make improvements "was
fully asserted and exercised," the Congress did keep within
reasonable limits; and what has been done, it seems to me, can be
done again.

Now for the second portion of the message--namely, that the
burdens of improvements would be general, while their benefits
would be local and partial, involving an obnoxious inequality.
That there is some degree of truth in this position, I shall not
deny.  No commercial object of government patronage can be so
exclusively general as to not be of some peculiar local
advantage.  The navy, as I understand it, was established, and is
maintained at a great annual expense, partly to be ready for war
when war shall come, and partly also, and perhaps chiefly, for
the protection of our commerce on the high seas.  This latter
object is, for all I can see, in principle the same as internal
improvements.  The driving a pirate from the track of commerce on
the broad ocean, and the removing of a snag from its more narrow
path in the Mississippi River, cannot, I think, be distinguished
in principle.  Each is done to save life and property, and for
nothing else.

The navy, then, is the most general in its benefits of all this
class of objects; and yet even the navy is of some peculiar
advantage to Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and
Boston, beyond what it is to the interior towns of Illinois.  The
next most general object I can think of would be improvements on
the Mississippi River and its tributaries.  They touch thirteen
of our States-Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana,
Ohio, Wisconsin, and Iowa.  Now I suppose it will not be denied
that these thirteen States are a little more interested in
improvements on that great river than are the remaining
seventeen.  These instances of the navy and the Mississippi River
show clearly that there is something of local advantage in the
most general objects.  But the converse is also true.  Nothing is
so local as to not be of some general benefit.  Take, for
instance, the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  Considered apart from
its effects, it is perfectly local.  Every inch of it is within
the State of Illinois.  That canal was first opened for business
last April.  In a very few days we were all gratified to learn,
among other things, that sugar had been carried from New Orleans
through this canal to Buffalo in New York.  This sugar took this
route, doubtless, because it was cheaper than the old route.
Supposing benefit of the reduction in the cost of carriage to be
shared between seller and the buyer, result is that the New
Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer, and the people
of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper, than before,-
-a benefit resulting from the canal, not to Illinois, where the
canal is, but to Louisiana and New York, where it is not.  In
other transactions Illinois will, of course, have her share, and
perhaps the larger share too, of the benefits of the canal; but
this instance of the sugar clearly shows that the benefits of an
improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality
of the improvement itself.  The just conclusion from all this is
that if the nation refuse to make improvements of the more
general kind because their benefits may be somewhat local, a
State may for the same reason refuse to make an improvement of a
local kind because its benefits may be somewhat general.  A State
may well say to the nation, "If you will do nothing for me, I
will do nothing for you."  Thus it is seen that if this argument
of "inequality" is sufficient anywhere, it is sufficient
everywhere, and puts an end to improvements altogether.  I hope
and believe that if both the nation and the States would, in good
faith, in their respective spheres do what they could in the way
of improvements, what of inequality might be produced in one
place might be compensated in another, and the sum of the whole
might not be very unequal.

But suppose, after all, there should be some degree of
inequality.  Inequality is certainly never to be embraced for its
own sake; but is every good thing to be discarded which may be
inseparably connected with some degree of it?  If so, we must
discard all government.  This Capitol is built at the public
expense, for the public benefit; but does any one doubt that it
is of some peculiar local advantage to the property-holders and
business people of Washington?  Shall we remove it for this
reason?  And if so, where shall we set it down, and be free from
the difficulty?  To make sure of our object, shall we locate it
nowhere, and have Congress hereafter to hold its sessions, as the
loafer lodged, "in spots about"?  I make no allusion to the
present President when I say there are few stronger cases in this
world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of
"inequality," than the Presidency itself is by some thought to
be.  An honest laborer digs coal at about seventy cents a day,
while the President digs abstractions at about seventy dollars a
day.  The coal is clearly worth more than the abstractions, and
yet what a monstrous inequality in the prices!  Does the
President, for this reason, propose to abolish the Presidency?
He does not, and he ought not.  The true rule, in determining to
embrace or reject anything, is not whether it have any evil in
it, but whether it have more of evil than of good.  There are few
things wholly evil or wholly good.  Almost everything, especially
of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so
that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is
continually demanded.  On this principle the President, his
friends, and the world generally act on most subjects.  Why not
apply it, then, upon this question?  Why, as to improvements,
magnify the evil, and stoutly refuse to see any good in them?

Mr. Chairman, on the third position of the message the
constitutional question--I have not much to say.  Being the man I
am, and speaking, where I do, I feel that in any attempt at an
original constitutional argument I should not be and ought not to
be listened to patiently.  The ablest and the best of men have
gone over the whole ground long ago.  I shall attempt but little
more than a brief notice of what some of them have said.  In
relation to Mr. Jefferson's views, I read from Mr. Polk's veto
message:

"President Jefferson, in his message to Congress in 1806,
recommended an amendment of the Constitution, with a view to
apply an anticipated surplus in the treasury 'to the great
purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such
other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper
to add to the constitutional enumeration of the federal powers';
and he adds: 'I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by
consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now
recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution,
and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied.'  In
1825, he repeated in his published letters the opinion that no
such power has been conferred upon Congress."

I introduce this not to controvert just now the constitutional
opinion, but to show that, on the question of expediency, Mr.
Jefferson's opinion was against the present President; that this
opinion of Mr. Jefferson, in one branch at least, is in the hands
of Mr. Polk like McFingal's gun--"bears wide and kicks the owner
over."

But to the constitutional question.  In 1826 Chancellor Kent
first published his Commentaries on American law.  He devoted a
portion of one of the lectures to the question of the authority
of Congress to appropriate public moneys for internal
improvements.  He mentions that the subject had never been
brought under judicial consideration, and proceeds to give a
brief summary of the discussion it had undergone between the
legislative and executive branches of the government.  He shows
that the legislative branch had usually been for, and the
executive against, the power, till the period of Mr. J.Q. Adams's
administration, at which point he considers the executive
influence as withdrawn from opposition, and added to the support
of the power.  In 1844 the chancellor published a new edition of
his Commentaries, in which he adds some notes of what had
transpired on the question since 1826.  I have not time to read
the original text on the notes; but the whole may be found on
page 267, and the two or three following pages, of the first
volume of the edition of 1844.  As to what Chancellor Kent seems
to consider the sum of the whole, I read from one of the notes:

"Mr. Justice Story, in his Commentaries on the Constitution of
the United States, Vol. II., pp. 429-440, and again pp. 519-538,
has stated at large the arguments for and against the proposition
that Congress have a constitutional authority to lay taxes and to
apply the power to regulate commerce as a means directly to
encourage and protect domestic manufactures; and without giving
any opinion of his own on the contested doctrine, he has left the
reader to draw his own conclusions.  I should think, however,
from the arguments as stated, that every mind which has taken no
part in the discussion, and felt no prejudice or territorial bias
on either side of the question, would deem the arguments in favor
of the Congressional power vastly superior."

It will be seen that in this extract the power to make
improvements is not directly mentioned; but by examining the
context, both of Kent and Story, it will be seen that the power
mentioned in the extract and the power to make improvements are
regarded as identical.  It is not to be denied that many great
and good men have been against the power; but it is insisted that
quite as many, as great and as good, have been for it; and it is
shown that, on a full survey of the whole, Chancellor Kent was of
opinion that the arguments of the latter were vastly superior.
This is but the opinion of a man; but who was that man?  He was
one of the ablest and most learned lawyers of his age, or of any
age.  It is no disparagement to Mr. Polk, nor indeed to any one
who devotes much time to politics, to be placed far behind
Chancellor Kent as a lawyer.  His attitude was most favorable to
correct conclusions.  He wrote coolly, and in retirement.  He was
struggling to rear a durable monument of fame; and he well knew
that truth and thoroughly sound reasoning were the only sure
foundations.  Can the party opinion of a party President on a law
question, as this purely is, be at all compared or set in
opposition to that of such a man, in such an attitude, as
Chancellor Kent?  This constitutional question will probably
never be better settled than it is, until it shall pass under
judicial consideration; but I do think no man who is clear on the
questions of expediency need feel his conscience much pricked
upon this.

Mr. Chairman, the President seems to think that enough may be
done, in the way of improvements, by means of tonnage duties
under State authority, with the consent of the General
Government.  Now I suppose this matter of tonnage duties is well
enough in its own sphere.  I suppose it may be efficient, and
perhaps sufficient, to make slight improvements and repairs in
harbors already in use and not much out of repair.  But if I have
any correct general idea of it, it must be wholly inefficient for
any general beneficent purposes of improvement.  I know very
little, or rather nothing at all, of the practical matter of
levying and collecting tonnage duties; but I suppose one of its
principles must be to lay a duty for the improvement of any
particular harbor upon the tonnage coming into that harbor; to do
otherwise--to collect money in one harbor, to be expended on
improvements in another--would be an extremely aggravated form of
that inequality which the President so much deprecates.  If I be
right in this, how could we make any entirely new improvement by
means of tonnage duties?  How make a road, a canal, or clear a
greatly obstructed river?  The idea that we could involves the
same absurdity as the Irish bull about the new boots.  "I shall
niver git 'em on," says Patrick, "till I wear 'em a day or two,
and stretch 'em a little."  We shall never make a canal by
tonnage duties until it shall already have been made awhile, so
the tonnage can get into it.

After all, the President concludes that possibly there may be
some great objects of improvement which cannot be effected by
tonnage duties, and which it therefore may be expedient for the
General Government to take in hand.  Accordingly he suggests, in
case any such be discovered, the propriety of amending the
Constitution.  Amend it for what?  If, like Mr. Jefferson, the
President thought improvements expedient, but not constitutional,
it would be natural enough for him to recommend such an
amendment.  But hear what he says in this very message:

"In view of these portentous consequences, I cannot but think
that this course of legislation should be arrested, even were
there nothing to forbid it in the fundamental laws of our Union."

For what, then, would he have the Constitution amended?  With him
it is a proposition to remove one impediment merely to be met by
others which, in his opinion, cannot be removed, to enable
Congress to do what, in his opinion, they ought not to do if they
could.

Here Mr. Meade of Virginia inquired if Mr. Lincoln understood the
President to be opposed, on grounds of expediency, to any and
every improvement.

Mr. Lincoln answered: In the very part of his message of which I
am speaking, I understand him as giving some vague expression in
favor of some possible objects of improvement; but in doing so I
understand him to be directly on the teeth of his own arguments
in other parts of it.  Neither the President nor any one can
possibly specify an improvement which shall not be clearly liable
to one or another of the objections he has urged on the score of
expediency.  I have shown, and might show again, that no work--no
object--can be so general as to dispense its benefits with
precise equality; and this inequality is chief among the
"portentous consequences" for which he declares that improvements
should be arrested.  No, sir.  When the President intimates that
something in the way of improvements may properly be done by the
General Government, he is shrinking from the conclusions to which
his own arguments would force him.  He feels that the
improvements of this broad and goodly land are a mighty interest;
and he is unwilling to confess to the people, or perhaps to
himself, that he has built an argument which, when pressed to its
conclusions, entirely annihilates this interest.

I have already said that no one who is satisfied of the
expediency of making improvements needs be much uneasy in his
conscience about its constitutionality.  I wish now to submit a
few remarks on the general proposition of amending the
Constitution.  As a general rule, I think we would much better
let it alone.  No slight occasion should tempt us to touch it.
Better not take the first step, which may lead to a habit of
altering it.  Better, rather, habituate ourselves to think of it
as unalterable.  It can scarcely be made better than it is.  New
provisions would introduce new difficulties, and thus create and
increase appetite for further change.  No, sir; let it stand as
it is.  New hands have never touched it.  The men who made it
have done their work, and have passed away.  Who shall improve on
what they did?

Mr. Chairman, for the purpose of reviewing this message in the
least possible time, as well as for the sake of distinctness, I
have analyzed its arguments as well as I could, and reduced them
to the propositions I have stated.  I have now examined them in
detail.  I wish to detain the committee only a little while
longer with some general remarks upon the subject of
improvements.  That the subject is a difficult one, cannot be
denied.  Still it is no more difficult in Congress than in the
State Legislatures, in the counties, or in the smallest municipal
districts which anywhere exist.  All can recur to instances of
this difficulty in the case of county roads, bridges, and the
like.  One man is offended because a road passes over his land,
and another is offended because it does not pass over his; one is
dissatisfied because the bridge for which he is taxed crosses the
river on a different road from that which leads from his house to
town; another cannot bear that the county should be got in debt
for these same roads and bridges; while not a few struggle hard
to have roads located over their lands, and then stoutly refuse
to let them be opened until they are first paid the damages.
Even between the different wards and streets of towns and cities
we find this same wrangling and difficulty.  Now these are no
other than the very difficulties against which, and out of which,
the President constructs his objections of "inequality,"
"speculation," and "crushing the treasury."  There is but a
single alternative about them: they are sufficient, or they are
not.  If sufficient, they are sufficient out of Congress as well
as in it, and there is the end.  We must reject them as
insufficient, or lie down and do nothing by any authority.  Then,
difficulty though there be, let us meet and encounter it.
"Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt; nothing so hard, but
search will find it out." Determine that the thing can and shall
be done, and then we shall find the way.  The tendency to undue
expansion is unquestionably the chief difficulty.

How to do something, and still not do too much, is the
desideratum.  Let each contribute his mite in the way of
suggestion.  The late Silas Wright, in a letter to the Chicago
convention, contributed his, which was worth something; and I now
contribute mine, which may be worth nothing.  At all events, it
will mislead nobody, and therefore will do no harm.  I would not
borrow money.  I am against an overwhelming, crushing system.
Suppose that, at each session, Congress shall first determine how
much money can, for that year, be spared for improvements; then
apportion that sum to the most important objects.  So far all is
easy; but how shall we determine which are the most important?
On this question comes the collision of interests.  I shall be
slow to acknowledge that your harbor or your river is more
important than mine, and vice versa.  To clear this difficulty,
let us have that same statistical information which the gentleman
from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] suggested at the beginning of this
session.  In that information we shall have a stern, unbending
basis of facts--a basis in no wise subject to whim, caprice, or
local interest.  The prelimited amount of means will save us from
doing too much, and the statistics will save us from doing what
we do in wrong places.  Adopt and adhere to this course, and, it
seems to me, the difficulty is cleared.

One of the gentlemen from South Carolina [Mr. Rhett] very much
deprecates these statistics.  He particularly objects, as I
understand him, to counting all the pigs and chickens in the
land.  I do not perceive much force in the objection.  It is true
that if everything be enumerated, a portion of such statistics
may not be very useful to this object.  Such products of the
country as are to be consumed where they are produced need no
roads or rivers, no means of transportation, and have no very
proper connection with this subject.  The surplus--that which is
produced in one place to be consumed in another; the capacity of
each locality for producing a greater surplus; the natural means
of transportation, and their susceptibility of improvement; the
hindrances, delays, and losses of life and property during
transportation, and the causes of each, would be among the most
valuable statistics in this connection.  From these it would
readily appear where a given amount of expenditure would do the
most good.  These statistics might be equally accessible, as they
would be equally useful, to both the nation and the States.  In
this way, and by these means, let the nation take hold of the
larger works, and the States the smaller ones; and thus, working
in a meeting direction, discreetly, but steadily and firmly, what
is made unequal in one place may be equalized in another,
extravagance avoided, and the whole country put on that career of
prosperity which shall correspond with its extent of territory,
its natural resources, and the intelligence and enterprise of its
people.




OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG POLITICIANS

TO WILLIAM H. HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, June 22, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Last night I was attending a sort of caucus of the
Whig members, held in relation to the coming Presidential
election.  The whole field of the nation was scanned, and all is
high hope and confidence.  Illinois is expected to better her
condition in this race.  Under these circumstances, judge how
heartrending it was to come to my room and find and read your
discouraging letter of the 15th.  We have made no gains, but have
lost "H.  R.  Robinson, Turner, Campbell, and four or five more."
Tell Arney to reconsider, if he would be saved.  Baker and I used
to do something, but I think you attach more importance to our
absence than is just.  There is another cause.  In 1840, for
instance, we had two senators and five representatives in
Sangamon; now we have part of one senator and two
representatives.  With quite one third more people than we had
then, we have only half the sort of offices which are sought by
men of the speaking sort of talent.  This, I think, is the chief
cause.  Now, as to the young men.  You must not wait to be
brought forward by the older men.  For instance, do you suppose
that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be
hunted up and pushed forward by older men?  You young men get
together and form a "Rough and Ready Club," and have regular
meetings and speeches.  Take in everybody you can get.  Harrison
Grimsley, L.  A.  Enos, Lee Kimball, and C.  W.  Matheny will do
to begin the thing; but as you go along gather up all the shrewd,
wild boys about town, whether just of age, or a little under age,
Chris.  Logan, Reddick Ridgely, Lewis Zwizler, and hundreds such.
Let every one play the part he can play best,--some speak, some
sing, and all "holler." Your meetings will be of evenings; the
older men, and the women, will go to hear you; so that it will
not only contribute to the election of "Old Zach," but will be an
interesting pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties
of all engaged.  Don't fail to do this.

You ask me to send you all the speeches made about "Old Zach,"
the war, etc.  Now this makes me a little impatient.  I have
regularly sent you the Congressional Globe and Appendix, and you
cannot have examined them, or you would have discovered that they
contain every speech made by every man in both houses of
Congress, on every subject, during the session.  Can I send any
more?  Can I send speeches that nobody has made?  Thinking it
would be most natural that the newspapers would feel interested
to give at least some of the speeches to their readers, I at the
beginning of the session made arrangements to have one copy of
the Globe and Appendix regularly sent to each Whig paper of the
district.  And yet, with the exception of my own little speech,
which was published in two only of the then five, now four, Whig
papers, I do not remember having seen a single speech, or even
extract from one, in any single one of those papers.  With equal
and full means on both sides, I will venture that the State
Register has thrown before its readers more of Locofoco speeches
in a month than all the Whig papers of the district have done of
Whig speeches during the session.

If you wish a full understanding of the war, I repeat what I
believe I said to you in a letter once before, that the whole, or
nearly so, is to be found in the speech of Dixon of Connecticut.
This I sent you in pamphlet as well as in the Globe.  Examine and
study every sentence of that speech thoroughly, and you will
understand the whole subject.  You ask how Congress came to
declare that war had existed by the act of Mexico.  Is it
possible you don't understand that yet?  You have at least twenty
speeches in your possession that fully explain it.  I will,
however, try it once more.  The news reached Washington of the
commencement of hostilities on the Rio Grande, and of the great
peril of General Taylor's army.  Everybody, Whigs and Democrats,
was for sending them aid, in men and money.  It was necessary to
pass a bill for this.  The Locos had a majority in both houses,
and they brought in a bill with a preamble saying: Whereas, War
exists by the act of Mexico, therefore we send General Taylor
money.  The Whigs moved to strike out the preamble, so that they
could vote to send the men and money, without saying anything
about how the war commenced; but being in the minority, they were
voted down, and the preamble was retained.  Then, on the passage
of the bill, the question came upon them, Shall we vote for
preamble and bill together, or against both together?  They did
not want to vote against sending help to General Taylor, and
therefore they voted for both together.  Is there any difficulty
in understanding this?  Even my little speech shows how this was;
and if you will go to the library, you may get the Journal of
1845-46, in which you will find the whole for yourself.

We have nothing published yet with special reference to the
Taylor race; but we soon will have, and then I will send them to
everybody.  I made an internal-improvement speech day before
yesterday, which I shall send home as soon as I can get it
written out and printed,--and which I suppose nobody will read.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SALARY OF JUDGE IN WESTERN VIRGINIA

REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JUNE 28, 1848.


Discussion as to salary of judge of western Virginia:--Wishing to
increase it from $1800 to $2500.

Mr. Lincoln said he felt unwilling to be either unjust or
ungenerous, and he wanted to understand the real case of this
judicial officer.  The gentleman from Virginia had stated that he
had to hold eleven courts.  Now everybody knew that it was not
the habit of the district judges of the United States in other
States to hold anything like that number of courts; and he
therefore took it for granted that this must happen under a
peculiar law which required that large number of courts to be
holden every year; and these laws, he further supposed, were
passed at the request of the people of that judicial district.
It came, then, to this: that the people in the western district
of Virginia had got eleven courts to be held among them in one
year, for their own accommodation; and being thus better
accommodated than neighbors elsewhere, they wanted their judge to
be a little better paid.  In Illinois there had been until the
present season but one district court held in the year.  There
were now to be two.  Could it be that the western district of
Virginia furnished more business for a judge than the whole State
of Illinois?




NATIONAL BANK

JULY, 1848,

[FRAGMENT]

The question of a national bank is at rest.  Were I President, I
should not urge its reagitation upon Congress; but should
Congress see fit to pass an act to establish such an institution,
I should not arrest it by the veto, unless I should consider it
subject to some constitutional objection from which I believe the
two former banks to have been free.




YOUNG v.s. OLD--POLITICAL JEALOUSY

TO W.  H.  HERNDON.

WASHINGTON, July 10, 1848.

DEAR WILLIAM:

Your letter covering the newspaper slips was received last night.
The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to me, and I
cannot but think there is some mistake in your impression of the
motives of the old men.  I suppose I am now one of the old men;
and I declare on my veracity, which I think is good with you,
that nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that
you and others of my young friends at home were doing battle in
the contest and endearing themselves to the people and taking a
stand far above any I have ever been able to reach in their
admiration.  I cannot conceive that other men feel differently.
Of course I cannot demonstrate what I say; but I was young once,
and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back.  I hardly
know what to say.  The way for a young man to rise is to improve
himself every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to
hinder him.  Allow me to assure you that suspicion and jealousy
never did help any man in any situation.  There may sometimes be
ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will
succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true
channel to brood over the attempted injury.  Cast about and see
if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known
to fall into it.

Now, in what I have said I am sure you will suspect nothing but
sincere friendship.  I would save you from a fatal error.  You
have been a studious young man.  You are far better informed on
almost all subjects than I ever have been.  You cannot fail in
any laudable object unless you allow your mind to be improperly
directed.  I have some the advantage of you in the world's
experience, merely by being older; and it is this that induces me
to advise.  You still seem to be a little mistaken about the
Congressional Globe and Appendix.  They contain all of the
speeches that are published in any way.  My speech and Dayton's
speech which you say you got in pamphlet form are both word for
word in the Appendix.  I repeat again, all are there.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




GENERAL TAYLOR AND THE VETO

SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
JULY 27, 1848.

Mr. SPEAKER, our Democratic friends seem to be in a great
distress because they think our candidate for the Presidency
don't suit us.  Most of them cannot find out that General Taylor
has any principles at all; some, however, have discovered that he
has one, but that one is entirely wrong.  This one principle is
his position on the veto power.  The gentleman from Tennessee
[Mr. Stanton] who has just taken his seat, indeed, has said there
is very little, if any, difference on this question between
General Taylor and all the Presidents; and he seems to think it
sufficient detraction from General Taylor's position on it that
it has nothing new in it.  But all others whom I have heard speak
assail it furiously.  A new member from Kentucky [Mr. Clark], of
very considerable ability, was in particular concerned about it.
He thought it altogether novel and unprecedented for a President
or a Presidential candidate to think of approving bills whose
constitutionality may not be entirely clear to his own mind.  He
thinks the ark of our safety is gone unless Presidents shall
always veto such bills as in their judgment may be of doubtful
constitutionality.  However clear Congress may be on their
authority to pass any particular act, the gentleman from Kentucky
thinks the President must veto it if he has doubts about it.  Now
I have neither time nor inclination to argue with the gentleman
on the veto power as an original question; but I wish to show
that General Taylor, and not he, agrees with the earlier
statesmen on this question.  When the bill chartering the first
Bank of the United States passed Congress, its constitutionality
was questioned.  Mr. Madison, then in the House of
Representatives, as well as others, had opposed it on that
ground.  General Washington, as President, was called on to
approve or reject it.  He sought and obtained on the
constitutionality question the separate written opinions of
Jefferson, Hamilton, and Edmund Randolph,--they then being
respectively Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, and
Attorney general.  Hamilton's opinion was for the power; while
Randolph's and Jefferson's were both against it.  Mr. Jefferson,
after giving his opinion deciding only against the
constitutionality of the bill, closes his letter with the
paragraph which I now read:

"It must be admitted, however, that unless the President's mind,
on a view of everything which is urged for and against this bill,
is tolerably clear that it is unauthorized by the Constitution,--
if the pro and con hang so even as to balance his judgment, a
just respect for the wisdom of the legislature would naturally
decide the balance in favor of their opinion.  It is chiefly for
cases where they are clearly misled by error, ambition, or
interest, that the Constitution has placed a check in the
negative of the President.
"THOMAS JEFFERSON.
"February 15, 1791."


General Taylor's opinion, as expressed in his Allison letter, is
as I now read:

"The power given by the veto is a high conservative power; but,
in my opinion, should never be exercised except in cases of clear
violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of
consideration by Congress."

It is here seen that, in Mr. Jefferson's opinion, if on the
constitutionality of any given bill the President doubts, he is
not to veto it, as the gentleman from Kentucky would have him do,
but is to defer to Congress and approve it.  And if we compare
the opinion of Jefferson and Taylor, as expressed in these
paragraphs, we shall find them more exactly alike than we can
often find any two expressions having any literal difference.
None but interested faultfinders, I think, can discover any
substantial variation.

But gentlemen on the other side are unanimously agreed that
General Taylor has no other principles.  They are in utter
darkness as to his opinions on any of the questions of policy
which occupy the public attention.  But is there any doubt as to
what he will do on the prominent questions if elected?   Not the
least.  It is not possible to know what he will or would do in
every imaginable case, because many questions have passed away,
and others doubtless will arise which none of us have yet thought
of; but on the prominent questions of currency, tariff, internal
improvements, and Wilmot Proviso, General Taylor's course is at
least as well defined as is General Cass's.  Why, in their
eagerness to get at General Taylor, several Democratic members
here have desired to know whether, in case of his election, a
bankrupt law is to be established.  Can they tell us General
Cass's opinion on this question?

[Some member answered, "He is against it."]

Aye, how do you know he is?  There is nothing about it in the
platform, nor elsewhere, that I have seen.  If the gentleman
knows of anything which I do not know he can show it.  But to
return.  General Taylor, in his Allison letter, says:

"Upon the subject of the tariff, the currency, the improvement of
our great highways, rivers, lakes, and harbors, the will of the
people, as expressed through their representatives in Congress,
ought to be respected and carried out by the executive."

Now this is the whole matter.  In substance, it is this: The
people say to General Taylor, "If you are elected, shall we have
a national bank?"  He answers, '' Your will, gentlemen, not mine.
''  What about the tariff?" "Say yourselves." "Shall our rivers
and harbors be improved?" "Just as you please.  If you desire a
bank, an alteration of the tariff, internal improvements, any or
all, I will not hinder you.  If you do not desire them, I will
not attempt to force them on you.  Send up your members of
Congress from the various districts, with opinions according to
your own, and if they are for these measures, or any of them, I
shall have nothing to oppose; if they are not for them, I shall
not, by any appliances whatever, attempt to dragoon them into
their adoption."

Now can there be any difficulty in understanding this?  To you
Democrats it may not seem like principle; but surely you cannot
fail to perceive the position plainly enough.  The distinction
between it and the position of your candidate is broad and
obvious, and I admit you have a clear right to show it is wrong
if you can; but you have no right to pretend you cannot see it at
all.  We see it, and to us it appears like principle, and the
best sort of principle at that--the principle of allowing the
people to do as they please with their own business.  My friend
from Indiana (C.  B.  Smith] has aptly asked, "Are you willing to
trust the people?" Some of you answered substantially, "We are
willing to trust the people; but the President is as much the
representative of the people as Congress." In a certain sense,
and to a certain extent, he is the representative of the people.
He is elected by them, as well as Congress is; but can he, in the
nature of things know the wants of the people as well as three
hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the
nation?  If so, where is the propriety of having a Congress?
That the Constitution gives the President a negative on
legislation, all know; but that this negative should be so
combined with platforms and other appliances as to enable him,
and in fact almost compel him, to take the whole of legislation
into his own hands, is what we object to, is what General Taylor
objects to, and is what constitutes the broad distinction between
you and us.  To thus transfer legislation is clearly to take it
from those who understand with minuteness the interests of the
people, and give it to one who does not and cannot so well
understand it.  I understand your idea that if a Presidential
candidate avow his opinion upon a given question, or rather upon
all questions, and the people, with full knowledge of this, elect
him, they thereby distinctly approve all those opinions.  By
means of it, measures are adopted or rejected contrary to the
wishes of the whole of one party, and often nearly half of the
other.  Three, four, or half a dozen questions are prominent at a
given time; the party selects its candidate, and he takes his
position on each of these questions.  On all but one his
positions have already been indorsed at former elections, and his
party fully committed to them; but that one is new, and a large
portion of them are against it.  But what are they to do?  The
whole was strung together; and they must take all, or reject all.
They cannot take what they like, and leave the rest.  What they
are already committed to being the majority, they shut their
eyes, and gulp the whole.  Next election, still another is
introduced in the same way.  If we run our eyes along the line of
the past, we shall see that almost if not quite all the articles
of the present Democratic creed have been at first forced upon
the party in this very way.  And just now, and just so,
opposition to internal improvements is to be established if
General Cass shall be elected.  Almost half the Democrats here
are for improvements; but they will vote for Cass, and if he
succeeds, their vote will have aided in closing the doors against
improvements.  Now this is a process which we think is wrong.  We
prefer a candidate who, like General Taylor, will allow the
people to have their own way, regardless of his private opinions;
and I should think the internal-improvement Democrats, at least,
ought to prefer such a candidate.  He would force nothing on them
which they don't want, and he would allow them to have
improvements which their own candidate, if elected, will not.

Mr. Speaker, I have said General Taylor's position is as well
defined as is that of General Cass.  In saying this, I admit I do
not certainly know what he would do on the Wilmot Proviso.  I am
a Northern man or rather a Western Free-State man, with a
constituency I believe to be, and with personal feelings I know
to be, against the extension of slavery.  As such, and with what
information I have, I hope and believe General Taylor, if
elected, would not veto the proviso.  But I do not know it.  Yet
if I knew he would, I still would vote for him.  I should do so
because, in my judgment, his election alone can defeat General
Cass; and because, should slavery thereby go to the territory we
now have, just so much will certainly happen by the election of
Cass, and in addition a course of policy leading to new wars, new
acquisitions of territory and still further extensions of
slavery.  One of the two is to be President.  Which is
preferable?

But there is as much doubt of Cass on improvements as there is of
Taylor on the proviso.  I have no doubt myself of General Cass on
this question; but I know the Democrats differ among themselves
as to his position.  My internal-improvement colleague [Mr.
Wentworth] stated on this floor the other day that he was
satisfied Cass was for improvements, because he had voted for all
the bills that he [Mr. Wentworth] had.  So far so good.  But Mr.
Polk vetoed some of these very bills.  The Baltimore convention
passed a set of resolutions, among other things, approving these
vetoes, and General Cass declares, in his letter accepting the
nomination, that he has carefully read these resolutions, and
that he adheres to them as firmly as he approves them cordially.
In other words, General Cass voted for the bills, and thinks the
President did right to veto them; and his friends here are
amiable enough to consider him as being on one side or the other,
just as one or the other may correspond with their own respective
inclinations.  My colleague admits that the platform declares
against the constitutionality of a general system of
improvements, and that General Cass indorses the platform; but he
still thinks General Cass is in favor of some sort of
improvements.  Well, what are they?  As he is against general
objects, those he is for must be particular and local.  Now this
is taking the subject precisely by the wrong end.  Particularity
expending the money of the whole people for an object which will
benefit only a portion of them--is the greatest real objection to
improvements, and has been so held by General Jackson, Mr. Polk,
and all others, I believe, till now.  But now, behold, the
objects most general--nearest free from this objection--are to be
rejected, while those most liable to it are to be embraced.  To
return: I cannot help believing that General Cass, when he wrote
his letter of acceptance, well understood he was to be claimed by
the advocates of both sides of this question, and that he then
closed the door against all further expressions of opinion
purposely to retain the benefits of that double position.  His
subsequent equivocation at Cleveland, to my mind, proves such to
have been the case.

One word more, and I shall have done with this branch of the
subject.  You Democrats, and your candidate, in the main are in
favor of laying down in advance a platform--a set of party
positions--as a unit, and then of forcing the people, by every
sort of appliance, to ratify them, however unpalatable some of
them may be.  We and our candidate are in favor of making
Presidential elections and the legislation of the country
distinct matters; so that the people can elect whom they please,
and afterward legislate just as they please, without any
hindrance, save only so much as may guard against infractions of
the Constitution, undue haste, and want of consideration.  The
difference between us is clear as noonday.  That we are right we
cannot doubt.  We hold the true Republican position.  In leaving
the people's business in their hands, we cannot be wrong.  We are
willing, and even anxious, to go to the people on this issue.

But I suppose I cannot reasonably hope to convince you that we
have any principles.  The most I can expect is to assure you that
we think we have and are quite contented with them.  The other
day one of the gentlemen from Georgia [Mr. Iverson], an eloquent
man, and a man of learning, so far as I can judge, not being
learned myself, came down upon us astonishingly.  He spoke in
what the 'Baltimore American' calls the "scathing and withering
style." At the end of his second severe flash I was struck blind,
and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my
continued existence.  A little of the bone was left, and I
gradually revived.  He eulogized Mr. Clay in high and beautiful
terms, and then declared that we had deserted all our principles,
and had turned Henry Clay out, like an old horse, to root.  This
is terribly severe.  It cannot be answered by argument--at least
I cannot so answer it.  I merely wish to ask the gentleman if the
Whigs are the only party he can think of who sometimes turn old
horses out to root.  Is not a certain Martin Van Buren an old
horse which your own party have turned out to root?  and is he
not rooting a little to your discomfort about now?  But in not
nominating Mr. Clay we deserted our principles, you say.  Ah! In
what?  Tell us, ye men of principle, what principle we violated.
We say you did violate principle in discarding Van Buren, and we
can tell you how.  You violated the primary, the cardinal, the
one great living principle of all democratic representative
government--the principle that the representative is bound to
carry out the known will of his constituents.  A large majority
of the Baltimore convention of 1844 were, by their constituents,
instructed to procure Van Buren 's nomination if they could.  In
violation--in utter glaring contempt of this, you rejected him;
rejected him, as the gentleman from New York [Mr. Birdsall] the
other day expressly admitted, for availability--that same
"general availability" which you charge upon us, and daily chew
over here, as something exceedingly odious and unprincipled.  But
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Iverson] gave us a second speech
yesterday, all well considered and put down in writing, in which
Van Buren was scathed and withered a "few" for his present
position and movements.  I cannot remember the gentleman's
precise language; but I do remember he put Van Buren down, down,
till he got him where he was finally to "stink" and "rot."

Mr. Speaker, it is no business or inclination of mine to defend
Martin Van Buren in the war of extermination now waging between
him and his old admirers.  I say, "Devil take the hindmost"--and
the foremost.  But there is no mistaking the origin of the
breach; and if the curse of "stinking" and "rotting" is to fall
on the first and greatest violators of principle in the matter, I
disinterestedly suggest that the gentleman from Georgia and his
present co-workers are bound to take it upon themselves.  But the
gentleman from Georgia further says we have deserted all our
principles, and taken shelter under General Taylor's military
coat-tail, and he seems to think this is exceedingly degrading.
Well, as his faith is, so be it unto him.  But can he remember no
other military coat-tail under which a certain other party have
been sheltering for near a quarter of a century?  Has he no
acquaintance with the ample military coat tail of General
Jackson?  Does he not know that his own party have run the five
last Presidential races under that coat-tail, and that they are
now running the sixth under the same cover?  Yes, sir, that coat-
tail was used not only for General Jackson himself, but has been
clung to, with the grip of death, by every Democratic candidate
since.  You have never ventured, and dare not now venture, from
under it.  Your campaign papers have constantly been "Old
Hickories," with rude likenesses of the old general upon them;
hickory poles and hickory brooms your never-ending emblems; Mr.
Polk himself was "Young Hickory," or something so; and even now
your campaign paper here is proclaiming that Cass and Butler are
of the true "Hickory stripe." Now, sir, you dare not give it up.
Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the
Hermitage Lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking
to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is
dead.  A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by
which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough
of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog.  Just such a
discovery has General Jackson's popularity been to you.  You not
only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had
enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several
comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now
to make still another.

Mr. Speaker, old horses and military coat-tails, or tails of any
sort, are not figures of speech such as I would be the first to
introduce into discussions here; but as the gentleman from
Georgia has thought fit to introduce them, he and you are welcome
to all you have made, or can make by them.  If you have any more
old horses, trot them out; any more tails, just cock them and
come at us.  I repeat, I would not introduce this mode of
discussion here; but I wish gentlemen on the other side to
understand that the use of degrading figures is a game at which
they may not find themselves able to take all the winnings.

["We give it up!"]

Aye, you give it up, and well you may; but for a very different
reason from that which you would have us understand.  The point--
the power to hurt--of all figures consists in the truthfulness of
their application; and, understanding this, you may well give it
up.  They are weapons which hit you, but miss us.

