[Sidenote] Lincoln to Asbury, July 31, 1858.

Lincoln clearly enough comprehended the dilemma and predicted the expedient of his antagonist. He had framed his questions and submitted them to a consultation of shrewd party friends. This one especially was the subject of anxious deliberation and serious disagreement. Nearly a month before, Lincoln in a private letter accurately foreshadowed Douglas's course on this question. "You shall have hard work to get him directly to the point whether a Territorial Legislature has or has not the power to exclude slavery. But if you succeed in bringing him to it—though he will be compelled to say it possesses no such power—he will instantly take ground that slavery cannot actually exist in the Territories unless the people desire it, and so give it protection by Territorial legislation. If this offends the South, he will let it offend them, as at all events he means to hold on to his chances in Illinois." There is a tradition that on the night preceding this Freeport debate Lincoln was catching a few hours' rest, at a railroad center named Mendota, to which place the converging trains brought after midnight a number of excited Republican leaders, on their way to attend the great meeting at the neighboring town of Freeport. Notwithstanding the late hour, Mr. Lincoln's bedroom was invaded by an improvised caucus, and the ominous question was once more brought under consideration. The whole drift of advice ran against putting the interrogatory to Douglas; but Lincoln persisted in his determination to force him to answer it. Finally his friends in a chorus cried out, "If you do, you can never be Senator." "Gentlemen," replied Lincoln, "I am killing larger game; if Douglas answers, he can never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."

When Lincoln had finished his opening speech in the Freeport debate, and Douglas in his reply came to interrogatory number two, which Lincoln had propounded, he answered as follows:

[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 95.

The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lincoln is, Can the people of a Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution? I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had answered that question over and over again. He heard me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over the State in 1854, in 1855, and in 1856, and he has no excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position on that question. It matters not what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is supported by local police regulations. Those police regulations can only be established by the local Legislature, and if the people are opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislation effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave Territory or a free Territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point.



The remarkable theory here proposed was immediately taken up and exhaustively discussed by the leading newspapers in all parts of the Union, and thereby became definitely known under the terms "unfriendly legislation" and "Freeport doctrine." Mr. Lincoln effectually disposed of it in the following fashion in the joint debate at Alton:

[Sidenote] Lincoln-Douglas Debates, pp. 234-5.

I understand I have ten minutes yet. I will employ it in saying something about this argument Judge Douglas uses, while he sustains the Dred Scott decision, that the people of the Territories can still somehow exclude slavery. The first thing I ask attention to is the fact that Judge Douglas constantly said, before the decision, that whether they could or not, was a question for the Supreme Court. But after the court has made the decision he virtually says it is not a question for the Supreme Court, but for the people. And how is it he tells us they can exclude it? He said it needs "police regulations," and that admits of "unfriendly legislation." Although it is a right established by the Constitution of the United States to take a slave into a Territory of the United States and hold him as property, yet unless the Territorial Legislature will give friendly legislation, and, more especially, if they adopt unfriendly legislation, they can practically exclude him. Now, without meeting this proposition as a matter of fact, I pass to consider the real constitutional obligation. Let me take the gentleman who looks me in the face before me, and let us suppose that he is a member of the Territorial Legislature. The first thing he will do will be to swear that he will support the Constitution of the United States. His neighbor by his side in the Territory has slaves and needs Territorial legislation to enable him to enjoy that constitutional right. Can he withhold the legislation which his neighbor needs for the enjoyment of a right which is fixed in his favor in the Constitution of the United States, which he has sworn to support? Can he withhold it without violating his oath? and more especially, can he pass unfriendly legislation to violate his oath? Why this is a monstrous sort of talk about the Constitution of the United States! There has never been as outlandish or lawless a doctrine from the mouth of any respectable man on earth. I do not believe it is a constitutional right to hold slaves in a Territory of the United States. I believe the decision was improperly made, and I go for reversing it. Judge Douglas is furious against those who go for reversing a decision. But he is for legislating it out of all force, while the law itself stands. I repeat that there has never been so monstrous a doctrine uttered from the mouth of a respectable man.

The announcement and subsequent defense by Douglas of his "Freeport doctrine" proved, as Lincoln had predicted, something more important than a mere campaign incident. It was the turning-point in Douglas's political fortunes. With the whole South, and with a few prominent politicians of the North, it served to put him outside the pale of party fellowship. Compared with this his Lecompton revolt had been a venial offense. In that case he had merely contended for the machinery of a fair popular vote. This was the avowal of a principle as obnoxious to the slavery propaganda as the unqualified abolitionism of Giddings and Lovejoy. Henceforth all hope of reconciliation, atonement, or chance of Presidential nomination by the united Democratic party was out of the question. Before this, newspaper zealots had indeed denounced him for his Lecompton recusancy as a traitor and renegade, and the Administration had endeavored to secure his defeat; now, however, in addition, the party high-priests put him under solemn ban of excommunication. How they felt and from what motives they acted is stated with singular force and frankness in a Senate speech, soon after the Charleston Convention, by Senator Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, one of the ablest and most persistent of the conspirators to nationalize slavery, and who, not long after, was one of the principal actors in the great rebellion:

Up to the years 1857 and 1858 no man in this nation had a higher or more exalted opinion of the character, the services, and the political integrity of the Senator from Illinois [Douglas] than I had.... Sir, it has been with reluctance and sorrow that I have been obliged to pluck down my idol from his place on high, and to refuse to him any more support or confidence as a member of the party. I have done so, I trust, upon no light or unworthy ground. I have not done so alone. The causes that have operated on me have operated on the Democratic party of the United States, and have operated an effect which the whole future life of the Senator will be utterly unable to obliterate. It is impossible that confidence thus lost can be restored. On what ground has that confidence been forfeited, and why is it that we now refuse him our support and fellowship? I have stated our reasons to-day. I have appealed to the record. I have not followed him back in the false issue or the feigned traverse that he makes in relation to matters that are not now in contest between him and the Democratic party. The question is not what we all said or believed in 1850 or in 1856. How idle was it to search ancient precedents and accumulate old quotations from what Senators may have at different times said in relation to their principles and views. The precise point, the direct arraignment, the plain and explicit allegation made against the Senator from Illinois is not touched by him in all of his speech.

[Sidenote] Benjamin, Senate Speech, May 22, 1860. Pamphlet.

We accuse him for this, to wit: that having bargained with us upon a point upon which we were at issue, that it should be considered a judicial point; that he would abide the decision; that he would act under the decision, and consider it a doctrine of the party; that having said that to us here in the Senate, he went home, and under the stress of a local election, his knees gave way; his whole person trembled. His adversary stood upon principle and was beaten; and lo! he is the candidate of a mighty party for the Presidency of the United States. The Senator from Illinois faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered; but lo! the grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because of his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost him the loss of the Presidency of the United States.

[Sidenote] 1858.

The Senatorial canvass in Illinois came to a close with the election on the 2d of November and resulted in a victory for Douglas. The Republicans, on their State ticket, polled 125,430 votes; the Douglas Democrats, 121,609; the Buchanan Democrats, 5071. By this plurality the Republican State officers were chosen. But in respect to members of the Legislature the case stood differently, and when in the following January the Senatorial election took place in joint session of the two Houses, Douglas received the vote of every Democrat, 54 members, and Lincoln the vote of every Republican, 46 members, whereupon Douglas was declared elected Senator of the United States for six years from the 4th of March, 1859.

