Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters Part 9

No one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other man.

We simply must begin with and mold from disorganized and discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarra.s.sment that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction.

As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wis.h.i.+ng not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State Government of Louisiana. In this I have done just so much as, and no more than, the public knows.

In the annual message of December, 1863, and in the accompanying proclamation, I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, which I promised, if adopted by any State, should be acceptable to and sustained by the executive government of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable, and I also distinctly protested that the executive claimed no right to say when or whether members should be admitted to seats in Congress from such States. This plan was, in advance, submitted to the then Cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of it. One of them suggested that I should then and in that connection apply the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation to the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and Louisiana; that I should drop the suggestion about apprentices.h.i.+p for freed people, and that I should omit the protest against my own power in regard to the admission of members to Congress. But even he approved every part and parcel of the plan which has since been employed or touched by the action of Louisiana.

The new Const.i.tution of Louisiana, declaring emanc.i.p.ation for the whole State, practically applies the proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does not adopt apprentices.h.i.+p for freed people, and it is silent, as it could not well be otherwise, about the admission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies to Louisiana, every member of the cabinet fully approved the plan. The message went to Congress, and I received many commendations of the plan, written and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any professed emanc.i.p.ationist came to my knowledge until after the news reached Was.h.i.+ngton that the people of Louisiana had began to move in accordance with it. From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with different persons supposed to be interested [in] seeking a reconstruction of a State government for Louisiana. When the message of 1863, with the plan before mentioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote me he was confident that the people, with his military cooperation, would reconstruct substantially on that plan. I wrote him and some of them to try it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such only has been my agency in getting up the Louisiana government. As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before stated. But as bad promises are better broken than kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse to the public interest; but I have not yet been so convinced.

I have been shown a letter on this subject, supposed to be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed on the question whether the seceded States, so called, are in the Union or out of it. It would, perhaps, add astonishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have found professed Union men endeavoring to make that question, I have _purposely_ forborne any public expression upon it. As appears to me, that question has not been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any discussion of it, while it thus remains practically immaterial, could have no effect other than the mischievous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it may hereafter become, that question is bad as the basis of a controversy, and good for nothing at all--a merely pernicious abstraction.

We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only possible, but in fact easier, to do; this without deciding or even considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union, and each forever after innocently, indulge his own opinion whether in doing the acts he brought the States from without into the Union, or only gave them proper a.s.sistance, they never having been out of it.

The amount of const.i.tuency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfactory to all if it contained 50,000, or 30,000, or even 20,000, instead of only about 12,000, as it really does. It is also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers. Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable.

The question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it? Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government?

Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, a.s.sumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-State const.i.tution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man.

Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the const.i.tutional amendment recently pa.s.sed by Congress, abolis.h.i.+ng slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to perpetual freedom in the State--committed to the very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants--and they ask the nation's recognition and its a.s.sistance to make good their committal.

Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white man: You are worthless or worse; we will neither help you, nor be helped by you. To the blacks we say: This cup of Liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all this is made true.

We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success.

The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smas.h.i.+ng it.

Again, if we reject Louisiana we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Const.i.tution. To meet this proposition it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question: Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes occur in the same State, and withal so new and unprecedented is the whole case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and collaterals.

Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be inflexible.

In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be proper.

FROM A LETTER TO J. W. FELL, DECEMBER 20, 1859

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were born in Virginia, of undistinguished families--second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods.

There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond "readin', writin', and cipherin'" to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age, I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store.

Then came the Black Hawk War; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten--the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practised law more a.s.siduously than ever before.

Always a Whig in politics; and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canva.s.ses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean, in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coa.r.s.e black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.

NOTES

COMMUNICATION TO THE PEOPLE OF SANGAMON COUNTY

This announcement of political principles appeared in the Sangamon _Journal_, at that time the only newspaper published in Springfield.

The present text, which differs in some details from that found in the various editions of Lincoln's works, follows the original, except in changing the spelling of Sangamo to Sangamon.

PERPETUATION OF OUR POLITICAL INSt.i.tUTIONS.