But in my hurry I was very near closing this subject of military
tails before I was done with it.  There is one entire article of
the sort I have not discussed yet,--I mean the military tail you
Democrats are now engaged in dovetailing into the great
Michigander [Cass].  Yes, sir; all his biographies (and they are
legion) have him in hand, tying him to a military tail, like so
many mischievous boys tying a dog to a bladder of beans.  True,
the material they have is very limited, but they drive at it
might and main.  He invaded Canada without resistance, and he
outvaded it without pursuit.  As he did both under orders, I
suppose there was to him neither credit nor discredit in them;
but they constitute a large part of the tail.  He was not at
Hull's surrender, but he was close by; he was volunteer aid to
General Harrison on the day of the battle of the Thames; and as
you said in 1840 Harrison was picking huckleberries two miles off
while the battle was fought, I suppose it is a just conclusion
with you to say Cass was aiding Harrison to pick huckleberries.
This is about all, except the mooted question of the broken
sword.  Some authors say he broke it, some say he threw it away,
and some others, who ought to know, say nothing about it.
Perhaps it would be a fair historical compromise to say, if he
did not break it, he did not do anything else with it.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, did you know I am a military hero?  Yes,
sir; in the days of the Black Hawk war I fought, bled, and came
away.  Speaking of General Cass's career reminds me of my own.  I
was not at Stiliman's defeat, but I was about as near it as Cass
was to Hull's surrender; and, like him, I saw the place very soon
afterward.  It is quite certain I did not break my sword, for I
had none to break; but I bent a musket pretty badly on one
occasion.  If Cass broke his sword, the idea is he broke it in
desperation; I bent the musket by accident.  If General Cass went
in advance of me in picking huckleberries, I guess I surpassed
him in charges upon the wild onions.  If he saw any live,
fighting Indians, it was more than I did; but I had a good many
bloody struggles with the mosquitoes, and although I never
fainted from the loss of blood, I can truly say I was often very
hungry.  Mr. Speaker, if I should ever conclude to doff whatever
our Democratic friends may suppose there is of black-cockade
federalism about me, and therefore they shall take me up as their
candidate for the Presidency, I protest they shall not make fun
of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me
into a military hero.

While I have General Cass in hand, I wish to say a word about his
political principles.  As a specimen, I take the record of his
progress in the Wilmot Proviso.  In the Washington Union of March
2, 1847, there is a report of a speech of General Cass, made the
day before in the Senate, on the Wilmot Proviso, during the
delivery of which Mr. Miller of New Jersey is reported to have
interrupted him as follows, to wit:

"Mr. Miller expressed his great surprise at the change in the
sentiments of the Senator from Michigan, who had been regarded as
the great champion of freedom in the Northwest, of which he was a
distinguished  ornament.  Last year the Senator from Michigan was
understood to be decidedly in favor of the Wilmot Proviso; and as
no reason had been stated for the change, he [Mr. Miller] could
not refrain from the expression of his extreme surprise."

To this General Cass is reported to have replied as follows, to
wit:

"Mr. Cass said that the course of the Senator from New Jersey was
most extraordinary.  Last year he [Mr. Cass] should have voted
for the proposition, had it come up.  But circumstances had
altogether changed.  The honorable Senator then read several
passages from the remarks, as given above, which he had committed
to writing, in order to refute such a charge as that of the
Senator from New Jersey."

In the "remarks above reduced to writing" is one numbered four,
as follows, to wit:

"Fourth.  Legislation now would be wholly inoperative, because no
territory hereafter to be acquired can be governed without an act
of Congress providing for its government; and such an act, on its
passage, would open the whole subject, and leave the Congress
called on to pass it free to exercise its own discretion,
entirely uncontrolled by any declaration found on the statute-
book."

In Niles's Register, vol.  lxxiii., p.  293, there is a letter of
General Cass to _______Nicholson, of Nashville, Tennessee, dated
December 24, 1847, from which the following are correct extracts:

"The Wilmot Proviso has been before the country some time.  It
has been repeatedly discussed in Congress and by the public
press.  I am strongly impressed with the opinion that a great
change has been going on in the public mind upon this subject,--
in my own as well as others',--and that doubts are resolving
themselves into convictions that the principle it involves should
be kept out of the national legislature, and left to the people
of the confederacy in their respective local governments....
Briefly, then, I am opposed to the exercise of any jurisdiction
by Congress over this matter; and I am in favor of leaving the
people of any territory which may be hereafter acquired the right
to regulate it themselves, under the general principles of the
Constitution.  Because--'First.  I do not see in the Constitution
any grant of the requisite power to Congress; and I am not
disposed to extend a doubtful precedent beyond its necessity,--
the establishment of territorial governments when needed,--
leaving to the inhabitants all the right compatible with the
relations they bear to the confederation."

These extracts show that in 1846 General Cass was for the proviso
at once; that in March, 1847, he was still for it, but not just
then; and that in December, 1847, he was against it altogether.
This is a true index to the whole man.  When the question was
raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for
it.  He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting
position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see glimpses of
the great Democratic ox-goad waving in his face, and to hear
indistinctly a voice saying, "Back! Back, sir! Back a little!" He
shakes his head, and bats his eyes, and blunders back to his
position of March, 1847; but still the goad waves, and the voice
grows more distinct and sharper still, "Back, sir! Back, I say!
Further back!"--and back he goes to the position of December,
1847, at which the goad is still, and the voice soothingly says,
"So! Stand at that!"

Have no fears, gentlemen, of your candidate.  He exactly suits
you, and we congratulate you upon it.  However much you may be
distressed about our candidate, you have all cause to be
contented and happy with your own.  If elected, he may not
maintain all or even any of his positions previously taken; but
he will be sure to do whatever the party exigency for the time
being may require; and that is precisely what you want.  He and
Van Buren are the same "manner of men"; and, like Van Buren, he
will never desert you till you first desert him.

Mr. Speaker, I adopt the suggestion of a friend, that General
Cass is a general of splendidly successful charges--charges, to
be sure, not upon the public enemy, but upon the public treasury.
He was Governor of Michigan territory, and ex-officio
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, from the 9th of October, 1813,
till the 31st of July, 1831--a period of seventeen years, nine
months, and twenty-two days.  During this period he received from
the United States treasury, for personal services and personal
expenses, the aggregate sum of ninety-six thousand and twenty
eight dollars, being an average of fourteen dollars and seventy-
nine cents per day for every day of the time.  This large sum was
reached by assuming that he was doing service at several
different places, and in several different capacities in the same
place, all at the same time.  By a correct analysis of his
accounts during that period, the following propositions may be
deduced:

First.  He was paid in three different capacities during the
whole of the time: that is to say--(1) As governor a salary at
the rate per year of $2000.  (2) As estimated for office rent,
clerk hire, fuel, etc., in superintendence of Indian affairs in
Michigan, at the rate per year of $1500.  (3) As compensation and
expenses for various miscellaneous items of Indian service out of
Michigan, an average per year of $625.

Second.  During part of the time--that is, from the 9th of
October, 1813, to the 29th of May, 1822 he was paid in four
different capacities; that is to say, the three as above, and, in
addition thereto, the commutation of ten rations per day,
amounting per year to $730.

Third.  During another part of the time--that is, from the
beginning of 1822 to the 31st of July, '83 he was also paid in
four different capacities; that is to say, the first three, as
above (the rations being dropped after the 29th of May, 1822),
and, in addition thereto, for superintending Indian Agencies at
Piqua, Ohio; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Chicago, Illinois, at the
rate per year of $1500.  It should be observed here that the last
item, commencing at the beginning of 1822, and the item of
rations, ending on the 29th of May, 1822, lap on each other
during so much of the time as lies between those two dates.

Fourth.  Still another part of the time--that is, from the 31st
of October, 1821, to the 29th of May, 1822--he was paid in six
different capacities; that is to say, the three first, as above;
the item of rations, as above; and, in addition thereto, another
item of ten rations per day while at Washington settling his
accounts, being at the rate per year of $730; and also an
allowance for expenses traveling to and from Washington, and
while there, of $1022, being at the rate per year of $1793.

Fifth.  And yet during the little portion of the time which lies
between the 1st of January, 1822, and the 29th of May, 1822, he
was paid in seven different capacities; that is to say, the six
last mentioned, and also, at the rate of $1500 per year, for the
Piqua, Fort Wayne, and Chicago service, as mentioned above.


These accounts have already been discussed some here; but when we
are amongst them, as when we are in the Patent Office, we must
peep about a good deal before we can see all the curiosities.  I
shall not be tedious with them.  As to the large item of $1500
per year--amounting in the aggregate to $26,715 for office rent,
clerk hire, fuel, etc., I barely wish to remark that, so far as I
can discover in the public documents, there is no evidence, by
word or inference, either from any disinterested witness or of
General Cass himself, that he ever rented or kept a separate
office, ever hired or kept a clerk, or even used any extra amount
of fuel, etc., in consequence of his Indian services.  Indeed,
General Cass's entire silence in regard to these items, in his
two long letters urging his claims upon the government, is, to my
mind, almost conclusive that no such claims had any real
existence.

But I have introduced General Cass's accounts here chiefly to
show the wonderful physical capacities of the man.  They show
that he not only did the labor of several men at the same time,
but that he often did it at several places, many hundreds of
miles apart, at the same time.  And at eating, too, his
capacities are shown to be quite as wonderful.  From October,
1821, to May, 1822, he eat ten rations a day in Michigan, ten
rations a day here in Washington, and near five dollars' worth a
day on the road between the two places! And then there is an
important discovery in his example--the art of being paid for
what one eats, instead of having to pay for it.  Hereafter if any
nice young man should owe a bill which he cannot pay in any other
way, he can just board it out.  Mr. Speaker, we have all heard of
the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay and
starving to death.  The like of that would never happen to
General Cass.  Place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would
stand stock-still midway between them, and eat them both at once,
and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some,
too, at the same time.  By all means make him President,
gentlemen.  He will feed you bounteously--if--if there is any
left after he shall have helped himself.

But, as General Taylor is, par exel1ence, the hero of the Mexican
War, and as you Democrats say we Whigs have always opposed the
war, you think it must be very awkward and embarrassing for us to
go for General Taylor.  The declaration that we have always
opposed the war is true or false, according as one may understand
the term "oppose the war." If to say "the war was unnecessarily
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President" be opposing
the war, then the Whigs have very generally opposed it.  Whenever
they have spoken at all, they have said this; and they have said
it on what has appeared good reason to them.  The marching an
army into the midst of a peaceful Mexican settlement, frightening
the inhabitants away, leaving their growing crops and other
property to destruction, to you may appear a perfectly amiable,
peaceful, unprovoking procedure; but it does not appear so to us.
So to call such an act, to us appears no other than a naked,
impudent absurdity, and we speak of it accordingly.  But if, when
the war had begun, and had become the cause of the country, the
giving of our money and our blood, in common with yours, was
support of the war, then it is not true that we have always
opposed the war.  With few individual exceptions, you have
constantly had our votes here for all the necessary supplies.
And, more than this, you have had the services, the blood, and
the lives of our political brethren in every trial and on every
field.  The beardless boy and the mature man, the humble and the
distinguished--you have had them.  Through suffering and death,
by disease and in battle they have endured and fought and fell
with you.  Clay and Webster each gave a son, never to be
returned.  From the State of my own residence, besides other
worthy but less known Whig names, we sent Marshall, Morrison,
Baker, and Hardin; they all fought, and one fell, and in the fall
of that one we lost our best Whig man.  Nor were the Whigs few in
number, or laggard in the day of danger.  In that fearful,
bloody, breathless struggle at Buena Vista, where each man's hard
task was to beat back five foes or die himself, of the five high
officers who perished, four were Whigs.

In speaking of this, I mean no odious comparison between the
lion-hearted Whigs and the Democrats who fought there.  On other
occasions, and among the lower officers and privates on that
occasion, I doubt not the proportion was different.  I wish to do
justice to all.  I think of all those brave men as Americans, in
whose proud fame, as an American, I too have a share.  Many of
them, Whigs and Democrats are my constituents and personal
friends; and I thank them,--more than thank them,--one and all,
for the high imperishable honor they have conferred on our common
State.

But the distinction between the cause of the President in
beginning the war, and the cause of the country after it was
begun, is a distinction which you cannot perceive.  To you the
President and the country seem to be all one.  You are interested
to see no distinction between them; and I venture to suggest that
probably your interest blinds you a little.  We see the
distinction, as we think, clearly enough; and our friends who
have fought in the war have no difficulty in seeing it also.
What those who have fallen would say, were they alive and here,
of course we can never know; but with those who have returned
there is no difficulty.  Colonel Haskell and Major Gaines,
members here, both fought in the war, and both of them underwent
extraordinary perils and hardships; still they, like all other
Whigs here, vote, on the record, that the war was unnecessarily
and unconstitutionally commenced by the President.  And even
General Taylor himself, the noblest Roman of them all, has
declared that as a citizen, and particularly as a soldier, it is
sufficient for him to know that his country is at war with a
foreign nation, to do all in his power to bring it to a speedy
and honorable termination by the most vigorous and energetic
operations, without inquiry about its justice, or anything else
connected with it.

Mr. Speaker, let our Democratic friends be comforted with the
assurance that we are content with our position, content with our
company, and content with our candidate; and that although they,
in their generous sympathy, think we ought to be miserable, we
really are not, and that they may dismiss the great anxiety they
have on our account.

Mr. Speaker, I see I have but three minutes left, and this forces
me to throw out one whole branch of my subject.  A single word on
still another.  The Democrats are keen enough to frequently
remind us that we have some dissensions in our ranks.  Our good
friend from Baltimore immediately before me [Mr. McLane]
expressed some doubt the other day as to which branch of our
party General Taylor would ultimately fall into the hands of.
That was a new idea to me.  I knew we had dissenters, but I did
not know they were trying to get our candidate away from us.  I
would like to say a word to our dissenters, but I have not the
time.  Some such we certainly have; have you none, gentlemen
Democrats?  Is it all union and harmony in your ranks?  no
bickerings?  no divisions?  If there be doubt as to which of our
divisions will get our candidate, is there no doubt as to which
of your candidates will get your party?  I have heard some things
from New York; and if they are true, one might well say of your
party there, as a drunken fellow once said when he heard the
reading of an indictment for hog-stealing.  The clerk read on
till he got to and through the words, "did steal, take, and carry
away ten boars, ten sows, ten shoats, and ten pigs," at which he
exclaimed, "Well, by golly, that is the most equally divided gang
of hogs I ever did hear of!"  If there is any other gang of hogs
more equally divided than the Democrats of New York are about
this time, I have not heard of it.




SPEECH DELIVERED AT WORCESTER, MASS., ON
SEPT. 12, 1848.

(From the Boston Advertiser.)

Mr. Kellogg then introduced to the meeting the Hon.  Abram
Lincoln, Whig member of Congress from Illinois, a representative
of free soil.

Mr. Lincoln has a very tall and thin figure, with an intellectual
face, showing a searching mind, and a cool judgment.  He spoke in
a clear and cool and very eloquent manner, for an hour and a
half, carrying the audience with him in his able arguments and
brilliant illustrations--only interrupted by warm and frequent
applause.  He began by expressing a real feeling of modesty in
addressing an audience "this side of the mountains," a part of
the country where, in the opinion of the people of his section,
everybody was supposed to be instructed and wise.  But he had
devoted his attention to the question of the coming Presidential
election, and was not unwilling to exchange with all whom he
might the ideas to which he had arrived.  He then began to show
the fallacy of some of the arguments against Gen. Taylor, making
his chief theme the fashionable statement of all those who oppose
him ("the old Locofocos as well as the new") that he has no
principles, and that the Whig party have abandoned their
principles by adopting him as their candidate.  He maintained
that Gen.  Taylor occupied a high and unexceptionable Whig
ground, and took for his first instance and proof of this the
statement in the Allison letter--with regard to the bank, tariff,
rivers and harbors, etc.--that the will of the people should
produce its own results, without executive influence.  The
principle that the people should do what--under the Constitution-
-as they please, is a Whig principle.  All that Gen.  Taylor is not
only to consent to, but appeal to the people to judge and act for
themselves.  And this was no new doctrine for Whigs.  It was the
"platform" on which they had fought all their battles, the
resistance of executive influence, and the principle of enabling
the people to frame the government according to their will.  Gen.
Taylor consents to be the candidate, and to assist the people to
do what they think to be their duty, and think to be best in
their national affairs, but because he don't want to tell what we
ought to do, he is accused of having no principles.  The Whigs
here maintained for years that neither the influence, the duress,
or the prohibition of the executive should control the
legitimately expressed will of the people; and now that, on that
very ground, Gen. Taylor says that he should use the power given
him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of
the people, he is accused of want of principle, and of
inconsistency in position.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to examine the absurdity of an attempt to
make a platform or creed for a national party, to all parts of
which all must consent and agree, when it was clearly the
intention and the true philosophy of our government, that in
Congress all opinions and principles should be represented, and
that when the wisdom of all had been compared and united, the
will of the majority should be carried out.  On this ground he
conceived (and the audience seemed to go with him) that Gen.
Taylor held correct, sound republican principles.

Mr. Lincoln then passed to the subject of slavery in the States,
saying that the people of Illinois agreed entirely with the
people of Massachusetts on this subject, except perhaps that they
did not keep so constantly thinking about it.  All agreed that
slavery was an evil, but that we were not responsible for it and
cannot affect it in States of this Union where we do not live.
But the question of the extension of slavery to new territories
of this country is a part of our responsibility and care, and is
under our control.  In opposition to this Mr. L.  believed that
the self-named "Free Soil" party was far behind the Whigs.  Both
parties opposed the extension.  As he understood it the new party
had no principle except this opposition.  If their platform held
any other, it was in such a general way that it was like the pair
of pantaloons the Yankee pedlar offered for sale, "large enough
for any man, small enough for any boy."  They therefore had taken
a position calculated to break down their single important
declared object.  They were working for the election of either
Gen. Cass or Gen. Taylor.  The speaker then went on to show,
clearly and eloquently, the danger of extension of slavery,
likely to result from the election of Gen. Cass.  To unite with
those who annexed the new territory to prevent the extension of
slavery in that territory seemed to him to be in the highest
degree absurd and ridiculous.  Suppose these gentlemen succeed in
electing Mr. Van Buren, they had no specific means to prevent the
extension of slavery to New Mexico and California, and Gen.
Taylor, he confidently believed, would not encourage it, and
would not prohibit its restriction.  But if Gen. Cass was
elected, he felt certain that the plans of farther extension of
territory would be encouraged, and those of the extension of
slavery would meet no check.  The "Free Soil" mart in claiming
that name indirectly attempts a deception, by implying that Whigs
were not Free Soil men.  Declaring that they would "do their duty
and leave the consequences to God " merely gave an excuse for
taking a course they were not able to maintain by a fair and full
argument.  To make this declaration did not show what their duty
was.  If it did we should have no use for judgment, we might as
well be made without intellect; and when divine or human law does
not clearly point out what is our duty, we have no means of
finding out what it is but by using our most intelligent judgment
of the consequences.  If there were divine law or human law for
voting for Martin Van Buren, or if a, fair examination of the
consequences and just reasoning would show that voting for him
would bring about the ends they pretended to wish--then he would
give up the argument.  But since there was no fixed law on the
subject, and since the whole probable result of their action
would be an assistance in electing Gen. Cass, he must say that
they were behind the Whigs in their advocacy of the freedom of
the soil.

Mr. Lincoln proceeded to rally the Buffalo convention for
forbearing to say anything--after all the previous declarations
of those members who were formerly Whigs--on the subject of the
Mexican War, because the Van Burens had been known to have
supported it.  He declared that of all the parties asking the
confidence of the country, this new one had less of principle
than any other.

He wondered whether it was still the opinion of these Free Soil
gentlemen, as declared in the "whereas" at Buffalo, that the Whig
and Democratic parties were both entirely dissolved and absorbed
into their own body.  Had the Vermont election given them any
light?  They had calculated on making as great an impression in
that State as in any part of the Union, and there their attempts
had been wholly ineffectual.  Their failure was a greater success
than they would find in any other part of the Union.

Mr. Lincoln went on to say that he honestly believed that all
those who wished to keep up the character of the Union; who did
not believe in enlarging our field, but in keeping our fences
where they are and cultivating our present possessions, making it
a garden, improving the morals and education of the people,
devoting the administrations to this purpose; all real Whigs,
friends of good honest government--the race was ours.  He had
opportunities of hearing from almost every part of the Union from
reliable sources and had not heard of a county in which we had
not received accessions from other parties.  If the true Whigs
come forward and join these new friends, they need not have a
doubt.  We had a candidate whose personal character and
principles he had already described, whom he could not eulogize
if he would.  Gen. Taylor had been constantly, perseveringly,
quietly standing up, doing his duty and asking no praise or
reward for it.  He was and must be just the man to whom the
interests, principles, and prosperity of the country might be
safely intrusted.  He had never failed in anything he had
undertaken, although many of his duties had been considered
almost impossible.

Mr. Lincoln then went into a terse though rapid review of the
origin of the Mexican War and the connection of the
administration and General Taylor with it, from which he deduced
a strong appeal to the Whigs present to do their duty in the
support of General Taylor, and closed with the warmest
aspirations for and confidence in a deserved success.

At the close of his truly masterly and convincing speech, the
audience gave three enthusiastic cheers for Illinois, and three
more for the eloquent Whig member from the State.




HIS FATHER'S REQUEST FOR MONEY

TO THOMAS LINCOLN

WASHINGTON,  Dec.  24, 1848.

MY DEAR FATHER:--Your letter of the 7th was received night before
last.  I very cheerfully send you the twenty dollars, which sum
you say is necessary to save your land from sale.  It is singular
that you should have forgotten a judgment against you; and it is
more singular that the plaintiff should have let you forget it so
long; particularly as I suppose you always had property enough to
satisfy a judgment of that amount.  Before you pay it, it would
be well to be sure you have not paid, or at least, that you
cannot prove you have paid it.

Give my love to mother and all the connections.  Affectionately
your son,

A. LINCOLN.




1849


BILL TO ABOLISH SLAVERY IN THE
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Resolved, That the Committee on the District of Columbia be
instructed to report a bill in substance as follows:

Sec.1.    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of
Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled, That
no person not now within the District of Columbia, nor now owned
by any person or persons now resident within it, nor hereafter
born within it, shall ever be held in slavery within said
District.

Sec.  2.    That no person now within said District, or now owned
by any person or persons now resident within the same, or
hereafter born within it, shall ever be held in slavery without
the limits of said District:Provided, That officers of the
Government of the United States, being citizens of the
slaveholding States, coming into said District on public
business, and remaining only so long as may be reasonably
necessary for that object, may be attended into and out of said
District, and while there, by the necessary servants of
themselves and their families, without their right to hold such
servants in service being thereby impaired.

Sec.  3.  That all children born of slave mothers within said
District, on or after the first day of January, in the year of
our Lord eighteen hundred and fifty, shall be free; but shall be
reasonably supported and educated by the respective owners of
their mothers, or by their heirs or representatives, and shall
owe reasonable service as apprentices to such owners, heirs, or
representatives, until they respectively arrive at the age of  __
years, when they shall be entirely free; and the municipal
authorities of Washington and Georgetown, within their respective
jurisdictional limits, are hereby empowered and required to make
all suitable and necessary provision for enforcing obedience to
this section, on the part of both masters and apprentices.

Sec.  4.  That all persons now within this District, lawfully
held as slaves, or now owned by any person or persons now
resident within said District, shall remain such at the will of
their respective owners, their heirs, and legal representatives:
Provided, That such owner, or his legal representative, may at
any time receive from the Treasury of the United States the full
value of his or her slave, of the class in this section
mentioned, upon which such slave shall be forthwith and forever
free: And provided further, That the President of the United
States, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury
shall be a board for determining the value of such slaves as
their owners may desire to emancipate under this section, and
whose duty it shall be to hold a session for the purpose on the
first Monday of each calendar month, to receive all applications,
and, on satisfactory evidence in each case that the person
presented for valuation is a slave, and of the class in this
section mentioned, and is owned by the applicant, shall value
such slave at his or her full cash value, and give to the
applicant an order on the Treasury for the amount, and also to
such slave a certificate of freedom.

Sec.  5.   That the municipal authorities of Washington and
Georgetown, within their respective jurisdictional limits, are
hereby empowered and required to provide active and efficient
means to arrest and deliver up to their owners all fugitive
slaves escaping into said District.

Sec.  6.   That the election officers within said District of
Columbia are hereby empowered and required to open polls, at all
the usual places of holding elections, on the first Monday of
April next, and receive the vote of every free white male citizen
above the age of twenty-one years, having resided within said
District for the period of one year or more next preceding the
time of such voting for or against this act, to proceed in taking
said votes, in all respects not herein specified, as at elections
under the municipal laws, and with as little delay as possible to
transmit correct statements of the votes so cast to the President
of the United States; and it shall be the duty of the President
to canvass said votes immediately, and if a majority of them be
found to be for this act, to forthwith issue his proclamation
giving notice of the fact; and this act shall only be in full
force and effect on and after the day of such proclamation.

Sec.  7.  That involuntary servitude for the punishment of crime,
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall in no
wise be prohibited by this act.

Sec.  8.  That for all the purposes of this act, the
jurisdictional limits of Washington are extended to all parts of
the District of Columbia not now included within the present
limits of Georgetown.




BILL GRANTING LANDS TO THE STATES TO MAKE RAILWAYS AND CANALS

REMARKS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
FEBRUARY 13, 1849.

Mr. Lincoln said he had not risen for the purpose of making a
speech, but only for the purpose of meeting some of the
objections to the bill.  If he understood those objections, the
first was that if the bill were to become a law, it would be used
to lock large portions of the public lands from sale, without at
last effecting the ostensible object of the bill--the
construction of railroads in the new States; and secondly, that
Congress would be forced to the abandonment of large portions of
the public lands to the States for which they might be reserved,
without their paying for them.  This he understood to be the
substance of the objections of the gentleman from Ohio to the
passage of the bill.

If he could get the attention of the House for a few minutes, he
would ask gentlemen to tell us what motive could induce any State
Legislature, or individual, or company of individuals, of the new
States, to expend money in surveying roads which they might know
they could not make.

[A voice: They are not required to make the road.)

Mr. Lincoln continued: That was not the case he was making.  What
motive would tempt any set of men to go into an extensive survey
of a railroad which they did not intend to make?  What good would
it do?  Did men act without motive?  Did business men commonly go
into an expenditure of money which could be of no account to
them?  He generally found that men who have money were disposed
to hold on to it, unless they could see something to be made by
its investment.  He could not see what motive of advantage to the
new States could be subserved by merely keeping the public lands
out of market, and preventing their settlement.  As far as he
could see, the new States were wholly without any motive to do
such a thing.  This, then, he took to be a good answer to the
first objection.

In relation to the fact assumed, that after a while, the new
States having got hold of the public lands to a certain extent,
they would turn round and compel Congress to relinquish all claim
to them, he had a word to say, by way of recurring to the history
of the past.  When was the time to come (he asked) when the
States in which the public lands were situated would compose a
majority of the representation in Congress, or anything like it?
A majority of Representatives would very soon reside west of the
mountains, he admitted; but would they all come from States in
which the public lands were situated?  They certainly would not;
for, as these Western States grew strong in Congress, the public
lands passed away from them, and they got on the other side of
the question; and the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Vinton] was an
example attesting that fact.

Mr. Vinton interrupted here to say that he had stood on this
question just where he was now, for five and twenty years.

Mr. Lincoln was not making an argument for the purpose of
convicting the gentleman of any impropriety at all.  He was
speaking of a fact in history, of which his State was an example.
He was referring to a plain principle in the nature of things.
The State of Ohio had now grown to be a giant.  She had a large
delegation on that floor; but was she now in favor of granting
lands to the new States, as she used to be?  The New England
States, New York, and the Old Thirteen were all rather quiet upon
the subject; and it was seen just now that a member from one of
the new States was the first man to rise up in opposition.  And
such would be with the history of this question for the future.
There never would come a time when the people residing in the
States embracing the public lands would have the entire control
of this subject; and so it was a matter of certainty that
Congress would never do more in this respect than what would be
dictated by a just liberality.  The apprehension, therefore, that
the public lands were in danger of being wrested from the General
Government by the strength of the delegation in Congress from the
new States, was utterly futile.  There never could be such a
thing.  If we take these lands (said he) it will not be without
your consent.  We can never outnumber you.  The result is that
all fear of the new States turning against the right of Congress
to the public domain must be effectually quelled, as those who
are opposed to that interest must always hold a vast majority
here, and they will never surrender the whole or any part of the
public lands unless they themselves choose to do so.  That was
all he desired to say.




ON FEDERAL POLITICAL APPOINTMENTS

TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

WASHINGTON, March 9, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY.

DEAR SIR: Co1onel R.  D.  Baker and myself are the only Whig
members of Congress from Illinois of the Thirtieth, and he of the
Thirty-first.  We have reason to think the Whigs of that State
hold us responsible, to some extent, for the appointments which
may be made of our citizens.  We do not know you personally, and
our efforts to you have so far been unavailing.  I therefore hope
I am not obtrusive in saying in this way, for him and myself,
that when a citizen of Illinois is to be appointed in your
department, to an office either in or out of the State, we most
respectfully ask to be heard.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




MORE POLITICAL PATRONAGE REQUESTS

TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

WASHINGTON, March 10, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF STATE.

SIR:--There are several applicants for the office of United
States Marshal for the District of Illinois.  Among the most
prominent of them are Benjamin Bond, Esq., of Carlyle, and
Thomas, Esq., of Galena.  Mr. Bond I know to be personally every
way worthy of the office; and he is very numerously and most
respectably recommended.  His papers I send to you; and I solicit
for his claims a full and fair consideration.

Having said this much, I add that in my individual judgment the
appointment of Mr. Thomas would be the better.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.


(Indorsed on Mr. Bond's papers.)

In this and the accompanying envelope are the recommendations of
about two hundred good citizens of all parts of Illinois, that
Benjamin Bond be appointed marshal for that district.  They
include the names of nearly all our Whigs who now are, or have
ever been, members of the State Legislature, besides forty-six of
the Democratic members of the present Legislature, and many other
good citizens.  I add that from personal knowledge I consider Mr.
Bond every way worthy of the office, and qualified to fill it.
Holding the individual opinion that the appointment of a
different gentleman would be better, I ask especial attention and
consideration for his claims, and for the opinions expressed in
his favor by those over whom I can claim no superiority.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that Walter Davis be appointed receiver of
the land-office at this place, whenever there shall be a vacancy.
I cannot say that Mr. Herndon, the present incumbent, has failed
in the proper discharge of any of the duties of the office.  He
is a very warm partisan, and openly and actively opposed to the
election of General Taylor.  I also understand that since General
Taylor's election he has received a reappointment from Mr. Polk,
his old commission not having expired.  Whether this is true the
records of the department will show.  I may add that the Whigs
here almost universally desire his removal.

I give no opinion of my own, but state the facts, and express the
hope that the department will act in this as in all other cases
on some proper general rule.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.--The land district to which this office belongs is very
nearly if not entirely within my district; so that Colonel Baker,
the other Whig representative, claims no voice in the
appointment.
A.  L.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that Turner R.  King, now of Pekin,
Illinois, be appointed register of the land-office at this place
whenever there shall be a vacancy.

I do not know that Mr. Barret, the present incumbent, has failed
in the proper discharge of any of his duties in the office.  He
is a decided partisan, and openly and actively opposed the
election of General Taylor.  I understand, too, that since the
election of General Taylor, Mr. Barret has received a
reappointment from Mr. Polk, his old commission not having
expired.  Whether this be true, the records of the department
will show.

Whether he should be removed I give no opinion, but merely
express the wish that the department may act upon some proper
general rule, and that Mr. Barret's case may not be made an
exception to it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.-The land district to which this office belongs is very
nearly if not entirely within my district; so that Colonel Baker,
the other Whig representative, claims no voice in the
appointment.
A.  L.




TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7,1849.

HON.  POSTMASTER-GENERAL.

DEAR Sir:--I recommend that Abner Y.  Ellis be appointed
postmaster at this place, whenever there shall be a vacancy.  J.
R.  Diller, the present incumbent, I cannot say has failed in the
proper discharge of any of the duties of the office.  He,
however, has been an active partisan in opposition to us.

Located at the seat of government of the State, he has been, for
part if not the whole of the time he has held the office, a
member of the Democratic State Central Committee, signing his
name to their addresses and manifestoes; and has been, as I
understand, reappointed by Mr. Polk since General Taylor's
election.  These are the facts of the case as I understand them,
and I give no opinion of mine as to whether he should or should
not be removed.  My wish is that the department may adopt some
proper general rule for such cases, and that Mr. Diller may not
be made an exception to it, one way or the other.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.--This office, with its delivery, is entirely within my
district; so that Colonel Baker, the other Whig representative,
claims no voice in the appointment.L.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, April 7, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE HOME DEPARTMENT.

DEAR SIR:--I recommend that William Butler be appointed pension
agent for the Illinois agency, when the place shall be vacant.
Mr. Hurst, the present incumbent, I believe has performed the
duties very well.  He is a decided partisan, and I believe
expects to be removed.  Whether he shall, I submit to the
department.  This office is not confined to my district, but
pertains to the whole State; so that Colonel Baker has an equal
right with myself to be heard concerning it.  However, the office
is located here; and I think it is not probable that any one
would desire to remove from a distance to take it.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.





TO THOMPSON.

SPRINGFIELD, April 25, 1849.

DEAR THOMPSON:
A tirade is still kept up against me here for recommending T. R.
King.  This morning it is openly avowed that my supposed
influence at Washington shall be broken down generally, and
King's prospects defeated in particular.  Now, what I have done
in this matter I have done at the request of you and some other
friends in Tazewell; and I therefore ask you to either admit it
is wrong or come forward and sustain me.  If the truth will
permit, I propose that you sustain me in the following manner:
copy the inclosed scrap in your own handwriting and get everybody
(not three or four, but three or four hundred) to sign it, and
then send it to me.  Also, have six, eight or ten of our best
known Whig friends there write to me individual letters, stating
the truth in this matter as they understand it.  Don't neglect or
delay in the matter.  I understand information of an indictment
having been found against him about three years ago, for gaming
or keeping a gaming house, has been sent to the department.  I
shall try to take care of it at the department till your action
can be had and forwarded on.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD ILLINOIS.  May 10, 1849.

HON.  SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR.

DEAR SIR:--I regret troubling you so often in relation to the
land-offices here, but I hope you will perceive the necessity of
it, and excuse me.  On the 7th of April I wrote you recommending
Turner R.  King for register, and Walter Davis for receiver.
Subsequently I wrote you that, for a private reason, I had
concluded to transpose them.  That private reason was the request
of an old personal friend who himself desired to be receiver, but
whom I felt it my duty to refuse a recommendation.  He said if I
would transpose King and Davis he would be satisfied.  I thought
it a whim, but, anxious to oblige him, I consented.  Immediately
he commenced an assault upon King's character, intending, as I
suppose, to defeat his appointment, and thereby secure another
chance for himself.  This double offence of bad faith to me and
slander upon a good man is so totally outrageous that I now ask
to have King and Davis placed as I originally recommended,--that
is, King for register and Davis for receiver.

An effort is being made now to have Mr. Barret, the present
register, retained.  I have already said he has done the duties
of the office well, and I now add he is a gentleman in the true
sense.  Still, he submits to be the instrument of his party to
injure us.  His high character enables him to do it more
effectually.  Last year he presided at the convention which
nominated the Democratic candidate for Congress in this district,
and afterward ran for the State Senate himself, not desiring the
seat, but avowedly to aid and strengthen his party.  He made
speech after speech with a degree of fierceness and coarseness
against General Taylor not quite consistent with his habitually
gentlemanly deportment.  At least one (and I think more) of those
who are now trying to have him retained was himself an applicant
for this very office, and, failing to get my recommendation, now
takes this turn.

In writing you a third time in relation to these offices, I
stated that I supposed charges had been forwarded to you against
King, and that I would inquire into the truth of them.  I now
send you herewith what I suppose will be an ample defense against
any such charges.  I ask attention to all the papers, but
particularly to the letters of Mr. David Mack, and the paper with
the long list of names.  There is no mistake about King's being a
good man.  After the unjust assault upon him, and considering the
just claims of Tazewell County, as indicated in the letters I
inclose you, it would in my opinion be injustice, and withal a
blunder, not to appoint him, at least as soon as any one is
appointed to either of the offices here.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., May 19, 1849.

DEAR GILLESPIE:

Butterfield will be commissioner of the Gen'l Land Office, unless
prevented by strong and speedy efforts.  Ewing is for him, and he
is only not appointed yet because Old Zach.  hangs fire.

I have reliable information of this.  Now, if you agree with me
that this appointment would dissatisfy rather than gratify the
Whigs of this State, that it would slacken their energies in
future contests, that his appointment in '41 is an old sore with
them which they will not patiently have reopened,--in a word that
his appointment now would be a fatal blunder to the
administration and our political men here in Illinois, write
Crittenden to that effect.  He can control the matter.  Were you
to write Ewing I fear the President would never hear of your
letter.  This may be mere suspicion.  You might write directly to
Old Zach.  You will be the best judge of the propriety of that.
Not a moment's time is to be lost.

Let this be confidential except with Mr. Edwards and a few others
whom you know I would trust just as I do you.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REQUEST FOR GENERAL LAND-OFICE APPPOINTMENT

TO E.  EMBREE.

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, May 25, 1849.