The main cause of Lincoln's defeat was the unfairness of the existing apportionment, which was based upon the census of 1850. A fair apportionment, based on the changes of population which had occurred, would have given northern Illinois a larger representation; and it was there the Republicans had recruited their principal strength in the recent transformation of parties. The Republicans estimated that this circumstance caused them a loss of six to ten members.

[Sidenote] Lincoln, Cincinnati Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates, p. 263.

But the unusual political combinations also had a large influence on the result. Lincoln, in an Ohio speech made in the following year, addressing himself to Kentuckians, thus summarized the political forces that contributed to his defeat: "Douglas had three or four very distinguished men of the most extreme anti-slavery views of any men in the Republican party expressing their desire for his reelection to the Senate last year. That would of itself have seemed to be a little wonderful, but that wonder is heightened when we see that Wise, of Virginia, a man exactly opposed to them, a man who believes in the divine right of slavery, was also expressing his desire that Douglas should be reelected; that another man that may be said to be kindred to Wise, Mr. Breckinridge, the Vice-President, and of your own State, was also agreeing with the anti-slavery men in the North, that Douglas ought to be reelected. Still to heighten the wonder, a Senator from Kentucky, whom I have always loved with an affection as tender and endearing as I have ever loved any man, who was opposed to the anti-slavery men for reasons which seemed sufficient to him and equally opposed to Wise and Breckinridge, was writing letters to Illinois to secure the reelection of Douglas. Now that all these conflicting elements should be brought, while at daggers' points with one another, to support him, is a feat that is worthy for you to note and consider. It is quite probable that each of these classes of men thought, by the reelection of Douglas, their peculiar views would gain something; it is probable that the anti-slavery men thought their views would gain something; that Wise and Breckinridge thought so too, as regards their opinions; that Mr. Crittenden thought that his views would gain something although he was opposed to both these other men. It is probable that each and all of them thought they were using Douglas, and it is yet an unsolved problem whether he was not using them all."

After a hundred consecutive days of excitement, of intense mental strain, and of unremitting bodily exertion, after speech-making and parades, music and bonfires, it must be something of a trial to face at once the mortification of defeat, the weariness of intellectual and physical reaction, and the dull commonplace of daily routine. Letters written at this period show that under these conditions Mr. Lincoln remained composed, patient, and hopeful. Two weeks after election he wrote thus to Mr. Judd, a member of the Legislature and Chairman of the Republican State Central Committee: "I have the pleasure to inform you that I am convalescing and hoping these lines may find you in the same improving state of health. Doubtless you have suspected for some time that I entertain a personal wish for a term in the United States Senate; and had the suspicion taken the shape of the direct charge I think I could not have truthfully denied it. But let the past as nothing be. For the future my view is that the fight must go on. The returns here are not yet complete, but it is believed that Dougherty's vote will be slightly greater than Miller's majority over Fondey. We have some 120,000 clear Republican votes. That pile is worth keeping together. It will elect a State ticket two years hence."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Judd, Nov. 15, 1858.

"In that day I shall fight in the ranks, but shall be in no one's way for any of the places. I am especially for Trumbull's reelection; and, by the way, this brings me to the principal object of this letter. Can you not take your draft of an apportionment bill and carefully revise it till it shall be strictly and obviously just in all particulars, and then by an early and persistent effort get enough of the enemies' men to enable you to pass it? I believe if you and Peck make a job of it, begin early and work earnestly and quietly, you can succeed in it. Unless something be done, Trumbull is inevitably beaten two years hence. Take this into serious consideration."

[Sidenote] Ibid., Nov. 16, 1858.

On the following day he received from Mr. Judd a letter informing him that the funds subscribed for the State Central Committee did not suffice to pay all the election bills, and asking his help to raise additional contributions. To this appeal Lincoln replied: "Yours of the 15th is just received. I wrote you the same day. As to the pecuniary matter, I am willing to pay according to my ability, but I am the poorest hand living to get others to pay. I have been on expenses so long without earning anything that I am absolutely without money now for even household purposes. Still, if you can put in $250 for me towards discharging the debt of the committee, I will allow it when you and I settle the private matter between us. This, with what I have already paid, and with an outstanding note of mine, will exceed my subscription of $500. This, too, is exclusive of my ordinary expenses during the campaign, all which being added to my loss of time and business, bears pretty heavily upon one no better off in world's goods than I; but as I had the post of honor, it is not for me to be over-nice. You are feeling badly—'And this too shall pass away.' Never fear."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Dr. Henry, Nov. 19, 1858. MS.

The sting of personal defeat is painful to most men, and doubtless it was so to Lincoln. Yet he regarded the passing struggle as something more than a mere scramble for office, and drew from it the consolation which all earnest workers feel in the consciousness of a task well done. Thus he wrote to a friend on November 19: "You doubtless have seen ere this the result of the election here. Of course I wished, but I did not much expect, a better result.... I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Asbury, November 19, 1858.

To these one other letter may be added, showing his never-failing faith in the political future. To a personal friend in Quincy, Illinois, who had watched the campaign with unusual attention, Lincoln wrote that same day: "Yours of the 13th was received some days ago. The fight must go on. The cause of civil liberty must not be surrendered at the end of one or even one hundred defeats. Douglas had the ingenuity to be supported in the late contest, both as the best means to break down and to uphold the slave interest. No ingenuity can keep these antagonistic elements in harmony long. Another explosion will soon come."

[Sidenote] 1858.

Douglas was also greatly exhausted by the wearing labors of the campaign; but he had the notable triumph of an assured reelection to the Senate and the congratulations of his enthusiastic friends to sustain and refresh him. Being an indefatigable worker, he was already organizing a new and more ambitious effort. Three weeks after election he started on a brief tour to the Southern States, making speeches at Memphis and New Orleans, of which further mention will be made in the next chapter. Perhaps he deemed it wise not to proceed immediately to Washington, where Congress convened on the first Monday of December, and thus to avoid a direct continuance of his battle with the Buchanan Administration. If so, the device proved ineffectual. The President and his partisans were determined to put the author of the "Freeport doctrine" under public ban, and to that end, when Congress organized, one of the first acts of the Senate majority was to depose Douglas from his place as chairman of the Committee on Territories, which he had held in that body for eleven years.

————— [1] A local nickname by which the southern or pro-slavery portion of Illinois was familiarly known.

[2] DOUGLAS'S QUESTIONS AND LINCOLN'S ANSWERS.

"Question 1. 'I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law?'

Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the fugitive-slave law.

Q. 2. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave-States into the Union even if the people want them?'

A. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave-States into the Union.

Q. 3. 'I want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make?'

A. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make.

Q. 4. 'I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?'

A. I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Q. 5. 'I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States?'

A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave trade between the different States.

Q. 6. 'I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, north as well as south of the Missouri Compromise line?'

A. I am impliedly if not expressly pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories.

Q. 7. 'I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?'

A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not aggravate the slavery question among ourselves."—Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 88.

[3] LINCOLN'S QUESTIONS.

"Question 1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English bill,—some 93,000,—will you vote to admit them?

Q. 2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a State constitution?

Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following such decision as a rule of political action?

Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question?"—Lincoln-Douglas Debates, p. 90.



CHAPTER X

LINCOLN'S OHIO SPEECHES

When Lincoln, in opening the Senatorial campaign of Illinois, declared that the Republican cause must be intrusted to its own undoubted friends "who do care for the result," he displayed a much better understanding of the character and aims of his opponent than those who, not so well informed, desired the adoption of a different course. Had the wishes of Greeley and others prevailed, had Douglas been adopted by the Illinois Republicans, the party would have found itself in a fatal dilemma, No sooner was the campaign closed than Douglas, having entered on his tour through the South, began making speeches, apparently designed to pave his way to a nomination for President by the next Democratic National Convention. Realizing that he had lost ground by his anti-Lecomptonism, and especially by his Freeport doctrine, and having felt in the late campaign the hostility of the Buchanan Administration, he now sought to recover prestige by publishing more advanced opinions indirectly sustaining and defending slavery.

