The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (53 page)

Springfield, February 9, 1855

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: The agony is over at last, and the result you doubtless know. I write this only to give you some particulars to explain what might appear difficult of understanding. 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. In this way he got from four to six of that sort of men to really prefer his election to that of any other man—all
sub rosa
, of course. One notable instance of this sort was with Mr. Strunk of Kankakee. At the beginning of the session he came a volunteer to tell me he was for me and would walk a hundred miles to elect me; but lo! it was not long before he leaked it out that he was going for me the first few ballots and then for Governor Matteson.

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. In the mean time Osgood, Don Morrison, and Trapp of St. Clair had openly gone over from us. With the united Nebraska force and their recruits, open and covert, it gave Matteson more than enough to elect him. We saw into it plainly ten days ago, but with every possible effort could not head it off. All that remained of the Anti-Nebraska force, excepting Judd, Cook, Palmer, Baker and Allen of Madison, and two or three of the secret Matteson men, would go into caucus, and I could get the nomination of that caucus. But the three senators and one of the two representatives above named “could never vote for a Whig,” and this incensed some twenty Whigs to “think” they would never vote for the man of the five. So we stood, and so we went into the fight yesterday—the Nebraska men 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, my old friend Strunk going with them, giving him 44 votes.

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 mean time 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; though Judge Davis, who came down this morning, declares he never would have consented to the forty-seven men being controlled by the five. I regret my defeat moderately, but I am not nervous about it. 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. I tell them it is their own fault—that they had abundant opportunity to choose between him and me, which they declined, and instead forced it on me to decide between him and Matteson.

Owen Lovejoy was an outspoken abolitionist, brother of the Elijah Lovejoy who had been murdered by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, in 1837. The Know-Nothing party was the one-hundred-percent American party of the day, viciously opposed to all foreigners and Catholics. It had been attacked not only by Lincoln but also by Douglas. Many of the men in the Know-Nothing party were opposed to slavery, but an alliance with them would be embarrassing for a man like Lincoln who believed in liberal principles.

Springfield, August 11, 1855

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: Yours of the 7th. was received the day before yesterday. Not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I. And yet the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do anything, lest I do wrong. Know-Nothingism has not yet entirely tumbled to pieces. Nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. Until we can get the elements of this organization there is not sufficient material to successfully combat the Nebraska democracy with. We cannot get them so long as they cling to a hope of success under their own organization; and I fear an open push by us now may offend them and tend to prevent our ever getting them. About us here, they are mostly my old political and personal friends, and I have hoped this organization would die out without the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them. Of their principles I think little better than I do of those of the slavery extensionists. Indeed I do not perceive how any one professing to be sensitive to the wrongs of the Negro, can join in a league to degrade a class of white men.
I have no objection to “fuse” with any body provided I can fuse on grounds which I think right. And I believe the opponents of slavery extension could now do this if it were not for the K.N.ism. In many speeches last summer I advised those who did me the honor of a hearing to “stand with” any body who stands right, and I am still quite willing to follow my own advice. I lately saw in the Quincy Whig the report of a preamble and resolution made by Mr. Williams, as chairman of a committee, to a public meeting and adopted by the meeting. I saw them but once, and have them not now at command, but so far as I can remember them they occupy the ground I should be willing to “fuse” upon. As to my personal movements this summer and fall, I am quite busy trying to pick up my lost crumbs of last year. I shall be here till September; then with Circuit till the 20th, then to Cincinnati awhile, after a Patent Right case, and back to the Circuit to the end of November. I can be seen here any time this month and at Bloomington at any time from the 10th. to the 17th. of September. As to an extra session of the Legislature, I should know no better how to bring that about than to lift myself over a fence by the straps of my boots.

Robertson was an elderly Kentuckian who had been in Congress during the passage of the Missouri Compromise in 1820. He was an author and a professor of law. The book to which Lincoln refers was probably an advance copy of Robertson’s
Scrapbook on Law, Politics, Men and Times.
Lincoln writes to him to expound his views on the possibilities of emancipation being accomplished in a peaceful manner—possibilities about which he has by this time become very pessimistic. The last paragraph of this letter foreshadows the famous phrase which Lincoln was to develop in his “House Divided” speech on June 16, 1858.

Springfield, Illinois, August 15, 1855

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: The volume you left for me has been received. I am really grateful for the honor of your kind remembrance, as well as for the book. The partial reading I have already given it has afforded me much of both pleasure and instruction. It was new to me that the exact question which led to the Missouri Compromise had arisen before it arose in regard to Missouri, and that you had taken so prominent a part in it. Your short but able and patriotic speech upon that occasion has not been improved upon since by those holding the same views, and, with all the lights you then had, the views you took appear to me as very reasonable.

You are not a friend to slavery in the abstract. In that speech you spoke of “the peaceful extinction of slavery,” and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was at some time to have an end. Since then we have had thirty-six years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us. The signal failure of Henry Clay and other good and great men, in 1849, to effect anything in favor of gradual emancipation in Kentucky, together with a thousand other signs, extinguished that hope utterly. On the question of liberty as a principle, we are not what we have been. When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that “all men are created equal” a self-evident truth, but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim “a self-evident lie.” The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day—for burning fire-crackers!!!

That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and the men of the Revolution. Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the States adopted systems of emancipation at once, and it is a significant fact that not a single State has done the like
since. So far as peaceful voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the Negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of a free mind, is now as fixed and hopeless of change for the better, as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves.

Our political problem now is, “Can we as a nation continue together permanently—forever—half slave and half free?” The problem is too mighty for me—may God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.

Lincoln’s correspondence with Speed had been long suspended; actually it was dying of inanition, and this letter was to be the last confidential message written to the man who had been Lincoln’s confidant since 1837. Speed was theoretically opposed to slavery, but he was a Southerner, affected by the prevailing attitude of the South which had become increasingly bitter toward the anti-slavery agitation which was rising constantly in the North. Lincoln writes to state his own position on the matter; he recalls the shackled slaves he had seen with Speed on their journey from Kentucky to Springfield in 1841. “I bite my lips and keep quiet,” he says. Lincoln claims still to be a Whig; he is silent on the charge that he is an abolitionist (which he certainly was not); but he vehemently disavows any connection with the Know-Nothings who were particularly offensive to him. The statement he makes in the next-to-the-last paragraph of this letter has often been quoted.

Springfield, August 24, 1855

D
EAR
S
PEED
: 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.