HON.  E.  EMBREE

DEAR SIR:--I am about to ask a favor of you, one which I hope
will not cost you much.  I understand the General Land-Office is
about to be given to Illinois, and that Mr. Ewing desires Justin
Butterfield, of Chicago, to be the man.  I give you my word, the
appointment of Mr. Butterfield will be an egregious political
blunder.  It will give offence to the whole Whig party here, and
be worse than a dead loss to the administration of so much of its
patronage.  Now, if you can conscientiously do so, I wish you to
write General Taylor at once, saying that either I or the man I
recommend should in your opinion be appointed to that office, if
any one from Illinois shall be.  I restrict my request to
Illinois because you may have a man from your own State, and I do
not ask to interfere with that.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




REQUEST FOR A PATENT

IMPROVED METHOD OF LIFTING VESSELS OVER SHOALS.

Application for Patent:

What I claim as my invention, and desire to secure by letters
patent, is the combination of expansible buoyant chambers placed
at the sides of a vessel with the main shaft or shafts by means
of the sliding spars, which pass down through the buoyant
chambers and are made fast to their bottoms and the series of
ropes and pulleys or their equivalents in such a manner that by
turning the main shaft or shafts in one direction the buoyant
chambers will be forced downward into the water, and at the same
time expanded and filled with air for buoying up the vessel by
the displacement of water, and by turning the shafts in an
opposite direction the buoyant chambers will be contracted into a
small space and secured against injury.

A. LINCOLN.




TO THE SECRETARY OF INTERIOR.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., June 3, 1849

HON.  SECRETARY OF INTERIOR.

DEAR SIR:--Vandalia, the receiver's office at which place is the
subject of the within, is not in my district; and I have been
much perplexed to express any preference between Dr. Stapp and
Mr. Remann.  If any one man is better qualified for such an
office than all others, Dr. Stapp is that man; still, I believe a
large majority of the Whigs of the district prefer Mr. Remann,
who also is a good man.  Perhaps the papers on file will enable
you to judge better than I can.  The writers of the within are
good men, residing within the land district.

Your obt.  servant,

A. LINCOLN.




TO W.  H.  HERNDON.

SPRINGFIELD, June 5, 1849.

DEAR WILLIAM:--Your two letters were received last night.  I have
a great many letters to write, and so cannot write very long
ones.  There must be some mistake about Walter Davis saying I
promised him the post-office.  I did not so promise him.  I did
tell him that if the distribution of the offices should fall into
my hands, he should have something; and if I shall be convinced
he has said any more than this, I shall be disappointed.  I said
this much to him because, as I understand, he is of good
character, is one of the young men, is of the mechanics, and
always faithful and never troublesome; a Whig, and is poor, with
the support of a widow mother thrown almost exclusively on him by
the death of his brother.  If these are wrong reasons, then I
have been wrong; but I have certainly not been selfish in it,
because in my greatest need of friends he was against me, and for
Baker.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.

P.  S.  Let the above be confidential.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

DEAR GILLESPIE:

Mr. Edwards is unquestionably offended with me in connection with
the matter of the General Land-Office.  He wrote a letter against
me which was filed at the department.

The better part of one's life consists of his friendships; and,
of them, mine with Mr. Edwards was one of the most cherished.  I
have not been false to it.  At a word I could have had the office
any time before the department was committed to Mr. Butterfield,
at least Mr. Ewing and the President say as much.  That word I
forbore to speak, partly for other reasons, but chiefly for Mr.
Edwards' sake, losing the office (that he might gain it) I was
always for; but to lose his friendship, by the effort for him,
would oppress me very much, were I not sustained by the utmost
consciousness of rectitude.  I first determined to be an
applicant, unconditionally, on the 2nd of June; and I did so then
upon being informed by a telegraphic despatch that the question
was narrowed down to Mr. B and myself, and that the Cabinet had
postponed the appointment three weeks, for my benefit.  Not
doubting that Mr. Edwards was wholly out of the question I,
nevertheless, would not then have become an applicant had I
supposed he would thereby be brought to suspect me of treachery
to him.  Two or three days afterwards a conversation with Levi
Davis convinced me Mr. Edwards was dissatisfied; but I was then
too far in to get out.  His own letter, written on the 25th of
April, after I had fully informed him of all that had passed, up
to within a few days of that time, gave assurance I had that
entire confidence from him which I felt my uniform and strong
friendship for him entitled me to.  Among other things it says,
"Whatever course your judgment may dictate as proper to be
pursued, shall never be excepted to by me."  I also had had a
letter from Washington, saying Chambers, of the Republic, had
brought a rumor then, that Mr. E had declined in my favor, which
rumor I judged came from Mr. E himself, as I had not then
breathed of his letter to any living creature.  In saying I had
never, before the 2nd of June, determined to be an applicant,
unconditionally, I mean to admit that, before then, I had said
substantially I would take the office rather than it should be
lost to the State, or given to one in the State whom the Whigs
did not want; but I aver that in every instance in which I spoke
of myself, I intended to keep, and now believe I did keep, Mr. E
above myself.  Mr. Edwards' first suspicion was that I had
allowed Baker to overreach me, as his friend, in behalf of Don
Morrison.  I knew this was a mistake; and the result has proved
it.  I understand his view now is, that if I had gone to open war
with Baker I could have ridden him down, and had the thing all my
own way.  I believe no such thing.  With Baker and some strong
man from the Military tract & elsewhere for Morrison, and we and
some strong man from the Wabash & elsewhere for Mr. E, it was not
possible for either to succeed.  I believed this in March, and I
know it now.  The only thing which gave either any chance was the
very thing Baker & I proposed,--an adjustment with themselves.

You may wish to know how Butterfield finally beat me.  I can not
tell you particulars now, but will when I see you.  In the
meantime let it be understood I am not greatly dissatisfied,--I
wish the offer had been so bestowed as to encourage our friends
in future contests, and I regret exceedingly Mr. Edwards'
feelings towards me.  These two things away, I should have no
regrets,--at least I think I would not.

Write me soon.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




RESOLUTIONS OF SYMPATHY WITH THE CAUSE OF
HUNGARIAN FREEDOM, SEPTEMBER [12?], 1849.

At a meeting to express sympathy with the cause of Hungarian
freedom, Dr. Todd, Thos. Lewis, Hon. A. Lincoln, and Wm.
Carpenter were appointed a committee to present appropriate
resolutions, which reported through Hon. A. Lincoln the
following:

Resolved, That, in their present glorious struggle for liberty,
the Hungarians command our highest admiration and have our
warmest sympathy.

Resolved, That they have our most ardent prayers for their speedy
triumph and final success.

Resolved, That the Government of the United States should
acknowledge the independence of Hungary as a nation of freemen at
the very earliest moment consistent with our amicable relations
with the government against which they are contending.

Resolved, That, in the opinion of this meeting, the immediate
acknowledgment of the independence of Hungary by our government
is due from American freemen to their struggling brethren, to the
general cause of republican liberty, and not violative of the
just rights of any nation or people.




TO Dr. WILLIAM FITHIAN.

SPRINGFIELD, Sept. 14, 1849.

Dr. WILLIAM FITHIAN, Danville, Ill.

DEAR DOCTOR:--Your letter of the 9th was received a day or two
ago.  The notes and mortgages you enclosed me were duly received.
I also got the original Blanchard mortgage from Antrim Campbell,
with whom Blanchard had left it for you.  I got a decree of
foreclosure on the whole; but, owing to there being no redemption
on the sale to be under the Blanchard mortgage, the court allowed
Mobley till the first of March to pay the money, before
advertising for sale.  Stuart was empowered by Mobley to appear
for him, and I had to take such decree as he would consent to, or
none at all.  I cast the matter about in my mind and concluded
that as I could not get a decree we would put the accrued
interest at interest, and thereby more than match the fact of
throwing the Blanchard debt back from twelve to six per cent., it
was better to do it.  This is the present state of the case.

I can well enough understand and appreciate your suggestions
about the Land-Office at Danville; but in my present condition, I
can do nothing.

Yours, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




SPRINGFIELD, Dec.  15, 1849.

__________ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--On my return from Kentucky I found your letter of the
7th of November, and have delayed answering it till now for the
reason I now briefly state.  From the beginning of our
acquaintance I had felt the greatest kindness for you and had
supposed it was reciprocated on your part.  Last summer, under
circumstances which I mentioned to you, I was painfully
constrained to withhold a recommendation which you desired, and
shortly afterwards I learned, in such a way as to believe it,
that you were indulging in open abuse of me.  Of course my
feelings were wounded.  On receiving your last letter the
question occurred whether you were attempting to use me at the
same time you would injure me, or whether you might not have been
misrepresented to me.  If the former, I ought not to answer you;
if the latter, I ought, and so I have remained in suspense.  I
now enclose you the letter, which you may use if you see fit.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




1850


RESOLUTIONS ON THE DEATH OF JUDGE NATHANIEL POPE.

Circuit and District Court of the U. S. in and for the State and
District of Illinois.  Monday, June 3, 1850.

On the opening of the Court this morning, the Hon. A. Lincoln, a
member of the Bar of this Court, suggested the death of the Hon.
Nathaniel Pope, late a judge of this Court, since the adjournment
of the last term; whereupon, in token of respect for the memory
of the deceased, it is ordered that the Court do now adjourn
until to-morrow morning at ten o'clock.

The Hon. Stephen T. Logan, the Hon. Norman H. Purple, the Hon.
David L. Gregg, the Hon. A. Lincoln, and George W. Meeker, Esq.,
were appointed a Committee to prepare resolutions.

Whereupon, the Hon.  Stephen T. Logan, in behalf of the
Committee, presented the following preamble and resolutions:

Whereas The Hon.  Nathaniel Pope, District Judge of the United
States Court for the District of Illinois, having departed this
life during the last vacation of said Court, and the members of
the Bar of said Court, entertainmg the highest veneration for his
memory, a profound respect for his ability, great experience, and
learning as a judge, and cherishing for his many virtues, public
and private, his earnest simplicity of character and
unostentatious deportment, both in his public and private
relations, the most lively and affectionate recollections, have

Resolved, That, as a manifestation of their deep sense of the
loss which has been sustained in his death, they will wear the
usual badge of mourning during the residue of the term.

Resolved, That the Chairman communicate to the family of the
deceased a copy of these proceedings, with an assurance of our
sincere condolence on account of their heavy bereavement.

Resolved, That the Hon.  A.  Williams, District Attorney of this
Court, be requested in behalf of the meeting to present these
proceedings to the Circuit Court, and respectfully to ask that
they may be entered on the records.

E. N. POWELL, Sec'y.
SAMUEL H. TREAT, Ch'n.




NOTES FOR LAW LECTURE

(fragments)

JULY 1, 1850

DISCOURAGE LITIGATION.  Persuade your neighbors to compromise
whenever you can.  Point out to them how the nominal winner is
often a real loser-in fees, expenses, and waste of time.  As a
peace-maker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good
man.  There will still be business enough.

Never stir up litigation.  A worse man can scarcely be found than
one who does this.  Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who
habitually over-hauls the register of deeds in search of defects
in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his
pocket?   A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession
which should drive such men out of it.

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of
bread and butter involved.  Properly attended to, fuller justice
is done to both lawyer and client.  An exorbitant fee should
never be claimed.  As a general rule never take your whole fee in
advance, nor any more than a small retainer.  When fully paid
beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the
same interest in the case as if something was still in prospect
for you, as well as for your client.  And when you lack interest
in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in
the performance.  Settle the amount of fee and take a note in
advance.  Then you will feel that you are working for something,
and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well.  Never sell
a fee note--at least not before the consideration service is
performed.  It leads to negligence and dishonesty--negligence by
losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund
when you have allowed the consideration to fail.

This idea of a refund or reduction of charges from the lawyer in
a failed case is a new one to me--but not a bad one.




1851


LETTERS TO FAMILY MEMBERS

TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

January 2, 1851

DEAR JOHNSTON:--Your request for eighty dollars I do not think it
best to comply with now.  At the various times when I have helped
you a little you have said to me, "We can get along very well
now"; but in a very short time I find you in the same difficulty
again.  Now, this can only happen by some defect in your conduct.
What that defect is, I think I know.  You are not lazy, and still
you are an idler.  I doubt whether, since I saw you, you have
done a good whole day's work in any one day.  You do not very
much dislike to work, and still you do not work much merely
because it does not seem to you that you could get much for it.
This habit of uselessly wasting time is the whole difficulty; it
is vastly important to you, and still more so to your children,
that you should break the habit.  It is more important to them,
because they have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle
habit before they are in it, easier than they can get out after
they are in.

You are now in need of some money; and what I propose is, that
you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," for somebody who will
give you money for it.  Let father and your boys take charge of
your things at home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and
you go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge of any
debt you owe, that you can get; and, to secure you a fair reward
for your labor, I now promise you, that for every dollar you
will, between this and the first of May, get for your own labor,
either in money or as your own indebtedness, I will then give you
one other dollar.  By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars a
month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty dollars a
month for your work.  In this I do not mean you shall go off to
St.  Louis, or the lead mines, or the gold mines in California,
but I mean for you to go at it for the best wages you can get
close to home in Coles County.  Now, if you will do this, you
will be soon out of debt, and, what is better, you will have a
habit that will keep you from getting in debt again.  But, if I
should now clear you out of debt, next year you would be just as
deep in as ever.  You say you would almost give your place in
heaven for seventy or eighty dollars.  Then you value your place
in heaven very cheap, for I am sure you can, with the offer I
make, get the seventy or eighty dollars for four or five months'
work.  You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed me
the land, and, if you don't pay the money back, you will deliver
possession.  Nonsense! If you can't now live with the land, how
will you then live without it?  You have always been kind to me,
and I do not mean to be unkind to you.  On the contrary, if you
will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more than
eighty times eighty dollars to you.

Affectionately your brother,

A. LINCOLN.




TO C.  HOYT.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan.  11, 1851.

C. HOYT, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Our case is decided against us.  The decision was
announced this morning.  Very sorry, but there is no help.  The
history of the case since it came here is this.  On Friday
morning last, Mr. Joy filed his papers, and entered his motion
for a mandamus, and urged me to take up the motion as soon as
possible.  I already had the points and authority sent me by you
and by Mr. Goodrich, but had not studied them.  I began preparing
as fast as possible.

The evening of the same day I was again urged to take up the
case.  I refused on the ground that I was not ready, and on which
plea I also got off over Saturday.  But on Monday (the 14th) I
had to go into it.  We occupied the whole day, I using the large
part.  I made every point and used every authority sent me by
yourself and by Mr. Goodrich; and in addition all the points I
could think of and all the authorities I could find myself.  When
I closed the argument on my part, a large package was handed me,
which proved to be the plat you sent me.

The court received it of me, but it was not different from the
plat already on the record.  I do not think I could ever have
argued the case better than I did.  I did nothing else, but
prepare to argue and argue this case, from Friday morning till
Monday evening.  Very sorry for the result; but I do not think it
could have been prevented.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, January 12, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:--On the day before yesterday I received a letter
from Harriet, written at Greenup.  She says she has just returned
from your house, and that father is very low and will hardly
recover.  She also says you have written me two letters, and
that, although you do not expect me to come now, you wonder that
I do not write.

I received both your letters, and although I have not answered
them it is not because I have forgotten them, or been
uninterested about them, but because it appeared to me that I
could write nothing which would do any good.  You already know I
desire that neither father nor mother shall be in want of any
comfort, either in health or sickness, while they live; and I
feel sure you have not failed to use my name, if necessary, to
procure a doctor, or anything else for father in his present
sickness.  My business is such that I could hardly leave home
now, if it was not as it is, that my own wife is sick abed.  (It
is a case of baby-sickness, and I suppose is not dangerous.) I
sincerely hope father may recover his health, but at all events,
tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our great and
good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away from him in any
extremity.  He notes the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the hairs
of our heads, and He will not forget the dying man who puts his
trust in Him.  Say to him that if we could meet now it is
doubtful whether it would not be more painful than pleasant, but
that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous
meeting with many loved ones gone before, and where the rest of
us, through the help of God, hope ere long to join them.

Write to me again when you receive this.

Affectionately,

A. LINCOLN.




PETITION ON BEHALF OF ONE JOSHUA GIPSON
TO THE JUDGE OF THE SANGAMON COUNTY COURT,

MAY 13, 1851.

TO THE HONORABLE, THE JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURT IN AND FOR THE
COUNTY OF SANGAMON AND STATE OF ILLINOIS:

Your Petitioner, Joshua Gipson, respectfully represents that on
or about the 21st day of December, 1850, a judgment was rendered
against your Petitioner for costs, by J.  C.  Spugg, one of the
Justices of the Peace in and for said County of Sangamon, in a
suit wherein your Petitioner was plaintiff and James L.  and C.
B.  Gerard were defendants; that said judgment was not the result
of negligence on the part of your Petitioner; that said judgment,
in his opinion, is unjust and erroneous in this, that the
defendants were at that time and are indebted to this Petitioner
in the full amount of the principal and interest of the note sued
on, the principal being, as affiant remembers and believes,
thirty-one dollars and eighty two cents; and that, as affiant is
informed and believes, the defendants succeeded in the trial of
said cause by proving old claims against your petitioner, in set-
off against said note, which claims had been settled, adjusted
and paid before said note was executed.  Your Petitioner further
states that the reasons of his not being present at said trial,
as he was not, and of its not being in his power to take an
appeal in the ordinary way, as it was not, were that your
Petitioner then resided in Edgar County about one hundred and
twenty miles from where defendants resided; that a very short
time before the suit was commenced your Petitioner was in
Sangamon County for the purpose of collecting debts due him, and
with the rest, the note in question, which note had then been
given more than a year, that your Petitioner then saw the
defendant J. L. Gerard who is the principal in said note, and
solicited payment of the same; that said defendant then made no
pretense that he did not owe the same, but on the contrary
expressly promised that he would come into Springfield, in a very
few days and either pay the money, or give a new note, payable by
the then next Christmas; that your Petitioner accordingly left
said note with said J. C. Spugg, with directions to give
defendant full time to pay the money or give the new note as
above, and if he did neither to sue; and then affiant came home
to Edgar County, not having the slightest suspicion that if suit
should be brought, the defendants would make any defense
whatever; and your Petitioner never did in any way learn that
said suit had been commenced until more than twenty days after it
had been decided against him.  He therefore prays for a writ of
Certiorari.

      HIS
JOSHUA x GIPSON
      MARK




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug.  31, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:
Inclosed is the deed for the land.  We are all well, and have
nothing in the way of news.  We have had no Cholera here for
about two weeks.

Give my love to all, and especially to Mother.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. D. JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, Nov. 4, 1851

DEAR BROTHER:

When I came into Charleston day before yesterday I learned that
you are anxious to sell the land where you live, and move to
Missouri.  I have been thinking of this ever since, and cannot
but think such a notion is utterly foolish.  What can you do in
Missouri better than here?  Is the land richer?  Can you there,
any more than here, raise corn and wheat and oats without work?
Will anybody there, any more than here, do your work for you?  If
you intend to go to work, there is no better place than right
where you are; if you do not intend to go to work you cannot get
along anywhere.  Squirming and crawling about from place to place
can do no good.  You have raised no crop this year, and what you
really want is to sell the land, get the money and spend it.
Part with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will never
after own a spot big enough to bury you in.  Half you will get
for the land you spend in moving to Missouri, and the other half
you will eat and drink and wear out, and no foot of land will be
bought.  Now I feel it is my duty to have no hand in such a piece
of foolery.  I feel that it is so even on your own account, and
particularly on Mother's account.  The eastern forty acres I
intend to keep for Mother while she lives; if you will not
cultivate it, it will rent for enough to support her; at least it
will rent for something.  Her dower in the other two forties she
can let you have, and no thanks to me.

Now do not misunderstand this letter.  I do not write it in any
unkindness.  I write it in order, if possible, to get you to face
the truth, which truth is, you are destitute because you have
idled away all your time.  Your thousand pretenses for not
getting along better are all nonsense; they deceive nobody but
yourself.  Go to work is the only cure for your case.

A word for Mother: Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live
with him.  If I were you I would try it awhile.  If you get tired
of it (as I think you will not) you can return to your own home.
Chapman feels very kindly to you; and I have no doubt he will
make your situation very pleasant.

Sincerely yours,

A. LINCOLN.




Nov.  4, 1851

DEAR MOTHER:

Chapman tells me he wants you to go and live with him.  If I were
you I would try it awhile.  If you get tired of it (as I think
you will not) you can return to your own home.  Chapman feels
very kindly to you; and I have no doubt he will make your
situation very pleasant.

Sincerely your son,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D.  JOHNSTON.

SHELBYVILLE, November 9, 1851

DEAR BROTHER :-When I wrote you before, I had not received your
letter.  I still think as I did, but if the land can be sold so
that I get three hundred dollars to put to interest for Mother, I
will not object, if she does not.  But before I will make a deed,
the money must be had, or secured beyond all doubt, at ten per
cent.

As to Abram, I do not want him, on my own account; but I
understand he wants to live with me, so that he can go to school
and get a fair start in the world, which I very much wish him to
have.  When I reach home, if I can make it convenient to take, I
will take him, provided there is no mistake between us as to the
object and terms of my taking him.  In haste, as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOHN D. JOHNSTON.


SPRINGFIELD, November 25, 1851.

DEAR BROTHER:--Your letter of the 22d is just received.  Your
proposal about selling the east forty acres of land is all that I
want or could claim for myself; but I am not satisfied with it on
Mother's account--I want her to have her living, and I feel that
it is my duty, to some extent, to see that she is not wronged.
She had a right of dower (that is, the use of one-third for life)
in the other two forties; but, it seems, she has already let you
take that, hook and line.  She now has the use of the whole of
the east forty, as long as she lives; and if it be sold, of
course she is entitled to the interest on all the money it
brings, as long as she lives; but you propose to sell it for
three hundred dollars, take one hundred away with you, and leave
her two hundred at 8 per cent., making her the enormous sum of 16
dollars a year.  Now, if you are satisfied with treating her in
that way, I am not.  It is true that you are to have that forty
for two hundred dollars, at Mother's death, but you are not to
have it before.  I am confident that land can be made to produce
for Mother at least $30 a year, and I can not, to oblige any
living person, consent that she shall be put on an allowance of
sixteen dollars a year.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




1852


EULOGY ON HENRY CLAY, DELIVERED IN THE STATE
HOUSE AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, JULY 16, 1852.

On the fourth day of July, 1776, the people of a few feeble and
oppressed colonies of Great Britain, inhabiting a portion of the
Atlantic coast of North America, publicly declared their national
independence, and made their appeal to the justice of their cause
and to the God of battles for the maintenance of that
declaration.  That people were few in number and without
resources, save only their wise heads and stout hearts.  Within
the first year of that declared independence, and while its
maintenance was yet problematical, while the bloody struggle
between those resolute rebels and their haughty would-be masters
was still waging,--of undistinguished parents and in an obscure
district of one of those colonies Henry Clay was born.  The
infant nation and the infant child began the race of life
together.  For three quarters of a century they have travelled
hand in hand.  They have been companions ever.  The nation has
passed its perils, and it is free, prosperous, and powerful.  The
child has reached his manhood, his middle age, his old age, and
is dead.  In all that has concerned the nation the man ever
sympathized; and now the nation mourns the man.

The day after his death one of the public journals, opposed to
him politically, held the following pathetic and beautiful
language, which I adopt partly because such high and exclusive
eulogy, originating with a political friend, might offend good
taste, but chiefly because I could not in any language of my own
so well express my thoughts:

"Alas, who can realize that Henry Clay is dead!  Who can realize
that never again that majestic form shall rise in the council-
chambers of his country to beat back the storms of anarchy which
may threaten, or pour the oil of peace upon the troubled billows
as they rage and menace around!  Who can realize that the
workings of that mighty mind have ceased, that the throbbings of
that gallant heart are stilled, that the mighty sweep of that
graceful arm will be felt no more, and the magic of that eloquent
tongue, which spake as spake no other tongue besides, is hushed
hushed for ever!  Who can realize that freedom's champion, the
champion of a civilized world and of all tongues and kindreds of
people, has indeed fallen!  Alas, in those dark hours of peril
and dread which our land has experienced, and which she may be
called to experience again, to whom now may her people look up
for that counsel and advice which only wisdom and experience and
patriotism can give, and which only the undoubting confidence of
a nation will receive?  Perchance in the whole circle of the
great and gifted of our land there remains but one on whose
shoulders the mighty mantle of the departed statesman may fall;
one who while we now write is doubtless pouring his tears over
the bier of his brother and friend brother, friend, ever, yet in
political sentiment as far apart as party could make them.  Ah,
it is at times like these that the petty distinctions of mere
party disappear.  We see only the great, the grand, the noble
features of the departed statesman; and we do not even beg
permission to bow at his feet and mingle our tears with those who
have ever been his political adherents--we do [not] beg this
permission, we claim it as a right, though we feel it as a
privilege.  Henry Clay belonged to his country--to the world;
mere party cannot claim men like him.  His career has been
national, his fame has filled the earth, his memory will endure
to the last syllable of recorded time.

"Henry Clay is dead!  He breathed his last on yesterday, at
twenty minutes after eleven, in his chamber at Washington.  To
those who followed his lead in public affairs, it more
appropriately belongs to pronounce his eulogy and pay specific
honors to the memory of the illustrious dead.  But all Americans
may show the grief which his death inspires, for his character
and fame are national property.  As on a question of liberty he
knew no North, no South, no East, no West, but only the Union
which held them all in its sacred circle, so now his countrymen
will know no grief that is not as wide-spread as the bounds of
the confederacy.  The career of Henry Clay was a public career.
>From his youth he has been devoted to the public service, at a
period, too, in the world's history justly regarded as a
remarkable era in human affairs.  He witnessed in the beginning
the throes of the French Revolution.  He saw the rise and fall of
Napoleon.  He was called upon to legislate for America and direct
her policy when all Europe was the battlefield of contending
dynasties, and when the struggle for supremacy imperilled the
rights of all neutral nations.  His voice spoke war and peace in
the contest with Great Britain.

"When Greece rose against the Turks and struck for liberty, his
name was mingled with the battle-cry of freedom.  When South
America threw off the thraldom of Spain, his speeches were read
at the head of her armies by Bolivar.  His name has been, and
will continue to be, hallowed in two hemispheres, for it is

          'One of the few, the immortal names
           That were not born to die!'

"To the ardent patriot and profound statesman he added a quality
possessed by few of the gifted on earth.  His eloquence has not
been surpassed.  In the effective power to move the heart of man,
Clay was without an equal, and the heaven-born endowment, in the
spirit of its origin, has been most conspicuously exhibited
against intestine feud.  On at least three important occasions he
has quelled our civil commotions by a power and influence which
belonged to no other statesman of his age and times.  And in our
last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its centre, in
old age he left the shades of private life, and gave the death-
blow to fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years, in
a series of senatorial efforts which in themselves would bring
immortality by challenging comparison with the efforts of any
statesman in any age.  He exorcised the demon which possessed the
body politic, and gave peace to a distracted land.  Alas! the
achievement cost him his life.  He sank day by day to the tomb
his pale but noble brow bound with a triple wreath, put there by
a grateful country.  May his ashes rest in peace, while his
spirit goes to take its station among the great and good men who
preceded him."

While it is customary and proper upon occasions like the present
to give a brief sketch of the life of the deceased, in the case
of Mr. Clay it is less necessary than most others; for his
biography has been written and rewritten and read and reread for
the last twenty-five years; so that, with the exception of a few
of the latest incidents of his life, all is as well known as it
can be.  The short sketch which I give is, therefore, merely to
maintain the connection of this discourse.

Henry Clay was born on the twelfth day of April, 1777, in Hanover
County, Virginia.  Of his father, who died in the fourth or fifth
year of Henry's age, little seems to be known, except that he was
a respectable man and a preacher of the Baptist persuasion.  Mr.
Clay's education to the end of life was comparatively limited.  I
say "to the end of life," because I have understood that from
time to time he added something to his education during the
greater part of his whole life.  Mr. Clay's lack of a more
perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally,
teaches at least one profitable lesson: it teaches that in this
country one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can
acquire sufficient education to get through the world
respectably.  In his twenty-third year Mr. Clay was licensed to
practise law, and emigrated to Lexington, Kentucky.  Here he
commenced and continued the practice till the year 1803, when he
was first elected to the Kentucky Legislature.  By successive
elections he was continued in the Legislature till the latter
part of 1806, when he was elected to fill a vacancy of a single
session in the United States Senate.  In 18O7 he was again
elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives, and by that
body chosen Speaker.  In 1808 he was re-elected to the same body.
In 1809 he was again chosen to fill a vacancy of two years in the
United States Senate.  In 1811 he was elected to the United
States House of Representatives, and on the first day of taking
his seat in that body he was chosen its Speaker.  In 1813 he was
again elected Speaker.  Early in 1814, being the period of our
last British war, Mr. Clay was sent as commissioner, with others,
to negotiate a treaty of peace, which treaty was concluded in the
latter part of the same year.  On his return from Europe he was
again elected to the lower branch of Congress, and on taking his
seat in December, 1815, was called to his old post-the Speaker's
chair, a position in which he was retained by successive
elections, with one brief intermission, till the inauguration of
John Quincy Adams, in March, 1825.  He was then appointed
Secretary of State, and occupied that important station till the
inauguration of General Jackson, in March, 1829.  After this he
returned to Kentucky, resumed the practice of law, and continued
it till the autumn of 1831, when he was by the Legislature of
Kentucky again placed in the United States Senate.  By a
reelection he was continued in the Senate till he resigned his
seat and retired, in March, 1848.  In December, 1849, he again
took his seat in the Senate, which he again resigned only a few
months before his death.

By the foregoing it is perceived that the period from the
beginning of Mr. Clay's official life in 1803 to the end of 1852
is but one year short of half a century, and that the sum of all
the intervals in it will not amount to ten years.  But mere
duration of time in office constitutes the smallest part of Mr.
Clay's history.  Throughout that long period he has constantly
been the most loved and most implicitly followed by friends, and
the most dreaded by opponents, of all living American
politicians.  In all the great questions which have agitated the
country, and particularly in those fearful crises, the Missouri
question, the nullification question, and the late slavery
question, as connected with the newly acquired territory,
involving and endangering the stability of the Union, his has
been the leading and most conspicuous part.  In 1824 he was first
a candidate for the Presidency, and was defeated; and, although
he was successively defeated for the same office in 1832 and in
1844, there has never been a moment since 1824 till after 1848
when a very large portion of the American people did not cling to
him with an enthusiastic hope and purpose of still elevating him
to the Presidency.  With other men, to be defeated was to be
forgotten; but with him defeat was but a trifling incident,
neither changing him nor the world's estimate of him.  Even those
of both political parties who have been preferred to him for the
highest office have run far briefer courses than he, and left him
still shining high in the heavens of the political world.
Jackson, Van Buren, Harnson, Polk, and Taylor all rose after, and
set long before him.  The spell--the long-enduring spell--with
which the souls of men were bound to him is a miracle.  Who can
compass it?   It is probably true he owed his pre-eminence to no
one quality, but to a fortunate combination of several.  He was
surpassingly eloquent; but many eloquent men fail utterly, and
they are not, as a class, generally successful.  His judgment was
excellent; but many men of good judgment live and die unnoticed.
His will was indomitable; but this quality often secures to its
owner nothing better than a character for useless obstinacy.
These, then, were Mr. Clay's leading qualities.  No one of them
is very uncommon; but all together are rarely combined in a
single individual, and this is probably the reason why such men
as Henry Clay are so rare in the world.

Mr. Clay's eloquence did not consist, as many fine specimens of
eloquence do, of types and figures, of antithesis and elegant
arrangement of words and sentences, but rather of that deeply
earnest and impassioned tone and manner which can proceed only
from great sincerity, and a thorough conviction in the speaker of
the justice and importance of his cause.  This it is that truly
touches the chords of sympathy; and those who heard Mr. Clay
never failed to be moved by it, or ever afterward forgot the
impression.  All his efforts were made for practical effect.  He
never spoke merely to be heard.  He never delivered a Fourth of
July oration, or a eulogy on an occasion like this.  As a
politician or statesman, no one was so habitually careful to
avoid all sectional ground.  Whatever he did he did for the whole
country.  In the construction of his measures, he ever carefully
surveyed every part of the field, and duly weighed every
conflicting interest.  Feeling as he did, and as the truth surely
is, that the world's best hope depended on the continued union of
these States, he was ever jealous of and watchful for whatever
might have the slightest tendency to separate them.

Mr. Clay's predominant sentiment, from first to last, was a deep
devotion to the cause of human liberty--a strong sympathy with
the oppressed everywhere, and an ardent wish for their elevation.
With him this was a primary and all-controlling passion.
Subsidiary to this was the conduct of his whole life.  He loved
his country partly because it was his own country, and mostly
because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its
advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the
advancement, prosperity, and glory of human liberty, human right,
and human nature.  He desired the prosperity of his countrymen,
partly because they were his countrymen, but chiefly to show to
the world that free men could be prosperous.

That his views and measures were always the wisest needs not to
be affirmed; nor should it be on this occasion, where so many
thinking differently join in doing honor to his memory.  A free
people in times of peace and quiet when pressed by no common
danger-naturally divide into parties.  At such times the man who
is of neither party is not, cannot be, of any consequence.  Mr.
Clay therefore was of a party.  Taking a prominent part, as he
did, in all the great political questions of his country for the
last half century, the wisdom of his course on many is doubted
and denied by a large portion of his countrymen; and of such it
is not now proper to speak particularly.  But there are many
others, about his course upon which there is little or no
disagreement amongst intelligent and patriotic Americans.  Of
these last are the War of 1812, the Missouri question,
nullification, and the now recent compromise measures.  In 1812
Mr. Clay, though not unknown, was still a young man.  Whether we
should go to war with Great Britain being the question of the
day, a minority opposed the declaration of war by Congress, while
the majority, though apparently inclined to war, had for years
wavered, and hesitated to act decisively.  Meanwhile British
aggressions multiplied, and grew more daring and aggravated.  By
Mr. Clay more than any other man the struggle was brought to a
decision in Congress.  The question, being now fully before
Congress, came up in a variety of ways in rapid succession, on
most of which occasions Mr. Clay spoke.  Adding to all the logic
of which the subject was susceptible that noble inspiration which
came to him as it came to no other, he aroused and nerved and
inspired his friends, and confounded and bore down all
opposition.  Several of his speeches on these occasions were
reported and are still extant, but the best of them all never
was.  During its delivery the reporters forgot their vocation,
dropped their pens, and sat enchanted from near the beginning to
quite the close.  The speech now lives only in the memory of a
few old men, and the enthusiasm with which they cherish their
recollection of it is absolutely astonishing.  The precise
language of this speech we shall never know; but we do know we
cannot help knowing--that with deep pathos it pleaded the cause
of the injured sailor, that it invoked the genius of the
Revolution, that it apostrophized the names of Otis, of Henry,
and of Washington, that it appealed to the interests, the pride,
the honor, and the glory of the nation, that it shamed and
taunted the timidity of friends, that it scorned and scouted and
withered the temerity of domestic foes, that it bearded and
defied the British lion, and, rising and swelling and maddening
in its course, it sounded the onset, till the charge, the shock,
the steady struggle, and the glorious victory all passed in vivid
review before the entranced hearers.

Important and exciting as was the war question of 1812, it never
so alarmed the sagacious statesmen of the country for the safety
of the Republic as afterward did the Missouri question.  This
sprang from that unfortunate source of discord--negro slavery.
When our Federal Constitution was adopted, we owned no territory
beyond the limits or ownership of the States, except the
territory northwest of the River Ohio and east of the
Mississippi.  What has since been formed into the States of
Maine, Kentucky and Tennessee, was, I believe, within the limits
of or owned by Massachusetts, Virginia, and North Carolina.  As
to the Northwestern Territory, provision had been made even
before the adoption of the Constitution that slavery should never
go there.  On the admission of States into the Union, carved from
the territory we owned before the Constitution, no question, or
at most no considerable question, arose about slavery--those
which were within the limits of or owned by the old States
following respectively the condition of the parent State, and
those within the Northwest Territory following the previously
made provision.  But in 1803 we purchased Louisiana of the
French, and it included with much more what has since been formed
into the State of Missouri.  With regard to it, nothing had been
done to forestall the question of slavery.  When, therefore, in
1819, Missouri, having formed a State constitution without
excluding slavery, and with slavery already actually existing
within its limits, knocked at the door of the Union for
admission, almost the entire representation of the non-
slaveholding States objected.  A fearful and angry struggle
instantly followed.  This alarmed thinking men more than any
previous question, because, unlike all the former, it divided the
country by geographical lines.  Other questions had their
opposing partisans in all localities of the country and in almost
every family, so that no division of the Union could follow such
without a separation of friends to quite as great an extent as
that of opponents.  Not so with the Missouri question.  On this a
geographical line could be traced, which in the main would
separate opponents only.  This was the danger.  Mr. Jefferson,
then in retirement, wrote:

"I had for a long time ceased to read newspapers or to pay any
attention to public affairs, confident they were in good hands
and content to be a passenger in our bark to the shore from which
I am not distant.  But this momentous question, like a firebell
in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.  I considered
it at once as the knell of the Union.  It is hushed, indeed, for
the moment.  But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.
A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and
political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of
men, will never be obliterated, and every irritation will mark it
deeper and deeper.  I can say with conscious truth that there is
not a man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would to
relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way.

"The cession of that kind of property--for it is so misnamed--is
a bagatelle which would not cost me a second thought if in that
way a general emancipation and expatriation could be effected,
and gradually and with due sacrifices I think it might be.  But
as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold
him nor safely let him go.  Justice is in one scale, and self-
preservation in the other."