Hitherto he had declared he did not care whether slavery was voted down or voted up. He had said he would not argue the question whether slavery was right or wrong. He had adopted Taney's assertion that the negro had no share in the Declaration of Independence. He had asserted that uniformity was impossible, but that freedom and slavery might abide together forever. But now that the election was over and a new term in the Senate secure, he was ready to conciliate pro-slavery opinion with stronger expressions. Hence, in a speech at Memphis, he cunningly linked together in argument unfriendly legislation, slavery, and annexation. He said: "Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil, and production making it the interest of the inhabitants to encourage slave property, they will pass a slave code."

Wherever these preclude the possibility of slavery being profitable, they will not permit it. On the sugar plantations of Louisiana it was not a question between the white man and the negro, but between the negro and the crocodile. He would say that between the negro and the crocodile, he took the side of the negro; but between the negro and the white man, he would go for the white man. The Almighty has drawn the line on this continent, on the one side of which the soil must be cultivated by slave labor; on the other by white labor. That line did not run on 36 and 30' [the Missouri Compromise line], for 36 and 30' runs over mountains and through valleys. But this slave line, he said, meanders in the sugar-fields and plantations of the South, and the people living in their different localities and in the Territories must determine for themselves whether their "middle bed" is best adapted to slavery or free labor.

[Sidenote] Douglas, Memphis Speech, Nov. 29, 1858. Memphis "Eagle and Enquirer."

Referring to annexation, he said our destiny had forced us to acquire Florida, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and California. "We have now territory enough, but how long will it be enough? One hive is enough for one swarm of bees, but a new swarm comes next year and a new hive is wanted." Men may say we shall never want anything more of Mexico, but the time would come when we would be compelled to take more. Central America was half-way to California and on the direct road. The time will come when our destiny, our institutions, our safety will compel us to have it. "So it is," concluded he, "with the island of Cuba.... It is a matter of no consequence whether we want it or not; we are compelled to take it, and we can't help it".

[Sidenote] Douglas, New Orleans Speech, Dec. 6, 1858. Pamphlet.

When Douglas reached New Orleans he substantially repeated these declarations in another long speech, and, as if he had not yet placed himself in entire harmony with Southern opinion, he added a sentiment almost as remarkable as the "mudsill" theory of Hammond, or the later "cornerstone" doctrine of Stephens: "It is a law of humanity," said he, "a law of civilization, that whenever a man or a race of men show themselves incapable of managing their own affairs, they must consent to be governed by those who are capable of performing the duty. It is on this principle that you establish those institutions of charity for the support of the blind, or the deaf and dumb, or the insane. In accordance with this principle, I assert that the negro race, under all circumstances, at all times, and in all countries, has shown itself incapable of self-government."

[Sidenote] Douglas, Baltimore Speech, Jan. 5, 1859. Pamphlet.

Once more, in a speech at Baltimore, Douglas repeated in substance what he had said at Memphis and New Orleans, and then in the beginning of January, 1859, he reached Washington and took his seat in the Senate. Here he began to comprehend the action of the Democratic caucus in deposing him from the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories. His personal influence and prestige among the Southern leaders were gone. Neither his revived zeal for annexation, nor his advanced views on the necessity for slave labor, restored his good-fellowship with the extremists. Although, pursuant to a recommendation in the annual message, a measure was then pending in the Senate to place thirty millions in the hands of President Buchanan with which to negotiate for Cuba, the attitude of the pro-slavery faction was not one of conciliation, but of unrelenting opposition to him.

[Sidenote] Brown, Senate Speech, Feb. 28, 1859. "Globe," pp. 1241 et seq.

Towards the close of the short session this feeling broke out in an open demonstration. On February 23, while an item of the appropriation bill was under debate, Senator Brown, of Mississippi, said he wanted the success of the Democratic party in 1860 to be a success of principles and not of men. He neither wanted to cheat nor be cheated. Under the decision of the Supreme Court the South would demand protection for slavery in the Territories. If he understood the Senator from Illinois, Mr. Douglas, he thought a Territorial Legislature might by non-action or by unfriendly action rightfully exclude slavery. He dissented from him, and now he would like to know from other Senators from the North what they would do: "If the Territorial Legislature refuses to act, will you act? If it pass unfriendly acts, will you pass friendly? If it pass laws hostile to slavery, will you annul them and substitute laws favoring slavery in their stead?... I would rather," concluded he "see the Democratic party sunk, never to be resurrected, than to see it successful only that one portion of it might practice a fraud on another."

[Sidenote] Brown, Senate Speech, Feb. 28, 1859. "Globe," pp. 1246-7.

Douglas met the issue, and defended his Freeport doctrine without flinching. The Democracy of the North hold, said he, that "if you repudiate the doctrine of non-intervention, and form a slave code by act of Congress, where the people of a Territory refuse it, you must step off the Democratic platform. I tell you, gentlemen of the South, in all candor, I do not believe a Democratic candidate can ever carry any one Democratic State of the North on the platform that it is the duty of the Federal Government to force the people of a Territory to have slavery when they do not want it."

The discussion extended itself to other Senators; Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, Clay, of Alabama, Mason, of Virginia, and Gwin, of California, seconded the demands and arguments of Brown; while Pugh, of Ohio, Broderick, of California, and Stuart, of Michigan, came to the help and defense of Douglas and non-intervention. Several Republicans drifted into the debate on behalf of the position and principles of their party, which of course differed from those of both Brown and Douglas. The discussion was continued to a late hour, and finally came to an end through mere lapse of time, but not until an irreparable schism in the Democratic party had been opened.

[Sidenote] Douglas to Dorr, June 22, 1859. Baltimore "Sun," June 24, 1859.

Silence upon so vital an issue could not long be maintained. In the following June, an Iowa friend wrote to Douglas to inquire whether he would be a candidate for the Presidential nomination at the coming Charleston Convention. Douglas replied that party issues must first be defined. If the Democracy adhered to their former principles, his friends would be at liberty to present his name. "If, on the contrary," continued he, "it shall become the policy of the Democratic party, which I cannot anticipate, to repudiate these their time-honored principles, on which we have achieved so many patriotic triumphs, and in lieu of them the convention shall interpolate into the creed of the party such new issues as the revival of the African slave-trade, or a Congressional slave-code for the Territories, or the doctrine that the Constitution of the United States either establishes or prohibits slavery in the Territories beyond the power of the people legally to control it, as other property—it is due to candor to say that, in such an event, I could not accept the nomination if tendered to me."

[Sidenote] Ray to Lincoln, July 27, 1858. MS.

We must leave the career of Douglas for a while, to follow up the personal history of Lincoln. The peculiar attitude of national politics had in the previous year drawn the attention of the whole country to Illinois in a remarkable degree. The Senatorial campaign was hardly opened when a Chicago editor, whose daily examination of a large list of newspaper exchanges brought the fact vividly under his observation, wrote to Lincoln: "You are like Byron, who woke up one morning and found himself famous. People wish to know about you. You have sprung at once from the position of a capital fellow, and a leading lawyer in Illinois, to a national reputation."



[Sidenote] David Davis to Lincoln, Nov. 7, 1858. MS.