On the close of the address resolutions were pa.s.sed requesting the author to furnish a copy to the press, but for some unexplained reason it was not published until a year later. The present text is taken from the Sangamon Journal. Lincoln was one of the organizers of the Lyceum.

All through his life Lincoln showed a marked respect for the law, and the present warning against the consequences of lawlessness, so rhetorically sounded by the young orator of twenty-eight, was a perfectly sincere expression of a profound conviction.

"_The gates of h.e.l.l_." Matthew xvi. 18. This quotation was repeated in a speech delivered at Indianapolis twenty-four years later, when civil war was threatening.

THE SPRINGFIELD SPEECH

During the summer of 1858 Lincoln delivered two important anti-slavery speeches at Springfield. The first and more important of these was made June 16,[*] at the close of the Republican State Convention, at which Lincoln was declared the party candidate for the United States Senate. The second, delivered a month later, is in part a defence and explanation of the earlier speech, which had been severely criticised by Lincoln's old opponent Judge Douglas. The first Springfield speech was very carefully prepared and the MS. was submitted to several of Lincoln's friends, all of whom objected to the opening statement as being impolitic and sure to lose the speaker the position for which he was a candidate. Lincoln refused to make any change, however, saying that he preferred to go down linked with truth, if that was necessary.

[*]By Herndon the date is given as June 17.

"_A house divided against itself_." Suggested by Matthew xii. 25, and Mark iii. 25. This quotation had already been used in 1843 in a Whig circular signed by Lincoln and two others, and in a letter written in 1863 Lincoln speaks of the government as a house divided against itself.

_Nebraska doctrine_. The doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" was recognized in the bill, introduced in the Senate January 4, 1854, by Douglas, to give territorial government to the district west of Missouri and Iowa known as Nebraska. A similar bill had been introduced the year before by Douglas. In its original form the bill contained no reference to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, but in the form in which it was pa.s.sed it declared the Missouri Compromise to be null and void. Under the terms of this compromise slavery had been restricted to the territory south of 36 degrees 30 minutes.

_Dred Scott decision_. This decision was rendered March 6, 1857.

_Silliman letter_. A statement on the situation in Kansas by the electors of Connecticut, which received its name from Professor Silliman of Yale College, by whom it was in the main drawn up.

_Lecompton Const.i.tution_. In 1857 a convention was held at Lecompton, Kan., to draw up a state const.i.tution. In this convention the advocates of slavery were in the majority and the instrument was so prepared as not to interfere with slavery wherever it already existed in the territory. The free-soil advocates refused to accept this const.i.tution. When the question of admitting Kansas under the Lecompton Const.i.tution was presented before Congress, Douglas, in accordance with his principles of popular sovereignty, broke with his party and opposed the effort. From our present point of view Lincoln does not seem to do Douglas justice.

_Stephen, Franklin, etc._ The reference is to Stephen A. Douglas, President Franklin Pierce, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, and James Buchanan. Lincoln's perfectly sincere belief in a deliberate conspiracy among these men to perpetuate slavery, which was shared by many Republicans of that time, is not sustained by the impartial investigations of later historians.

_McLean or Curtis_. John McLean and Benjamin R. Curtis were the only justices who were strongly opposed to the Dred Scott decision. Curtis, who was a Whig from Ma.s.sachusetts and who resigned the same year, wrote a minority decision.

_Chase and Mace_. Salmon P. Chase was at that time Senator from Ohio.

Daniel Mace was a Democrat representative, who was opposed to the Nebraska Bill.

_Judge Nelson_. Samuel Nelson, a justice of the Supreme Court.

"_A living dog is better than a dead lion_." Ecclesiastes ix. 4.

THE FREEPORT DEBATE.

The Lincoln-Douglas Joint Debates took place in seven towns in various parts of Illinois between August 21 and October 15, 1858. The proposal for these meetings was made by Lincoln in a note addressed to Douglas.

The length of each debate and the division of time between the speakers are stated in the opening sentence of the speech given in the text.