Mr. Clay was in Congress, and, perceiving the danger, at once
engaged his whole energies to avert it.  It began, as I have
said, in 1819 ; and it did not terminate till 1821.  Missouri
would not yield the point; and Congress that is, a majority in
Congress--by repeated votes showed a determination not to admit
the State unless it should yield.  After several failures, and
great labor on the part of Mr. Clay to so present the question
that a majority could consent to the admission, it was by a vote
rejected, and, as all seemed to think, finally.  A sullen gloom
hung over the nation.  All felt that the rejection of Missouri
was equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, because those
States which already had what Missouri was rejected for refusing
to relinquish would go with Missouri.  All deprecated and
deplored this, but none saw how to avert it.  For the judgment of
members to be convinced of the necessity of yielding was not the
whole difficulty; each had a constituency to meet and to answer
to.  Mr. Clay, though worn down and exhausted, was appealed to by
members to renew his efforts at compromise.  He did so, and by
some judicious modifications of his plan, coupled with laborious
efforts with individual members and his own overmastering
eloquence upon that floor, he finally secured the admission of
the State.  Brightly and captivating as it had previously shown,
it was now perceived that his great eloquence was a mere
embellishment, or at most but a helping hand to his inventive
genius and his devotion to his country in the day of her extreme
peril.

After the settlement of the Missouri question, although a portion
of the American people have differed with Mr. Clay, and a
majority even appear generally to have been opposed to him on
questions of ordinary administration, he seems constantly to have
been regarded by all as the man for the crisis.  Accordingly, in
the days of nullification, and more recently in the reappearance
of the slavery question connected with our territory newly
acquired of Mexico, the task of devising a mode of adjustment
seems to have been cast upon Mr. Clay by common consent--and his
performance of the task in each case was little else than a
literal fulfilment of the public expectation.

Mr. Clay's efforts in behalf of the South Americans, and
afterward in behalf of the Greeks, in the times of their
respective struggles for civil liberty, are among the finest on
record, upon the noblest of all themes, and bear ample
corroboration of what I have said was his ruling passion--a love
of liberty and right, unselfishly, and for their own sakes.

Having been led to allude to domestic slavery so frequently
already, I am unwilling to close without referring more
particularly to Mr. Clay's views and conduct in regard to it.  He
ever was on principle and in feeling opposed to slavery.  The
very earliest, and one of the latest, public efforts of his life,
separated by a period of more than fifty years, were both made in
favor of gradual emancipation.  He did not perceive that on a
question of human right the negroes were to be excepted from the
human race.  And yet Mr. Clay was the owner of slaves.  Cast into
life when slavery was already widely spread and deeply seated, he
did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how it
could be at once eradicated without producing a greater evil even
to the cause of human liberty itself.  His feeling and his
judgment, therefore, ever led him to oppose both extremes of
opinion on the subject.  Those who would shiver into fragments
the Union of these States, tear to tatters its now venerated
Constitution, and even burn the last copy of the Bible, rather
than slavery should continue a single hour, together with all
their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are
receiving, their just execration; and the name and opinions and
influence of Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and
enduringly arrayed against them.  But I would also, if I could,
array his name, opinions, and influence against the opposite
extreme--against a few but an increasing number of men who, for
the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to
ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that
"all men are created free and equal." So far as I have learned,
the first American of any note to do or attempt this was the late
John C.  Calhoun; and if I mistake not, it soon after found its
way into some of the messages of the Governor of South Carolina.
We, however, look for and are not much shocked by political
eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina.  But only last
year I saw with astonishment what purported to be a letter of a
very distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied,
with apparent approbation, into a St.  Louis newspaper,
containing the following to me very unsatisfactory language:

"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not
in mine.  Professional abolitionists have made more use of it
than of any passage in the Bible.  It came, however, as I trace
it, from Saint Voltaire, and was baptized by Thomas Jefferson,
and since almost universally regarded as canonical authority`All
men are born free and equal.'

"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our
generation.  I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of
whom it is true.  But I must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins,
and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw a
proof of this sage aphorism."

This sounds strangely in republican America.  The like was not
heard in the fresher days of the republic.  Let us contrast with
it the language of that truly national man whose life and death
we now commemorate and lament: I quote from a speech of Mr. Clay
delivered before the American Colonization Society in 1827:

" We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this
question.  The society goes into no household to disturb its
domestic tranquillity.  It addresses itself to no slaves to
weaken their obligations of obedience.  It seeks to affect no
man's property.  It neither has the power nor the will to affect
the property of any one contrary to his consent.  The execution
of its scheme would augment instead of diminishing the value of
property left behind.  The society, composed of free men,
conceals itself only with the free.  Collateral consequences we
are not responsible for.  It is not this society which has
produced the great moral revolution which the age exhibits.  What
would they who thus reproach us have done?   If they would
repress all tendencies toward liberty and ultimate emancipation,
they must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of this
society.  They must go back to the era of our liberty and
independence, and muzzle the cannon which thunders its annual
joyous return.  They must renew the slave trade, with all its
train of atrocities.  They must suppress the workings of British
philanthropy, seeking to meliorate the condition of the
unfortunate West Indian slave.  They must arrest the career of
South American deliverance from thraldom.  They must blow out the
moral lights around us and extinguish that greatest torch of all
which America presents to a benighted world--pointing the way to
their rights, their liberties, and their happiness.  And when
they have achieved all those purposes their work will be yet
incomplete.  They must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate
the light of reason and the love of liberty.  Then, and not till
then, when universal darkness and despair prevail, can you
perpetuate slavery and repress all sympathy and all humane and
benevolent efforts among free men in behalf of the unhappy
portion of our race doomed to bondage."

The American Colonization Society was organized in 1816.  Mr.
Clay, though not its projector, was one of its earliest members;
and he died, as for many preceding years he had been, its
president.  It was one of the most cherished objects of his
direct care and consideration, and the association of his name
with it has probably been its very greatest collateral support.
He considered it no demerit in the society that it tended to
relieve the slave-holders from the troublesome presence of the
free negroes; but this was far from being its whole merit in his
estimation.  In the same speech from which we have quoted he
says:

" There is a moral fitness in the idea of returning to Africa her
children, whose ancestors have been torn from her by the ruthless
hand of fraud and violence.  Transplanted in a foreign land, they
will carry back to their native soil the rich fruits of religion,
civilization, law, and liberty.  May it not be one of the great
designs of the Ruler of the universe, whose ways are often
inscrutable by short-sighted mortals, thus to transform an
original crime into a signal blessing to that most unfortunate
portion of the globe?"

This suggestion of the possible ultimate redemption of the
African race and African continent was made twenty-five years
ago.  Every succeeding year has added strength to the hope of its
realization.  May it indeed be realized.  Pharaoh's country was
cursed with plagues, and his hosts were lost in the Red Sea, for
striving to retain a captive people who had already served them
more than four hundred years.  May like disasters never befall
us!  If, as the friends of colonization hope, the present and
coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means succeed
in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery, and
at the same time in restoring a captive people to their long-lost
fatherland with bright prospects for the future, and this too so
gradually that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered
by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation.  And if
to such a consummation the efforts of Mr. Clay shall have
contributed, it will be what he most ardently wished, and none of
his labors will have been more valuable to his country and his
kind.

But Henry Clay is dead.  His long and eventful life is closed.
Our country is prosperous and powerful; but could it have been
quite all it has been, and is, and is to be, without Henry Clay?
Such a man the times have demanded, and such in the providence of
God was given us.  But he is gone.  Let us strive to deserve, as
far as mortals may, the continued care of Divine Providence,
trusting that in future national emergencies He will not fail to
provide us the instruments of safety and security.

NOTE.  We are indebted for a copy of this speech to the courtesy
of Major Wm.  H.  Bailhache, formerly one of the proprietors of
the Illinois State Journal.




CHALLENGED VOTERS

OPINION ON THE ILLINOIS ELECTION LAW.

SPRINGFIELD, November 1, 1852

A leading article in the Daily Register of this morning has
induced some of our friends to request our opinion on the
election laws as applicable to challenged voters.  We have
examined the present constitution of the State, the election law
of 1849, and the unrepealed parts of the election law in the
revised code of 1845; and we are of the opinion that any person
taking the oath prescribed in the act of 1849 is entitled to vote
unless counter-proof be made satisfactory to a majority of the
judges that such oath is untrue; and that for the purpose of
obtaining such counter-proof, the proposed voter may be asked
questions in the way of cross-examination, and other independent
testimony may be received.  We base our opinion as to receiving
counter-proof upon the unrepealed Section nineteen of the
election law in the revised code.

A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EDWARDS
S. T. LOGAN.
S. H. TREAT




1853


LEGAL OFFICE WORK

TO JOSHUA R.  STANFORD.

PEKIN, MAY 12, 1853

Mr. JOSHUA R. STANFORD.

SIR:--I hope the subject-matter of this letter will appear a
sufficient apology to you for the liberty I, a total stranger,
take in addressing you.  The persons here holding two lots under
a conveyance made by you, as the attorney of Daniel M.  Baily,
now nearly twenty-two years ago, are in great danger of losing
the lots, and very much, perhaps all, is to depend on the
testimony you give as to whether you did or did not account to
Baily for the proceeds received by you on this sale of the lots.
I, therefore, as one of the counsel, beg of you to fully refresh
your recollection by any means in your power before the time you
may be called on to testify.  If persons should come about you,
and show a disposition to pump you on the subject, it may be no
more than prudent to remember that it may be possible they design
to misrepresent you and embarrass the real testimony you may
ultimately give.  It may be six months or a year before you are
called on to testify.

Respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




1854



TO O. L. DAVIS.

SPRINGFIELD, June 22, 1854.

O. L. DAVIS, ESQ.

DEAR SIR:--You, no doubt, remember the enclosed memorandum being
handed me in your office.  I have just made the desired search,
and find that no such deed has ever been here.  Campbell, the
auditor, says that if it were here, it would be in his office,
and that he has hunted for it a dozen times, and could never find
it.  He says that one time and another, he has heard much about
the matter, that it was not a deed for Right of Way, but a deed,
outright, for Depot-ground--at least, a sale for Depot-ground,
and there may never have been a deed.  He says, if there is a
deed, it is most probable General Alexander, of Paris, has it.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




NEBRASKA MEASURE

TO J. M. PALMER

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, Sept.  7, 1854.

HON. J. M. PALMER.

DEAR SIR:--You know how anxious I am that this Nebraska measure
shall be rebuked and condemned everywhere.  Of course I hope
something from your position; yet I do not expect you to do
anything which may be wrong in your own judgment; nor would I
have you do anything personally injurious to yourself.  You are,
and always have been, honestly and sincerely a Democrat; and I
know how painful it must be to an honest, sincere man to be urged
by his party to the support of a measure which in his conscience
he believes to be wrong.  You have had a severe struggle with
yourself, and you have determined not to swallow the wrong.  Is
it not just to yourself that you should, in a few public
speeches, state your reasons, and thus justify yourself?  I wish
you would; and yet I say, don't do it, if you think it will
injure you.  You may have given your word to vote for Major
Harris; and if so, of course you will stick to it.  But allow me
to suggest that you should avoid speaking of this; for it
probably would induce some of your friends in like manner to cast
their votes.  You understand.  And now let me beg your pardon for
obtruding this letter upon you, to whom I have ever been opposed
in politics.  Had your party omitted to make Nebraska a test of
party fidelity, you probably would have been the Democratic
candidate for Congress in the district.  You deserved it, and I
believe it would have been given you.  In that case I should have
been quite happy that Nebraska was to be rebuked at all events.
I still should have voted for the Whig candidate; but I should
have made no speeches, written no letters; and you would have
been elected by at least a thousand majority.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO A. B. MOREAU.

SPRINGFIELD, September 7, 1854

A. B. MOREAU, ESQ.

SIR:--Stranger though I am, personally, being a brother in the
faith, I venture to write you.  Yates can not come to your court
next week.  He is obliged to be at Pike court where he has a
case, with a fee of five hundred dollars, two hundred dollars
already paid.  To neglect it would be unjust to himself, and
dishonest to his client.  Harris will be with you, head up and
tail up, for Nebraska.  You must have some one to make an anti-
Nebraska speech.  Palmer is the best, if you can get him, I
think.  Jo.  Gillespie, if you can not get Palmer, and somebody
anyhow, if you can get neither.  But press Palmer hard.  It is in
his Senatorial district, I believe.

Yours etc.,

A. LINCOLN.




REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS--PEORIA SPEECH

SPEECH AT PEORIA, ILLINOIS,
IN REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS,

OCTOBER 16, 1854.

I do not rise to speak now, if I can stipulate with the audience
to meet me here at half-past six or at seven o'clock.  It is now
several minutes past five, and Judge Douglas has spoken over
three hours.  If you hear me at all, I wish you to hear me
through.  It will take me as long as it has taken him.  That will
carry us beyond eight o'clock at night.  Now, every one of you
who can remain that long can just as well get his supper, meet me
at seven, and remain an hour or two later.  The Judge has already
informed you that he is to have an hour to reply to me.  I doubt
not but you have been a little surprised to learn that I have
consented to give one of his high reputation and known ability
this advantage of me.  Indeed, my consenting to it, though
reluctant, was not wholly unselfish, for I suspected, if it were
understood that the Judge was entirely done, you Democrats would
leave and not hear me; but by giving him the close, I felt
confident you would stay for the fun of hearing him skin me.

The audience signified their assent to the arrangement, and
adjourned to seven o'clock P.M., at which time they reassembled,
and Mr. Lincoln spoke substantially as follows:

The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its
restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say.
As I desire to present my own connected view of this subject, my
remarks will not be specifically an answer to Judge Douglas; yet,
as I proceed, the main points he has presented will arise, and
will receive such respectful attention as I may be able to give
them.  I wish further to say that I do not propose to question
the patriotism or to assail the motives of any man or class of
men, but rather to confine myself strictly to the naked merits of
the question.  I also wish to be no less than national in all the
positions I may take, and whenever I take ground which others
have thought, or may think, narrow, sectional, and dangerous to
the Union, I hope to give a reason which will appear sufficient,
at least to some, why I think differently.

And as this subject is no other than part and parcel of the
larger general question of domestic slavery, I wish to make and
to keep the distinction between the existing institution and the
extension of it so broad and so clear that no honest man can
misunderstand me, and no dishonest one successfully misrepresent
me.

In order to a clear understanding of what the Missouri Compromise
is, a short history of the preceding kindred subjects will
perhaps be proper.

When we established our independence, we did not own or claim the
country to which this compromise applies.  Indeed, strictly
speaking, the Confederacy then owned no country at all; the
States respectively owned the country within their limits, and
some of them owned territory beyond their strict State limits.
Virginia thus owned the Northwestern Territory--the country out
of which the principal part of Ohio, all Indiana, all Illinois,
all Michigan, and all Wisconsin have since been formed.  She also
owned (perhaps within her then limits) what has since been formed
into the State of Kentucky.  North Carolina thus owned what is
now the State of Tennessee; and South Carolina and Georgia owned,
in separate parts, what are now Mississippi and Alabama.
Connecticut, I think, owned the little remaining part of Ohio,
being the same where they now send Giddings to Congress and beat
all creation in making cheese.

These territories, together with the States themselves,
constitute all the country over which the Confederacy then
claimed any sort of jurisdiction.  We were then living under the
Articles of Confederation, which were superseded by the
Constitution several years afterward.  The question of ceding the
territories to the General Government was set on foot.  Mr.
Jefferson,--the author of the Declaration of Independence, and
otherwise a chief actor in the Revolution; then a delegate in
Congress; afterward, twice President; who was, is, and perhaps
will continue to be, the most distinguished politician of our
history; a Virginian by birth and continued residence, and withal
a slaveholder,--conceived the idea of taking that occasion to
prevent slavery ever going into the Northwestern Territory.  He
prevailed on the Virginia Legislature to adopt his views, and to
cede the Territory, making the prohibition of slavery therein a
condition of the deed.  (Jefferson got only an understanding, not
a condition of the deed to this wish.) Congress accepted the
cession with the condition; and the first ordinance (which the
acts of Congress were then called) for the government of the
Territory provided that slavery should never be permitted
therein.  This is the famed "Ordinance of '87," so often spoken
of.

Thenceforward for sixty-one years, and until, in 1848, the last
scrap of this Territory came into the Union as the State of
Wisconsin, all parties acted in quiet obedience to this
ordinance.  It is now what Jefferson foresaw and intended--the
happy home of teeming millions of free, white, prosperous people,
and no slave among them.

Thus, with the author of the Declaration of Independence, the
policy of prohibiting slavery in new territory originated.  Thus,
away back to the Constitution, in the pure, fresh, free breath of
the Revolution, the State of Virginia and the national Congress
put that policy into practice.  Thus, through more than sixty of
the best years of the republic, did that policy steadily work to
its great and beneficent end.  And thus, in those five States,
and in five millions of free, enterprising people, we have before
us the rich fruits of this policy.

But now new light breaks upon us.  Now Congress declares this
ought never to have been, and the like of it must never be again.
The sacred right of self-government is grossly violated by it.
We even find some men who drew their first breath--and every
other breath of their lives--under this very restriction, now
live in dread of absolute suffocation if they should be
restricted in the "sacred right" of taking slaves to Nebraska.
That perfect liberty they sigh for--the liberty of making slaves
of other people, Jefferson never thought of, their own fathers
never thought of, they never thought of themselves, a year ago.
How fortunate for them they did not sooner become sensible of
their great misery! Oh, how difficult it is to treat with respect
such assaults upon all we have ever really held sacred!

But to return to history.  In 1803 we purchased what was then
called Louisiana, of France.  It included the present States of
Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa; also the Territory of
Minnesota, and the present bone of contention, Kansas and
Nebraska.  Slavery already existed among the French at New
Orleans, and to some extent at St.  Louis.  In 1812 Louisiana
came into the Union as a slave State, without controversy.  In
1818 or '19, Missouri showed signs of a wish to come in with
slavery.  This was resisted by Northern members of Congress; and
thus began the first great slavery agitation in the nation.  This
controversy lasted several months, and became very angry and
exciting--the House of Representatives voting steadily for the
prohibition of slavery in Missouri, and the Senate voting as
steadily against it.  Threats of the breaking up of the Union
were freely made, and the ablest public men of the day became
seriously alarmed.  At length a compromise was made, in which, as
in all compromises, both sides yielded something.  It was a law,
passed on the 6th of March, 1820, providing that Missouri might
come into the Union with slavery, but that in all the remaining
part of the territory purchased of France which lies north of
thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude, slavery
should never be permitted.  This provision of law is the
"Missouri Compromise." In excluding slavery north of the line,
the same language is employed as in the Ordinance of 1787.  It
directly applied to Iowa, Minnesota, and to the present bone of
contention, Kansas and Nebraska.  Whether there should or should
not be slavery south of that line, nothing was said in the law.
But Arkansas constituted the principal remaining part south of
the line; and it has since been admitted as a slave State,
without serious controversy.  More recently, Iowa, north of the
line, came in as a free State without controversy.  Still later,
Minnesota, north of the line, had a territorial organization
without controversy.  Texas, principally south of the line, and
west of Arkansas, though originally within the purchase from
France, had, in 1819, been traded off to Spain in our treaty for
the acquisition of Florida.  It had thus become a part of Mexico.
Mexico revolutionized and became independent of Spain.  American
citizens began settling rapidly with their slaves in the southern
part of Texas.  Soon they revolutionized against Mexico, and
established an independent government of their own, adopting a
constitution with slavery, strongly resembling the constitutions
of our slave States.  By still another rapid move, Texas,
claiming a boundary much farther west than when we parted with
her in 1819, was brought back to the United States, and admitted
into the Union as a slave State.  Then there was little or no
settlement in the northern part of Texas, a considerable portion
of which lay north of the Missouri line; and in the resolutions
admitting her into the Union, the Missouri restriction was
expressly extended westward across her territory.  This was in
1845, only nine years ago.

Thus originated the Missouri Compromise; and thus has it been
respected down to 1845.  And even four years later, in 1849, our
distinguished Senator, in a public address, held the following
language in relation to it:

"The Missouri Compromise has been in practical operation for
about a quarter of a century, and has received the sanction and
approbation of men of all parties in every section of the Union.
It has allayed all sectional jealousies and irritations growing
out of this vexed question, and harmonized and tranquillized the
whole country.  It has given to Henry Clay, as its prominent
champion, the proud sobriquet of the "Great Pacificator," and by
that title, and for that service, his political friends had
repeatedly appealed to the people to rally under his standard as
a Presidential candidate, as the man who had exhibited the
patriotism and power to suppress an unholy and treasonable
agitation, and preserve the Union.  He was not aware that any man
or any party, from any section of the Union, had ever urged as an
objection to Mr. Clay that he was the great champion of the
Missouri Compromise.  On the contrary, the effort was made by the
opponents of Mr. Clay to prove that he was not entitled to the
exclusive merit of that great patriotic measure, and that the
honor was equally due to others, as well as to him, for securing
its adoption; that it had its origin in the hearts of all
patriotic men, who desired to preserve and perpetuate the
blessings of our glorious Union--an origin akin to that of the
Constitution of the United States, conceived in the same spirit
of fraternal affection, and calculated to remove forever the only
danger which seemed to threaten, at some distant day, to sever
the social bond of union.  All the evidences of public opinion at
that day seemed to indicate that this compromise had been
canonized in the hearts of the American people, as a sacred thing
which no ruthless hand would ever be reckless enough to disturb."

I do not read this extract to involve Judge Douglas in an
inconsistency.  If he afterward thought he had been wrong, it was
right for him to change.  I bring this forward merely to show the
high estimate placed on the Missouri Compromise by all parties up
to so late as the year 1849.

But going back a little in point of time.  Our war with Mexico
broke out in 1846.  When Congress was about adjourning that
session, President Polk asked them to place two millions of
dollars under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if
found practicable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace
with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory.  A bill
was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing
swimmingly in the House of Representatives, when a member by the
name of David Wilmot, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, moved as an
amendment, "Provided, that in any territory thus acquired there
never shall be slavery."

This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso.  It created a
great flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill,
and the bill passed with it through the House.  The Senate,
however, adjourned without final action on it, and so both
appropriation and proviso were lost for the time.  The war
continued, and at the next session the President renewed his
request for the appropriation, enlarging the amount, I think, to
three millions.  Again came the proviso, and defeated the
measure.  Congress adjourned again, and the war went on.  In
December, 1847, the new Congress assembled.  I was in the lower
House that term.  The Wilmot Proviso, or the principle of it, was
constantly coming up in some shape or other, and I think I may
venture to say I voted for it at least forty times during the
short time I was there.  The Senate, however, held it in check,
and it never became a law.  In the spring of 1848 a treaty of
peace was made with Mexico, by which we obtained that portion of
her country which now constitutes the Territories of New Mexico
and Utah and the present State of California.  By this treaty the
Wilmot Proviso was defeated, in so far as it was intended to be a
condition of the acquisition of territory.  Its friends, however,
were still determined to find some way to restrain slavery from
getting into the new country.  This new acquisition lay directly
west of our old purchase from France, and extended west to the
Pacific Ocean, and was so situated that if the Missouri line
should be extended straight west, the new country would be
divided by such extended line, leaving some north and some south
of it.  On Judge Douglas's motion, a bill, or provision of a
bill, passed the Senate to so extend the Missouri line.  The
proviso men in the House, including myself, voted it down,
because, by implication, it gave up the southern part to slavery,
while we were bent on having it all free.

In the fall of 1848 the gold-mines were discovered in California.
This attracted people to it with unprecedented rapidity, so that
on, or soon after, the meeting of the new Congress in December,
1849, she already had a population of nearly a hundred thousand,
had called a convention, formed a State constitution excluding
slavery, and was knocking for admission into the Union.  The
proviso men, of course, were for letting her in, but the Senate,
always true to the other side, would not consent to her
admission, and there California stood, kept out of the Union
because she would not let slavery into her borders.  Under all
the circumstances, perhaps, this was not wrong.  There were other
points of dispute connected with the general question of Slavery,
which equally needed adjustment.  The South clamored for a more
efficient fugitive slave law.  The North clamored for the
abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District of
Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of
the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of
negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to
Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been
openly maintained for fifty years.  Utah and New Mexico needed
territorial governments; and whether slavery should or should not
be prohibited within them was another question.  The indefinite
western boundary of Texas was to be settled.  She was a slave
State, and consequently the farther west the slavery men could
push her boundary, the more slave country they secured; and the
farther east the slavery opponents could thrust the boundary
back, the less slave ground was secured.  Thus this was just as
clearly a slavery question as any of the others.

These points all needed adjustment, and they were held up,
perhaps wisely, to make them help adjust one another.  The Union
now, as in 1820, was thought to be in danger, and devotion to the
Union rightfully inclined men to yield somewhat in points where
nothing else could have so inclined them.  A compromise was
finally effected.  The South got their new fugitive slave law,
and the North got California, (by far the best part of our
acquisition from Mexico) as a free State.  The South got a
provision that New Mexico and Utah, when admitted as States, may
come in with or without slavery as they may then choose; and the
North got the slave trade abolished in the District of Columbia..
The North got the western boundary of Texas thrown farther back
eastward than the South desired; but, in turn, they gave Texas
ten millions of dollars with which to pay her old debts.  This is
the Compromise of 1850.

Preceding the Presidential election of 1852, each of the great
political parties, Democrats and Whigs, met in convention and
adopted resolutions indorsing the Compromise of '50, as a
"finality," a final settlement, so far as these parties could
make it so, of all slavery agitation.  Previous to this, in 1851,
the Illinois Legislature had indorsed it.

During this long period of time, Nebraska (the Nebraska
Territory, not the State of as we know it now) had remained
substantially an uninhabited country, but now emigration to and
settlement within it began to take place.  It is about one third
as large as the present United States, and its importance, so
long overlooked, begins to come into view.  The restriction of
slavery by the Missouri Compromise directly applies to it--in
fact was first made, and has since been maintained expressly for
it.  In 1853, a bill to give it a territorial government passed
the House of Representatives, and, in the hands of Judge Douglas,
failed of passing only for want of time.  This bill contained no
repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  Indeed, when it was assailed
because it did not contain such repeal, Judge Douglas defended it
in its existing form.  On January 4, 1854, Judge Douglas
introduces a new bill to give Nebraska territorial government.
He accompanies this bill with a report, in which last he
expressly recommends that the Missouri Compromise shall neither
be affirmed nor repealed.  Before long the bill is so modified as
to make two territories instead of one, calling the southern one
Kansas.

Also, about a month after the introduction of the bill, on the
Judge's own motion it is so amended as to declare the Missouri
Compromise inoperative and void; and, substantially, that the
people who go and settle there may establish slavery, or exclude
it, as they may see fit.  In this shape the bill passed both
branches of Congress and became a law.

This is the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.  The foregoing
history may not be precisely accurate in every particular, but I
am sure it is sufficiently so for all the use I shall attempt to
make of it, and in it we have before us the chief material
enabling us to judge correctly whether the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is right or wrong.  I think, and shall try to show,
that it is wrong--wrong in its direct effect, letting slavery
into Kansas and Nebraska, and wrong in its prospective principle,
allowing it to spread to every other part of the wide world where
men can be found inclined to take it.

This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert real
zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.  I hate it
because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.  I hate it
because it deprives our republican example of its just influence
in the world; enables the enemies of free institutions with
plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends
of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and especially because it
forces so many good men among ourselves into an open war with the
very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticizing the
Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right
principle of action but self-interest.

Before proceeding let me say that I think I have no prejudice
against the Southern people.  They are just what we would be in
their situation.  If slavery did not now exist among them, they
would not introduce it.  If it did now exist among us, we should
not instantly give it up.  This I believe of the masses North and
South.  Doubtless there are individuals on both sides who would
not hold slaves under any circumstances, and others who would
gladly introduce slavery anew if it were out of existence.  We
know that some Southern men do free their slaves, go North and
become tip-top abolitionists, while some Northern ones go South
and become most cruel slave masters.

When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible
for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact.
When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very
difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can
understand and appreciate the saying.  I surely will not blame
them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.  If
all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as
to the existing institution.  My first impulse would be to free
all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native
land.  But a moment's reflection would convince me that whatever
of high hope (as I think there is) there may be in this in the
long run, its sudden execution is impossible.  If they were all
landed there in a day, they would all perish in the next ten
days; and there are not surplus shipping and surplus money enough
to carry them there in many times ten days.  What then?  Free
them all, and keep them among us as underlings?  Is it quite
certain that this betters their condition?  I think I would not
hold one in slavery at any rate, yet the point is not clear
enough for me to denounce people upon.  What next?  Free them,
and make them politically and socially our equals?  My own
feelings will not admit of this, and if mine would, we well know
that those of the great mass of whites will not.  Whether this
feeling accords with justice and sound judgment is not the sole
question, if indeed it is any part of it.  A universal feeling,
whether well or ill founded, cannot be safely disregarded.  We
cannot then make them equals.  It does seem to me that systems of
gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in
this I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.

When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge
them--not grudgingly, but fully and fairly; and I would give them
any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives which
should not in its stringency be more likely to carry a free man
into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an
innocent one.

But all this, to my judgment, furnishes no more excuse for
permitting slavery to go into our own free territory than it
would for reviving the African slave trade by law.  The law which
forbids the bringing of slaves from Africa, and that which has so
long forbidden the taking of them into Nebraska, can hardy be
distinguished on any moral principle, and the repeal of the
former could find quite as plausible excuses as that of the
latter.

The arguments by which the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is
sought to be justified are these:

First.  That the Nebraska country needed a territorial
government.

Second.  That in various ways the public had repudiated that
compromise and demanded the repeal, and therefore should not now
complain of it.

 And, lastly, That the repeal establishes a principle which is
intrinsically right.

I will attempt an answer to each of them in its turn.

First, then: If that country was in need of a territorial
organization, could it not have had it as well without as with a
repeal?  Iowa and Minnesota, to both of which the Missouri
restriction applied,
had, without its repeal, each in succession, territorial
organizations.  And even the year before, a bill for Nebraska
itself was within an ace of passing without the repealing clause,
and this in the hands of the same men who are now the champions
of repeal.  Why no necessity then for repeal?  But still later,
when this very bill was first brought in, it contained no repeal.
But, say they, because the people had demanded, or rather
commanded, the repeal, the repeal was to accompany the
organization whenever that should occur.

Now, I deny that the public ever demanded any such thing--ever
repudiated the Missouri Compromise, ever commanded its repeal.  I
deny it, and call for the proof.  It is not contended, I believe,
that any such command has ever been given in express terms.  It
is only said that it was done in principle.  The support of the
Wilmot Proviso is the first fact mentioned to prove that the
Missouri restriction was repudiated in principle, and the second
is the refusal to extend the Missouri line over the country
acquired from Mexico.  These are near enough alike to be treated
together.  The one was to exclude the chances of slavery from the
whole new acquisition by the lump, and the other was to reject a
division of it, by which one half was to be given up to those
chances.  Now, whether this was a repudiation of the Missouri
line in principle depends upon whether the Missouri law contained
any principle requiring the line to be extended over the country
acquired from Mexico.  I contend it did not.  I insist that it
contained no general principle, but that it was, in every sense,
specific.  That its terms limit it to the country purchased from
France is undenied and undeniable.  It could have no principle
beyond the intention of those who made it.  They did not intend
to extend the line to country which they did not own.  If they
intended to extend it in the event of acquiring additional
territory, why did they not say so?  It was just as easy to say
that "in all the country west of the Mississippi which we now
own, or may hereafter acquire, there shall never be slavery," as
to say what they did say; and they would have said it if they had
meant it.  An intention to extend the law is not only not
mentioned in the law, but is not mentioned in any contemporaneous
history.  Both the law itself, and the history of the times, are
a blank as to any principle of extension; and by neither the
known rules of construing statutes and contracts, nor by common
sense, can any such principle be inferred.

Another fact showing the specific character of the Missouri law--
showing that it intended no more than it expressed, showing that
the line was not intended as a universal dividing line between
Free and Slave territory, present and prospective, north of which
slavery could never go--is the fact that by that very law
Missouri came in as a slave State, north of the line.  If that
law contained any prospective principle, the whole law must be
looked to in order to ascertain what the principle was.  And by
this rule the South could fairly contend that, inasmuch as they
got one slave State north of the line at the inception of the
law, they have the right to have another given them north of it
occasionally, now and then, in the indefinite westward extension
of the line.  This demonstrates the absurdity of attempting to
deduce a prospective principle from the Missouri Compromise line.

When we voted for the Wilmot Proviso we were voting to keep
slavery out of the whole Mexican acquisition, and little did we
think we were thereby voting to let it into Nebraska lying
several hundred miles distant.  When we voted against extending
the Missouri line, little did we think we were voting to destroy
the old line, then of near thirty years' standing.

To argue that we thus repudiated the Missouri Compromise is no
less absurd than it would be to argue that because we have so far
forborne to acquire Cuba, we have thereby, in principle,
repudiated our former acquisitions and determined to throw them
out of the Union.  No less absurd than it would be to say that
because I may have refused to build an addition to my house, I
thereby have decided to destroy the existing house! And if I
catch you setting fire to my house, you will turn upon me and say
I instructed you to do it!

The most conclusive argument, however, that while for the Wilmot
Proviso, and while voting against the extension of the Missouri
line, we never thought of disturbing the original Missouri
Compromise, is found in the fact that there was then, and still
is, an unorganized tract of fine country, nearly as large as the
State of Missouri, lying immediately west of Arkansas and south
of the Missouri Compromise line, and that we never attempted to
prohibit slavery as to it.  I wish particular attention to this.
It adjoins the original Missouri Compromise line by its northern
boundary, and consequently is part of the country into which by
implication slavery was permitted to go by that compromise.
There it has lain open ever s, and there it still lies, and yet
no effort has been made at any time to wrest it from the South.
In all our struggles to prohibit slavery within our Mexican
acquisitions, we never so much as lifted a finger to prohibit it
as to this tract.  Is not this entirely conclusive that at all
times we have held the Missouri Compromise as a sacred thing,
even when against ourselves as well as when for us?

Senator Douglas sometimes says the Missouri line itself was in
principle only an extension of the line of the Ordinance of '87--
that is to say, an extension of the Ohio River.  I think this is
weak enough on its face.  I will remark, however, that, as a
glance at the map will show, the Missouri line is a long way
farther south than the Ohio, and that if our Senator in proposing
his extension had stuck to the principle of jogging southward,
perhaps it might not have been voted down so readily.

But next it is said that the compromises of '50, and the
ratification of them by both political parties in '52,
established a new principle which required the repeal of the
Missouri Compromise.  This again I deny.  I deny it, and demand
the proof.  I have already stated fully what the compromises of
'50 are.  That particular part of those measures from which the
virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise is sought to be
inferred (for it is admitted they contain nothing about it in
express terms) is the provision in the Utah and New Mexico laws
which permits them when they seek admission into the Union as
States to come in with or without slavery, as they shall then see
fit.  Now I insist this provision was made for Utah and New
Mexico, and for no other place whatever.  It had no more direct
reference to Nebraska than it had to the territories of the moon.
But, say they, it had reference to Nebraska in principle.  Let us
see.  The North consented to this provision, not because they
considered it right in itself, but because they were compensated-
-paid for it.

They at the same time got California into the Union as a free
State.  This was far the best part of all they had struggled for
by the Wilmot Proviso.  They also got the area of slavery
somewhat narrowed in the settlement of the boundary of Texas.
Also they got the slave trade abolished in the District of
Columbia.

For all these desirable objects the North could afford to yield
something; and they did yield to the South the Utah and New
Mexico provision.  I do not mean that the whole North, or even a
majority, yielded, when the law passed; but enough yielded--when
added to the vote of the South, to carry the measure.  Nor can it
be pretended that the principle of this arrangement requires us
to permit the same provision to be applied to Nebraska, without
any equivalent at all.  Give us another free State; press the
boundary of Texas still farther back; give us another step toward
the destruction of slavery in the District, and you present us a
similar case.  But ask us not to repeat, for nothing, what you
paid for in the first instance.  If you wish the thing again, pay
again.  That is the principle of the compromises of '50, if,
indeed, they had any principles beyond their specific terms--it
was the system of equivalents.

Again, if Congress, at that time, intended that all future
Territories should, when admitted as States, come in with or
without slavery at their own option, why did it not say so?
With such a universal provision, all know the bills could not
have passed.  Did they, then--could they-establish a principle
contrary to their own intention?  Still further, if they intended
to establish the principle that, whenever Congress had control,
it should be left to the people to do as they thought fit with
slavery, why did they not authorize the people of the District of
Columbia, at their option, to abolish slavery within their
limits?

I personally know that this has not been left undone because it
was unthought of.  It was frequently spoken of by members of
Congress, and by citizens of Washington, six years ago; and I
heard no one express a doubt that a system of gradual
emancipation, with compensation to owners, would meet the
approbation of a large majority of the white people of the
District.  But without the action of Congress they could say
nothing; and Congress said "No." In the measures of 1850,
Congress had the subject of slavery in the District expressly on
hand.  If they were then establishing the principle of allowing
the people to do as they please with slavery, why did they not
apply the principle to that people?