The compliment was fully warranted; the personal interest in Lincoln increased daily from the beginning to the end of the great debates. The Freeport doctrine and its effect upon the Democratic party gave these discussions both present significance and a growing interest for the future. Another friend wrote him, a few days after election: "You have made a noble canvass, which, if unavailing in this State, has earned you a national reputation, and made you friends everywhere."

[Sidenote] Delahay to Lincoln, March 15, 1859. MS.

[Sidenote] Dorsheimer to Chase, Sept. 12, 1859. MS.

[Sidenote] Kasson to Lincoln, Sept. 13, 1859. MS.

[Sidenote] Kirkpatrick to Lincoln, Sept. 15, 1859. MS.

[Sidenote] Weed to Judd, Oct. 21, 1859. MS.

[Sidenote] Dennison to Trumbull, July 21, 1859. MS.

That this was not the mere flattery of partial friends became manifest to him by other indications; by an increased correspondence filled with general commendation, and particularly by numerous invitations to deliver speeches in other States. The Republican Central Committee of New Hampshire wrote him that if Douglas came, as was expected, to that State, they desired Lincoln to come and answer him. The Central Committee of Minnesota wished him to come there and assist in their canvass. There was an incessant commotion in politics throughout the whole North, and as the season advanced calls came from all quarters. Kansas wanted him; Buffalo, Des Moines, Pittsburgh wanted him; Thurlow Weed telegraphed: "Send Abraham Lincoln to Albany immediately." Not only his presence, but his arguments, and ideas, were in demand. Dennison, making the canvass for Governor of Ohio, asked for a report of his debates for campaign "material."

That men in all parts of the Union were thus turning to him for help and counsel was due, not alone to the publicity and credit he had gained in his debates with Douglas in the previous year; it grew quite as much out of the fact that by his sagacity and courage he had made himself the safest, as well as the most available, rallying-point of the Republican party and exponent of Republican doctrine. The Lecompton quarrel in the Democratic party had led many prominent Republicans on a false trail. In Douglas's new attitude, developed by his Southern speeches and his claim to readmission into regular Democratic fellowship, these leaders found themselves at fault, discredited by their own course. Lincoln, on the contrary, not only held aloft the most aggressive Republican banner, but stood nearest the common party enemy, and was able to offer advice to all the elements of the Republican party, free from any suspicion of intrigue with foe or faction. The causes of his Senatorial defeat thus gave him a certain party authority and leadership, which were felt if not openly acknowledged. On his part, while never officious or obtrusive, he was always ready with seasonable and judicious suggestions, generous in spirit and comprehensive in scope, and which looked beyond mere local success.

Thus he wrote from Springfield to Schuyler Colfax (afterwards Vice-President of the United States), July 6, 1859: "I much regret not seeing you while you were here among us. Before learning that you were to be at Jacksonville on the 4th, I had given my word to be at another place. Besides a strong desire to make your personal acquaintance, I was anxious to speak with you on politics a little more fully than I can well do in a letter. My main object in such conversation would be to hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and particularly for the contest of 1860. The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to 'platform' for something which will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere, and especially in a national convention. As instances, the movement against foreigners in Massachusetts; in New Hampshire, to make obedience to the fugitive-slave law punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to repeal the fugitive-slave law; and, squatter sovereignty, in Kansas. In these things there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions, if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of conventions is very likely to find its way into them. What is desirable, if possible, is that in every local convocation of Republicans a point should be made to avoid everything which will disturb Republicans elsewhere. Massachusetts Republicans should have looked beyond their noses, and then they could not have failed to see that tilting against foreigners would ruin us in the whole Northwest. New Hampshire and Ohio should forbear tilting against the fugitive-slave law in such way as to utterly overwhelm us in Illinois with the charge of enmity to the Constitution itself. Kansas, in her confidence that she can be saved to freedom on 'squatter sovereignty,' ought not to forget that to prevent the spread and nationalization of slavery is a national concern, and must be attended to by the nation. In a word, in every locality we should look beyond our noses; and at least say nothing on points where it is probable we shall disagree. I write this for your eye only; hoping, however, if you see danger as I think I do, you will do what you can to avert it. Could not suggestions be made to leading men in the State and Congressional conventions, and so avoid, to some extent at least, these apples of discord."[1]

[Sidenote] Colfax to Lincoln, July 14, 1859. MS.

By this time Colfax was cured of his late coquetting with Douglas, and he replied: "The suggestions you make have occurred to me.... Nothing is more evident than that there is an ample number of voters in the Northern States, opposed to the extension and aggressions of slavery and to Democratic misrule, to triumphantly elect a President of the United States. But it is equally evident that making up this majority are men of all shades and gradations of opinion, from the conservative who will scarcely defend his principles for fear of imperiling peace, to the bold radical who strikes stalwart blows regardless of policy or popularity. How this mass of mind shall be consolidated into a victorious phalanx in 1860 is the great problem, I think, of our eventful times. And he who could accomplish it is worthier of fame than Napoleon or Victor Emmanuel.... In this work, to achieve success, and to achieve it without sacrifice of essential principle, you can do far more than one like myself, so much younger. Your counsel carries great weight with it; for, to be plain, there is no political letter that falls from your pen which is not copied throughout the Union."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Canisius, May 17, 1859.

This allusion was called out by two letters which Lincoln had written during the year; one declaring his opposition to the waning fallacy of know-nothingism, in which he also defined his position on "fusion." Referring to a provision lately adopted by Massachusetts to restrict naturalization, he wrote: "Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State; and it is no privilege of mine to scold her for what she does. Still, if from what she has done, an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I would do, I may, without impropriety, speak out, I say then, that, as I understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself. As to the matter of fusion, I am for it, if it can be had on Republican grounds; and I am not for it on any other terms. A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish and unprincipled. It would lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still carry the whole South. The question of men is a different one. There are good patriotic men and able statesmen in the South whom I would cheerfully support, if they would now place themselves on Republican ground, but I am against letting down the Republican standard a hair's breadth."

The other was a somewhat longer letter, to a Boston committee which had invited him to a festival in honor of Jefferson's birthday. "Bearing in mind that about seventy years ago two great political parties were first formed in this country; that Thomas Jefferson was the head of one of them, and Boston the headquarters of the other, it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should now be celebrating his birthday, in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere...."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Pierce and others, April 6, 1859.

"But, soberly, it is now no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. One would state with great confidence that he could convince any sane child that the simpler propositions of Euclid are true; but nevertheless he would fail, utterly, with one who should deny the definitions and axioms. The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them 'glittering generalities.' Another bluntly calls them 'self-evident lies.' And others insidiously argue that they apply only to 'superior races.' These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect—the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads plotting against the people. They are the van-guard—the miners and sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression."

Lincoln's more important political work of the year 1859 was the part he took in the canvass in the State of Ohio, where a governor was to be chosen at the October election, and where the result would decide not merely the present and local strength of the rival candidates, but also to some extent indicate the prospects and probabilities of the Presidential campaign of 1860. The Ohio Democrats had called Douglas into their canvass, and the Republicans, as soon as they learned the fact, arranged that Lincoln should come and answer him. There was a fitness in this, not merely because Lincoln's joint debates with him in Illinois in the previous summer were so successful, but also because Douglas in nearly every speech made since then, both in his Southern tour and elsewhere, alluded to the Illinois campaign, and to Lincoln by name, especially to what he characterized as his political heresies. By thus everywhere making Lincoln and Lincoln's utterances a public target, Douglas himself, in effect, prolonged and extended the joint debates over the whole Union. Another circumstance added to the momentary interest of the general discussion. Douglas was by nature aggressive. Determined to hold his Northern followers in the new issues which had grown out of his Freeport doctrine, and the new antagonisms which the recent slave code debate in the Senate revealed, he wrote and published in "Harper's Magazine" for September, 1859, a political article beginning with the assertion that "Under our complex system of government it is the first duty of American statesmen to mark distinctly the dividing-line between Federal and Local authority." Quoting both the paragraph of Lincoln's Springfield speech declaring that "a house divided against itself cannot stand," and the paragraph from Seward's Rochester speech, announcing the "irrepressible conflict," Douglas made a long historical examination of his own theory of "non-intervention" and "popular sovereignty," and built up an elaborate argument to sustain his course. The novelty of this appeal to the public occasioned general interest and varied comment, and the expedient seemed so ingenious as to excite the envy of Administration Democrats. Accordingly, Attorney-General Black, of President Buchanan's Cabinet, at "the request of friends," wrote, printed, and circulated an anonymous pamphlet in answer, in which he admitted that Douglas was "not the man to be treated with a disdainful silence," but characterized the "Harper" essay as "an unsuccessful effort at legal precision; like the writing of a judge who is trying in vain to give good reasons for a wrong decision on a question of law which he has not quite mastered." Douglas, in a speech at Wooster, Ohio, criticized this performance of Black's. Reply and rejoinder on both sides followed in due time; and this war of pamphlets was one of the prominent political incidents of the year.

Thus Lincoln's advent in the Ohio campaign attracted much more than usual notice. He made but two speeches, one at Columbus, and one at Cincinnati, at each of which places Douglas had recently preceded him. Lincoln's addresses not only brought him large and appreciative audiences, but they obtained an unprecedented circulation in print. In the main, they reproduced and tersely re-applied the ideas and arguments developed in the Senatorial campaign in Illinois, adding, however, searching comments on the newer positions and points to which Douglas had since advanced. There is only space to insert a few disconnected quotations:

Now, what is Judge Douglas's popular sovereignty? It is as a principle no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object....

If you will read the copyright essay, you will discover that Judge Douglas himself says, a controversy between the American Colonies and the Government of Great Britain began on the slavery question in 1699, and continued from that time until the Revolution; and, while he did not say so, we all know that it has continued with more or less violence ever since the Revolution....

Take these two things and consider them together; present the question of planting a State with the institution of slavery by the side of a question of who shall be Governor of Kansas for a year or two, and is there a man here, is there a man on earth, who would not say the governor question is the little one, and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local, the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be governor? while the durable, the important, and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery? This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind from his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him....

The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the United States a right to carry his slaves into the United States Territories. And now there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the Territory could lawfully drive slavery out again. When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity; no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be....

The Judge says the people of the Territories have the right, by his principle, to have slaves if they want them. Then I say that the people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in Africa if they want them, and I defy any man on earth to show any distinction between the two things—to show that the one is either more wicked or more unlawful; to show on original principles, that one is better or worse than the other; or to show by the Constitution, that one differs a whit from the other. He will tell me, doubtless, that there is no constitutional provision against people taking slaves into the new Territories, and I tell him that there is equally no constitutional provision against buying slaves in Africa....

Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no wrong in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it; that it is a matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question how they shall deal with brutes; that between us and the negro here there is no sort of question, but that at the South the question is between the negro and the crocodile; that it is a mere matter of policy; that there is a perfect right according to interest to do just as you please—when this is done, where this doctrine prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public opinion for the slave trade....

[Sidenote] Lincoln, Columbus Speech, Sept. 16, 1859. Debates, pp. 253-54

Public opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like ours this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have stated. There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it. Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on layer after layer, until very soon you are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all these things; and you will receive and support, or submit to, the slave trade revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the free North.

This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe—nay, we know, that this is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself....

[Sidenote] Lincoln Cincinnati Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates, pp. 267-8.

I say we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient fugitive-slave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor the general welfare requires us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either congresses or courts. The people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

[Sidenote] Parsons and others to Lincoln, Dec. 7, 1859. Debates, preface.

The Ohio Republicans gained a decided success at the October election. Ascribing this result in a large measure to the influence of Lincoln's speeches, the State Executive Committee resolved to publish in cheap book form the full Illinois joint debates and the two Ohio addresses, to serve as campaign material for the ensuing year. "We regard them," wrote the committee to Lincoln, "as luminous and triumphant expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party, successfully vindicated from the aspersions of its foes, and calculated to make a document of great practical service to the Republican party in the approaching Presidential contest."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Parsons and others, Dec. 19, 1859. Ibid.

Lincoln, thanking them for the flattering terms of their request, explained in his reply: "The copies I send you, are as reported and printed by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself at the time—that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are verbal only, and very few in number. I wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I send, without any comment whatever."

The enterprise proved a success beyond the most sanguine expectations. A Columbus firm undertook the publication, itself assuming all pecuniary risk. Three large editions were sold directly to the public, without any aid from or any purchase by the committee—the third edition containing the announcement that up to that date, June 16, 1860, thirty thousand copies had already been circulated.[2]

————— [1] Partly printed in Hollister, "Life of Colfax," p. 146. We are indebted to Mrs. Colfax for the full manuscript text of this and other valuable letters which we have used.

[2] The preface to this third edition contains a letter from Douglas, alleging that injustice had been done him because, "the original reports as published in the 'Chicago Times,' although intended to be fair and just, were necessarily imperfect, and in some respects erroneous"; charging at the same time that Lincoln's speeches had been revised, corrected, and improved.[A] To this the publishers replied: "The speeches of Mr. Lincoln were never 'revised, corrected, or improved' in the sense you use those words. Remarks by the crowd which were not responded to, and the reporters' insertions of 'cheers,' 'great applause,' and so forth, which received no answer or comment from the speaker, were by our direction omitted, as well from Mr. Lincoln's speeches as yours, as we thought their perpetuation in book form would be in bad taste, and were in no manner pertinent to, or a part of, the speech."[B] And the publishers add a list of their corrections.

[A] Douglas to Follet, Foster & Co., June 9, 1860. Debates, third edition, preface.

[B] Follet, Foster & Co. to Douglas, June 16, 1860. Ibid.



CHAPTER XI

HARPER'S FERRY

There now occurred another strange event which, if it had been specially designed as a climax for the series of great political sensations since 1852, could scarcely have been more dramatic. This was John Brown's invasion of Harper's Ferry in order to create a slave insurrection. We can only understand the transaction as far as we can understand the man, and both remain somewhat enigmatical.

Of Puritan descent, John Brown was born in Connecticut in the year 1800. When he was five years old, the family moved to Ohio, at that time a comparative wilderness. Here he grew up a strong, vigorous boy of the woods. His father taught him the tanner's trade; but a restless disposition drove him to frequent changes of scene and effort when he grew to manhood. He attempted surveying. He became a divinity student. He tried farming and tanning in Pennsylvania, and tanning and speculating in real estate in Ohio. Cattle-dealing was his next venture; from this to sheep-raising; and by a natural transition to the business of a wool-factor in Massachusetts. This not succeeding, he made a trip to Europe. Returning, he accepted from Gerrit Smith a tract of mountain land in the Adirondacks, where he proposed to found and foster colonies of free negroes. This undertaking proved abortive, like all his others, and he once more went back to the wool business in Ohio.