Again it is claimed that by the resolutions of the Illinois
Legislature, passed in 1851, the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise was demanded.  This I deny also.  Whatever may be
worked out by a criticism of the language of those resolutions,
the people have never understood them as being any more than an
indorsement of the compromises of 1850, and a release of our
senators from voting for the Wilmot Proviso.  The whole people
are living witnesses that this only was their view.  Finally, it
is asked, "If we did not mean to apply the Utah and New Mexico
provision to all future territories, what did we mean when we, in
1852, indorsed the compromises of 1850?"

For myself I can answer this question most easily.  I meant not
to ask a repeal or modification of the Fugitive Slave law.  I
meant not to ask for the abolition of slavery in the District of
Columbia.  I meant not to resist the admission of Utah and New
Mexico, even should they ask to come in as slave States.  I meant
nothing about additional Territories, because, as I understood,
we then had no Territory whose character as to slavery was not
already settled.  As to Nebraska, I regarded its character as
being fixed by the Missouri Compromise for thirty years--as
unalterably fixed as that of my own home in Illinois.  As to new
acquisitions, I said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof." When we make new acquisitions, we will, as heretofore,
try to manage them somehow.  That is my answer; that is what I
meant and said; and I appeal to the people to say each for
himself whether that is not also the universal meaning of the
free States.

And now, in turn, let me ask a few questions.  If, by any or all
these matters, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was
commanded, why was not the command sooner obeyed?  Why was the
repeal omitted in the Nebraska Bill of 1853?  Why was it omitted
in the original bill of 1854?  Why in the accompanying report was
such a repeal characterized as a departure from the course
pursued in 1850 and its continued omission recommended?

I am aware Judge Douglas now argues that the subsequent express
repeal is no substantial alteration of the bill.  This argument
seems wonderful to me.  It is as if one should argue that white
and black are not different.  He admits, however, that there is a
literal change in the bill, and that he made the change in
deference to other senators who would not support the bill
without.  This proves that those other senators thought the
change a substantial one, and that the Judge thought their
opinions worth deferring to.  His own opinions, therefore, seem
not to rest on a very firm basis, even in his own mind; and I
suppose the world believes, and will continue to believe, that
precisely on the substance of that change this whole agitation
has arisen.

I conclude, then, that the public never demanded the repeal of
the Missouri Compromise

I now come to consider whether the appeal with its avowed
principles, is intrinsically right.  I insist that it is not.
Take the particular case.  A controversy had arisen between the
advocates and opponents of slavery, in relation to its
establishment within the country we had purchased of France.  The
southern, and then best, part of the purchase was already in as a
slave State.  The controversy was settled by also letting
Missouri in as a slave State; but with the agreement that within
all the remaining part of the purchase, north of a certain line,
there should never be slavery.  As to what was to be done with
the remaining part, south of the line, nothing was said; but
perhaps the fair implication was, it should come in with slavery
if it should so choose.  The southern part, except a portion
heretofore mentioned, afterward did come in with slavery, as the
State of Arkansas.  All these many years, since 1820, the
northern part had remained a wilderness.  At length settlements
began in it also.  In due course Iowa came in as a free State,
and Minnesota was given a territorial government, without
removing the slavery restriction.  Finally, the sole remaining
part north of the line--Kansas and Nebraska--was to be organized;
and it is proposed, and carried, to blot out the old dividing
line of thirty-four years' standing, and to open the whole of
that country to the introduction of slavery.  Now this, to my
mind, is manifestly unjust.  After an angry and dangerous
controversy, the parties made friends by dividing the bone of
contention.  The one party first appropriates her own share,
beyond all power to be disturbed in the possession of it, and
then seizes the share of the other party.  It is as if two
starving men had divided their only loaf, the one had hastily
swallowed his half, and then grabbed the other's half just as he
was putting it to his mouth.

Let me here drop the main argument, to notice what I consider
rather an inferior matter.  It is argued that slavery will not go
to Kansas and Nebraska, in any event.  This is a palliation, a
lullaby.  I have some hope that it will not; but let us not be
too confident.  As to climate, a glance at the map shows that
there are five slave States--Delaware, Maryland, Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri, and also the District of Columbia, all
north of the Missouri Compromise line.  The census returns of
1850 show that within these there are eight hundred and sixty-
seven thousand two hundred and seventy-six slaves, being more
than one fourth of all the slaves in the nation.

It is not climate, then, that will keep slavery out of these
Territories.  Is there anything in the peculiar nature of the
country?  Missouri adjoins these Territories by her entire
western boundary, and slavery is already within every one of her
western counties.  I have even heard it said that there are more
slaves in proportion to whites in the northwestern county of
Missouri than within any other county in the State.  Slavery
pressed entirely up to the old western boundary of the State, and
when rather recently a part of that boundary at the northwest was
moved out a little farther west, slavery followed on quite up to
the new line.  Now, when the restriction is removed, what is to
prevent it from going still farther?  Climate will not, no
peculiarity of the country will, nothing in nature will.  Will
the disposition of the people prevent it?  Those nearest the
scene are all in favor of the extension.  The Yankees who are
opposed to it may be most flumerous; but, in military phrase, the
battlefield is too far from their base of operations.

But it is said there now is no law in Nebraska on the subject of
slavery, and that, in such case, taking a slave there operates
his freedom.  That is good book-law, but it is not the rule of
actual practice.  Wherever slavery is it has been first
introduced without law.  The oldest laws we find concerning it
are not laws introducing it, but regulating it as an already
existing thing.  A white man takes his slave to Nebraska now.
Who will inform the negro that he is free?  Who will take him
before court to test the question of his freedom?  In ignorance
of his legal emancipation he is kept chopping, splitting, and
plowing.  Others are brought, and move on in the same track.  At
last, if ever the time for voting comes on the question of
slavery the institution already, in fact, exists in the country,
and cannot well be removed.  The fact of its presence, and the
difficulty of its removal, will carry the vote in its favor.
Keep it out until a vote is taken, and a vote in favor of it
cannot be got in any population of forty thousand on earth, who
have been drawn together by the ordinary motives of emigration
and settlement.  To get slaves into the Territory simultaneously
with the whites in the incipient stages of settlement is the
precise stake played for and won in this Nebraska measure.

The question is asked us: "If slaves will go in notwithstanding
the general principle of law liberates them, why would they not
equally go in against positive statute law--go in, even if the
Missouri restriction were maintained!" I answer, because it takes
a much bolder man to venture in with his property in the latter
case than in the former; because the positive Congressional
enactment is known to and respected by all, or nearly all,
whereas the negative principle that no law is free law is not
much known except among lawyers.  We have some experience of this
practical difference.  In spite of the Ordinance of  '87, a few
negroes were brought into Illinois, and held in a state of quasi-
slavery, not enough, however, to carry a vote of the people in
favor of the institution when they came to form a constitution.
But into the adjoining Missouri country, where there was no
Ordinance of '87,--was no restriction,--they were carried ten
times, nay, a hundred times, as fast, and actually made a slave
State.  This is fact-naked fact.

Another lullaby argument is that taking slaves to new countries
does not increase their number, does not make any one slave who
would otherwise be free.  There is some truth in this, and I am
glad of it; but it is not wholly true.  The African slave trade
is not yet effectually suppressed; and, if we make a reasonable
deduction for the white people among us who are foreigners and
the descendants of foreigners arriving here since 1808, we shall
find the increase of the black population outrunning that of the
white to an extent unaccountable, except by supposing that some
of them, too, have been coming from Africa.  If this be so, the
opening of new countries to the institution increases the demand
for and augments the price of slaves, and so does, in fact, make
slaves of freemen, by causing them to be brought from Africa and
sold into bondage.

But however this may be, we know the opening of new countries to
slavery tends to the perpetuation of the institution, and so does
keep men in slavery who would otherwise be free.  This result we
do not feel like favoring, and we are under no legal obligation
to suppress our feelings in this respect.

Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to
the extension of slavery to new countries.  That is to say,
inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska,
therefore I must not object to your taking your slave.  Now, I
admit that this is perfectly logical if there is no difference
between hogs and negroes.  But while you thus require me to deny
the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the
South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much?   It is
kindly provided that of all those who come into the world only a
small percentage are natural tyrants.  That percentage is no
larger in the slave States than in the free.  The great majority
South, as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can
no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to
physical pain.  These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern
people manifest, in many ways, their sense of the wrong of
slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is
humanity in the negro.  If they deny this, let me address them a
few plain questions.  In 1820 you (the South) joined the North,
almost unanimously, in declaring the African slave trade piracy,
and in annexing to it the punishment of death.  Why did you do
this?  If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join in
providing that men should be hung for it?  The practice was no
more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to such as would buy
them.  But you never thought of hanging men for catching and
selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears.

Again, you have among you a sneaking individual of the class of
native tyrants known as the "slavedealer." He watches your
necessities, and crawls up to buy your slave, at a speculating
price.  If you cannot help it, you sell to him; but if you can
help it, you drive him from your door.  You despise him utterly.
You do not recognize him as a friend, or even as an honest man.
Your children must not play with his; they may rollick freely
with the little negroes, but not with the slave-dealer's
children.  If you are obliged to deal with him, you try to get
through the job without so much as touching him.  It is common
with you to join hands with the men you meet, but with the slave-
dealer you avoid the ceremony--instinctively shrinking from the
snaky contact.  If he grows rich and retires from business, you
still remember him, and still keep up the ban of non-intercourse
upon him and his family.  Now, why is this?  You do not so treat
the man who deals in corn, cotton, or tobacco.

And yet again: There are in the United States and Territories,
including the District of Columbia, 433,643 free blacks.  At five
hundred dollars per head they are worth over two hundred millions
of dollars.  How comes this vast amount of property to be running
about without owners?  We do not see free horses or free cattle
running at large.  How is this?  All these free blacks are the
descendants of slaves, or have been slaves themselves; and they
would be slaves now but for something which has operated on their
white owners, inducing them at vast pecuniary sacrifice to
liberate them.  What is that something?  Is there any mistaking
it?   In all these cases it is your sense of justice and human
sympathy continually telling you that the poor negro has some
natural right to himself--that those who deny it and make mere
merchandise of him deserve kickings, contempt, and death.

And now why will you ask us to deny the humanity of the slave,
and estimate him as only the equal of the hog?  Why ask us to do
what you will not do yourselves?  Why ask us to do for nothing
what two hundred millions of dollars could not induce you to do?

But one great argument in support of the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise is still to come.  That argument is "the sacred right
of self-government." It seems our distinguished Senator has found
great difficulty in getting his antagonists, even in the Senate,
to meet him fairly on this argument.  Some poet has said:

"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

At the hazard of being thought one of the fools of this
quotation, I meet that argument--I rush in--I take that bull by
the horns.  I trust I understand and truly estimate the right of
self-government.  My faith in the proposition that each man
should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively
his own lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is
in me.  I extend the principle to communities of men as well as
to individuals.  I so extend it because it is politically wise,
as well as naturally just; politically wise in saving us from
broils about matters which do not concern us.  Here, or at
Washington, I would not trouble myself with the oyster laws of
Virginia, or the cranberry laws of Indiana.  The doctrine of
self-government is right,--absolutely and eternally right,--but
it has no just application as here attempted.  Or perhaps I
should rather say that whether it has such application depends
upon whether a negro is or is not a man.  If he is not a man, in
that case he who is a man may as a matter of self-government do
just what he pleases with him.  But if the negro is a man, is it
not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say
that he too shall not govern himself?  When the white man governs
himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and
also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that
is despotism.  If the negro is a man, why, then, my ancient faith
teaches me that "all men are created equal," and that there can
be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another.

Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm,
paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska
are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good
enough to govern a few miserable negroes!"

Well, I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will
continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere.  I do
not say the contrary.  What I do say is that no man is good
enough to govern another man without that other's consent.  I say
this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American
republicanism.  Our Declaration of Independence says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness.  That to secure these rights,
governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS
PROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED."

I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according
to our ancient faith, the just powers of government are derived
from the consent of the governed.  Now the relation of master and
slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle.  The
master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he
governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those
which he prescribes for himself.  Allow all the governed an equal
voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-
government.

Let it not be said that I am contending for the establishment of
political and social equality between the whites and blacks.  I
have already said the contrary.  I am not combating the argument
of necessity, arising from the fact that the blacks are already
among us; but I am combating what is set up as moral argument for
allowing them to be taken where they have never yet been--arguing
against the extension of a bad thing, which, where it already
exists, we must of necessity manage as we best can.

In support of his application of the doctrine of self-government,
Senator Douglas has sought to bring to his aid the opinions and
examples of our Revolutionary fathers.  I am glad he has done
this.  I love the sentiments of those old-time men, and shall be
most happy to abide by their opinions.  He shows us that when it
was in contemplation for the colonies to break off from Great
Britain, and set up a new government for themselves, several of
the States instructed their delegates to go for the measure,
provided each State should be allowed to regulate its domestic
concerns in its own way.  I do not quote; but this in substance.
This was right; I see nothing objectionable in it.  I also think
it probable that it had some reference to the existence of
slavery among them.  I will not deny that it had.  But had it any
reference to the carrying of slavery into new countries?  That is
the question, and we will let the fathers themselves answer it.

This same generation of men, and mostly the same individuals of
the generation who declared this principle, who declared
independence, who fought the war of the Revolution through, who
afterward made the Constitution under which we still live--these
same men passed the Ordinance of '87, declaring that slavery
should never go to the Northwest Territory.

I have no doubt Judge Douglas thinks they were very inconsistent
in this.  It is a question of discrimination between them and
him.  But there is not an inch of ground left for his claiming
that their opinions, their example, their authority, are on his
side in the controversy.

Again, is not Nebraska, while a Territory, a part of us?  Do we
not own the country?  And if we surrender the control of it, do
we not surrender the right of self-government?  It is part of
ourselves.  If you say we shall not control it, because it is
only part, the same is true of every other part; and when all the
parts are gone, what has become of the whole?  What is then left
of us?  What use for the General Government, when there is
nothing left for it to govern?

But you say this question should be left to the people of
Nebraska, because they are more particularly interested.  If this
be the rule, you must leave it to each individual to say for
himself whether he will have slaves.  What better moral right
have thirty-one citizens of Nebraska to say that the thirty-
second shall not hold slaves than the people of the thirty-one
States have to say that slavery shall not go into the thirty-
second State at all?

But if it is a sacred right for the people of Nebraska to take
and hold slaves there, it is equally their sacred right to buy
them where they can buy them cheapest; and that, undoubtedly,
will be on the coast of Africa, provided you will consent not to
hang them for going there to buy them.  You must remove this
restriction, too, from the sacred right of self-government.  I am
aware you say that taking slaves from the States to Nebraska does
not make slaves of freemen; but the African slave-trader can say
just as much.  He does not catch free negroes and bring them
here.  He finds them already slaves in the hands of their black
captors, and he honestly buys them at the rate of a red cotton
handkerchief a head.  This is very cheap, and it is a great
abridgment of the sacred right of self-government to hang men for
engaging in this profitable trade.

Another important objection to this application of the right of
self-government is that it enables the first few to deprive the
succeeding many of a free exercise of the right of self-
government.  The first few may get slavery in, and the subsequent
many cannot easily get it out.  How common is the remark now in
the slave States, "If we were only clear of our slaves, how much
better it would be for us." They are actually deprived of the
privilege of governing themselves as they would, by the action of
a very few in the beginning.  The same thing was true of the
whole nation at the time our Constitution was formed.

Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories,
is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go
there.  The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be
made of these Territories.  We want them for homes of free white
people.  This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if
slavery shall be planted within them.  Slave States are places
for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to.  New free
States are the places for poor people to go to, and better their
condition.  For this use the nation needs these Territories.

Still further: there are constitutional relations between the
slave and free States which are degrading to the latter.  We are
under legal obligations to catch and return their runaway slaves
to them: a sort of dirty, disagreeable job, which, I believe, as
a general rule, the slaveholders will not perform for one
another.  Then again, in the control of the government--the
management of the partnership affairs--they have greatly the
advantage of us.  By the Constitution each State has two
senators, each has a number of representatives in proportion to
the number of its people, and each has a number of Presidential
electors equal to the whole number of its senators and
representatives together.  But in ascertaining the number of the
people for this purpose, five slaves are counted as being equal
to three whites.  The slaves do not vote; they are only counted
and so used as to swell the influence of the white people's
votes.  The practical effect of this is more aptly shown by a
comparison of the States of South Carolina and Maine.  South
Carolina has six representatives, and so has Maine; South
Carolina has eight Presidential electors, and so has Maine.  This
is precise equality so far; and of course they are equal in
senators, each having two.  Thus in the control of the government
the two States are equals precisely.  But how are they in the
number of their white people?  Maine has 581,813, while South
Carolina has 274,567; Maine has twice as many as South Carolina,
and 32,679 over.  Thus, each white man in South Carolina is more
than the double of any man in Maine.  This is all because South
Carolina, besides her free people, has 384,984 slaves.  The South
Carolinian has precisely the same advantage over the white man in
every other free State as well as in Maine.  He is more than the
double of any one of us in this crowd.  The same advantage, but
not to the same extent, is held by all the citizens of the slave
States over those of the free; and it is an absolute truth,
without an exception, that there is no voter in any slave State
but who has more legal power in the government than any voter in
any free State.  There is no instance of exact equality; and the
disadvantage is against us the whole chapter through.  This
principle, in the aggregate, gives the slave States in the
present Congress twenty additional representatives, being seven
more than the whole majority by which they passed the Nebraska
Bill.

Now all this is manifestly unfair; yet I do not mention it to
complain of it, in so far as it is already settled.  It is in the
Constitution, and I do not for that cause, or any other cause,
propose to destroy, or alter, or disregard the Constitution.  I
stand to it, fairly, fully, and firmly.

But when I am told I must leave it altogether to other people to
say whether new partners are to be bred up and brought into the
firm, on the same degrading terms against me, I respectfully
demur.  I insist that whether I shall be a whole man or only the
half of one, in comparison with others is a question in which I
am somewhat concerned, and one which no other man can have a
sacred right of deciding for me.  If I am wrong in this, if it
really be a sacred right of self-government in the man who shall
go to Nebraska to decide whether he will be the equal of me or
the double of me, then, after he shall have exercised that right,
and thereby shall have reduced me to a still smaller fraction of
a man than I already am, I should like for some gentleman, deeply
skilled in the mysteries of sacred rights, to provide himself
with a microscope, and peep about, and find out, if he can, what
has become of my sacred rights.  They will surely be too small
for detection with the naked eye.

Finally, I insist that if there is anything which it is the duty
of the whole people to never intrust to any hands but their own,
that thing is the preservation and perpetuity of their own
liberties and institutions.  And if they shall think as I do,
that the extension of slavery endangers them more than any or all
other causes, how recreant to themselves if they submit The
question, and with it the fate of their country, to a mere
handful of men bent only on seif-interest.  If this question of
slavery extension were an insignificant one, one having no power
to do harm--it might be shuffled aside in this way; and being, as
it is, the great Behemoth of danger, shall the strong grip of the
nation be loosened upon him, to intrust him to the hands of such
feeble keepers?

I have done with this mighty argument of self-government.  Go,
sacred thing! Go in peace.

But Nebraska is urged as a great Union-saving measure.  Well, I
too go for saving the Union.  Much as I hate slavery, I would
consent to the extension of it rather than see the Union
dissolved, just as I would consent to any great evil to avoid a
greater one.  But when I go to Union-saving, I must believe, at
least, that the means I employ have some adaptation to the end.
To my mind, Nebraska has no such adaptation.

"It hath no relish of salvation in it."

It is an aggravation, rather, of the only one thing which ever
endangers the Union.  When it came upon us, all was peace and
quiet.  The nation was looking to the forming of new bends of
union, and a long course of peace and prosperity seemed to lie
before us.  In the whole range of possibility, there scarcely
appears to me to have been anything out of which the slavery
agitation could have been revived, except the very project of
repealing the Missouri Compromise.  Every inch of territory we
owned already had a definite settlement of the slavery question,
by which all parties were pledged to abide.  Indeed, there was no
uninhabited country on the continent which we could acquire, if
we except some extreme northern regions which are wholly out of
the question.

In this state of affairs the Genius of Discord himself could
scarcely have invented a way of again setting us by the ears but
by turning back and destroying the peace measures of the past.
The counsels of that Genius seem to have prevailed.  The Missouri
Compromise was repealed; and here we are in the midst of a new
slavery agitation, such, I think, as we have never seen before.
Who is responsible for this?  Is it those who resist the measure,
or those who causelessly brought it forward, and pressed it
through, having reason to know, and in fact knowing, it must and
would be so resisted?  It could not but be expected by its author
that it would be looked upon as a measure for the extension of
slavery, aggravated by a gross breach of faith.

Argue as you will and long as you will, this is the naked front
and aspect of the measure.  And in this aspect it could not but
produce agitation.  Slavery is founded in the selfishness of
man's nature--opposition to it in his love of justice.  These
principles are at eternal antagonism, and when brought into
collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks
and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.  Repeal the
Missouri Compromise, repeal all compromises, repeal the
Declaration of Independence, repeal all past history, you still
cannot repeal human nature.  It still will be the abundance of
man's heart that slavery extension is wrong, and out of the
abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.

The structure, too, of the Nebraska Bill is very peculiar.  The
people are to decide the question of slavery for themselves; but
when they are to decide, or how they are to decide, or whether,
when the question is once decided, it is to remain so or is to be
subject to an indefinite succession of new trials, the law does
not say.  Is it to be decided by the first dozen settlers who
arrive there, or is it to await the arrival of a hundred?  Is it
to be decided by a vote of the people or a vote of the
Legislature, or, indeed, by a vote of any sort?  To these
questions the law gives no answer.  There is a mystery about
this; for when a member proposed to give the Legislature express
authority to exclude slavery, it was hooted down by the friends
of the bill.  This fact is worth remembering.  Some Yankees in
the East are sending emigrants to Nebraska to exclude slavery
from it; and, so far as I can judge, they expect the question to
be decided by voting in some way or other.  But the Missourians
are awake, too.  They are within a stone's-throw of the contested
ground.  They hold meetings and pass resolutions, in which not
the slightest allusion to voting is made.  They resolve that
slavery already exists in the Territory; that more shall go
there; that they, remaining in Missouri, will protect it, and
that abolitionists shall be hung or driven away.  Through all
this bowie knives and six-shooters are seen plainly enough, but
never a glimpse of the ballot-box.

And, really, what is the result of all this?  Each party within
having numerous and determined backers without, is it not
probable that the contest will come to blows and bloodshed?
Could there be a more apt invention to bring about collision and
violence on the slavery question than this Nebraska project is?
I do not charge or believe that such was intended by Congress;
but if they had literally formed a ring and placed champions
within it to fight out the controversy, the fight could be no
more likely to come off than it is.  And if this fight should
begin, is it likely to take a very peaceful, Union-saving turn?
Will not the first drop of blood so shed be the real knell of the
Union?

The Missouri Compromise ought to be restored.  For the sake of
the Union, it ought to be restored.  We ought to elect a House of
Representatives which will vote its restoration.  If by any means
we omit to do this, what follows?  Slavery may or may not be
established in Nebraska.  But whether it be or not, we shall have
repudiated--discarded from the councils of the nation--the spirit
of compromise; for who, after this, will ever trust in a national
compromise?  The spirit of mutual concession--that spirit which
first gave us the Constitution, and which has thrice saved the
Union--we shall have strangled and cast from us forever.  And
what shall we have in lieu of it?  The South flushed with triumph
and tempted to excess; the North, betrayed as they believe,
brooding on wrong and burning for revenge.  One side will
provoke, the other resent.  The one will taunt, the other defy;
one aggresses, the other retaliates.  Already a few in the North
defy all constitutional restraints, resist the execution of the
Fugitive Slave law, and even menace the institution of slavery in
the States where it exists.  Already a few in the South claim the
constitutional right to take and to hold slaves in the free
States, demand the revival of the slave trade, and demand a
treaty with Great Britain by which fugitive slaves may be
reclaimed from Canada.  As yet they are but few on either side.
It is a grave question for lovers of the union whether the final
destruction of the Missouri Compromise, and with it the spirit of
all compromise, will or will not embolden and embitter each of
these, and fatally increase the number of both.

But restore the compromise, and what then?  We thereby restore
the national faith, the national confidence, the national feeling
of brotherhood.  We thereby reinstate the spirit of concession
and compromise, that spirit which has never failed us in past
perils, and which may be safely trusted for all the future.  The
South ought to join in doing this.  The peace of the nation is as
dear to them as to us.  In memories of the past and hopes of the
future, they share as largely as we.  It would be on their part a
great act--great in its spirit, and great in its effect.  It
would be worth to the nation a hundred years purchase of peace
and prosperity.  And what of sacrifice would they make?  They
only surrender to us what they gave us for a consideration long,
long ago; what they have not now asked for, struggled or cared
for; what has been thrust upon them, not less to their
astonishment than to ours.

But it is said we cannot restore it; that though we elect every
member of the lower House, the Senate is still against us.  It is
quite true that of the senators who passed the Nebraska Bill a
majority of the whole Senate will retain their seats in spite of
the elections of this and the next year.  But if at these
elections their several constituencies shall clearly express
their will against Nebraska, will these senators disregard their
will?  Will they neither obey nor make room for those who will?

But even if we fail to technically restore the compromise, it is
still a great point to carry a popular vote in favor of the
restoration.  The moral weight of such a vote cannot be estimated
too highly.  The authors of Nebraska are not at all satisfied
with the destruction of the compromise--an indorsement of this
principle they proclaim to be the great object.  With them,
Nebraska alone is a small matter--to establish a principle for
future use is what they particularly desire.

The future use is to be the planting of slavery wherever in the
wide world local and unorganized opposition cannot prevent it.
Now, if you wish to give them this indorsement, if you wish to
establish this principle, do so.  I shall regret it, but it is
your right.  On the contrary, if you are opposed to the
principle,--intend to give it no such indorsement, let no
wheedling, no sophistry, divert you from throwing a direct vote
against it.

Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration, lest
they be thrown in company with the abolitionists.  Will they
allow me, as an old Whig, to tell them, good-humoredly, that I
think this is very silly?  Stand with anybody that stands right.
Stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes
wrong.  Stand with the abolitionist in restoring the Missouri
Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the
Fugitive Slave law.  In the latter case you stand with the
Southern disunionist.  What of that?  You are still right.  In
both cases you are right.  In both cases you oppose the dangerous
extremes.  In both you stand on middle ground, and hold the
ship level and steady.  In both you are national, and nothing
less than national.  This is the good old Whig ground.  To desert
such ground because of any company is to be less than a Whig--
less than a man--less than an American.

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed
principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body
politic.  I object to it because it assumes that there can be
moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.  I object to
it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people--a sad evidence
that, feeling prosperity, we forget right; that liberty, as a
principle, we have ceased to revere.  I object to it because the
fathers of the republic eschewed and rejected it.  The argument
of "necessity" was the only argument they ever admitted in favor
of slavery; and so far, and so far only, as it carried them did
they ever go.  They found the institution existing among us,
which they could not help, and they cast blame upon the British
king for having permitted its introduction.

The royally appointed Governor of Georgia in the early 1700's was
threatened by the King with removal if he continued to oppose
slavery in his colony--at that time the King of England made a
small profit on every slave imported to the colonies.  The later
British criticism of the United States for not eradicating
slavery in the early 1800's, combined with their tacit support of
the 'Confederacy' during the Civil War is a prime example of the
irony and hypocracy of politics: that self-interest will ever
overpower right.

Before the Constitution they prohibited its introduction into the
Northwestern Territory, the only country we owned then free from
it.  At the framing and adoption of the Constitution, they
forbore to so much as mention the word "slave" or "slavery" in
the whole instrument.  In the provision for the recovery of
fugitives, the slave is spoken of as a "person held to service or
labor." In that prohibiting the abolition of the African slave
trade for twenty years, that trade is spoken of as "the migration
or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing
shall think proper to admit," etc.  These are the only provisions
alluding to slavery.  Thus the thing is hid away in the
Constitution, just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or cancer
which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death,--with
the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at a
certain time.  Less than this our fathers could not do, and more
they would not do.  Necessity drove them so far, and farther they
would not go.  But this is not all.  The earliest Congress under
the Constitution took the same view of slavery.  They hedged and
hemmed it in to the narrowest limits of necessity.

In 1794 they prohibited an outgoing slave trade--that is, the
taking of slaves from the United States to sell.  In 1798 they
prohibited the bringing of slaves from Africa into the
Mississippi Territory, this Territory then comprising what are
now the States of Mississippi and Alabama.  This was ten years
before they had the authority to do the same thing as to the
States existing at the adoption of the Constitution.  In 1800
they prohibited American citizens from trading in slaves between
foreign countries, as, for instance, from Africa to Brazil.  In
1803 they passed a law in aid of one or two slave-State laws in
restraint of the internal slave trade.  In 1807, in apparent hot
haste, they passed the law, nearly a year in advance,--to take
effect the first day of 1808, the very first day the Constitution
would permit, prohibiting the African slave trade by heavy
pecuniary and corporal penalties.  In 1820, finding these
provisions ineffectual, they declared the slave trade piracy, and
annexed to it the extreme penalty of death.  While all this was
passing in the General Government, five or six of the original
slave States had adopted systems of gradual emancipation, by
which the institution was rapidly becoming extinct within their
limits.  Thus we see that the plain, unmistakable spirit of that
age toward slavery was hostility to the principle and toleration
only by necessity.

But now it is to be transformed into a "sacred right." Nebraska
brings it forth, places it on the highroad to extension and
perpetuity, and with a pat on its back says to it, "Go, and God
speed you." Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the nation
the very figure-head of the ship of state.  Little by little, but
steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the
old for the new faith.  Near eighty years ago we began by
declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that
beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for
some men to enslave others is a "sacred right of self-
government." These principles cannot stand together.  They are as
opposite as God and Mammon; and who ever holds to the one must
despise the other.  When Pettit, in connection with his support
of the Nebraska Bill, called the Declaration of Independence "a
self-evident lie," he only did what consistency and candor
require all other Nebraska men to do.  Of the forty-odd Nebraska
senators who sat present and heard him, no one rebuked him.  Nor
am I apprised that any Nebraska newspaper, or any Nebraska
orator, in the whole nation has ever yet rebuked him.  If this
had been said among Marion's men, Southerners though they were,
what would have become of the man who said it?  If this had been
said to the men who captured Andre, the man who said it would
probably have been hung sooner than Andre was.  If it had been
said in old Independence Hall seventy-eight years ago, the very
doorkeeper would have throttled the man and thrust him into the
street.  Let no one be deceived.  The spirit of seventy-six and
the spirit of Nebraska are utter antagonisms; and the former is
being rapidly displaced by the latter.

Fellow-countrymen, Americans, South as well as North, shall we
make no effort to arrest this?  Already the liberal party
throughout the world express the apprehension that "the one
retrograde institution in America is undermining the principles
of progress, and fatally violating the noblest political system
the world ever saw." This is not the taunt of enemies, but the
warning of friends.  Is it quite safe to disregard it--to despise
it?  Is there no danger to liberty itself in discarding the
earliest practice and first precept of our ancient faith?  In our
greedy chase to make profit of the negro, let us beware lest we
"cancel and tear in pieces" even the white man's charter of
freedom.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust.  Let us
repurify it.  Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not
the blood, of the Revolution.  Let us turn slavery from its
claims of "moral right,, back upon its existing legal rights and
its arguments of "necessity." Let us return it to the position
our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.  Let us
readopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the
practices and policy which harmonize with it.  Let North and
South, let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere
join in the great and good work.  If we do this, we shall not
only have saved the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to
make and to keep it forever worthy of the saving.  We shall have
so saved it that the succeeding millions of free happy people the
world over shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest
generations.

At Springfield, twelve days ago, where I had spoken substantially
as I have here, Judge Douglas replied to me; and as he is to
reply to me here, I shall attempt to anticipate him by noticing
some of the points he made there.  He commenced by stating I had
assumed all the way through that the principle of the Nebraska
Bill would have the effect of extending slavery.  He denied that
this was intended or that this effect would follow.

I will not reopen the argument upon this point.  That such was
the intention the world believed at the start, and will continue
to believe.  This was the countenance of the thing, and both
friends and enemies instantly recognized it as such.  That
countenance cannot now be changed by argument.  You can as easily
argue the color out of the negro's skin.  Like the bloody hand,"
you may wash it and wash it, the red witness of guilt still
sticks and stares horribly at you.

Next he says that Congressional intervention never prevented
slavery anywhere; that it did not prevent it in the Northwestern
Territory, nor in Illinois; that, in fact, Illinois came into the
Union as a slave State; that the principle of the Nebraska Bill
expelled it from Illinois, from several old States, from
everywhere.

Now this is mere quibbling all the way through.  If the Ordinance
of '87 did not keep slavery out of the Northwest Territory, how
happens it that the northwest shore of the Ohio River is entirely
free from it, while the southeast shore, less than a mile
distant, along nearly the whole length of the river, is entirely
covered with it?

If that ordinance did not keep it out of Illinois, what was it
that made the difference between Illinois and Missouri?  They lie
side by side, the Mississippi River only dividing them, while
their early settlements were within the same latitude.  Between
1810 and 1820 the number of slaves in Missouri increased 7211,
while in Illinois in the same ten years they decreased 51.  This
appears by the census returns.  During nearly all of that ten
years both were Territories, not States.  During this time the
ordinance forbade slavery to go into Illinois, and nothing
forbade it to go into Missouri.  It did go into Missouri, and did
not go into Illinois.  That is the fact.  Can any one doubt as to
the reason of it?  But he says Illinois came into the Union as a
slave State.  Silence, perhaps, would be the best answer to this
flat contradiction of the known history of the country.  What are
the facts upon which this bold assertion is based?  When we first
acquired the country, as far back as 1787, there were some slaves
within it held by the French inhabitants of Kaskaskia.  The
territorial legislation admitted a few negroes from the slave
States as indentured servants.  One year after the adoption of
the first State constitution, the whole number of them was--what
do you think?  Just one hundred and seventeen, while the
aggregate free population was 55,094,--about four hundred and
seventy to one.  Upon this state of facts the people framed their
constitution prohibiting the further introduction of slavery,
with a sort of guaranty to the owners of the few indentured
servants, giving freedom to their children to be born thereafter,
and making no mention whatever of any supposed slave for life.
Out of this small matter the Judge manufactures his argument that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State.  Let the facts be
the answer to the argument.

The principles of the Nebraska Bill, he says, expelled slavery
from Illinois.  The principle of that bill first planted it here-
-that is, it first came because there was no law to prevent it,
first came before we owned the country; and finding it here, and
having the Ordinance of '87 to prevent its increasing, our people
struggled along, and finally got rid of it as best they could.

But the principle of the Nebraska Bill abolished slavery in
several of the old States.  Well, it is true that several of the
old States, in the last quarter of the last century, did adopt
systems of gradual emancipation by which the institution has
finally become extinct within their limits; but it may or may not
be true that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was the cause
that led to the adoption of these measures.  It is now more than
fifty years since the last of these States adopted its system of
emancipation.

If the Nebraska Bill is the real author of the benevolent works,
it is rather deplorable that it has for so long a time ceased
working altogether.  Is there not some reason to suspect that it
was the principle of the Revolution, and not the principle of the
Nebraska Bill, that led to emancipation in these old States?
Leave it to the people of these old emancipating States, and I am
quite certain they will decide that neither that nor any other
good thing ever did or ever will come of the Nebraska Bill.

In the course of my main argument, Judge Douglas interrupted me
to say that the principle of the Nebraska Bill was very old; that
it originated when God made man, and placed good and evil before
him, allowing him to choose for himself, being responsible for
the choice he should make.  At the time I thought this was merely
playful, and I answered it accordingly.  But in his reply to me
he renewed it as a serious argument.  In seriousness, then, the
facts of this proposition are not true as stated.  God did not
place good and evil before man, telling him to make his choice.
On the contrary, he did tell him there was one tree of the fruit
of which he should not eat, upon pain of certain death.  I should
scarcely wish so strong a prohibition against slavery in
Nebraska.

But this argument strikes me as not a little remarkable in
another particular--in its strong resemblance to the old argument
for the divine right of kings." By the latter, the king is to do
just as he pleases with his white subjects, being responsible to
God alone.  By the former, the white man is to do just as he
pleases with his black slaves, being responsible to God alone.
The two things are precisely alike, and it is but natural that
they should find similar arguments to sustain them.

I had argued that the application of the principle of self-
government, as contended for, would require the revival of the
African slave trade; that no argument could be made in favor of a
man's right to take slaves to Nebraska which could not be equally
well made in favor of his right to bring them from the coast of
Africa.  The Judge replied that the Constitution requires the
suppression of the foreign slave trade, but does not require the
prohibition of slavery in the Territories.  That is a mistake in
point of fact.  The Constitution does not require the action of
Congress in either case, and it does authorize it in both.  And
so there is still no difference between the cases.

In regard to what I have said of the advantage the slave States
have over the free in the matter of representation, the Judge
replied that we in the free States count five free negroes as
five white people, while in the slave States they count five
slaves as three whites only; and that the advantage, at last, was
on the side of the free States.

Now, in the slave States they count free negroes just as we do;
and it so happens that, besides their slaves, they have as many
free negroes as we have, and thirty thousand over.  Thus, their
free negroes more than balance ours; and their advantage over us,
in consequence of their slaves, still remains as I stated it.