Twice married, nineteen children had been born to him, of whom eleven were living when, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill plunged the country into the heat of political strife. Four of his sons moved away to the new Territory in the first rush of emigrants; several others went later. When the Border-Ruffian hostilities broke out, John Brown followed, with money and arms contributed in the North. With his sons as a nucleus, he gathered a little band of fifteen to twenty adventurers, and soon made his name a terror in the lawless guerrilla warfare of the day. His fighting was of the prevailing type, justifiable, if at all, only on the score of defensive retaliation, and some of his acts were as criminal and atrocious as the worst of those committed by the Border Ruffians.[1] His losses, one son murdered, another wounded to the death, and a third rendered insane from cruel treatment, are scarcely compensated by the transitory notoriety he gathered in a few fool-hardy skirmishes.

[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 48.

[Sidenote] Sanborn, in the "Atlantic," April, 1872.

These varied experiences give us something of a clue to his character: a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament; unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation, and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct, he was clean, but coarse; honest, but rude. In disposition he mingled the sacrificing tenderness with the sacrificial sternness of his prototypes in Jewish history. He could lay his own child on the altar without a pang. The strongest element of his character was religious fanaticism. Taught from earliest childhood to "fear God and keep his commandments," he believed firmly in the divine authenticity of the Bible, and memorized much of its contents. His favorite texts became literal and imperative mandates; he came to feel that he bore the commission and enjoyed the protection of the Almighty. In his Kansas camps he prayed and saw visions; believed he wielded the sword of the Lord and of Gideon; had faith that the angels encompassed him. He desired no other safeguard than his own ideas of justice and his own convictions of duty. These ideas and convictions, however, refused obedience to accepted laws and morals, and were mere fantastic and pernicious outgrowths of his religious fanaticism. His courage partook of the recklessness of insanity. He did not count odds. "What are five to one?" he asked; and at another time he said, "One man in the right, ready to die, will chase a thousand." Perhaps he even believed he held a charmed life, for he boasted that he had been fired at thirty times and only his hair had been touched. In personal appearance he was tall and slender, with rather a military bearing. He had an impressive, half-persuasive, half-commanding manner. He was always very secretive, affected much mystery in movements, came and went abruptly, was direct and dogmatic to bluntness in his conversation. His education was scant, his reading limited; he wrote strong phrases in bad orthography. If we may believe the intimations from himself and those who knew him best, he had not only acquired a passionate hatred of the institution of slavery, but had for twenty years nursed the longing to become a liberator of slaves in the Southern States. To this end he read various stories of insurrections, and meditated on the vicissitudes, chances, and strategy of partisan warfare. A year's border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action, but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.



It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper's Ferry invasion first took practical shape in John Brown's mind, but the indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas experience. His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred the spring and summer of 1856. In the autumn of that year the United States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil war. In January, 1857, we find him in the Eastern States, appealing for arms and supplies to various committees and in various places, alleging that he desired to organize and equip a company of one hundred minute-men, who were "mixed up with the people of Kansas," but who should be ready on call to rush to the defense of freedom. This appeal only partly succeeded. From one committee he obtained authority as agent over certain arms stored in Iowa, the custody and control of which had been in dispute. From another committee he obtained a portion of the clothing he desired. From still other sources he received certain moneys, but not sufficient for his requirements. Two circumstances, however, indicate that he was practicing a deception upon the committees and public. He entered into a contract with a blacksmith, in Collinsville, Connecticut, to manufacture him 1000 pikes of a certain pattern,[2] to be completed in 90 days, and paid $550 on the contract. There is no record that he mentioned this matter to any committee. His proposed Kansas minute-men were only to be one hundred in number, and the pikes could not be for them; his explanation to the blacksmith, that they would be a good weapon of defense for Kansas settlers, was clearly a subterfuge. These pikes, ordered about March 23, 1857, were without doubt intended for his Virginia invasion; and in fact the identical lot, finished after long delay, under the same contract, were shipped to him in September, 1859, and were actually used in his Harper's Ferry attempt. The other circumstance is that, about the time of his contract for the pikes, he also, without the knowledge of committees or friends, engaged an adventurer, named Forbes, to go West and give military instruction to his company—a measure neither useful nor practicable for Kansas defense. These two acts may be taken as the first preparation for Harper's Ferry.

But merely to conceive great enterprises is not to perform them, and every after-step of John Brown reveals his lamentable weakness and utter inadequacy for the heroic role to which he fancied himself called. His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from others. Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, of course soon quarreled with him, and left him, and endeavored first to supplant and then betray him.

[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony Mason Report, p. 91. Ibid., pp. 91-4.

Meanwhile, little by little, Brown gathered one colored and six white confederates from among his former followers in Kansas, and assembled them for drill and training in Iowa; four others joined him there. These, together with his son Owen, counted, all told, a band of twelve persons engaged for, and partly informed of, his purpose. He left them there for instruction during the first three months of the year 1858, while he himself went East to procure means.

[Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 51.

At the beginning of February, 1858, John Brown became, and remained for about a month, a guest at the house of Frederick Douglass, in Rochester, New York. Immediately on his arrival there he wrote to a prominent Boston abolitionist, T.W. Higginson: "I now want to get, for the perfecting of by far the most important undertaking of my whole life, from $500 to $800 within the next sixty days. I have written Rev. Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and F.B. Sanborn, Esquires, on the subject."

[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.

Correspondence and mutual requests for a conference ensued, and finally these Boston friends sent Sanborn to the house of Gerrit Smith, in Peterboro, New York, where a meeting had been arranged. Sanborn was a young man of twenty-six, just graduated from college, who, as secretary of various Massachusetts committees, had been the active agent for sending contributions to Kansas. He arrived on the evening of Washington's birthday, February 22, 1858, and took part in a council of conspiracy, of which John Brown was the moving will and chief actor.

[Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52. Sanborn in "Atlantic," March, 1875, p. 329; also, Mason Report, pp. 48-59.

Brown began by reading to the council a long document which he had drafted since his stay in Rochester. It called itself a "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States," which, as it explained, looked to no overthrow of States or dissolution of the Union, but simply to "amendment and repeal." It was not in any sense a reasonable project of government, but simply an ill-jointed outline of rules for a proposed slave insurrection. The scheme, so far as any comprehension of it may be gleaned from the various reports which remain, was something as follows:

[Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 55.

[Sidenote] Blair, Testimony, Mason Report, pp. 121-5.

[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.

Somewhere in the Virginia mountains he would raise the standard of revolt and liberation. Enthusiasts would join him from the free States, and escaped blacks come to his help from Canada. From Virginia and the neighboring slave-States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, fugitive slaves, with their families, would flock to his camps. He would take his supplies, provisions, and horses by force from the neighboring plantations. Money, plate, watches, and jewelry would "constitute a liberal safety or intelligence fund." For arms, he had 200 Sharps rifles, and 200 revolvers, with which he would arm his best marksmen. His ruder followers, and even the women and children, he would arm with pikes to defend the fortifications. He would construct defenses of palisades and earth-works. He would use natural strongholds; find secret mountain-passes to connect one with another; retreat from and evade attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and indefinitely prolong a guerrilla war, of which the Seminole Indians in Florida and the negroes in Hayti afforded examples. With success, he would enlarge the area of his occupation so as to include arable valleys and low-lands bordering the Alleghany range in the slave-States; and here he would colonize, govern, and educate the blacks he had freed, and maintain their liberty. He would make captures and reprisals, confiscate property, take, hold, and exchange prisoners and especially white hostages and exchange them for slaves to liberate. He would recognize neutrals, make treaties, exercise humanity, prevent crime, repress immorality, and observe all established laws of war. Success would render his revolt permanent, and in the end, through "amendment and repeal," abolish slavery. If, at the worst, he were driven from the mountains he would retreat with his followers through the free States to Canada. He had 12 recruits drilling in Iowa, and a half-executed contract for 1000 pikes in Connecticut; furnish him $800 in money and he would begin operations in May.