In reply to my argument that the compromise measures of 1850 were
a system of equivalents, and that the provisions of no one of
them could fairly be carried to other subjects without its
corresponding equivalent being carried with it, the Judge denied
outright that these measures had any connection with or
dependence upon each other.  This is mere desperation.  If they
had no connection, why are they always spoken of in connection?
Why has he so spoken of them a thousand times?  Why has he
constantly called them a series of measures?  Why does everybody
call them a compromise?  Why was California kept out of the Union
six or seven months, if it was not because of its connection with
the other measures?  Webster's leading definition of the verb "to
compromise" is "to adjust and settle a difference, by mutual
agreement, with concessions of claims by the parties." This
conveys precisely the popular understanding of the word
"compromise.

We knew, before the Judge told us, that these measures passed
separately, and in distinct bills, and that no two of them were
passed by the votes of precisely the same members.  But we also
know, and so does he know, that no one of them could have passed
both branches of Congress but for the understanding that the
others were to pass also.  Upon this understanding, each got
votes which it could have got in no other way.  It is this fact
which gives to the measures their true character; and it is the
universal knowledge of this fact that has given them the name of
"compromises," so expressive of that true character.

I had asked: "If, in carrying the Utah and New Mexico laws to
Nebraska, you could clear away other objection, how could you
leave Nebraska 'perfectly free' to introduce slavery before she
forms a constitution, during her territorial government, while
the Utah and New Mexico laws only authorize it when they form
constitutions and are admitted into the Union?"  To this Judge
Douglas answered that the Utah and New Mexico laws also
authorized it before; and to prove this he read from one of their
laws, as follows: "That the legislative power of said Territory
shall extend to all rightful subjects of legislation, consistent
with the Constitution of the United States and the provisions of
this act."

Now it is perceived from the reading of this that there is
nothing express upon the subject, but that the authority is
sought to be implied merely for the general provision of "all
rightful subjects of legislation." In reply to this I insist, as
a legal rule of construction, as well as the plain, popular view
of the matter, that the express provision for Utah and New Mexico
coming in with slavery, if they choose, when they shall form
constitutions, is an exclusion of all implied authority on the
same subject; that Congress having the subject distinctly in
their minds when they made the express provision, they therein
expressed their whole meaning on that subject.

The Judge rather insinuated that I had found it convenient to
forget the Washington territorial law passed in 1853.  This was a
division of Oregon, organizing the northern part as the Territory
of Washington.  He asserted that by this act the Ordinance of
'87, theretofore existing in Oregon, was repealed; that nearly
all the members of Congress voted for it, beginning in the House
of Representatives with Charles Allen of Massachusetts, and
ending with Richard Yates of Illinois; and that he could not
understand how those who now opposed the Nebraska Bill so voted
there, unless it was because it was then too soon after both the
great political parties had ratified the compromises of 1850, and
the ratification therefore was too fresh to be then repudiated.

Now I had seen the Washington act before, and I have carefully
examined it since; and I aver that there is no repeal of the
Ordinance of '87, or of any prohibition of slavery, in it.  In
express terms, there is absolutely nothing in the whole law upon
the subject--in fact, nothing to lead a reader to think of the
subject.  To my judgment it is equally free from everything from
which repeal can be legally implied; but, however this may be,
are men now to be entrapped by a legal implication, extracted
from covert language, introduced perhaps for the very purpose of
entrapping them?  I sincerely wish every man could read this law
quite through, carefully watching every sentence and every line
for a repeal of the Ordinance of '87, or anything equivalent to
it.

Another point on the Washington act: If it was intended to be
modeled after the Utah and New Mexico acts, as Judge Douglas
insists, why was it not inserted in it, as in them, that
Washington was to come in with or without slavery as she may
choose at the adoption of her constitution?  It has no such
provision in it; and I defy the ingenuity of man to give a reason
for the omission, other than that it was not intended to follow
the Utah and New Mexico laws in regard to the question of
slavery.

The Washington act not only differs vitally from the Utah and New
Mexico acts, but the Nebraska act differs vitally from both.  By
the latter act the people are left "perfectly free" to regulate
their own domestic concerns, etc.; but in all the former, all
their laws are to be submitted to Congress, and if disapproved
are to be null.  The Washington act goes even further; it
absolutely prohibits the territorial Legislature, by very strong
and guarded language, from establishing banks or borrowing money
on the faith of the Territory.  Is this the sacred right of self-
government we hear vaunted so much?  No, sir; the Nebraska Bill
finds no model in the acts of '50 or the Washington act.  It
finds no model in any law from Adam till to-day.  As Phillips
says of Napoleon, the Nebraska act is grand, gloomy and peculiar,
wrapped in the solitude of its own originality, without a model
and without a shadow upon the earth.

In the course of his reply Senator Douglas remarked in substance
that he had always considered this government was made for the
white people and not for the negroes.  Why, in point of mere
fact, I think so too.  But in this remark of the Judge there is a
significance which I think is the key to the great mistake (if
there is any such mistake) which he has made in this Nebraska
measure.  It shows that the Judge has no very vivid impression
that the negro is human, and consequently has no idea that there
can be any moral question in legislating about him.  In his view
the question of whether a new country shall be slave or free is a
matter of as utter indifference as it is whether his neighbor
shall plant his farm with tobacco or stock it with horned cattle.
Now, whether this view is right or wrong, it is very certain that
the great mass of mankind take a totally different view.  They
consider slavery a great moral wrong, and their feeling against
it is not evanescent, but eternal.  It lies at the very
foundation of their sense of justice, and it cannot be trifled
with.  It is a great and durable element of popular action, and I
think no statesman can safely disregard it.

Our Senator also objects that those who oppose him in this matter
do not entirely agree with one another.  He reminds me that in my
firm adherence to the constitutional rights of the slave States I
differ widely from others who are cooperating with me in opposing
the Nebraska Bill, and he says it is not quite fair to oppose him
in this variety of ways.  He should remember that he took us by
surprise--astounded us by this measure.  We were thunderstruck
and stunned, and we reeled and fell in utter confusion.  But we
rose, each fighting, grasping whatever he could first reach--a
scythe, a pitchfork, a chopping-ax, or a butcher's cleaver.  We
struck in the direction of the sound, and we were rapidly closing
in
upon him.  He must not think to divert us from our purpose by
showing us that our drill, our dress, and our weapons are not
entirely perfect and uniform.  When the storm shall be past he
shall find us still Americans, no less devoted to the continued
union and prosperity of the country than heretofore.

Finally, the Judge invokes against me the memory of Clay and
Webster, They were great men, and men of great deeds.  But where
have I assailed them?  For what is it that their lifelong enemy
shall now make profit by assuming to defend them against me,
their lifelong friend?  I go against the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise; did they ever go for it?  They went for the
Compromise of 1850; did I ever go against them?  They were
greatly devoted to the Union; to the small measure of my ability
was I ever less so?  Clay and Webster were dead before this
question arose; by what authority shall our Senator say they
would espouse his side of it if alive?  Mr. Clay was the leading
spirit in making the Missouri Compromise; is it very credible
that if now alive he would take the lead in the breaking of it?
The truth is that some support from Whigs is now a necessity with
the Judge, and for this it is that the names of Clay and Webster
are invoked.  His old friends have deserted him in such numbers
as to leave too few to live by.  He came to his own, and his own
received him not; and lo! he turns unto the Gentiles.

A word now as to the Judge's desperate assumption that the
compromises of 1850 had no connection with one another; that
Illinois came into the Union as a slave State, and some other
similar ones.  This is no other than a bold denial of the history
of the country.  If we do not know that the compromises of 1850
were dependent on each other; if we do not know that Illinois
came into the Union as a free State,--we do not know anything.
If we do not know these things, we do not know that we ever had a
Revolutionary War or such a chief as Washington.  To deny these
things is to deny our national axioms,--or dogmas, at least,--and
it puts an end to all argument.  If a man will stand up and
assert, and repeat and reassert, that two and two do not make
four, I know nothing in the power of argument that can stop him.
I think I can answer the Judge so long as he sticks to the
premises; but when he flies from them, I cannot work any argument
into the consistency of a mental gag and actually close his mouth
with it.  In such a case I can only commend him to the seventy
thousand answers just in from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana.




REQUEST FOR SENATE SUPPORT

TO CHARLES HOYT

CLINTON, De WITT Co., Nov.  10, 1854

DEAR SIR:--You used to express a good deal of partiality for me,
and if you are still so, now is the time.  Some friends here are
really for me for the U.S.  Senate, and I should be very grateful
if you could make a mark for me among your members.  Please write
me at all events, giving me the names, post-offices, and
"political position" of members round about you.  Direct to
Springfield.

Let this be confidential.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO T. J. HENDERSON.

SPRINGFIELD,

November 27, 1854

T. J. HENDERSON, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--It has come round that a whig may, by possibility,
be elected to the United States Senate, and I want the chance of
being the man.  You are a member of the Legislature, and have a
vote to give.  Think it over, and see whether you can do better
than to go for me.

Write me, at all events; and let this be confidential.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J. GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec.  1, 1854.

DEAR SIR:--I have really got it into my head to try to be United
States Senator, and, if I could have your support, my chances
would be reasonably good.  But I know, and acknowledge, that you
have as just claims to the place as I have; and therefore I
cannot ask you to yield to me, if you are thinking of becoming a
candidate, yourself.  If, however, you are not, then I should
like to be remembered affectionately by you; and also to have you
make a mark for me with the Anti-Nebraska members down your way.

If you know, and have no objection to tell, let me know whether
Trumbull intends to make a push.  If he does, I suppose the two
men in St.  Clair, and one, or both, in Madison, will be for him.
We have the Legislature, clearly enough, on joint ballot, but the
Senate is very close, and Cullom told me to-day that the Nebraska
men will stave off the election, if they can.  Even if we get
into joint vote, we shall have difficulty to unite our forces.
Please write me, and let this be confidential.

Your friend, as ever,

A. LINCOLN




POLITICAL REFERENCES

TO JUSTICE MCLEAN.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., December 6, 1854.

SIR:--I understand it is in contemplation to displace the present
clerk and appoint a new one for the Circuit and District Courts
of Illinois.  I am very friendly to the present incumbent, and,
both for his own sake and that of his family, I wish him to be
retained so long as it is possible for the court to do so.

In the contingency of his removal, however, I have recommended
William Butler as his successor, and I do not wish what I write
now to be taken as any abatement of that recommendation.

William J.  Black is also an applicant for the appointment, and I
write this at the solicitation of his friends to say that he is
every way worthy of the office, and that I doubt not the
conferring it upon him will give great satisfaction.

Your ob't servant,

A. LINCOLN




TO T. J. HENDERSON.

SPRINGFIELD,  December 15.  1854

HON. T. J. HENDERSON.

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 11th was received last night, and for
which I thank you.  Of course I prefer myself to all others; yet
it is neither in my heart nor my conscience to say I am any
better man than Mr. Williams.  We shall have a terrible struggle
with our adversaries.  They are desperate and bent on desperate
deeds.  I accidentally learned of one of the leaders here writing
to a member south of here, in about the following language:

We are beaten.  They have a clean majority of at least nine, on
joint ballot.  They outnumber us, but we must outmanage them.
Douglas must be sustained.  We must elect the Speaker; and we
must elect a Nebraska United States Senator, or elect none at
all." Similar letters, no doubt, are written to every Nebraska
member.  Be considering how we can best meet, and foil, and beat
them.  I send you, by mail, a copy of my Peoria speech.  You may
have seen it before, or you may not think it worth seeing now.

Do not speak of the Nebraska letter mentioned above; I do not
wish it to become public, that I received such information.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




1855


LOSS OF PRIMARY FOR SENATOR

TO E. B. WASHBURNE.

SPRINGFIELD, February 9, 1855

MY DEAR SIR:

I began with 44 votes, Shields 41, and Trumbull 5,--yet Trumbull
was elected.  In fact 47 different members voted for me,--getting
three new ones on the second ballot, and losing four old ones.
How came my 47 to yield to Trumbull's 5?  It was Governor
Matteson's work.  He has been secretly a candidate ever since
(before, even) the fall election.

All the members round about the canal were Anti-Nebraska, but
were nevertheless nearly all Democrats and old personal friends
of his.  His plan was to privately impress them with the belief
that he was as good Anti-Nebraska as any one else--at least could
be secured to be so by instructions, which could be easily
passed.

The Nebraska men, of course, were not for Matteson; but when they
found they could elect no avowed Nebraska man, they tardily
determined to let him get whomever of our men he could, by
whatever means he could, and ask him no questions.

The Nebraska men were very confident of the election of Matteson,
though denying that he was a candidate, and we very much
believing also that they would elect him.  But they wanted first
to make a show of good faith to Shields by voting for him a few
times, and our secret Matteson men also wanted to make a show of
good faith by voting with us a few times.  So we led off.  On the
seventh ballot, I think, the signal was given to the Nebraska men
to turn to Matteson, which they acted on to a man, with one
exception.  .  .   Next ballot the remaining Nebraska man and one
pretended Anti went over to him, giving him 46.  The next still
another, giving him 47, wanting only three of an election.  In
the meantime our friends, with a view of detaining our expected
bolters, had been turning from me to Trumbull till he had risen
to 35 and I had been reduced to 15.  These would never desert me
except by my direction; but I became satisfied that if we could
prevent Matteson's election one or two ballots more, we could not
possibly do so a single ballot after my friends should begin to
return to me from Trumbull.  So I determined to strike at once,
and accordingly advised my remaining friends to go for him, which
they did and elected him on the tenth ballot.

Such is the way the thing was done.  I think you would have done
the same under the circumstances.

I could have headed off every combination and been elected, had
it not been for Matteson's double game--and his defeat now gives
me more pleasure than my own gives me pain.  On the whole, it is
perhaps as well for our general cause that Trumbull is elected.
The Nebraska men confess that they hate it worse than anything
that could have happened.  It is a great consolation to see them
worse whipped than I am.

Yours forever,

A. LINCOLN.




RETURN TO LAW PROFESSION

TO SANFORD, PORTER, AND STRIKER, NEW YORK.

SPRINGFIELD, MARCH 10, 1855

GENTLEMEN:--Yours of the 5th is received, as also was that of
15th Dec, last, inclosing bond of Clift to Pray.  When I received
the bond I was dabbling in politics, and of course neglecting
business.  Having since been beaten out I have gone to work
again.

As I do not practice in Rushville, I to-day open a correspondence
with Henry E.  Dummer, Esq., of Beardstown, Ill., with the view
of getting the job into his hands.  He is a good man if he will
undertake it.

Write me whether I shall do this or return the bond to you.

Yours respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.




TO O.  H.  BROWNING.

SPRINGFIELD, March 23, 1855.

HON.  O.  H.  BROWNING.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your letter to Judge Logan has been shown to us by
him; and, with his consent, we answer it.  When it became
probable that there would be a vacancy on the Supreme Bench,
public opinion, on this side of the river, seemed to be
universally directed to Logan as the proper man to fill it.  I
mean public opinion on our side in politics, with very small
manifestation in any different direction by the other side.  The
result is, that he has been a good deal pressed to allow his name
to be used, and he has consented to it, provided it can be done
with perfect cordiality and good feeling on the part of all our
own friends.  We, the undersigned, are very anxious for it; and
the more so now that he has been urged, until his mind is turned
upon the matter.  We, therefore are very glad of your letter,
with the information it brings us, mixed only with a regret that
we can not elect Logan and Walker both.  We shall be glad, if you
will hoist Logan's name, in your Quincy papers.

Very truly your friends,

A. LINCOLN,
B. S. EWARDS,
JOHN T. STUART.




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, June 7, 1855.

H. C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Your note containing election news is received; and
for which I thank you.  It is all of no use, however.  Logan is
worse beaten than any other man ever was since elections were
invented--beaten more than twelve hundred in this county.  It is
conceded on all hands that the Prohibitory law is also beaten.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.





RESPONSE TO A PRO-SLAVERY FRIEND

TO JOSHUA. F. SPEED.

SPRINGFIELD, August 24, 1855

DEAR SPEED:--You know what a poor correspondent I am.  Ever since
I received your very agreeable letter of the 22d of May, I have
been intending to write you an answer to it.  You suggest that in
political action, now, you and I would differ.  I suppose we
would; not quite as much, however, as you may think.  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.  In 1841 you and I had together a tedious
low-water trip on a steamboat from Louisville to St.  Louis.  You
may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of
the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled
together with irons.  That sight was a continued torment to me,
and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio or any
other slave border.  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.  I do oppose the extension of slavery because my
judgment and feeling so prompt me, and I am under no obligations
to the contrary.  If for this you and I must differ, differ we
must.  You say, if you were President, you would send an army and
hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages upon 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 practical one.  In your
assumption that there may be a fair decision of the slavery
question in Kansas, I plainly see you and I would differ about
the Nebraska law.  I look upon that enactment not as a law, but
as a violence from the beginning.  It was conceived in violence,
is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence.  I
say it was conceived in violence, because the destruction of the
Missouri Compromise, under the circumstances, was nothing less
than violence.  It was passed in violence because it could not
have passed at all but for the votes of many members in violence
of the known will of their constituents.  It is maintained in
violence, because the elections since clearly demand its repeal;
and the demand is openly disregarded.

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are executing the
law; I say the way it is being executed is quite as good as any
of its antecedents.  It is being executed in the precise way
which was intended from the first, else why does no Nebraska man
express astonishment or condemnation?  Poor Reeder is the only
public man who has been silly enough to believe that anything
like fairness was ever intended, and he has been bravely
undeceived.

That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it will ask
to be admitted into the Union, I take to be already a settled
question, and so settled by the very means you so pointedly
condemn.  By every principle of law ever held by any court North
or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free; yet, in utter
disregard of this,--in the spirit of violence merely,--that
beautiful Legislature gravely passes a law to hang any man who
shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights.  This is the
subject and real object of the law.  If, like Haman, they should
hang upon the gallows of their own building, I shall not be among
the mourners for their fate.  In my humble sphere, I shall
advocate the restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as
Kansas remains a Territory, and when, by all these foul means, it
seeks to come into the Union as a slave State, I shall oppose it.
I am very loath in any case to withhold my assent to the
enjoyment of property acquired or located in good faith; but I do
not admit that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held
in slavery is a probability with any man.  Any man who has sense
enough to be the controller of his own property has too much
sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole
Nebraska business.  But I digress.  In my opposition to the
admission of Kansas I shall have some company, but we may be
beaten.  If we are, I shall not on that account attempt to
dissolve the Union.  I think it probable, however, we shall be
beaten.  Standing as a unit among yourselves, You can, directly
and indirectly, bribe enough of our men to carry the day, as you
could on the open proposition to establish a monarchy.  Get hold
of some man in the North whose position and ability is such that
he can make the support of your measure, whatever it may be, a
Democratic party necessity, and the thing is done.  Apropos of
this, let me tell you an anecdote.  Douglas introduced the
Nebraska Bill in January.  In February afterward there was a
called session of the Illinois Legislature.  Of the one hundred
members composing the two branches of that body, about seventy
were Democrats.  These latter held a caucus in which the Nebraska
Bill was talked of, if not formally discussed.  It was thereby
discovered that just three, and no more, were in favor of the
measure.  In a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have
resolutions passed approving the bill; and they were passed by
large majorities!!!!   The truth of this is vouched for by a
bolting Democratic member.  The masses, too, Democratic as well
as Whig, were even nearer unanimous against it; but, as soon as
the party necessity of supporting it became apparent, the way the
Democrats began to see the wisdom and justice of it was perfectly
astonishing.

You say that if Kansas fairly votes herself a free State, as a
Christian you will rejoice at it.  All decent slaveholders talk
that way, and I do not doubt their candor.  But they never vote
that way.  Although in a private letter or conversation you will
express your preference that Kansas shall be free, you would vote
for no man for Congress who would say the same thing publicly.
No such man could be elected from any district in a slave State.
You think Stringfellow and company ought to be hung; and yet at
the next Presidential election you will vote for the exact type
and representative of Stringfellow.  The slave-breeders and
slave-traders are a small, odious, and detested class among you;
and yet in politics they dictate the course of all of you, and
are as completely your masters as you are the master of your own
negroes.  You inquire where I now stand.  That is a disputed
point.  I think I am a Whig; but others say there are no Whigs,
and 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 un-Whig 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 can 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.

Mary will probably pass a day or two in Louisville in October.
My kindest regards to Mrs.  Speed.  On the leading subject of
this letter I have more of her sympathy than I have of yours; and
yet let me say I am,

Your friend forever,

A. LINCOLN.




1856


REQUEST FOR A RAILWAY PASS

TO R. P. MORGAN

SPRINGFIELD, February 13, 1856.

R. P. MORGAN, ESQ.:

Says Tom to John, "Here's your old rotten wheelbarrow.  I've
broke it usin' on it.  I wish you would mend it, 'case I shall
want to borrow it this arternoon."  Acting on this as a
precedent, I say, "Here's your old 'chalked hat,--I wish you
would take it and send me a new one, 'case I shall want to use it
the first of March."

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN

(A 'chalked hat' was the common term, at that time, for a
railroad pass.)




SPEECH DELIVERED BEFORE THE FIRST REPUBLICAN
STATE CONVENTION OF ILLINOIS,

HELD AT BLOOMINGTON, ON MAY 29, 1856.

[From the Report by William C.  Whitney.]

(Mr. Whitney's notes were made at the time, but not written out
until 1896.  He does not claim that the speech, as here reported,
is literally correct only that he has followed the argument, and
that in many cases the sentences are as Mr. Lincoln spoke them.)


Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: I was over at [Cries of "Platform!"
"Take the platform!"]--I say, that while I was at Danville Court,
some of our friends of Anti-Nebraska got together in Springfield
and elected me as one delegate to represent old Sangamon with
them in this convention, and I am here certainly as a sympathizer
in this movement and by virtue of that meeting and selection.
But we can hardly be called delegates strictly, inasmuch as,
properly speaking, we represent nobody but ourselves.  I think it
altogether fair to say that we have no Anti-Nebraska party in
Sangamon, although there is a good deal of Anti-Nebraska feeling
there; but I say for myself, and I think I may speak also for my
colleagues, that we who are here fully approve of the platform
and of all that has been done [A voice, "Yes!,"], and even if we
are not regularly delegates, it will be right for me to answer
your call to speak.  I suppose we truly stand for the public
sentiment of Sangamon on the great question of the repeal,
although we do not yet represent many numbers who have taken a
distinct position on the question.

We are in a trying time--it ranges above mere party--and this
movement to call a halt and turn our steps backward needs all the
help and good counsels it can get; for unless popular opinion
makes itself very strongly felt, and a change is made in our
present course, blood will flow on account of Nebraska, and
brother's hands will be raised against brother!

[The last sentence was uttered in such an earnest, impressive, if
not, indeed, tragic, manner, as to make a cold chill creep over
me.  Others gave a similar experience.]

I have listened with great interest to the earnest appeal made to
Illinois men by the gentleman from Lawrence [James S.  Emery] who
has just addressed us so eloquently and forcibly.  I was deeply
moved by his statement of the wrongs done to free-State men out
there.  I think it just to say that all true men North should
sympathize with them, and ought to be willing to do any possible
and needful thing to right their wrongs.  But we must not promise
what we ought not, lest we be called on to perform what we
cannot; we must be calm and moderate, and consider the whole
difficulty, and determine what is possible and just.  We must not
be led by excitement and passion to do that which our sober
judgments would not approve in our cooler moments.  We have
higher aims; we will have more serious business than to dally
with temporary measures.

We are here to stand firmly for a principle--to stand firmly for
a right.  We know that great political and moral wrongs are done,
and outrages committed, and we denounce those wrongs and
outrages, although we cannot, at present, do much more.  But we
desire to reach out beyond those personal outrages and establish
a rule that will apply to all, and so prevent any future
outrages.

We have seen to-day that every shade of popular opinion is
represented here, with Freedom, or rather Free Soil, as the
basis.  We have come together as in some sort representatives of
popular opinion against the extension of slavery into territory
now free in fact as well as by law, and the pledged word of the
statesmen of the nation who are now no more.  We come--we are
here assembled together--to protest as well as we can against a
great wrong, and to take measures, as well as we now can, to make
that wrong right; to place the nation, as far as it may be
possible now, as it was before the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise; and the plain way to do this is to restore the
Compromise, and to demand and determine that Kansas shall be
free! [Immense applause.] While we affirm, and reaffirm, if
necessary, our devotion to the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, let our practical work here be limited to the
above.  We know that there is not a perfect agreement of
sentiment here on the public questions which might be rightfully
considered in this convention, and that the indignation which we
all must feel cannot be helped; but all of us must give up
something for the good of the cause.  There is one desire which
is uppermost in the mind, one wish common to us all, to which no
dissent will be made; and I counsel you earnestly to bury all
resentment, to sink all personal feeling, make all things work to
a common purpose in which we are united and agreed about, and
which all present will agree is absolutely necessary--which must
be done by any rightful mode if there be such:
Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! [Applause.] The test--the
pinch--is right there.  If we lose Kansas to freedom, an example
will be set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end.  We,
therefore, in the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to the
root of the tree." Temporizing will not do longer; now is the
time for decision--for firm, persistent, resolute action.
[Applause.]

The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of
wholesome legislation, but was and is an act of legislative
usurpation, whose result, if not indeed intention, is to make
slavery national; and unless headed off in some effective way, we
are in a fair way to see this land of boasted freedom converted
into a land of slavery in fact.  [Sensation.] Just open your two
eyes, and see if this be not so.  I need do no more than state,
to command universal approval, that almost the entire North, as
well as a large following in the border States, is radically
opposed to the planting of slavery in free territory.  Probably
in a popular vote throughout the nation nine tenths of the voters
in the free States, and at least one-half in the border States,
if they could express their sentiments freely, would vote NO on
such an issue; and it is safe to say that two thirds of the votes
of the entire nation would be opposed to it.  And yet, in spite
of this overbalancing of sentiment in this free country, we are
in a fair way to see Kansas present itself for admission as a
slave State.  Indeed, it is a felony, by the local law of Kansas,
to deny that slavery exists there even now.  By every principle
of law, a negro in Kansas is free; yet the bogus Legislature
makes it an infamous crime to tell him that he is free!

Statutes of Kansas, 1555, chapter 151, Sec.  12: If any free
person, by speaking or by writing, assert or maintain that
persons have not the right to hold slaves in this Territory, or
shall introduce into this Territory, print, publish, write,
circulate .  .  .  any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or
circular containing any denial of the right of persons to hold
slaves in this Territory such person shall be deemed guilty of
felony, and punished by imprisonment at hard labor for a term of
not less than two years.
Sec.  13.  No person who is conscientiously opposed to holding
slaves, or who does not admit the right to hold slaves in this
Territory, shall sit as a juror on the trial of any prosecution
for any violation of any Sections of this Act.

The party lash and the fear of ridicule will overawe justice and
liberty; for it is a singular fact, but none the less a fact, and
well known by the most common experience, that men will do things
under the terror of the party lash that they would not on any
account or for any consideration do otherwise; while men who will
march up to the mouth of a loaded cannon without shrinking will
run from the terrible name of "Abolitionist," even when
pronounced by a worthless creature whom they, with good reason,
despise.  For instance--to press this point a little--Judge
Douglas introduced his Nebraska Bill in January; and we had an
extra session of our Legislature in the succeeding February, in
which were seventy-five Democrats; and at a party caucus, fully
attended, there were just three votes, out of the whole seventy-
five, for the measure.  But in a few days orders came on from
Washington, commanding them to approve the measure; the party
lash was applied, and it was brought up again in caucus, and
passed by a large majority.  The masses were against it, but
party necessity carried it; and it was passed through the lower
house of Congress against the will of the people, for the same
reason.  Here is where the greatest danger lies that, while we
profess to be a government of law and reason, law will give way
to violence on demand of this awful and crushing power.  Like the
great Juggernaut--I think that is the name--the great idol, it
crushes everything that comes in its way, and makes a [?]--or, as
I read once, in a blackletter law book, "a slave is a human being
who is legally not a person but a thing." And if the safeguards
to liberty are broken down, as is now attempted, when they have
made things of all the free negroes, how long, think you, before
they will begin to make things of poor white men?  [Applause.] Be
not deceived.  Revolutions do not go backward.  The founder of
the Democratic party declared that all men were created equal.
His successor in the leadership has written the word "white"
before men, making it read "all white men are created equal."
Pray, will or may not the Know-Nothings, if they should get in
power, add the word "Protestant," making it read "all Protestant
white men...?"

Meanwhile the hapless negro is the fruitful subject of reprisals
in other quarters.  John Pettit, whom Tom Benton paid his
respects to, you will recollect, calls the immortal Declaration
"a self-evident lie"; while at the birthplace of freedom--in the
shadow of Bunker Hill and of the "cradle of liberty," at the home
of the Adamses and Warren and Otis--Choate, from our side of the
house, dares to fritter away the birthday promise of liberty by
proclaiming the Declaration to be "a string of glittering
generalities"; and the Southern Whigs, working hand in hand with
proslavery Democrats, are making Choate's theories practical.
Thomas Jefferson, a slaveholder, mindful of the moral element in
slavery, solemnly declared that he trembled for his country when
he remembered that God is just; while Judge Douglas, with an
insignificant wave of the hand, "don't care whether slavery is
voted up or voted down." Now, if slavery is right, or even
negative, he has a right to treat it in this trifling manner.
But if it is a moral and political wrong, as all Christendom
considers it to be, how can he answer to God for this attempt to
spread and fortify it?  [Applause.]

But no man, and Judge Douglas no more than any other, can
maintain a negative, or merely neutral, position on this
question; and, accordingly, he avows that the Union was made by
white men and for white men and their descendants.  As matter of
fact, the first branch of the proposition is historically true;
the government was made by white men, and they were and are the
superior race.  This I admit.  But the corner-stone of the
government, so to speak, was the declaration that "all men are
created equal," and all entitled to "life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." [Applause.]

And not only so, but the framers of the Constitution were
particular to keep out of that instrument the word "slave," the
reason being that slavery would ultimately come to an end, and
they did not wish to have any reminder that in this free country
human beings were ever prostituted to slavery.  [Applause.] Nor
is it any argument that we are superior and the negro inferior--
that he has but one talent while we have ten.  Let the negro
possess the little he has in independence; if he has but one
talent, he should be permitted to keep the little he has.
[Applause:] But slavery will endure no test of reason or logic;
and yet its advocates, like Douglas, use a sort of bastard logic,
or noisy assumption it might better be termed, like the above, in
order to prepare the mind for the gradual, but none the less
certain, encroachments of the Moloch of slavery upon the fair
domain of freedom.  But however much you may argue upon it, or
smother it in soft phrase, slavery can only be maintained by
force--by violence.  The repeal of the Missouri Compromise was by
violence.  It was a violation of both law and the sacred
obligations of honor, to overthrow and trample under foot a
solemn compromise, obtained by the fearful loss to freedom of one
of the fairest of our Western domains.  Congress violated the
will and confidence of its constituents in voting for the bill;
and while public sentiment, as shown by the elections of 1854,
demanded the restoration of this compromise, Congress violated
its trust by refusing simply because it had the force of numbers
to hold on to it.  And murderous violence is being used now, in
order to force slavery on to Kansas; for it cannot be done in any
other way.  [Sensation.]

The necessary result was to establish the rule of violence--
force, instead of the rule of law and reason; to perpetuate and
spread slavery, and in time to make it general.  We see it at
both ends of the line.  In Washington, on the very spot where the
outrage was started, the fearless Sumner is beaten to
insensibility, and is now slowly dying; while senators who claim
to be gentlemen and Christians stood by, countenancing the act,
and even applauding it afterward in their places in the Senate.
Even Douglas, our man, saw it all and was within helping
distance, yet let the murderous blows fall unopposed.  Then, at
the other end of the line, at the very time Sumner was being
murdered, Lawrence was being destroyed for the crime of freedom.
It was the most prominent stronghold of liberty in Kansas, and
must give way to the all-dominating power of slavery.  Only two
days ago, Judge Trumbull found it necessary to propose a bill in
the Senate to prevent a general civil war and to restore peace in
Kansas.

We live in the midst of alarms; anxiety beclouds the future; we
expect some new disaster with each newspaper we read.  Are we in
a healthful political state?  Are not the tendencies plain?  Do
not the signs of the times point plainly the way in which we are
going?  [Sensation.]

In the early days of the Constitution slavery was recognized, by
South and North alike, as an evil, and the division of sentiment
about it was not controlled by geographical lines or
considerations of climate, but by moral and philanthropic views.
Petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the very
first Congress by Virginia and Massachusetts alike.  To show the
harmony which prevailed, I will state that a fugitive slave law
was passed in 1793, with no dissenting voice in the Senate, and
but seven dissenting votes in the House.  It was, however, a wise
law, moderate, and, under the Constitution, a just one.  Twenty-
five years later, a more stringent law was proposed and defeated;
and thirty-five years after that, the present law, drafted by
Mason of Virginia, was passed by Northern votes.  I am not, just
now, complaining of this law, but I am trying to show how the
current sets; for the proposed law of 1817 was far less offensive
than the present one.  In 1774 the Continental Congress pledged
itself, without a dissenting vote, to wholly discontinue the
slave trade, and to neither purchase nor import any slave; and
less than three months before the passage of the Declaration of
Independence, the same Congress which adopted that declaration
unanimously resolved "that no slave be imported into any of the
thirteen United Colonies." [Great applause.]

On the second day of July, 1776, the draft of a Declaration of
Independence was reported to Congress by the committee, and in it
the slave trade was characterized as "an execrable commerce," as
"a piratical warfare," as the "opprobrium of infidel powers," and
as "a cruel war against human nature.  [Applause.] All agreed on
this except South Carolina and Georgia, and in order to preserve
harmony, and from the necessity of the case, these expressions
were omitted.  Indeed, abolition societies existed as far south
as Virginia; and it is a well-known fact that Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Lee, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton were
qualified abolitionists, and much more radical on that subject
than we of the Whig and Democratic parties claim to be to-day.
On March 1, 1784, Virginia ceded to the confederation all its
lands lying northwest of the Ohio River.  Jefferson, Chase of
Maryland, and Howell of Rhode Island, as a committee on that and
territory thereafter to be ceded, reported that no slavery should
exist after the year 1800.  Had this report been adopted, not
only the Northwest, but Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and
Mississippi also would have been free; but it required the assent
of nine States to ratify it.  North Carolina was divided, and
thus its vote was lost; and Delaware, Georgia, and New Jersey
refused to vote.  In point of fact, as it was, it was assented to
by six States.  Three years later on a square vote to exclude
slavery from the Northwest, only one vote, and that from New
York, was against it.  And yet, thirty-seven years later, five
thousand citizens of Illinois, out of a voting mass of less than
twelve thousand, deliberately, after a long and heated contest,
voted to introduce slavery in Illinois; and, to-day, a large
party in the free State of Illinois are willing to vote to fasten
the shackles of slavery on the fair domain of Kansas,
notwithstanding it received the dowry of freedom long before its
birth as a political community.  I repeat, therefore, the
question: Is it not plain in what direction we are tending?
[Sensation.] In the colonial time, Mason, Pendleton, and
Jefferson were as hostile to slavery in Virginia as Otis, Ames,
and the Adamses were in Massachusetts; and Virginia made as
earnest an effort to get rid of it as old Massachusetts did.  But
circumstances were against them and they failed; but not that the
good will of its leading men was lacking.  Yet within less than
fifty years Virginia changed its tune, and made negro-breeding
for the cotton and sugar States one of its leading industries.
[Laughter and applause.]

In the Constitutional Convention, George Mason of Virginia made a
more violent abolition speech than my friends Lovejoy or Codding
would desire to make here to-day--a speech which could not be
safely repeated anywhere on Southern soil in this enlightened
year.  But, while there were some differences of opinion on this
subject even then, discussion was allowed; but as you see by the
Kansas slave code, which, as you know, is the Missouri slave
code, merely ferried across the river, it is a felony to even
express an opinion hostile to that foul blot in the land of
Washington and the Declaration of Independence.  [Sensation.]

In Kentucky--my State--in 1849, on a test vote, the mighty
influence of Henry Clay and many other good then there could not
get a symptom of expression in favor of gradual emancipation on a
plain issue of marching toward the light of civilization with
Ohio and Illinois; but the State of Boone and Hardin and Henry
Clay, with a nigger under each arm, took the black trail toward
the deadly swamps of barbarism.  Is there--can there be--any
doubt about this thing?  And is there any doubt that we must all
lay aside our prejudices and march, shoulder to shoulder, in the
great army of Freedom?  [Applause.]

Every Fourth of July our young orators all proclaim this to be
"the land of the free and the home of the brave!" Well, now, when
you orators get that off next year, and, may be, this very year,
how would you like some old grizzled farmer to get up in the
grove and deny it?  [Laughter.] How would you like that?  But
suppose Kansas comes in as a slave State, and all the "border
ruffians" have barbecues about it, and free-State men come
trailing back to the dishonored North, like whipped dogs with
their tails between their legs, it is--ain't it ?--evident that
this is no more the "land of the free"; and if we let it go so,
we won't dare to say "home of the brave" out loud.  [Sensation
and confusion.]