[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," March, 1875, p. 329.

[Sidenote] Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 206.

[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52.

This, if we supply continuity and arrangement to his vagaries, must have been approximately what he felt or dreamily saw, and outlined in vigorous words to his auditors. His listening friends were dumfounded at the audacity as well as heart-sick at the hopelessness of such an attempt. They pointed out the almost certainty of failure and destruction, and attempted to dissuade him from the mad scheme; but to no purpose. They saw they were dealing with a foregone conclusion; he had convoked them, not to advise as to methods, but to furnish the means. All reasonable argument he met with his rigid dogmatic formulas, his selected proverbs, his favorite texts of Scripture. The following, preserved by various witnesses as samples of his sayings at other times, indicate his reasoning on this occasion: "Give a slave a pike and you make him a man. I would not give Sharps rifles to more than ten men in a hundred, and then only when they have learned to use them. A ravine is better than a plain. Woods and mountain-sides can be held by resolute men against ten times their force. Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia five weeks; the same number, well organized and armed, can shake the system out of the State." "A few men in the right, and knowing they are right, can overturn a king. Twenty men in the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two years." "If God be for us, who can be against us? Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."

[Sidenote] Ibid., March, 1875, p. 329.

[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 439.

[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Atlantic," July, 1872, pp. 53-4.

One of the participants relates, that—"When the agitated party broke up their council for the night, it was perfectly plain that Brown could not be held back from his purpose." The discussion of the friends on the second day (February 23) was therefore only whether they should aid him, or oppose him, or remain indifferent. Against every admonition of reason, mere personal sympathy seems to have carried a decision in favor of the first of these alternatives. "You see how it is," said the chief counselor, Gerrit Smith; "our dear old friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him." Brown has left an exact statement of his own motive and expectation, in a letter to Sanborn on the following day. "I have only had this one opportunity in a life of nearly sixty years ... God has honored but comparatively a very small part of mankind with any possible chance for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards ... I expect nothing but to endure hardness, but I expect to effect a mighty conquest, even though it be like the last victory of Samson."

[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony, Mason Report, p. 99.

Nine days later Brown went to Boston, where the conspiracy was enlarged and strengthened by the promises and encouragements of a little coterie of radical abolitionists.[3] Within the next two months the funds he desired were contributed and sent him. Meanwhile Brown returned West, and moved his company of recruits from Iowa, by way of Chicago and Detroit, to the town of Chatham, in Canada West, arriving there about the 1st of May. By written invitations, Brown here called together what is described as "a quiet convention of the friends of freedom," to perfect his organization. On the 8th of May, 1858, they held a meeting with closed doors, there being present the original company of ten or eleven white members and one colored, whom Brown had brought with him, and a somewhat miscellaneous gathering of negro residents of Canada. Some sort of promise of secrecy was mutually made; then John Brown, in a speech, laid his plan before the meeting. One Delany, a colored doctor, in a response, promised the assistance of all the colored people in Canada. The provisional constitution drafted by Brown at Rochester was read and adopted by articles, and about forty-five persons signed their names to the "Constitution," for the "proscribed and oppressed races of the United States." Two days afterwards, the meeting again convened for the election of officers; John Brown was elected commander-in-chief by acclamation; other members were by the same summary method appointed secretary of war, secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and two of them members of congress. The election of a president was prudently postponed.

This Chatham Convention cannot claim consideration as a serious deliberative proceeding. John Brown was its sole life and voice. The colored Canadians were nothing but spectators. The ten white recruits were mere Kansas adventurers, mostly boys in years and waifs in society, perhaps depending largely for livelihood on the employment or bounty, precarious as it was, of their leader. Upon this reckless, drifting material the strong despotic will, emotional enthusiasm, and mysterious rhapsodical talk of John Brown exercised an irresistible fascination; he drew them by easy gradations into his confidence and conspiracy. The remaining element, John Brown's son in the Chatham meeting, and other sons and relatives in the Harper's Ferry attack, are of course but the long educated instruments of the father's thought and purpose.

[Sidenote] Stearns to Brown, May 14, 1858: Howe, Testimony, Mason Report, p. 177.

With funds provided, with his plan of government accepted, and himself formally appointed commander-in-chief, Brown doubtless thought his campaign about to begin; it was however destined to an unexpected interruption. The discarded and disappointed adventurer Forbes had informed several prominent Republicans in Washington City that Brown was meditating an unlawful enterprise; and the Boston committee, warned that certain arms in Brown's custody, which had been contributed for Kansas defense, were about to be flagrantly misused, dared not incur the public odium of complicity in such a deception and breach of faith. The Chatham organization was scarcely completed when Brown received word from the Boston committee that he must not use the arms (the 200 Sharps rifles and 200 revolvers) which had been intrusted to him for any other purpose than for the defense of Kansas. Brown hurried to Boston; but oral consultation with his friends confirmed the necessity for postponement; and it was arranged that, to lull suspicion, he should return to Kansas and await a more favorable opportunity. He yielded assent, and that fall and winter performed the exploit of leading an armed foray into Missouri, and carrying away eleven slaves to Canada—an achievement which, while to a certain degree it placed him in the attitude of a public outlaw, nevertheless greatly increased his own and his followers' confidence in the success of his general plan. Gradually the various obstacles melted away. Kansas became pacified. The adventurer Forbes faded out of sight and importance. The disputed Sharps rifles and revolvers were transferred from committee to committee, and finally turned over to a private individual to satisfy a debt. He in turn delivered them to Brown without any hampering conditions. The Connecticut blacksmith finished and shipped the thousand pikes. The contributions from the Boston committee swelled from one to several thousands of dollars. The recruits, with a few changes, though scattered in various parts of the country, were generally held to their organization and promise, and slightly increased in number. The provisional constitution and sundry blank commissions were surreptitiously printed, and captains and lieutenants appointed by the signature of John Brown "Commander-in-Chief," countersigned by the "Secretary of War."

Gradually, also, the commander-in-chief resolved on an important modification of his plan: that, instead of plunging at once into the Virginia mountains, he would begin by the capture of the United States armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Two advantages seem to have vaguely suggested themselves to his mind as likely to arise from this course: the possession of a large quantity of Government arms, and the widespread panic and moral influence of so bold an attempt. But it nowhere appears that he had any conception of the increased risk and danger it involved, or that he adopted the slightest precaution to meet them.

Harper's Ferry was a town of five thousand inhabitants, lying between the slave-States of Maryland and Virginia, at the confluence of the Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, where the united streams flow through a picturesque gap in the single mountain-range called the Blue Ridge. The situation possesses none of the elements which would make it a defensible fastness for protracted guerrilla warfare, such as was contemplated in Brown's plan. The mountains are everywhere approachable without difficulty; are pierced by roads and farms in all directions; contain few natural resources for sustenance, defense, or concealment; are easily observed or controlled from the plain by superior forces. The town is irregular, compact, and hilly; a bridge across each stream connects it with the opposite shores, and the Government factory and buildings, which utilized the water-power of the Potomac, lay in the lowest part of the point of land between the streams. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the Potomac bridge.