Can any man doubt that, even in spite of the people's will,
slavery will triumph through violence, unless that will be made
manifest and enforced?  Even Governor Reeder claimed at the
outset that the contest in Kansas was to be fair, but he got his
eyes open at last; and I believe that, as a result of this moral
and physical violence, Kansas will soon apply for admission as a
slave State.  And yet we can't mistake that the people don't want
it so, and that it is a land which is free both by natural and
political law.  No law, is free law! Such is the understanding of
all Christendom.  In the Somerset case, decided nearly a century
ago, the great Lord Mansfield held that slavery was of such a
nature that it must take its rise in positive (as distinguished
from natural) law; and that in no country or age could it be
traced back to any other source.  Will some one please tell me
where is the positive law that establishes slavery in Kansas?  [A
voice: "The bogus laws."] Aye, the bogus laws! And, on the same
principle, a gang of Missouri horse-thieves could come into
Illinois and declare horse-stealing to be legal [Laughter], and
it would be just as legal as slavery is in Kansas.  But by
express statute, in the land of Washington and Jefferson, we may
soon be brought face to face with the discreditable fact of
showing to the world by our acts that we prefer slavery to
freedom--darkness to light! [Sensation.]

It is, I believe, a principle in law that when one party to a
contract violates it so grossly as to chiefly destroy the object
for which it is made, the other party may rescind it.  I will ask
Browning if that ain't good law.  [Voices: Yes!"] Well, now if
that be right, I go for rescinding the whole, entire Missouri
Compromise and thus turning Missouri into a free State; and I
should like to know the difference--should like for any one to
point out the difference--between our making a free State of
Missouri and their making a slave State of Kansas.  [Great
applause.] There ain't one bit of difference, except that our way
would be a great mercy to humanity.  But I have never said, and
the Whig party has never said, and those who oppose the Nebraska
Bill do not as a body say, that they have any intention of
interfering with slavery in the slave States.  Our platform says
just the contrary.  We allow slavery to exist in the slave
States, not because slavery is right or good, but from the
necessities of our Union.  We grant a fugitive slave law because
it is so "nominated in the bond"; because our fathers so
stipu1ated--had to--and we are bound to carry out this agreement.
But they did not agree to introduce slavery in regions where it
did not previously exist.  On the contrary, they said by their
example and teachings that they did not deem it expedient--did
n't consider it right--to do so; and it is wise and
right to do just as they did about it.  [Voices: "Good!"] And
that it what we propose--not to interfere with slavery where it
exists (we have never tried to do it), and to give them a
reasonable and efficient fugitive slave law.  [A voice: "No!"] I
say YES! [Applause.] It was part of the bargain, and I 'm for
living up to it; but I go no further; I'm not bound to do more,
and I won't agree any further.  [Great applause.]

We, here in Illinois, should feel especially proud of the
provision of the Missouri Compromise excluding slavery from what
is now Kansas; for an Illinois man, Jesse B.  Thomas, was its
father.  Henry Clay, who is credited with the authorship of the
Compromise in general terms, did not even vote for that
provision, but only advocated the ultimate admission by a second
compromise; and Thomas was, beyond all controversy, the real
author of the "slavery restriction" branch of the Compromise.  To
show the generosity of the Northern members toward the Southern
side: on a test vote to exclude slavery from Missouri, ninety
voted not to exclude, and eighty-seven to exclude, every vote
from the slave States being ranged with the former and fourteen
votes from the free States, of whom seven were from New England
alone; while on a vote to exclude slavery from what is now
Kansas, the vote was one hundred and thirty-four for, to forty-
two against.  The scheme, as a whole, was, of course, a Southern
triumph.  It is idle to contend otherwise, as is now being done
by the Nebraskites; it was so shown by the votes and quite as
emphatically by the expressions of representative men.  Mr.
Lowndes of South Carolina was never known to commit a political
mistake; his was the great judgment of that section; and he
declared that this measure "would restore tranquillity to the
country--a result demanded by every consideration of discretion,
of moderation, of wisdom, and of virtue." When the measure came
before President Monroe for his approval, he put to each member
of his cabinet this question: "Has Congress the constitutional
power to prohibit slavery in a Territory?" And John C.  Calhoun
and William H.  Crawford from the South, equally with John Quincy
Adams, Benjamin Rush, and Smith Thompson from the North, alike
answered, "Yes!" without qualification or equivocation; and this
measure, of so great consequence to the South, was passed; and
Missouri was, by means of it, finally enabled to knock at the
door of the Republic for an open passage to its brood of slaves.
And, in spite of this, Freedom's share is about to be taken by
violence--by the force of misrepresentative votes, not called for
by the popular will.  What name can I, in common decency, give to
this wicked transaction?  [Sensation.]

But even then the contest was not over; for when the Missouri
constitution came before Congress for its approval, it forbade
any free negro or mulatto from entering the State.  In short, our
Illinois "black 1aws" were hidden away in their constitution
[Laughter], and the controversy was thus revived.  Then it was
that Mr. Clay's talents shone out conspicuously, and the
controversy that shook the union to its foundation was finally
settled to the satisfaction of the conservative parties on both
sides of the line, though not to the extremists on either, and
Missouri was admitted by the small majority of six in the lower
House.  How great a majority, do you think, would have been given
had Kansas also been secured for slavery?  [A voice: "A majority
the other way."] "A majority the other way," is answered.  Do you
think it would have been safe for a Northern man to have
confronted his constituents after having voted to consign both
Missouri and Kansas to hopeless slavery?  And yet this man
Douglas, who misrepresents his constituents and who has exerted
his highest talents in that direction, will be carried in triumph
through the State and hailed with honor while applauding that
act.  [Three groans for "Dug!"] And this shows whither we are
tending.  This thing of slavery is more powerful than its
supporters--even than the high priests that minister at its
altar.  It debauches even our greatest men.  It gathers strength,
like a rolling snowball, by its own infamy.  Monstrous crimes are
committed in its name by persons collectively which they would
not dare to commit as individuals.  Its aggressions and
encroachments almost surpass belief.  In a despotism, one might
not wonder to see slavery advance steadily and remorselessly into
new dominions; but is it not wonderful, is it not even alarming,
to see its steady advance in a land dedicated to the proposition
that "all men are created equal"?  [Sensation.]

It yields nothing itself; it keeps all it has, and gets all it
can besides.  It really came dangerously near securing Illinois
in 1824; it did get Missouri in 1821.  The first proposition was
to admit what is now Arkansas and Missouri as one slave State.
But the territory was divided and Arkansas came in, without
serious question, as a slave State; and afterwards Missouri, not,
as a sort of equality, free, but also as a slave State.  Then we
had Florida and Texas; and now Kansas is about to be forced into
the dismal procession.  [Sensation.] And so it is wherever you
look.  We have not forgotten--it is but six years since--how
dangerously near California came to being a slave State.  Texas
is a slave State, and four other slave States may be carved from
its vast domain.  And yet, in the year 1829, slavery was
abolished throughout that vast region by a royal decree of the
then sovereign of Mexico.  Will you please tell me by what right
slavery exists in Texas to-day?  By the same right as, and no
higher or greater than, slavery is seeking dominion in Kansas:
by political force--peaceful, if that will suffice; by the torch
(as in Kansas) and the bludgeon (as in the Senate chamber), if
required.  And so history repeats itself; and even as slavery has
kept its course by craft, intimidation, and violence in the past,
so it will persist, in my judgment, until met and dominated by
the will of a people bent on its restriction.

We have, this very afternoon, heard bitter denunciations of
Brooks in Washington, and Titus, Stringfellow, Atchison, Jones,
and Shannon in Kansas--the battle-ground of slavery.  I certainly
am not going to advocate or shield them; but they and their acts
are but the necessary outcome of the Nebraska law.  We should
reserve our highest censure for the authors of the mischief, and
not for the catspaws which they use.  I believe it was
Shakespeare who said, "Where the offence lies, there let the axe
fall"; and, in my opinion, this man Douglas and the Northern men
in Congress who advocate "Nebraska" are more guilty than a
thousand Joneses and Stringfellows, with all their murderous
practices, can be.  [Applause.]

We have made a good beginning here to-day.  As our Methodist
friends would say, "I feel it is good to be here." While
extremists may find some fault with the moderation of our
platform, they should recollect that "the battle is not always to
the strong, nor the race to the swift." In grave emergencies,
moderation is generally safer than radicalism; and as this
struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our
action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but
rather win all that we can to our standard.  We must not belittle
nor overlook the facts of our condition--that we are new and
comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and
relatively strong.  They have the administration and the
political power; and, right or wrong, at present they have the
numbers.  Our friends who urge an appeal to arms with so much
force and eloquence should recollect that the government is
arrayed against us, and that the numbers are now arrayed against
us as well; or, to state it nearer to the truth, they are not yet
expressly and affirmatively for us; and we should repel friends
rather than gain them by anything savoring of revolutionary
methods.  As it now stands, we must appeal to the sober sense and
patriotism of the people.  We will make converts day by day; we
will grow strong by calmness and moderation; we will grow strong
by the violence and injustice of our adversaries.  And, unless
truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the
majority after a while, and then the revolution which we will
accomplish will be none the less radical from being the result of
pacific measures.  The battle of freedom is to be fought out on
principle.  Slavery is a violation of the eternal right.  We have
temporized with it from the necessities of our condition; but as
sure as God reigns and school children read, THAT BLACK FOUL LIE
CAN NEVER BE CONSECRATED INTO GOD'S HALLOWED TRUTH! [Immense
applause lasting some time.]

One of our greatest difficulties is, that men who know that
slavery is a detestable crime and ruinous to the nation are
compelled, by our peculiar condition and other circumstances, to
advocate it concretely, though damning it in the raw.  Henry Clay
was a brilliant example of this tendency; others of our purest
statesmen are compelled to do so; and thus slavery secures actual
support from those who detest it at heart.  Yet Henry Clay
perfected and forced through the compromise which secured to
slavery a great State as well as a political advantage.  Not that
he hated slavery less, but that he loved the whole Union more.
As long as slavery profited by his great compromise, the hosts of
proslavery could not sufficiently cover him with praise; but now
that this compromise stands in their way-

"....they never mention him,
His name is never heard:
Their lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word."

They have slaughtered one of his most cherished measures, and his
ghost would arise to rebuke them.  [Great applause.]

Now, let us harmonize, my friends, and appeal to the moderation
and patriotism of the people: to the sober second thought; to the
awakened public conscience.  The repeal of the sacred Missouri
Compromise has installed the weapons of violence: the bludgeon,
the incendiary torch, the death-dealing rifle, the bristling
cannon--the weapons of kingcraft, of the inquisition, of
ignorance, of barbarism, of oppression.  We see its fruits in the
dying bed of the heroic Sumner; in the ruins of the "Free State"
hotel; in the smoking embers of the Herald of Freedom; in the
free-State Governor of Kansas chained to a stake on freedom's
soil like a horse-thief, for the crime of freedom.  [Applause.]
We see it in Christian statesmen, and Christian newspapers, and
Christian pulpits applauding the cowardly act of a low bully, WHO
CRAWLED UPON HIS VICTIM BEHIND HIS BACK AND DEALT THE DEADLY
BLOW.  [Sensation and applause.] We note our political
demoralization in the catch-words that are coming into such
common use; on the one hand, "freedom-shriekers," and sometimes
"freedom-screechers" [Laughter], and, on the other hand, "border-
ruffians," and that fully deserved.  And the significance of
catch-words cannot pass unheeded, for they constitute a sign of
the times.  Everything in this world "jibes" in with everything
else, and all the fruits of this Nebraska Bill are like the
poisoned source from which they come.  I will not say that we may
not sooner or later be compelled to meet force by force; but the
time has not yet come, and, if we are true to ourselves, may
never come.  Do not mistake that the ballot is stronger than the
bullet.  Therefore let the legions of slavery use bullets; but
let us wait patiently till November and fire ballots at them in
return; and by that peaceful policy I believe we shall ultimately
win.  [Applause.]

It was by that policy that here in Illinois the early fathers
fought the good fight and gained the victory.  In 1824 the free
men of our State, led by Governor Coles (who was a native of
Maryland and President Madison's private secretary), determined
that those beautiful groves should never re-echo the dirge of one
who has no title to himself.  By their resolute determination,
the winds that sweep across our broad prairies shall never cool
the parched brow, nor shall the unfettered streams that bring joy
and gladness to our free soil water the tired feet, of a slave;
but so long as those heavenly breezes and sparkling streams bless
the land, or the groves and their fragrance or memory remain, the
humanity to which they minister SHALL BE FOREVER FREE! [Great
applause] Palmer, Yates, Williams, Browning, and some more in
this convention came from Kentucky to Illinois (instead of going
to Missouri), not only to better their conditions, but also to
get away from slavery.  They have said so to me, and it is
understood among us Kentuckians that we don't like it one bit.
Now, can we, mindful of the blessings of liberty which the early
men of Illinois left to us, refuse a like privilege to the free
men who seek to plant Freedom's banner on our Western outposts?
["No!" "No!"] Should we not stand by our neighbors who seek to
better their conditions in Kansas and Nebraska?  ["Yes!" "Yes!"]
Can we as Christian men, and strong and free ourselves, wield the
sledge or hold the iron which is to manacle anew an already
oppressed race?  ["No!" "No!"] "Woe unto them," it is written,
"that decree unrighteous decrees and that write grievousness
which they have prescribed." Can we afford to sin any more deeply
against human liberty?  ["No!" "No!"]

One great trouble in the matter is, that slavery is an insidious
and crafty power, and gains equally by open violence of the
brutal as well as by sly management of the peaceful.  Even after
the Ordinance of 1787, the settlers in Indiana and Illinois (it
was all one government then) tried to get Congress to allow
slavery temporarily, and petitions to that end were sent from
Kaskaskia, and General Harrison, the Governor, urged it from
Vincennes, the capital.  If that had succeeded, good-bye to
liberty here.  But John Randolph of Virginia made a vigorous
report against it; and although they persevered so well as to get
three favorable reports for it, yet the United States Senate,
with the aid of some slave States, finally squelched if for good.
[Applause.] And that is why this hall is to-day a temple for free
men instead of a negro livery-stable.  [Great applause and
laughter.] Once let slavery get planted in a locality, by ever so
weak or doubtful a title, and in ever so small numbers, and it is
like the Canada thistle or Bermuda grass--you can't root it out.
You yourself may detest slavery; but your neighbor has five or
six slaves, and he is an excellent neighbor, or your son has
married his daughter, and they beg you to help save their
property, and you vote against your interests and principle to
accommodate a neighbor, hoping that your vote will be on the
losing side.  And others do the same; and in those ways slavery
gets a sure foothold.  And when that is done the whole mighty
Union--the force of the nation--is committed to its support.  And
that very process is working in Kansas to-day.  And you must
recollect that the slave property is worth a billion of dollars;
while free-State men must work for sentiment alone.  Then there
are "blue lodges"--as they call them--everywhere doing their
secret and deadly work.

It is a very strange thing, and not solvable by any moral law
that I know of, that if a man loses his horse, the whole country
will turn out to help hang the thief; but if a man but a shade or
two darker than I am is himself stolen, the same crowd will hang
one who aids in restoring him to liberty.  Such are the
inconsistencies of slavery, where a horse is more sacred than a
man; and the essence of squatter or popular sovereignty--I don't
care how you call it--is that if one man chooses to make a slave
of another, no third man shall be allowed to object.  And if you
can do this in free Kansas, and it is allowed to stand, the next
thing you will see is shiploads of negroes from Africa at the
wharf at Charleston, for one thing is as truly lawful as the
other; and these are the bastard notions we have got to stamp
out, else they will stamp us out.  [Sensation and applause.]

Two years ago, at Springfield, Judge Douglas avowed that Illinois
came into the Union as a slave State, and that slavery was weeded
out by the operation of his great, patent, everlasting principle
of "popular sovereignty." [Laughter.] Well, now, that argument
must be answered, for it has a little grain of truth at the
bottom.  I do not mean that it is true in essence, as he would
have us believe.  It could not be essentially true if the
Ordinance of '87 was valid.  But, in point of fact, there were
some degraded beings called slaves in Kaskaskia and the other
French settlements when our first State constitution was adopted;
that is a fact, and I don't deny it.  Slaves were brought here as
early as 1720, and were kept here in spite of the Ordinance of
1787 against it.  But slavery did not thrive here.  On the
contrary, under the influence of the ordinance the number
decreased fifty-one from 1810 to 1820; while under the influence
of squatter sovereignty, right across the river in Missouri, they
increased seven thousand two hundred and eleven in the same time;
and slavery finally faded out in Illinois, under the influence of
the law of freedom, while it grew stronger and stronger in
Missouri, under the law or practice of "popular sovereignty." In
point of fact there were but one hundred and seventeen slaves in
Illinois one year after its admission, or one to every four
hundred and seventy of its population; or, to state it in another
way, if Illinois was a slave State in 1820, so were New York and
New Jersey much greater slave States from having had greater
numbers, slavery having been established there in very early
times.  But there is this vital difference between all these
States and the Judge's Kansas experiment: that they sought to
disestablish slavery which had been already established, while
the Judge seeks, so far as he can, to disestablish freedom, which
had been established there by the Missouri Compromise.  [Voices:
"Good!"]

The Union is under-going a fearful strain; but it is a stout old
ship, and has weathered many a hard blow, and "the stars in their
courses," aye, an invisible Power, greater than the puny efforts
of men, will fight for us.  But we ourselves must not decline the
burden of responsibility, nor take counsel of unworthy passions.
Whatever duty urges us to do or to omit must be done or omitted;
and the recklessness with which our adversaries break the laws,
or counsel their violation, should afford no example for us.
Therefore, let us revere the Declaration of Independence; let us
continue to obey the Constitution and the laws; let us keep step
to the music of the Union.  Let us draw a cordon, so to speak,
around the slave States, and the hateful institution, like a
reptile poisoning itself, will perish by its own infamy.
[Applause.]

But we cannot be free men if this is, by our national choice, to
be a land of slavery.  Those who deny freedom to others deserve
it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot
long retain
it.[Loud applause.]

Did you ever, my friends, seriously reflect upon the speed with
which we are tending downwards?  Within the memory of men now
present the leading statesman of Virginia could make genuine,
red-hot abolitionist speeches in old Virginia! and, as I have
said, now even in "free Kansas" it is a crime to declare that it
is "free Kansas." The very sentiments that I and others have just
uttered would entitle us, and each of us, to the ignominy and
seclusion of a dungeon; and yet I suppose that, like Paul, we
were "free born." But if this thing is allowed to continue, it
will be but one step further to impress the same rule in
Illinois.  [Sensation.]

The conclusion of all is, that we must restore the Missouri
Compromise.  We must highly resolve that Kansas must be free!
[Great applause.] We must reinstate the birthday promise of the
Republic; we must reaffirm the Declaration of Independence; we
must make good in essence as well as in form Madison's avowal
that "the word slave ought not to appear in the Constitution";
and we must even go further, and decree that only local law, and
not that time-honored instrument, shall shelter a slaveholder.
We must make this a land of liberty in fact, as it is in name.
But in seeking to attain these results--so indispensable if the
liberty which is our pride and boast shall endure--we will be
loyal to the Constitution and to the "flag of our Union," and no
matter what our grievance--even though Kansas shall come in as a
slave State; and no matter what theirs--even if we shall restore
the compromise--WE WILL SAY TO THE SOUTHERN DISUNIONISTS, WE
WON'T GO OUT OF THE UNION, AND YOU SHAN'T!

[This was the climax; the audience rose to its feet en masse,
applauded, stamped, waved handkerchiefs, threw hats in the air,
and ran riot for several minutes.  The arch-enchanter who wrought
this transformation looked, meanwhile, like the personification
of political justice.]

But let us, meanwhile, appeal to the sense and patriotism of the
people, and not to their prejudices; let us spread the floods of
enthusiasm here aroused all over these vast prairies, so
suggestive of freedom.  Let us commence by electing the gallant
soldier Governor (Colonel) Bissell who stood for the honor of our
State alike on the plains and amidst the chaparral of Mexico and
on the floor of Congress, while he defied the Southern Hotspur;
and that will have a greater moral effect than all the border
ruffians can accomplish in all their raids on Kansas.  There is
both a power and a magic in popular opinion.  To that let us now
appeal; and while, in all probability, no resort to force will be
needed, our moderation and forbearance will stand US in good
stead when, if ever, WE MUST MAKE AN APPEAL TO BATTLE AND TO THE
GOD OF HOSTS! [Immense applause and a rush for the orator.]

One can realize with this ability to move people's minds that the
Southern Conspiracy were right to hate this man.  He, better than
any at the time was able to uncover their stratagems and tear
down their sophisms and contradictions.




POLITICAL CORRESPONDENCE

TO W. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, July 9, 1856.

DEAR WHITNEY:--I now expect to go to Chicago on the 15th, and I
probably shall remain there or thereabouts for about two weeks.

It turned me blind when I first heard Swett was beaten and
Lovejoy nominated; but, after much reflection, I really believe
it is best to let it stand.  This, of course, I wish to be
confidential.

Lamon did get your deeds.  I went with him to the office, got
them, and put them in his hands myself.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ON OUT-OF-STATE CAMPAIGNERS

TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, July 12, 1856

Your's of the 29th of June was duly received.  I did not answer
it because it plagued me.  This morning I received another from
Judd and Peck, written by consultation with you.  Now let me tell
you why I am plagued:

1.  I can hardly spare the time.

2.  I am superstitious.  I have scarcely known a party preceding
an election to call in help from the neighboring States but they
lost the State.  Last fall, our friends had Wade, of Ohio, and
others, in Maine; and they lost the State.  Last spring our
adversaries had New Hampshire full of South Carolinians, and they
lost the State.  And so, generally, it seems to stir up more
enemies than friends.

Have the enemy called in any foreign help?  If they have a
foreign champion there I should have no objection to drive a nail
in his track.  I shall reach Chicago on the night of the 15th, to
attend to a little business in court.  Consider the things I have
suggested, and write me at Chicago.  Especially write me whether
Browning consents to visit you.

Your obedient servant,

A. LINCOLN.




REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN SPEECH

FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT GALENA, ILLINOIS, IN THE
FREMONT CAMPAIGN, AUGUST 1, 1856.

You further charge us with being disunionists.  If you mean that
it is our aim to dissolve the Union, I for myself answer that it
is untrue; for those who act with me I answer that it is untrue.
Have you heard us assert that as our aim?  Do you really believe
that such is our aim?  Do you find it in our platform, our
speeches, our conventions, or anywhere?  If not, withdraw the
charge.

But you may say that, though it is not our aim, it will be the
result if we succeed, and that we are therefore disunionists in
fact.  This is a grave charge you make against us, and we
certainly have a right to demand that you specify in what way we
are to dissolve the Union.  How are we to effect this?

The only specification offered is volunteered by Mr. Fillmore in
his Albany speech.  His charge is that if we elect a President
and Vice-President both from the free States, it will dissolve
the Union.  This
is open folly.  The Constitution provides that the President and
Vice-President of the United States shall be of different States,
but says nothing as to the latitude and longitude of those
States.  In 1828 Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C.
Calhoun, of South Carolina, were elected President and Vice-
President, both from slave States; but no one thought of
dissolving the Union then on that account.  In 1840 Harrison, of
Ohio, and Tyler, of Virginia, were elected.  In 1841 Harrison
died and John Tyler succeeded to the Presidency, and William R.
King, of Alabama, was elected acting Vice-President by the
Senate; but no one supposed that the Union was in danger.  In
fact, at the very time Mr. Fillmore uttered this idle charge, the
state of things in the United States disproved it.  Mr. Pierce,
of New Hampshire, and Mr. Bright, of Indiana, both from free
States, are President and Vice-President, and the Union stands
and will stand.  You do not pretend that it ought to dissolve the
Union, and the facts show that it won't; therefore the charge may
be dismissed without further consideration.

No other specification is made, and the only one that could be
made is that the restoration of the restriction of 1820, making
the United States territory free territory, would dissolve the
Union.  Gentlemen, it will require a decided majority to pass
such an act.  We, the majority, being able constitutionally to do
all that we purpose, would have no desire to dissolve the Union.
Do you say that such restriction of slavery would be
unconstitutional, and that some of the States would not submit to
its enforcement?  I grant you that an unconstitutional act is not
a law; but I do not ask and will not take your construction of
the Constitution.  The Supreme Court of the United States is the
tribunal to decide such a question, and we will submit to its
decisions; and if you do also, there will be an end of the
matter.  Will you?  If not, who are the disunionists--you or we?
We, the majority, would not strive to dissolve the Union; and if
any attempt is made, it must be by you, who so loudly stigmatize
us as disunionists.  But the Union, in any event, will not be
dissolved.  We don't want to dissolve it, and if you attempt it
we won't let you.  With the purse and sword, the army and navy
and treasury, in our hands and at our command, you could not do
it.  This government would be very weak indeed if a majority with
a disciplined army and navy and a well-filled treasury could not
preserve itself when attacked by an unarmed, undisciplined,
unorganized minority.  All this talk about the dissolution of the
Union is humbug, nothing but folly.  We do not want to dissolve
the Union; you shall not.




ON THE DANGER OF THIRD-PARTIES

TO JOHN BENNETT.

SPRINGFIELD, AUG. 4, 1856

DEAR SIR:--I understand you are a Fillmore man.  If, as between
Fremont and Buchanan, you really prefer the election of Buchanan,
then burn this without reading a line further.  But if you would
like to defeat Buchanan and his gang, allow me a word with you:
Does any one pretend that Fillmore can carry the vote of this
State?  I have not heard a single man pretend so.  Every vote
taken from Fremont and given to Fillmore is just so much in favor
of Buchanan.  The Buchanan men see this; and hence their great
anxiety in favor of the Fillmore movement.  They know where the
shoe pinches.  They now greatly prefer having a man of your
character go for Fillmore than for Buchanan because they expect
several to go with you, who would go for Fremont if you were to
go directly for Buchanan.

I think I now understand the relative strength of the three
parties in this State as well as any one man does, and my opinion
is that to-day Buchanan has alone 85,000, Fremont 78,000, and
Fillmore 21,000.

This gives B. the State by 7000 and leaves him in the minority of
the whole 14,000.

Fremont and Fillmore men being united on Bissell, as they already
are, he cannot be beaten.  This is not a long letter, but it
contains the whole story.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JESSE K. DUBOIS.

SPRINGFIELD, Aug. 19, 1856.

DEAR DUBOIS : Your letter on the same sheet with Mr. Miller's is
just received.  I have been absent four days.  I do not know when
your court sits.

Trumbull has written the committee here to have a set of
appointments made for him commencing here in Springfield, on the
11th of Sept., and to extend throughout the south half of the
State.  When he goes to Lawrenceville, as he will, I will strain
every nerve to be with you and him.  More than that I cannot
promise now.

Yours as truly as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HARRISON MALTBY.

[Confidential]

SPRINGFIELD, September 8, 1856.

DEAR SIR:--I understand you are a Fillmore man.  Let me prove to
you that every vote withheld from Fremont and given to Fillmore
in this State actually lessens Fillmore's chance of being
President.  Suppose Buchanan gets all the slave States and
Pennsylvania, and any other one State besides; then he is
elected, no matter who gets all the rest.  But suppose Fillmore
gets the two slave States of Maryland and Kentucky; then Buchanan
is not elected; Fillmore goes into the House of Representatives,
and may be made President by a compromise.  But suppose, again,
Fillmore's friends throw away a few thousand votes on him in
Indiana and Illinois; it will inevitably give these States to
Buchanan, which will more than compensate him for the loss of
Maryland and Kentucky, will elect him, and leave Fillmore no
chance in the House of Representatives or out of it.

This is as plain as adding up the weight of three small hogs.  As
Mr. Fillmore has no possible chance to carry Illinois for
himself, it is plainly to his interest to let Fremont take it,
and thus keep it out of the hands of Buchanan.  Be not deceived.
Buchanan is the hard horse to beat in this race.  Let him have
Illinois, and nothing can beat him; and he will get Illinois if
men persist in throwing away votes upon Mr. Fillmore.  Does some
one persuade you that Mr. Fillmore can carry Illinois?  Nonsense!
There are over seventy newspapers in Illinois opposing Buchanan,
only three or four of which support Mr. Fillmore, all the rest
going for Fremont.  Are not these newspapers a fair index of the
proportion of the votes?  If not, tell me why.

Again, of these three or four Fillmore newspapers, two, at least,
are supported in part by the Buchanan men, as I understand.  Do
not they know where the shoe pinches?  They know the Fillmore
movement helps them, and therefore they help it.  Do think these
things over, and then act according to your judgment.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN




TO Dr. R. BOAL.

Sept.  14, 1856.

Dr. R. BOAL, Lacon, Ill.

MY DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 8th inviting me to be with [you] at
Lacon on the 30th is received.  I feel that I owe you and our
friends of Marshall a good deal, and I will come if I can; and if
I do not get there, it will be because I shall think my efforts
are now needed farther south.

Present my regards to Mrs. Boal, and believe [me], as ever,

Your friend,

A. LINCOLN.




TO HENRY O'CONNER, MUSCATINE, IOWA.

SPRINGFIELD, Sept.  14, 1856.

DEAR SIR:--Yours, inviting me to attend a mass-meeting on the 23d
inst., is received.  It would be very pleasant to strike hands
with the Fremonters of Iowa, who have led the van so splendidly,
in this grand charge which we hope and believe will end in a most
glorious victory.  All thanks, all honor to Iowa!  But Iowa is
out of all danger, and it is no time for us, when the battle
still rages, to pay holiday visits to Iowa.  I am sure you will
excuse me for remaining in Illinois, where much hard work is
still to be done.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




AFTER THE DEMOCRATIC VICTORY OF BUCHANAN

FRAGMENT OF SPEECH AT A REPUBLICAN BANQUET
IN CHICAGO, DECEMBER 10, 1856.

We have another annual Presidential message.  Like a rejected
lover making merry at the wedding of his rival, the President
felicitates himself hugely over the late Presidential election.
He considers the result a signal triumph of good principles and
good men, and a very pointed rebuke of bad ones.  He says the
people did it.  He forgets that the "people," as he complacently
calls only those who voted for Buchanan, are in a minority of the
whole people by about four hundred thousand votes--one full tenth
of all the votes.  Remembering this, he might perceive that the
"rebuke" may not be quite as durable as he seems to think--that
the majority may not choose to remain permanently rebuked by that
minority.

The President thinks the great body of us Fremonters, being
ardently attached to liberty, in the abstract, were duped by a
few wicked and designing men.  There is a slight difference of
opinion on this.  We think he, being ardently attached to the
hope of a second term, in the concrete, was duped by men who had
liberty every way.  He is the cat's-paw.  By much dragging of
chestnuts from the fire for others to eat, his claws are burnt
off to the gristle, and he is thrown aside as unfit for further
use.  As the fool said of King Lear, when his daughters had
turned him out of doors, "He 's a shelled peascod" ["That 's a
sheal'd peascod").

So far as the President charges us "with a desire to change the
domestic institutions of existing States," and of "doing
everything in our power to deprive the Constitution and the laws
of moral authority," for the whole party on belief, and for
myself on knowledge, I pronounce the charge an unmixed and
unmitigated falsehood.

Our government rests in public opinion.  Whoever can change
public opinion can change the government practically just so
much.  Public opinion, on any subject, always has a "central
idea," from which all its minor thoughts radiate.  That "central
idea" in our political public opinion at the beginning was, and
until recently has continued to be, "the equality of men." And
although it has always submitted patiently to whatever of
inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity, its
constant working has been a steady progress toward the practical
equality of all men.  The late Presidential election was a
struggle by one party to discard that central idea and to
substitute for it the opposite idea that slavery is right in the
abstract, the workings of which as a central idea may be the
perpetuity of human slavery and its extension to all countries
and colors.  Less than a year ago the Richmond Enquirer, an
avowed advocate of slavery, regardless of color, in order to
favor his views, invented the phrase "State equality," and now
the President, in his message, adopts the Enquirer's catch-
phrase, telling us the people "have asserted the constitutional
equality of each and all of the States of the Union as States."
The President flatters himself that the new central idea is
completely inaugurated; and so indeed it is, so far as the mere
fact of a Presidential election can inaugurate it.  To us it is
left to know that the majority of the people have not yet
declared for it, and to hope that they never will.

All of us who did not vote for Mr. Buchanan, taken together, are
a majority of four hundred thousand.  But in the late contest we
were divided between Fremont and Fillmore.  Can we not come
together for the future?  Let every one who really believes and
is resolved that free society is not and shall not be a failure,
and who can conscientiously declare that in the last contest he
has done only what he thought best--let every such one have
charity to believe that every other one can say as much.  Thus
let bygones be bygones; let past differences as nothing be; and
with steady eye on the real issue let us reinaugurate the good
old "central idea" of the republic.  We can do it.  The human
heart is with us; God is with us.  We shall again be able, not to
declare that "all States as States are equal," nor yet that "all
citizens as citizens are equal," but to renew the broader, better
declaration, including both these and much more, that "all men
are created equal.




TO Dr. R. BOAL.

SPRINGFIELD, Dec. 25, 1856.

DEAR SIR:-When I was at Chicago two weeks ago I saw Mr. Arnold,
and from a remark of his I inferred he was thinking of the
speakership, though I think he was not anxious about it.  He
seemed most anxious for harmony generally, and particularly that
the contested seats from Peoria and McDonough might be rightly
determined.  Since I came home I had a talk with Cullom, one of
our American representatives here, and he says he is for you for
Speaker and also that he thinks all the Americans will be for
you, unless it be Gorin, of Macon, of whom he cannot speak.  If
you would like to be Speaker go right up and see Arnold.  He is
talented, a practised debater, and, I think, would do himself
more credit on the floor than in the Speaker's seat.  Go and see
him; and if you think fit, show him this letter.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1857


TO JOHN E.  ROSETTE.
Private.

SPRINGFIELD, ILL., February 10, 1857.

DEAR SIR:--Your note about the little paragraph in the Republican
was received yesterday, since which time I have been too unwell
to notice it.  I had not supposed you wrote or approved it.  The
whole originated in mistake.  You know by the conversation with
me that I thought the establishment of the paper unfortunate, but
I always expected to throw no obstacle in its way, and to
patronize it to the extent of taking and paying for one copy.
When the paper was brought to my house, my wife said to me, "Now
are you going to take another worthless little paper?", I said to
her evasively, "I have not directed the paper to be left." From
this, in my absence, she sent the message to the carrier.  This
is the whole story.

Yours truly,

A. LINCOLN.




RESPONSE TO A DOUGLAS SPEECH

SPEECH IN SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
JUNE 26, 1857.

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I am here to-night partly by the invitation of
some of you, and partly by my own inclination.  Two weeks ago
Judge Douglas spoke here on the several subjects of Kansas, the
Dred Scott decision, and Utah.  I listened to the speech at the
time, and have the report of it since.  It was intended to
controvert opinions which I think just, and to assail
(politically, not personally) those men who, in common with me,
entertain those opinions.  For this reason I wished then, and
still wish, to make some answer to it, which I now take the
opportunity of doing.

I begin with Utah.  If it prove to be true, as is probable, that
the people of Utah are in open rebellion to the United States,
then Judge Douglas is in favor of repealing their territorial
organization, and attaching them to the adjoining States for
judicial purposes.  I say, too, if they are in rebellion, they
ought to be somehow coerced to obedience; and I am not now
prepared to admit or deny that the Judge's mode of coercing them
is not as good as any.  The Republicans can fall in with it
without taking back anything they have ever said.  To be sure, it
would be a considerable backing down by Judge Douglas from his
much-vaunted doctrine of self-government for the Territories; but
this is only additional proof of what was very plain from the
beginning, that that doctrine was a mere deceitful pretense for
the benefit of slavery.  Those who could not see that much in the
Nebraska act itself, which forced governors, and secretaries, and
judges on the people of the Territories without their choice or
consent, could not be made to see, though one should rise from
the dead.

But in all this it is very plain the Judge evades the only
question the Republicans have ever pressed upon the Democracy in
regard to Utah.  That question the Judge well knew to be this:
"If the people of Utah peacefully form a State constitution
tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the
Union?" There is nothing in the United States Constitution or law
against polygamy; and why is it not a part of the Judge's "sacred
right of self-government" for the people to have it, or rather to
keep it, if they choose?  These questions, so far as I know, the
Judge never answers.  It might involve the Democracy to answer
them either way, and they go unanswered.

As to Kansas.  The substance of the Judge's speech on Kansas is
an effort to put the free-State men in the wrong for not voting
at the election of delegates to the constitutional convention.
He says:

"There is every reason to hope and believe that the law will be
fairly interpreted and impartially executed, so as to insure to
every bona fide inhabitant the free and quiet exercise of the
elective franchise."

It appears extraordinary that Judge Douglas should make such a
statement.  He knows that, by the law, no one can vote who has
not been registered; and he knows that the free-State men place
their refusal to vote on the ground that but few of them have
been registered.  It is possible that this is not true, but Judge
Douglas knows it is asserted to be true in letters, newspapers,
and public speeches, and borne by every mail and blown by every
breeze to the eyes and ears of the world.  He knows it is boldly
declared that the people of many whole counties, and many whole
neighborhoods in others, are left unregistered; yet he does not
venture to contradict the declaration, or to point out how they
can vote without being registered; but he just slips along, not
seeming to know there is any such question of fact, and
complacently declares:

 "There is every reason to hope and believe that the law will be
fairly and impartially executed, so as to insure to every bona
fide inhabitant the free and quiet exercise of the elective
franchise."

I readily agree that if all had a chance to vote they ought to
have voted.  If, on the contrary, as they allege, and Judge
Douglas ventures not to particularly contradict, few only of the
free-State men had a chance to vote, they were perfectly right in
staying from the polls in a body.

By the way, since the Judge spoke, the Kansas election has come
off.  The Judge expressed his confidence that all the Democrats
in Kansas would do their duty-including "free-State Democrats,"
of course.  The returns received here as yet are very incomplete;
but so far as they go, they indicate that only about one sixth of
the registered voters have really voted; and this, too, when not
more, perhaps, than one half of the rightful voters have been
registered, thus showing the thing to have been altogether the
most exquisite farce ever enacted.  I am watching with
considerable interest to ascertain what figure "the free-State
Democrats" cut in the concern.  Of course they voted,--all
Democrats do their duty,--and of course they did not vote for
slave-State candidates.  We soon shall know how many delegates
they elected, how many candidates they had pledged to a free
State, and how many votes were cast for them.

Allow me to barely whisper my suspicion that there were no such
things in Kansas as "free-State Democrats"--that they were
altogether mythical, good only to figure in newspapers and
speeches in the free States.  If there should prove to be one
real living free-State Democrat in Kansas, I suggest that it
might be well to catch him, and stuff and preserve his skin as an
interesting specimen of that soon-to-be extinct variety of the
genus Democrat.

And now as to the Dred Scott decision.  That decision declares
two propositions--first, that a negro cannot sue in the United
States courts; and secondly, that Congress cannot prohibit
slavery in the Territories.  It was made by a divided court
dividing differently on the different points.  Judge Douglas does
not discuss the merits of the decision, and in that respect I
shall follow his example, believing I could no more improve on
McLean and Curtis than he could on Taney.

He denounces all who question the correctness of that decision,
as offering violent resistance to it.  But who resists it?  Who
has, in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott free, and
resisted the authority of his master over him?

Judicial decisions have two uses--first, to absolutely determine
the case decided, and secondly, to indicate to the public how
other similar cases will be decided when they arise.  For the
latter use, they are called "precedents" and "authorities."

We believe as much as Judge Douglas (perhaps more) in obedience
to, and respect for, the judicial department of government.  We
think its decisions on constitutional questions, when fully
settled, should control not only the particular cases decided,
but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed
only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that
instrument itself.  More than this would be revolution.  But we
think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous.  We know the court
that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall
do what we can to have it to overrule this.  We offer no
resistance to it.

Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents
according to circumstances.  That this should be so accords both
with common sense and the customary understanding of the legal
profession.

If this important decision had been made by the unanimous
concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan
bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation and with
the steady practice of the departments throughout our history,
and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts which
are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been
before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and
reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps
would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in
it as a precedent.

But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to
the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious,
it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite
established a settled doctrine for the country.  But Judge
Douglas considers this view awful.  Hear him:

"The courts are the tribunals prescribed by the Constitution and
created by the authority of the people to determine, expound, and
enforce the law.  Hence, whoever resists the final decision of
the highest judicial tribunal aims a deadly blow at our whole
republican system of government--a blow which, if successful,
would place all our rights and liberties at the mercy of passion,
anarchy, and violence.  I repeat, therefore, that if resistance
to the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a
matter like the points decided in the Dred Scott case, clearly
within their jurisdiction as defined by the Constitution, shall
be forced upon the country as a political issue, it will become a
distinct and naked issue between the friends and enemies of the
Constitution--the friends and the enemies of the supremacy of the
laws."

Why, this same Supreme Court once decided a national bank to be
constitutional; but General Jackson, as President of the United
States, disregarded the decision, and vetoed a bill for a
recharter, partly on constitutional ground, declaring that each
public functionary must support the Constitution "as he
understands it." But hear the General's own words.  Here they
are, taken from his veto message:

"It is maintained by the advocates of the bank that its
constitutionality, in all its features, ought to be considered as
settled by precedent, and by the decision of the Supreme Court.
To this conclusion I cannot assent.  Mere precedent is a
dangerous source of authority, and should not be regarded as
deciding questions of constitutional power, except where the
acquiescence of the people and the States can be considered as
well settled.  So far from this being the case on this subject,
an argument against the bank might be based on precedent.  One
Congress, in 1791, decided in favor of a bank; another, in 1811,
decided against it.  One Congress, in 1815, decided against a
bank; another, in 1816, decided in its favor.  Prior to the
present Congress, therefore, the precedents drawn from that
course were equal.  If we resort to the States, the expressions
of legislative, judicial, and executive opinions against the bank
have been probably to those in its favor as four to one.  There
is nothing in precedent, therefore, which, if its authority were
admitted, ought to weigh in favor of the act before me."

I drop the quotations merely to remark that all there ever was in
the way of precedent up to the Dred Scott decision, on the points
therein decided, had been against that decision.  But hear
General Jackson further:

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of
this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of
this government.  The Congress, the executive, and the courts
must, each for itself, be guided by its own opinion of the
Constitution.  Each public officer who takes an oath to support
the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands
it, and not as it is understood by others."

Again and again have I heard Judge Douglas denounce that bank
decision and applaud General Jackson for disregarding it.  It
would be interesting for him to look over his recent speech, and
see how exactly his fierce philippics against us for resisting
Supreme Court decisions fall upon his own head.  It will call to
mind a long and fierce political war in this country, upon an
issue which, in his own language, and, of course, in his own
changeless estimation, was a distinct issue between the friends
and the enemies of the Constitution," and in which war he fought
in the ranks of the enemies of the Constitution.

I have said, in substance, that the Dred Scott decision was in
part based on assumed historical facts which were not really
true, and I ought not to leave the subject without giving some
reasons for saying this; I therefore give an instance or two,
which I think fully sustain me.  Chief Justice Taney, in
delivering the opinion of the majority of the court, insists at
great length that negroes were no part of the people who made, or
for whom was made, the Declaration of Independence, or the
Constitution of the United States.

On the contrary, Judge Curtis, in his dissenting opinion, shows
that in five of the then thirteen States--to wit, New Hampshire,
Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina--free
negroes were voters, and in proportion to their numbers had the
same part in making the Constitution that the white people had.
He shows this with so much particularity as to leave no doubt of
its truth; and as a sort of conclusion on that point, holds the
following language:

"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of
the United States, through the action, in each State, of those
persons who were qualified by its laws to act thereon in behalf
of themselves and all other citizens of the State.  In some of
the States, as we have seen, colored persons were among those
qualified by law to act on the subject.  These colored persons
were not only included in the body of 'the people of the United
States' by whom the Constitution was ordained and established;
but in at least five of the States they had the power to act, and
doubtless did act, by their suffrages, upon the question of its
adoption."

Again, Chief Justice Taney says:

"It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public
opinion, in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in
the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time
of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of
the United States was framed and adopted."

And again, after quoting from the Declaration, he says:

"The general words above quoted would seem to include the whole
human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at
this day, would be so understood."

In these the Chief Justice does not directly assert, but plainly
assumes as a fact, that the public estimate of the black man is
more favorable now than it was in the days of the Revolution.
This assumption is a mistake.  In some trifling particulars the
condition of that race has been ameliorated; but as a whole, in
this country, the change between then and now is decidedly the
other way, and their ultimate destiny has never appeared so
hopeless as in the last three or four years.  In two of the five
States--New Jersey and North Carolina--that then gave the free
negro the right of voting, the right has since been taken away,
and in a third--New York--it has been greatly abridged; while it
has not been extended, so far as I know, to a single additional
State, though the number of the States has more than doubled.  In
those days, as I understand, masters could, at their own
pleasure, emancipate their slaves; but since then such legal
restraints have been made upon emancipation as to amount almost
to prohibition.  In those days Legislatures held the unquestioned
power to abolish slavery in their respective States, but now it
is becoming quite fashionable for State constitutions to withhold
that power from the Legislatures.  In those days, by common
consent, the spread of the black man's bondage to the new
countries was prohibited, but now Congress decides that it will
not continue the prohibition, and the Supreme Court decides that
it could not if it would.  In those days our Declaration of
Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all;
but now, to aid in making the bondage of the negro universal and
eternal, it is assailed and sneered at and construed and hawked
at and torn, till, if its framers could rise from
their graves, they could not at all recognize it.  All the powers
of earth seem rapidly combining against him.  Mammon is after
him, ambition follows, philosophy follows, and the theology of
the day fast joining the cry.  They have him in his prison house;
they have searched his person, and left no prying instrument with
him.  One after another they have closed the heavy iron doors
upon him; and now they have him, as it were, bolted in with a
lock of hundred keys, which can never be unlocked without the
concurrence of every key--the keys in the hands of a hundred
different men, and they scattered to hundred different and
distant places; and they stand musing as to what invention, in
all the dominions of mind and matter, can be produced to make the
impossibility of his escape more complete than it is.

It is grossly incorrect to say or assume that the public estimate
of the negro is more favorable now than it was at the origin of
the government.

Three years and a half ago, Judge Douglas brought forward his
famous Nebraska Bill.  The country was at once in a blaze.  He
scorned all opposition, and carried it through Congress.  Since
then he has seen himself superseded in a Presidential nomination
by one indorsing the general doctrine of his measure, but at the
same time standing clear of the odium of its untimely agitation
and its gross breach of national faith; and he has seen that
successful rival constitutionally elected, not by the strength of
friends, but by the division of adversaries, being in a popular
minority of nearly four hundred thousand votes.  He has seen his
chief aids in his own State, Shields and Richardson, politically
speaking, successively tried, convicted, and executed for an
offence not their own but his.  And now he sees his own case
standing next on the docket for trial.

There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white
people at the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white
and black races; and Judge Douglas evidently is basing his chief
hope upon the chances of his being able to appropriate the
benefit of this disgust to himself.  If he can, by much drumming
and repeating, fasten the odium of that idea upon his
adversaries, he thinks he can struggle through the storm.  He
therefore clings to this hope, as a drowning man to the last
plank.  He makes an occasion for lugging it in from the
opposition to the Dred Scott decision.  He finds the Republicans
insisting that the Declaration of Independence includes all men,
black as well as white, and forthwith he boldly denies that it
includes negroes at all, and proceeds to argue gravely that all
who contend it does, do so only because they want to vote, and
eat, and sleep, and marry with negoes.  He will have it that they
cannot be consistent else.  Now I protest against the counterfeit
logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman
for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife.  I need not
have her for either.  I can just leave her alone.  In some
respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right
to eat the bread she earns with her own hands, without asking
leave of any one else, she is my equal and the equal of all
others.

Chief Justice Taney, in his opinion in the Dred Scott case,
admits that the language of the Declaration is broad enough to
include the whole human family, but he and Judge Douglas argue
that the authors of that instrument did not intend to include
negroes, by the fact that they did not at once actually place
them on an equality with the whites.  Now this grave argument
comes to just nothing at all, by the other fact that they did not
at once, or ever afterward, actually place all white people on an
equality with one another.  And this is the staple argument of
both the Chief Justice and the Senator for doing this obvious
violence to the plain, unmistakable language of the Declaration.

I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to
include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal
in all respects.  They did not mean to say all were equal in
color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity.
They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they
did consider all men created equal--equal with "certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant.  They
did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then
actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to
confer it immediately upon them.  In fact, they had no power to
confer such a boon.  They meant simply to declare the right, so
that enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances
should permit.

They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which
should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked
to, constantly labored for, and, even though never perfectly
attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly
spreading and deepening its influence and augmenting the
happiness and value of life to all people of all colors
everywhere.  The assertion that "all men are created equal" was
of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great
Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but
for future use.  Its authors meant it to be--as thank God, it is
now proving itself--stumbling-block to all those who in after
times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful
paths of despotism.  They knew the proneness of prosperity to
breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this
fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for
them at least one hard nut to crack.

I have now briefly expressed my view of the meaning and object of
that part of the Declaration of Independence which declares that
"all men are created equal."

Now let us hear Judge Douglas's view of the same subject, as I
find it in the printed report of his late speech.  Here it is:

"No man can vindicate the character, motives, and conduct of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence, except upon the
hypothesis that they referred to the white race alone, and not to
the African, when they declared all men to have been created
equal; that they were speaking of British subjects on this
continent being equal to British subjects born and residing in
Great Britain; that they were entitled to the same inalienable
rights, and among them were enumerated life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.  The Declaration was adopted for the
purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized
world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and
dissolving their connection with the mother country."

My good friends, read that carefully over some leisure hour, and
ponder well upon it; see what a mere wreck--mangled ruin--it
makes of our once glorious Declaration.

"They were speaking of British subjects on this continent being
equal to British subjects born and residing in Great Britain"!
Why, according to this, not only negroes but white people outside
of Great Britain and America were not spoken of in that
instrument.  The English, Irish, and Scotch, along with white
Americans, were included, to be sure, but the French, Germans,
and other white people of the world are all gone to pot along
with the Judge's inferior races!

I had thought the Declaration promised something better than the
condition of British subjects; but no, it only meant that we
should be equal to them in their own oppressed and unequal
condition.  According to that, it gave no promise that, having
kicked off the king and lords of Great Britain, we should not at
once be saddled with a king and lords of our own.

I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive
improvement in the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it
merely "was adopted for the purpose of justifying the colonists
in the eyes of the civilized world in withdrawing their
allegiance from the British crown, and dissolving their
connection with the mother country." Why, that object having been
effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no
practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on the
battlefield after the victory is won.

I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-
morrow week.  What for?  The doings of that day had no reference
to the present; and quite half of you are not even descendants of
those who were referred to at that day.  But I suppose you will
celebrate, and will even go so far as to read the Declaration.
Suppose, after you read it once in the old-fashioned way, you
read it once more with Judge Douglas's version.  It will then run
thus:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British
subjects who were on this continent eighty-one years ago were
created equal to all British subjects born and then residing in
Great Britain."

And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you
really willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away
?--thus left no more, at most, than an interesting memorial of
the dead past?--thus shorn of its vitality and practical value,
and left without the germ or even the suggestion of the
individual rights of man in it?

But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the
mixing of blood by the white and black races.  Agreed for once--a
thousand times agreed.  There are white men enough to marry all
the white women and black men enough to many all the black women;
and so let them be married.  On this point we fully agree with
the Judge, and when he shall show that his policy is better
adapted to prevent amalgamation than ours, we shall drop ours and
adopt his.  Let us see.  In 1850 there were in the United States
405,751 mulattoes.  Very few of these are the offspring of whites
and free blacks; nearly all have sprung from black slaves and
white masters.  A separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation; but as an immediate separation is
impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they
are not already together.  If white and black people never get
together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas.  That is
at least one self-evident truth.  A few free colored persons may
get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too
insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood.  In
1850 there were in the free States 56,649 mulattoes; but for the
most part they were not born there--they came from the slave
States, ready made up.  In the same year the slave States had
348,874 mulattoes, all of home production.  The proportion of
free mulattoes to free blacks--the only colored classes in the
free States is much greater in the slave than in the free States.
It is worthy of note, too, that among the free States those which
make the colored man the nearest equal to the white have
proportionably the fewest mulattoes, the least of amalgamation.
In New Hampshire, the State which goes farthest toward equality
between the races, there are just 184 mulattoes, while there are
in Virginia--how many do you think?--79,775, being 23,126 more
than in all the free States together.

These statistics show that slavery is the greatest source of
amalgamation, and next to it, not the elevation, but the
degradation of the free blacks.  Yet Judge Douglas dreads the
slightest restraints on the spread of slavery, and the slightest
human recognition of the negro, as tending horribly to
amalgamation!

The very Dred Scott case affords a strong test as to which party
most favors amalgamation, the Republicans or the dear Union-
saving Democracy.  Dred Scott, his wife, and two daughters were
all involved in the suit.  We desired the court to have held that
they were citizens so far at least as to entitle them to a
hearing as to whether they were free or not; and then, also, that
they were in fact and in law really free.  Could we have had our
way, the chances of these black girls ever mixing their blood
with that of white people would have been diminished at least to
the extent that it could not have been without their consent.
But Judge Douglas is delighted to have them decided to be slaves,
and not human enough to have a hearing, even if they were free,
and thus left subject to the forced concubinage of their masters,
and liable to become the mothers of mulattoes in spite of
themselves: the very state of case that produces nine tenths of
all the mulattoes all the mixing of blood in the nation.

Of course, I state this case as an illustration only, not meaning
to say or intimate that the master of Dred Scott and his family,
or any more than a percentage of masters generally, are inclined
to exercise this particular power which they hold over their
female slaves.

I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect
preventive of amalgamation.  I have no right to say all the
members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say
that as a party they are in favor of it.  There is nothing in
their platform directly on the subject.  But I can say a very
large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief
plank in their platform--opposition to the spread of slavery--is
most favorable to that separation.

Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by
colonization; and no political party, as such, is now doing
anything directly for colonization.  Party operations at present
only favor or retard colonization incidentally.  The enterprise
is a difficult one; but "where there is a will there is a way,"
and what colonization needs most is a hearty will.  Will springs
from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest.  Let us
be brought to believe it is morally right, and at the same time
favorable to, or at least not against, our interest to transfer
the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do
it, however great the task may be.  The children of Israel, to
such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men,
went out of Egyptian bondage in a body.

How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and
Republican parties incidentally, bear on the question of forming
a will--a public sentiment--for colonization, is easy to see.
The Republicans inculcate, with whatever of ability they can,
that the negro is a man, that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and
that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged.  The
Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the
wrong of his bondage; so far as possible crush all sympathy for
him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him;
compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the
indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-
government."

The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it
will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to
Liberia, and pay his passage, while they can send him to a new
country--Kansas, for instance--and sell him for fifteen hundred
dollars, and the rise.




TO WILLIAM GRIMES.

SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, August, 1857

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 14th is received, and I am much obliged
for the legal information you give.

You can scarcely be more anxious than I that the next election in
Iowa should result in favor of the Republicans.  I lost nearly
all the working part of last year, giving my time to the canvass;
and I am altogether too poor to lose two years together.  I am
engaged in a suit in the United States Court at Chicago, in which
the Rock Island Bridge Company is a party.  The trial is to
commence on the 8th of September, and probably will last two or
three weeks.  During the trial it is not improbable that all
hands may come over and take a look at the bridge, and, if it
were possible to make it hit right, I could then speak at
Davenport.  My courts go right on without cessation till late in
November.  Write me again, pointing out the more striking points
of difference between your old and new constitutions, and also
whether Democratic and Republican party lines were drawn in the
adoption of it, and which were for and which were against it.
If, by possibility, I could get over among you it might be of
some advantage to know these things in advance.

Yours very truly,

A. LINCOLN.




ARGUMENT IN THE ROCK ISLAND BRIDGE CASE.

(From the Daily Press of Chicago, Sept.  24, 1857.)

Hurd et al. vs Railroad Bridge Co.

United States Circuit Court,
Hon. John McLean, Presiding Judge.

13th day, Tuesday, Sept.  22, 1857.

Mr. A. Lincoln addressed the jury.  He said he did not purpose to
assail anybody, that he expected to grow earnest as he proceeded
but not ill-natured.  "There is some conflict of testimony in the
case," he said, "but one quarter of such a number of witnesses
seldom agree, and even if all were on one side some discrepancy
might be expected.  We are to try and reconcile them, and to
believe that they are not intentionally erroneous as long as we
can."  He had no prejudice, he said, against steamboats or
steamboat men nor any against St. Louis, for he supposed they
went about this matter as other people would do in their
situation.  "St. Louis," he continued, "as a commercial place may
desire that this bridge should not stand, as it is adverse to her
commerce, diverting a portion of it from the river; and it may be
that she supposes that the additional cost of railroad
transportation upon the productions of Iowa will force them to go
to St. Louis if this bridge is removed.  The meetings in St.
Louis are connected with this case only as some witnesses are in
it, and thus has some prejudice added color to their testimony."
The last thing that would be pleasing to him, Mr. Lincoln said,
would be to have one of these great channels, extending almost
from where it never freezes to where it never thaws, blocked up,
but there is a travel from east to west whose demands are not
less important than those of the river.  It is growing larger and
larger, building up new countries with a rapidity never before
seen in the history of the world.  He alluded to the astonishing
growth of Illinois, having grown within his memory to a
population of a million and a half; to Iowa and the other young
rising communities of the Northwest.

"This current of travel," said he, "has its rights as well as
that of north and south.  If the river had not the advantage in
priority and legislation we could enter into free competition
with it and we could surpass it.  This particular railroad line
has a great importance and the statement of its business during a
little less than a year shows this importance.  It is in evidence
that from September 8, 1856, to August 8, 1857, 12,586 freight
cars and 74,179 passengers passed over this bridge.  Navigation
was closed four days short of four months last year, and during
this time while the river was of no use this road and bridge were
valuable.  There is, too, a considerable portion of time when
floating or thin ice makes the river useless while the bridge is
as useful as ever.  This shows that this bridge must be treated
with respect in this court and is not to be kicked about with
contempt.  The other day Judge Wead alluded to the strike of the
contending interest and even a dissolution of the Union.  The
proper mode for all parties in this affair is to 'live and let
live,' and then we will find a cessation of this trouble about
the bridge.  What mood were the steamboat men in when this bridge
was burned?  Why, there was a shouting and ringing of bells and
whistling on all the boats as it fell.  It was a jubilee, a
greater celebration than follows an excited election.  The first
thing I will proceed to is the record of Mr. Gurney and the
complaint of Judge Wead that the record did not extend back over
all the time from the completion of the bridge.  The principal
part of the navigation after the bridge was burned passed through
the span.  When the bridge was repaired and the boats were a
second time confined to the draw it was provided that this record
should be kept.  That is the simple history of that book.

"From April 19th, 1856, to May 6th--seventeen days--there were
twenty accidents and all the time since then there have been but
twenty hits, including seven accidents, so that the dangers of
this place are tapering off and as the boatmen get cool the
accidents get less.  We may soon expect if this ratio is kept up
that there will be no accidents at all.

"Judge Wead said, while admitting that the floats went straight
through, there was a difference between a float and a boat, but I
do not remember that he indulged us with an argument in support
of this statement.  Is it because there is a difference in size?
Will not a small body and a large one float the same way under
the same influence?  True a flatboat will float faster than an
egg shell and the egg shell might be blown away by the wind, but
if under the same influence they would go the same way.  Logs,
floats, boards, various things the witnesses say all show the
same current.  Then is not this test reliable?  At all depths too
the direction of the current is the same.  A series of these
floats would make a line as long as a boat and would show any
influence upon any part and all parts of the boat.

"I will now speak of the angular position of the piers.  What is
the amount of the angle?  The course of the river is a curve and
the pier is straight.  If a line is produced from the upper end
of the long pier straight with the pier to a distance of 350
feet, and a line is drawn from a point in the channel opposite
this point to the head of the pier, Colonel Nason says they will
form an angle of twenty degrees.  But the angle if measured at
the pier is seven degrees; that is, we would have to move the
pier seven degrees to make it exactly straight with the current.
Would that make the navigation better or worse?  The witnesses of
the plaintiff seem to think it was only necessary to say that the
pier formed an angle with the current and that settled the
matter.  Our more careful and accurate witnesses say that, though
they had been accustomed to seeing the piers placed straight with
the current, yet they could see that here the current had been
made straight by us in having made this slight angle; that the
water now runs just right, that it is straight and cannot be
improved.  They think that if the pier was changed the eddy would
be divided and the navigation improved.

"I am not now going to discuss the question what is a material
obstruction.  We do not greatly differ about the law.  The cases
produced here are, I suppose, proper to be taken into
consideration by the court in instructing a jury.  Some of them I
think are not exactly in point, but I am still willing to trust
his honor, Judge McLean, and take his instructions as law.  What
is reasonable skill and care?  This is a thing of which the jury
are to judge.  I differ from the other side when it says that
they are bound to exercise no more care than was taken before the
building of the bridge.  If we are allowed by the Legislature to
build the bridge which will require them to do more than before,
when a pilot comes along, it is unreasonable for him to dash on
heedless of this structure which has been legally put there.  The
Afton came there on the 5th and lay at Rock Island until next
morning.  When a boat lies up the pilot has a holiday, and would
not any of these jurors have then gone around to the bridge and
gotten acquainted with the place?  Pilot Parker has shown here
that he does not understand the draw.  I heard him say that the
fall from the head to the foot of the pier was four feet; he
needs information.  He could have gone there that day and seen
there was no such fall.  He should have discarded passion and the
chances are that he would have had no disaster at all.  He was
bound to make himself acquainted with the place.

"McCammon says that the current and the swell coming from the
long pier drove her against the long pier.  In other words drove
her toward the very pier from which the current came!  It is an
absurdity, an impossibility.  The only recollection I can find
for this contradiction is in a current which White says strikes
out from the long pier and then like a ram's horn turns back, and
this might have acted somehow in this manner.

"It is agreed by all that the plaintiff's boat was destroyed and
that it was destroyed upon the head of the short pier; that she
moved from the channel where she was with her bow above the head
of the long pier, till she struck the short one, swung around
under the bridge and there was crowded and destroyed.

"I shall try to prove that the average velocity of the current
through the draw with the boat in it should be five and a half
miles an hour; that it is slowest at the head of the pier and
swiftest at the foot of the pier.  Their lowest estimate in
evidence is six miles an hour, their highest twelve miles.  This
was the testimony of men who had made no experiment, only
conjecture.  We have adopted the most exact means.  The water
runs swiftest in high water and we have taken the point of nine
feet above low water.  The water when the Afton was lost was
seven feet above low water, or at least a foot lower than our
time.  Brayton and his assistants timed the instruments, the best
instruments known in measuring currents.  They timed them under
various circumstances and they found the current five miles an
hour and no more.  They found that the water at the upper end ran
slower than five miles; that below it was swifter than five
miles, but that the average was five miles.  Shall men who have
taken no care, who conjecture, some of whom speak of twenty miles
an hour, be believed against those who have had such a favorable.
and well improved opportunity?  They should not even qualify the
result.  Several men have given their opinion as to the distance
of the steamboat Carson, and I suppose if one should go and
measure that distance you would believe him in preference to all
of them.

"These measurements were made when the boat was not in the draw.
It has been ascertained what is the area of the cross section of
this stream and the area of the face of the piers, and the
engineers say that the piers being put there will increase the
current proportionally as the space is decreased.  So with the
boat in the draw.  The depth of the channel was twenty-two feet,
the width one hundred and sixteen feet; multiply these and you
have the square-feet across the water of the draw, viz.: 2552
feet.  The Afton was 35 feet wide and drew 5 feet, making a
fourteenth of the sum.  Now, one-fourteenth of five miles is
five-fourteenths of one mile--about ,one third of a mile--the
increase of the current.  We will call the current five and a
half miles per hour.  The next thing I will try to prove is that
the plaintiff's (?) boat had power to run six miles an hour in
that current.  It had been testified that she was a strong, swift
boat, able to run eight miles an hour up stream in a current of
four miles an hour, and fifteen miles down stream.  Strike the
average and you will find what is her average--about eleven and a
half miles.  Take the five and a half miles which is the speed of
the current in the draw and it leaves the power of that boat in
that draw at six miles an hour, 528 feet per minute and 8 4/5
feet to the second.

" Next I propose to show that there are no cross currents.  I
know their witnesses say that there are cross currents--that, as
one witness says, there were three cross currents and two eddies;
so far as mere statement, without experiment, and mingled with
mistakes, can go, they have proved.  But can these men's
testimony be compared with the nice, exact, thorough experiments
of our witnesses?  Can you believe that these floats go across
the currents?  It is inconceivable that they could not have
discovered every possible current.  How do boats find currents
that floats cannot discover?  We assume the position then that
those cross currents are not there.  My next proposition is that
the Afton passed between the S. B. Carson and the Iowa shore.
That is undisputed.

"Next I shall show that she struck first the short pier, then the
long pier, then the short one again and there she stopped."
Mr. Lincoln then cited the testimony of eighteen witnesses on
this point.

"How did the boat strike when she went in?  Here is an endless
variety of opinion.  But ten of them say what pier she struck;
three of them testify that she struck first the short, then the
long and then the short for the last time.  None of the rest
substantially contradict this.  I assume that these men have got
the truth because I believe it an established fact.  My next
proposition is that after she struck the short and long pier and
before she got back to the short pier the boat got right with her
bow up.  So says the pilot Parker--that he got her through until
her starboard wheel passed the short pier.  This would make her
head about even with the head of the long pier.  He says her head
was as high or higher than the head of the long pier.  Other
witnesses confirmed this one.  The final stroke was in the splash
door aft the wheel.  Witnesses differ, but the majority say that
she struck thus."

Court adjourned.

14th day, Wednesday, Sept.  23, 1857.

Mr. A. LINCOLN resumed.  He said he should conclude as soon as
possible.  He said the colored map of the plaintiff which was
brought in during one stage of the trial showed itself that the
cross currents alleged did not exist.  That the current as
represented would drive an ascending boat to the long pier but
not to the short pier, as they urge.  He explained from a model
of a boat where the splash door is, just behind the wheel.  The
boat struck on the lower shoulder of the short pier as she swung
around in the splash door; then as she went on around she struck
the point or end of the pier, where she rested.  "Her engineers,"
said Mr. Lincoln, "say the starboard wheel then was rushing
around rapidly.  Then the boat must have struck the upper point
of the pier so far back as not to disturb the wheel.  It is forty
feet from the stern of the Afton to the splash door, and thus it
appears that she had but forty feet to go to clear the pier.  How
was it that the Afton with all her power flanked over from the
channel to the short pier without moving one foot ahead?  Suppose
she was in the middle of the draw, her wheel would have been 31
feet from the short pier.  The reason she went over thus is her
starboard wheel was not working.  I shall try to establish the
fact that the wheel was not running and that after she struck she
went ahead strong on this same wheel.  Upon the last point the
witnesses agree, that the starboard wheel was running after she
struck, and no witnesses say that it was running while she was
out in the draw flanking over."

Mr. Lincoln read from the testimonies of various witnesses to
prove that the starboard wheel was not working while the Afton
was out in the stream.

"Other witnesses show that the captain said something of the
machinery of the wheel, and the inference is that he knew the
wheel was not working.  The fact is undisputed that she did not
move one inch ahead while she was moving this 31 feet sideways.
There is evidence proving that the current there is only five
miles an hour, and the only explanation is that her power was not
all used--that only one wheel was working.  The pilot says he
ordered the engineers to back her up.  The engineers differ from
him and said they kept on going ahead.  The bow was so swung that
the current pressed it over; the pilot pressed the stern over
with the rudder, though not so fast but that the bow gained on
it, and only one wheel being in motion the boat nearly stood
still so far as motion up and down is concerned, and thus she was
thrown upon this pier.  The Afton came into the draw after she
had just passed the Carson, and as the Carson no doubt kept the
true course the Afton going around her got out of the proper way,
got across the current into the eddy which is west of a straight
line drawn down from the long pier, was compelled to resort to
these changes of wheels, which she did not do with sufficient
adroitness to save her.  Was it not her own fault that she
entered wrong, so far wrong that she never got right?  Is the
defence to blame for that?

"For several days we were entertained with depositions about
boats 'smelling a bar.'  Why did the Afton then, after she had
come up smelling so close to the long pier sheer off so
strangely.  When she got to the centre of the very nose she was
smelling she seemed suddenly to have lost her sense of smell and
to have flanked over to the short pier."

Mr. Lincoln said there was no practicability in the project of
building a tunnel under the river, for there "is not a tunnel
that is a successful project in this world.  A suspension bridge
cannot be built so high but that the chimneys of the boats will
grow up till they cannot pass.  The steamboat men will take pains
to make them grow.  The cars of a railroad cannot without immense
expense rise high enough to get even with a suspension bridge or
go low enough to get through a tunnel; such expense is
unreasonable.

"The plaintiffs have to establish that the bridge is a material
obstruction and that they have managed their boat with reasonable
care and skill.  As to the last point high winds have nothing to
do with it, for it was not a windy day.  They must show due skill
and care.  Difficulties going down stream will not do, for they
were going up stream.  Difficulties with barges in tow have
nothing to do with the accident, for they had no barge.  "Mr.
Lincoln said he had much more to say, many things he could
suggest to the jury, but he wished to close to save time.




TO JESSE K.  DUBOIS.

DEAR DUBOIS:

BLOOMINGTON, Dec. 19, 1857.

J. M. Douglas of the I. C. R. R. Co. is here and will carry this
letter.  He says they have a large sum (near $90,000) which they
will pay into the treasury now, if they have an assurance that
they shall not be sued before Jan., 1859--otherwise not.
I really wish you could consent to this.  Douglas says they
cannot pay more, and I believe him.

I do not write this as a lawyer seeking an advantage for a
client; but only as a friend, only urging you to do what I think
I would do if I were in your situation.  I mean this as private
and confidential only, but I feel a good deal of anxiety about
it.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO JOSEPH GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Jan. 19, 1858.

MY DEAR SIR:
This morning Col. McClernand showed me a petition for a mandamus
against the Secretary of State to compel him to certify the
apportionment act of last session; and he says it will be
presented to the court to-morrow morning.  We shall be allowed
three or four days to get up a return, and I, for one, want the
benefit of consultation with you.

Please come right up.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO J.  GILLESPIE.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb 7, 1858

MY DEAR SIR:
Yesterday morning the court overruled the demurrer to Hatches
return in the mandamus case. McClernand was present; said nothing
about pleading over; and so I suppose the matter is ended.

The court gave no reason for the decision; but Peck tells me
confidentially that they were unanimous in the opinion that even
if the Gov'r had signed the bill purposely, he had the right to
scratch his name off so long as the bill remained in his custody
and control.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




TO H. C. WHITNEY.

SPRINGFIELD, December 18, 1857.

HENRY C. WHITNEY, ESQ.

MY DEAR SIR:--Coming home from Bloomington last night I found
your letter of the 15th.

I know of no express statute or decisions as to what a J.  P.
upon the expiration of his term shall do with his docket books,
papers, unfinished business, etc., but so far as I know, the
practice has been to hand over to the successor, and to cease to
do anything further whatever, in perfect analogo to Sections 110
and 112, and I have supposed and do suppose this is the law.  I
think the successor may forthwith do whatever the retiring J.  P.
might have done.  As to the proviso to Section 114 I think it was
put in to cover possible cases, by way of caution, and not to
authorize the J.  P.  to go forward and finish up whatever might
have been begun by him.

The view I take, I believe, is the Common law principle, as to
retiring officers and their successors, to which I remember but
one exception, which is the case of Sheriff and ministerial
officers of that class.

I have not had time to examine this subject fully, but I have
great confidence I am right.  You must not think of offering me
pay for this.

Mr. John O. Johnson is my friend; I gave your name to him.  He is
doing the work of trying to get up a Republican organization.  I
do not suppose "Long John" ever saw or heard of him.  Let me say
to you confidentially, that I do not entirely appreciate what the
Republican papers of Chicago are so constantly saying against
"Long John." I consider those papers truly devoted to the
Republican cause, and not unfriendly to me; but I do think that
more of what they say against "Long John" is dictated by personal
malice than themselves are conscious of.  We can not afford to
lose the services of "Long John" and I do believe the unrelenting
warfare made upon him is injuring our cause.  I mean this to be
confidential.

If you quietly co-operate with Mr. J.  O.  Johnson on getting up
an organization, I think it will be right.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




1858



ANOTHER POLITICAL PATRONAGE REFERENCE

TO EDWARD G. MINER.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb.19, 1858.

MY DEAR SIR:

Mr, G. A. Sutton is an applicant for superintendent of the
addition of the Insane Asylum, and I understand it partly depends
on you whether he gets it.

Sutton is my fellow-townsman and friend, and I therefore wish to
say for him that he is a man of sterling integrity and as a
master mechanic and builder not surpassed by any in our city, or
any I have known anywhere, as far as I can judge.  I hope you
will consider me as being really interested for Mr. Sutton and
not as writing merely to relieve myself of importunity.  Please
show this to Col. William Ross and let him consider it as much
intended for him as for yourself.

Your friend as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

TO W. H. LAMON, ESQ.

SPRINGFIELD, JUNE 11, 1858

DEAR SIR:--Yours of the 9th written at Joliet is just received.
Two or three days ago I learned that McLean had appointed
delegates in favor of Lovejoy, and thenceforward I have
considered his renomination a fixed fact.  My opinion--if my
opinion is of any consequence in this case, in which it is no
business of mine to interfere--remains unchanged, that running an
independent candidate against Lovejoy will not do; that it will
result in nothing but disaster all round.  In the first place,
whosoever so runs will be beaten and will be spotted for life; in
the second place, while the race is in progress, he will be under
the strongest temptation to trade with the Democrats, and to
favor the election of certain of their friends to the
Legislature; thirdly, I shall be held responsible for it, and
Republican members of the Legislature who are partial to Lovejoy
will for that purpose oppose  us; and lastly, it will in the end
lose us the district altogether.  There is no safe way but a
convention; and if in that convention, upon a common platform
which all are willing to stand upon, one who has been known as an
abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground,
can get the majority of the votes to which all look for an
election, there is no safe way but to submit.

As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that
is one of the chances I have to run, and which I intend to run
with patience.

I write in the court room.  Court has opened, and I must close.

Yours as ever,

A. LINCOLN.




BRIEF AUTOBIOGRAPHY,

JUNE 15, 1858.


The compiler of the Dictionary of Congress states that while
preparing that work for publication, in 1858, he sent to Mr.
Lincoln the usual request for a sketch of his life, and received
the following reply:

Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky.
Education, defective.
Profession, a lawyer.
Have been a captain of volunteers in Black Hawk war.
Postmaster at a very small office.
Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature and was a member
of the lower house of Congress.

Yours, etc.,

A. LINCOLN.