On the 4th of July, 1859, John Brown, under an assumed name, with two sons and another follower, appeared near Harper's Ferry, and soon after rented the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, five miles from town, where he made a pretense of cattle-dealing and mining; but in reality collected secretly his rifles, revolvers, ammunition, pikes, blankets, tents, and miscellaneous articles for a campaign. His rather eccentric actions, and the irregular coming and going of occasional strangers at his cabin, created no suspicion in the neighborhood. Cautiously increasing his supplies, and gathering his recruits, he appointed the attack for the 24th of October; but for some unexplained reason (fear of treachery, it is vaguely suggested) he precipitated his movement in advance of that date. From this point the occurrences exhibit no foresight or completeness of preparation, no diligent pursuit of an intelligent plan, nor skill to devise momentary expedients; only a blind impulse to act.

On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, Brown gave his final orders, humanely directing his men to take no life where they could avoid it. Placing a few pikes and other implements in his one-horse wagon, he started with his company of eighteen followers at 8 o'clock in the evening, leaving five men behind. They cut the telegraph wires on the way, and reached Harper's Ferry about 11 o'clock. He himself broke open the armory gates, took the watchmen prisoners, and made that place his headquarters. Separating his men into small detachments, he took possession of, and attempted to hold, the two bridges, the arsenal, and the rifle-factory. Next he sent six of his men five miles into the country to bring in several prominent slaveowners and their slaves. This was accomplished before daylight, and all were brought as prisoners to Brown at the armory. With them they also brought a large four-horse farm wagon, which he now sent to transfer arms from the Kennedy farm to a school-house on the Maryland side of the Potomac, about one mile from the town.

Meanwhile, about midnight of Sunday, they detained the railroad train three hours, but finally allowed it to proceed. A negro porter was shot on the bridge. The town began to be alarmed. Citizens were captured at various points, and brought to swell the number of prisoners at the armory, counting forty or fifty by morning. Still, not until daylight, and even until the usual hour of rising on Monday morning, did the town comprehend the nature and extent of the trouble.

What, now, did Brown intend to do? What result did he look for from his movement thus far? Amid his conflicting acts and contradictory explanations, the indications seem clear only on two or three points. Both he and his men gave everybody to understand without reserve that they had come not to kill whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon, also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that ceremony did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught. They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reenforcement. He gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages, and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them for slaves. Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect an armistice or compromise with the citizens, to stop bloodshed, on condition that he be permitted to hold the armory and retain the liberated negroes. All this warrants the inference that he expected to hold the town, first, by the effect of terror; secondly, by the display of leniency and kindness; and supposed that he could remain indefinitely, and dictate terms at his leisure. The fallacy of this scheme became quickly apparent.

As the day dawned upon the town and the truth upon the citizens, his situation in a military point of view was already hopeless—eighteen men against perhaps 1000 adults, and these eighteen scattered in four or five different squads, without means of mutual support, communication, or even contingent orders! Gradually, as the startled citizens became certain of the insignificant numbers of the assailants, an irregular street-firing broke out between Brown's sentinels and individuals with firearms. The alarm was carried to neighboring towns, and killed and wounded on both sides augmented the excitement. Tradition rather than definite record asserts that some of Brown's lieutenants began to comprehend that they were in a trap, and advised him to retreat. Nearly all his eulogists have assumed that such was his original plan, and his own subsequent excuses hint at this intention. But the claim is clearly untenable. He had no means of defensive retreat—no provisions, no transportation for his arms and equipage, no supply of ammunition. The suggestion is an evident afterthought.

Whether from choice or necessity, however, he remained only to find himself more and more closely pressed. By Monday noon the squad in the rifle-works, distant one mile from the armory, had been driven out, killed, and captured. The other squads, not so far from their leader, joined him at the armory, minus their losses. Already he was driven to take refuge with his diminished force in the engine-house, a low, strong brick building in the armory yard, where they barricaded doors and improvised loop-holes, and into which they took with them ten selected prisoners as hostages. But the expedient was one of desperation. By this movement Brown literally shut himself up in his own prison, from which escape was impossible.

A desultory fire was kept up through doors and loop-holes. But now the whole country had become thoroughly aroused, and sundry military companies from neighboring towns and counties poured into Harper's Ferry. Brown himself at length realized the hopelessness of his position, and parleyed for leave to retreat across the river on condition of his giving up his prisoners; but it was too late. President Buchanan also took prompt measures; and on Monday night a detachment of eighty marines from the Washington navy-yard, under command of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the United States army, the same who afterwards became the principal leader of the Confederate armies in the rebellion, reached the scene of action, and were stationed in the armory yard so as to cut off the insurgents from all retreat. At daylight on Tuesday morning Brown was summoned to surrender at discretion, but he refused. The instant the officer left the engine-house a storming-party of marines battered in the doors; in five minutes the conflict was over. One marine was shot dead in the assault; Brown fell under severe sword and bayonet wounds, two of his sons lay dead or dying, and four or five of his men were made prisoners, only two remaining unhurt. The great scheme of liberation built up through nearly three years of elaborate conspiracy, and designed to be executed in defiance of law, by individual enterprise with pikes, rifles, forts, guerrilla war, prisoners, hostages, and plunder, was, after an experimental campaign of thirty-six hours, in utter collapse. Of Brown's total force of twenty-two men, ten were killed, five escaped, and seven were captured, tried, and hanged. Of the townspeople, five had been killed and eight wounded.



[Sidenote] Sanborn in the "Atlantic," Dec. 1875. p. 718.

While John Brown's ability for military leadership was too insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a Virginia court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason, conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. Eight years before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave law: "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The trial for life of one bold, and to some extent successful, man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population." Even now, when mere Quixotic knight-errantry and his own positive violation of the rights of individuals and society had put his life in forfeit, this sympathy for his boldness and misfortune came to him in large measure. Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions," he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the mystery of Brown's life and deeds.

He was convicted, sentenced, and hanged on the 2d of December. Congress met a few days afterwards, and the Senate appointed an investigating committee to inquire into the seizure of the United States armory and arsenal. The long and searching examination of many witnesses brought out with sufficient distinctness the varied personal plottings of Brown, but failed to reveal that half a dozen radical abolition clergymen of Boston were party to the conspiracy; nor did they then or afterwards justify their own conduct by showing that Christ ever counseled treason, abetted conspiracy, or led rebellion against established government. From beginning to end, the whole act was reprehensible, and fraught with evil result. Modern civilization and republican government require that beyond the self-defense necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform shall act by authority of law only.

[Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 18.

Upon politics the main effect of the Harper's Ferry incident was to aggravate the temper and increase the bitterness of all parties. Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of Indiana, Democratic members of the Senate investigating committee, sought diligently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the Republican party at large responsible for Brown's raid. They felt obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to meet similar cases in the future, since the "invasion" of Virginia was not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was "simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority." Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin, Republican members of the committee, in their minority report, considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in Kansas. Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the object of still further setting himself right with the South, and atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the government, people, or property of another; once more quoting Lincoln's Springfield speech, and Seward's Rochester speech as containing revolutionary doctrines.

[Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.

[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 41.

[Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, "Life of Emerson," p. 140.

In the country at large, as in Congress, the John Brown raid excited bitter discussion and radically diverse comment—some execrating him as a deservedly punished felon, while others exalted him as a saint. His Boston friends particularly, who had encouraged him with voice or money, were extravagant in their demonstrations of approval and admiration. On the day of his execution religious services were held, and funeral bells were tolled. "The road to heaven," said Theodore Parker, "is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy." "Some eighteen hundred years ago," said Thoreau, "Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links." Emerson, using a yet stronger figure, had already called him "a new saint, waiting yet his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross."