Abraham Lincoln: a History Volume I Part 5

They considered their success already a.s.sured; but they left out of view the value of the moral forces called into being by their insolent challenge. The better cla.s.s of people in the State, those heretofore unknown in politics, the schoolmasters, the ministers, immediately prepared for the contest, which became one of the severest the State has ever known. They established three newspapers, and sustained them with money and contributions. The Governor gave his entire salary for four years to the expenses of this contest, in which he had no personal interest whatever. The antislavery members of the Legislature made up a purse of a thousand dollars. They spent their money mostly in printer's ink and in the payment of active and zealous colporteurs. The result was a decisive defeat for the slave party. The convention was beaten by 1800 majority, in a total vote of 11612, and the State saved forever from slavery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTIN VAN BUREN.]

But these supreme efforts of the advocates of public morals, uninfluenced by considerations of personal advantage, are of rare occurrence, and necessarily do not survive the exigencies that call them forth. The apologists of slavery, beaten in the canva.s.s, were more successful in the field of social opinion. In the reaction which succeeded the triumph of the antislavery party, it seemed as if there had never been any antislavery sentiment in the State. They had voted, it is true, against the importation of slaves from the South, but they were content to live under a code of Draconian ferocity, inspired by the very spirit of slavery, visiting the immigration of free negroes with penalties of the most savage description. Even Governor Coles, the public-spirited and popular politician, was indicted and severely fined for having brought his own freedmen into the State and having a.s.sisted them in establis.h.i.+ng themselves around him upon farms of their own. The Legislature remitted the fine, but the Circuit Court declared it had no const.i.tutional power to do so, though the Supreme Court afterwards overruled this decision. Any mention of the subject of slavery was thought in the worst possible taste, and no one could avow himself opposed to it without the risk of social ostracism. Every town had its one or two abolitionists, who were regarded as harmless or dangerous lunatics, according to the energy with which they made their views known.

From this arose a singular prejudice against New England people. It was attributable partly to the natural feeling of distrust of strangers which is common to ignorance and provincialism, but still more to a general suspicion that all Eastern men were abolitionists. Mr. Cook, who so long represented the State in Congress, used to relate with much amus.e.m.e.nt how he once spent the night in a farmer's cabin, and listened to the honest man's denunciations of "that-- Yankee Cook." Cook was a Kentuckian, but his enemies could think of no more dreadful stigma to apply to him than that of calling him a Yankee. Senator James A. McDougall once told us that although he made no pretense of concealing his Eastern nativity, he never could keep his ardent friends in Pike County from denying the fact and fighting any one who a.s.serted it. The great preacher, Peter Cartwright, used to denounce Eastern men roundly in his sermons, calling them "imps who lived on oysters" instead of honest corn-bread and bacon. The taint of slavery, the contagion of a plague they had not quite escaped, was on the people of Illinois. They were strong enough to rise once in their might and say they would not have slavery among them. But in the petty details of every day, in their ordinary talk, and in their routine legislation, their sympathies were still with the slave-holders. They would not enlist with them, but they would fight their battles in their own way.

Their readiness to do what came to be called later, in a famous speech, the "dirty work" of the South was seen in the tragic death of Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, in this very year of 1837. He had for some years been publis.h.i.+ng a religious newspaper in St. Louis, but finding the atmosphere of that city becoming dangerous to him on account of the freedom of his comments upon Southern inst.i.tutions, he moved to Alton, in Illinois, twenty-five miles further up the river. His arrival excited an immediate tumult in that place; a mob gathered there on the day he came-it was Sunday, and the good people were at leisure-and threw his press into the Mississippi. Having thus expressed their determination to vindicate the law, they held a meeting, and cited him before it to declare his intentions. He said they were altogether peaceful and legal; that he intended to publish a religious newspaper and not to meddle with politics. This seemed satisfactory to the people, and he was allowed to fish out his press, buy new types, and set up his paper. But Mr. Lovejoy was a predestined martyr. He felt there was a "woe" upon him if he held his peace against the wickedness across the river. He wrote and published what was in his heart to say, and Alton was again vehemently moved. A committee appointed itself to wait upon him; for this sort of outrage is usually accomplished with a curious formality which makes it seem to the partic.i.p.ants legal and orderly. The preacher met them with an undaunted front and told them he must do his duty as it appeared to him; that he was amenable to law, but nothing else; he even spoke in condemnation of mobs. Such language "from a minister of the gospel" shocked and infuriated the committee and those whom they represented. "The people a.s.sembled," says Governor Ford, "and quietly took the press and types and threw them into the river." We venture to say that the word "quietly" never before found itself in such company. It is not worth while to give the details of the b.l.o.o.d.y drama that now rapidly ran to its close. There was a fruitless effort at compromise, which to Lovejoy meant merely surrender, and which he firmly rejected. The threats of the mob were answered by defiance; from the little band that surrounded the abolitionist. A new press was ordered, and arrived, and was stored in a warehouse, where Lovejoy and his friends shut themselves up, determined to defend it with their lives. They were there besieged by the infuriated crowd, and after a short interchange of shots Lovejoy was killed, his friends dispersed, and the press once more-and this time finally-thrown into the turbid flood.

These events took place in the autumn of 1837, but they indicate sufficiently the temper of the people of the State in the earlier part of the year.

[Sidenote: Law approved Dec. 26, 1831.]

The vehemence with which the early antislavery apostles were conducting their agitation in the East naturally roused a corresponding violence of expression in every other part of the country. William Lloyd Garrison, the boldest and most aggressive non- resistant that ever lived, had, since 1831, been pouring forth once a week in the "Liberator" his earnest and eloquent denunciations of slavery, taking no account of the expedient or the possible, but demanding with all the fervor of an ancient prophet the immediate removal of the cause of offense. Oliver Johnson attacked the national sin and wrong, in the "Standard," with zeal and energy equally hot and untiring. Their words stung the slave-holding States to something like frenzy. The Georgia Legislature offered a reward of five thousand dollars to any one who should kidnap Garrison, or who should bring to conviction any one circulating the "Liberator" in the State. Yet so little known in their own neighborhoods were these early workers in this great reform that when the Mayor of Boston received remonstrances from certain Southern States against such an incendiary publication as the "Liberator," he was able to say that no member of the city government and no person of his acquaintance had ever heard of the paper or its editor; that on search being made it was found that "his office was an obscure hole, his only visible auxiliary a negro boy, and his supporters a very few insignificant persons of all colors." But the leaven worked continually, and by the time of which we are writing the antislavery societies of the North-east had attained a considerable vitality, and the echoes of their work came back from the South in furious resolutions of legislatures and other bodies, which, in their exasperation, could not refrain from this injudicious advertising of their enemies. Pet.i.tions to Congress, which were met by gag-laws, constantly increasing in severity, brought the dreaded discussion more and more before the public. But there was as yet little or no antislavery agitation in Illinois.

[Sidenote: Jan 25, 1837.]

There was no sympathy with nor even toleration for any public expression of hostility to slavery. The zeal of the followers of Jackson, although he had ceased to be President, had been whetted by his public denunciations of the antislavery propaganda; little more than a year before he had called upon Congress to take measures to "prohibit under severe penalties" the further progress of such incendiary proceedings as were "calculated to stimulate the slaves to insurrection and to produce all the horrors of civil war." But in spite of all this, people with uneasy consciences continued to write and talk and pet.i.tion Congress against slavery, and most of the State legislatures began to pa.s.s resolutions denouncing them. In the last days of 1836 Governor Duncan sent to the Illinois Legislature the reports and resolutions of several States in relation to this subject. They were referred to a committee, who in due time reported a set of resolves "highly disapproving abolition societies"; holding that "the right of property in slaves is secured to the slave-holding States by the Federal Const.i.tution"; that the general Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the consent of the citizens of said District, without a manifest breach of good faith; and requesting the Governor to transmit to the States which had sent their resolutions to him a copy of those tranquilizing expressions. A long and dragging debate ensued of which no record has been preserved; the resolutions, after numberless amendments had been voted upon, were finally pa.s.sed, in the Senate, unanimously, in the House with none but Lincoln and five others in the negative. [Footnote: We are under obligations to John M. Adair for transcripts of the State records bearing on this matter.] No report remains of the many speeches which prolonged the debate; they have gone the way of all buncombe; the sound and fury of them have pa.s.sed away into silence; but they woke an echo in one sincere heart which history will be glad to perpetuate.

There was no reason that Abraham Lincoln should take especial notice of these resolutions, more than another. He had done his work at this session in effecting the removal of the capital. He had only to shrug his shoulders at the violence and untruthfulness of the majority, vote against them, and go back to his admiring const.i.tuents, to his dinners and his toasts. But his conscience and his reason forbade him to be silent; he felt a word must be said on the other side to redress the distorted balance. He wrote his protest, saying not one word he was not ready to stand by then and thereafter, wasting not a syllable in rhetoric or feeling, keeping close to law and truth and justice. When he had finished it he showed it to some of his colleagues for their adhesion; but one and all refused, except Dan Stone, who was not a candidate for reelection, having retired from politics to a seat on the bench. The risk was too great for the rest to run. Lincoln was twenty-eight years old; after a youth, of singular privations and struggles he had arrived at an enviable position in the politics and the society of the State. His intimate friends, those whom he loved and honored, were Browning, Butler, Logan, and Stuart-Kentuckians all, and strongly averse to any discussion of the question of slavery. The public opinion of his county, which was then little less than the breath of his life, was all the same way. But all these considerations could not withhold him from performing a simple duty-a duty which no one could have blamed him for leaving undone. The crowning grace of the whole act is in the closing sentence: "The difference between these opinions and those contained in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest." Reason enough for the Lincolns and Luthers.

He had many years of growth and development before him. There was a long distance to be traversed between the guarded utterances of this protest and the heroic audacity which launched the proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation. But the young man who dared declare, in the prosperous beginning of his political life, in the midst of a community imbued with slave-State superst.i.tions, that "he believed the inst.i.tution of slavery was founded both on injustice and bad policy,"-attacking thus its moral and material supports, while at the same time recognizing all the const.i.tutional guarantees which protected it,-had in him the making of a statesman and, if need be, a martyr. His whole career was to run in the lines marked out by these words, written in the hurry of a closing session, and he was to accomplish few acts, in that great history which G.o.d reserved for him, wiser and n.o.bler than this.

CHAPTER IX

COLLAPSE OF THE SYSTEM

Mr. Lincoln had made thus far very little money-nothing more, in fact, than a subsistence of the most modest character. But he had made some warm friends, and this meant much among the early Illinoisans. He had become intimately acquainted, at Vandalia, with William Butler, who was greatly interested in the removal of the capital to Springfield, and who urged the young legislator to take up his residence at the new seat of government. Lincoln readily fell in with this suggestion, and accompanied his friend home when the Legislature adjourned, sharing the lodging of Joshua F. Speed, a young Kentucky merchant, and taking his meals at the house of Mr. Butler for several years.

[Sidenote: "Sangamon Journal," November 7, 1835.]

[Sidenote: Reynolds, "Life and Times" p. 237.]

In this way began Mr. Lincoln's residence in Springfield, where he was to remain until called to one of the highest of destinies intrusted to men, and where his ashes were to rest forever in monumental marble. It would have seemed a dreary village to any one accustomed to the world, but in a letter written about this time, Lincoln speaks of it as a place where there was a "good deal of flouris.h.i.+ng about in carriages" -a town of some pretentious to elegance. It had a population of 1500. The county contained nearly 18,000 souls, of whom 78 were free negroes, 20 registered indentured servants, and six slaves. Scarcely a perceptible trace of color, one would say, yet we find in the Springfield paper a leading article beginning with the startling announcement, "Our State is threatened to be overrun with free negroes." The county was one of the richest in Illinois, possessed of a soil of inexhaustible fertility, and divided to the best advantage between prairie and forest. It was settled early in the history of the State, and the country was held in high esteem by the aborigines. The name of Sangamon is said to mean in the Pottawatomie language "land of plenty." Its citizens were of an excellent cla.s.s of people, a large majority of them from Kentucky, though representatives were not wanting from the Eastern States, men of education and character.

There had been very little of what might be called pioneer life in Springfield. Civilization came in with a reasonably full equipment at the beginning. The Edwardses, in fair-top boots and ruffled s.h.i.+rts; the Ridgelys brought their banking business from Maryland; the Logans and Conklings were good lawyers before they arrived; another family came from Kentucky, with a cotton manufactory which proved its aristocratic character by never doing any work. With a population like this, the town had, from the beginning, a more settled and orderly type than was usual in the South and West. A glance at the advertising columns of the newspaper will show how much attention to dress was paid in the new capital. "Cloths, ca.s.sinetts, ca.s.simeres, velvet, silk, satin, and Ma.r.s.eilles vestings, fine calf boots, seal and morocco pumps, for gentlemen," and for the s.e.x which in barbarism dresses less and in civilization dresses more than the male, "silks, bareges, crepe lisse, lace veils, thread lace, Thibet shawls, lace handkerchiefs, fine prunella shoes, etc." It is evident that the young politician was confronting a social world more formidably correct than anything he had as yet seen.

[Sidenote: Ford's "History," p. 94.]

Governor Ford began some years before this to remark with pleasure the change in the dress of the people of Illinois: the gradual disappearance of leather and, linsey-woolsey, the hunting-knife and tomahawk, from the garb of men; the deerskin moccasin supplanted by the leather boot and shoe; the leather breeches tied around the ankle replaced by the modern pantaloons; and the still greater improvement in the adornment of women, the former bare feet decently shod, and homespun frocks giving way to gowns of calico and silk, and the heads tied up in red cotton turbans disappearing in favor of those surmounted by pretty bonnets of silk or straw. We admit that these changes were not unattended with the grumbling ill-will of the pioneer patriarchs; they predicted nothing but ruin to a country that thus forsook the old ways "which were good enough for their fathers." But with the change in dress came other alterations which were all for the better-a growing self-respect among the young; an industry and thrift by which they could buy good clothes; a habit of attending religious service, where they could show them; a progress in sociability, civility, trade, and morals.

The taste for civilization had sometimes a whimsical manifestation. Mr. Stuart said the members of the Legislature bitterly complained of the amount of game-venison and grouse of the most delicious quality- which was served them at the taverns in Vandalia; they clamored for bacon-they were starving, they said, "for something civilized." There was plenty of civilized nourishment in Springfield. Wheat was fifty cents a bushel, rye thirty-three; corn and oats were twenty-five, potatoes twenty-five; b.u.t.ter was eight cents a pound, and eggs were eight cents a dozen; pork was two and a half cents a pound.

The town was built on the edge of the woods, the north side touching the timber, the south encroaching on the prairie. The richness of the soil was seen in the mud of the streets, black as ink, and of an unfathomable depth in time of thaw. There were, of course, no pavements or sidewalks; an attempt at crossings was made by laying down large chunks of wood. The houses were almost all wooden, and were disposed in rectangular blocks. A large square had been left in the middle of the town, in antic.i.p.ation of future greatness, and there, when Lincoln began his residence, the work of clearing the ground for the new State-house was already going forward. In one of the largest houses looking on the square, at the north-west corner, the county court had its offices, and other rooms in the building were let to lawyers. One of these was occupied by Stuart and Lincoln, for the friends.h.i.+p formed in the Black Hawk war and strengthened at Vandalia induced "Major" Stuart to offer a partners.h.i.+p to "Captain" Lincoln. [Footnote: It is not unworthy of notice that in a country where military t.i.tles were conferred with ludicrous profusion, and borne with absurd complacency, Abraham Lincoln, who had actually been commissioned, and had served as captain, never used the designation after he laid down his command.]

Lincoln did not gain any immediate eminence at the bar. His preliminary studies had been cursory and slight, and Stuart was then too much engrossed in politics to pay the unremitting attention to the law which that jealous mistress requires. He had been a candidate for Congress the year before, and had been defeated by W. L. May. He was a candidate again in 1838, and was elected over so agile an adversary as Stephen Arnold Douglas. His paramount interest in these canva.s.ses necessarily prevented him from setting to his junior partner the example which Lincoln so greatly needed, of close and steady devotion to their profession. It was several years later that Lincoln found with Judge Logan the companions.h.i.+p and inspiration which he required, and began to be really a lawyer. During the first year or two he is princ.i.p.ally remembered in Springfield as an excellent talker, the life and soul of the little gatherings about the county offices, a story- teller of the first rank, a good-natured, friendly fellow whom everybody liked and trusted. He relied more upon his influence with a jury than upon his knowledge of law in the few cases he conducted in court, his acquaintance with human nature being far more extensive than his legal lore.

Lincoln was not yet done with Vandalia, its dinners of game, and its political intrigue. The archives of the State were not removed to Springfield until 1839, and Lincoln remained a member of the Legislature by successive reelections from 1834 to 1842. His campaigns were carried on almost entirely without expense. Joshua Speed told the writers that on one occasion some of the Whigs contributed a purse of two hundred dollars which Speed handed to Lincoln to pay his personal expenses in the canva.s.s. After the election was over, the successful candidate handed Speed $199.25, with the request that he return it to the subscribers. "I did not need the money," he said. "I made the canva.s.s on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider, which some farm-hands insisted I should treat them to." He was called down to Vandalia in the summer of 1837, by a special session of the Legislature. The magnificent schemes of the foregoing winter required some repairing. The banks throughout the United States had suspended specie payments in the spring, and as the State banks in Illinois were the fiscal agents of the railroads and ca.n.a.ls, the Governor called upon the law-makers to revise their own work, to legalize the suspension, and bring their improvement system within possible bounds. They acted as might have been expected: complied with the former suggestion, but flatly refused to touch their masterpiece. They had been glorifying their work too energetically to destroy it in its infancy. It was said you could recognize a legislator that year in any crowd by his automatic repet.i.tion of the phrase, "Thirteen hundred-fellow-citiztens!-and fifty miles of railroad!" There was nothing to be done but to go on with the stupendous folly. Loans were effected with surprising and fatal facility, and, "before the end of the year, work had begun at many points on the railroads. The whole State was excited to the highest pitch of frenzy and expectation. Money was as plenty as dirt. Industry, instead of being stimulated, actually languished. We exported nothing," says Governor Ford, "and everything from abroad was paid for by the borrowed money expended among us." Not only upon the railroads, but on the ca.n.a.l as well, the work was begun on a magnificent scale. Nine millions of dollars were thought to be a mere trifle in view of the colossal sum expected to be realized from the sale of ca.n.a.l lands, three hundred thousand acres of which had been given by the general Government. There were rumors of coming trouble, and of an unhealthy condition of the banks; but it was considered disloyal to look too curiously into such matters. One frank patriot, who had been sent as one of a committee to examine the bank at Shawneetown, when asked what he found there, replied with winning candor, "Plenty of good whisky and sugar to sweeten it."

[Sidenote: Ford, "History," p. 197.]

But a year of baleful experience destroyed a great many illusions, and in the election of 1838 the subject of internal improvements was treated with much more reserve by candidates. The debt of the State, issued at a continually increasing discount, had already attained enormous proportions; the delirium of the last few years was ending, and sensible people began to be greatly disquieted. Nevertheless, Mr. Cyrus Edwards boldly made his canva.s.s for Governor as a supporter of the system of internal improvements, and his opponent, Thomas Carlin, was careful not to commit himself strongly on the other side. Carlin was elected, and finding that a majority of the Legislature was still opposed to any steps backward, he made no demonstration against the system at the first session. Lincoln was a member of this body, and, being by that time the unquestioned leader of the Whig minority, was nominated for Speaker, and came within one vote of an election. The Legislature was still stiff-necked and perverse in regard to the system. It refused to modify it in the least, and voted, as if in bravado, another eight hundred thousand dollars to extend it.

But this was the last paroxysm of a fever that was burnt out. The market was glutted with Illinois bonds; one banker and one broker after another, to whose hands they had been recklessly confided in New York and London, failed, or made away with the proceeds of sales. The system had utterly failed; there was nothing to do but repeal it, stop work upon the visionary roads, and endeavor to invent some means of paying the enormous debt. This work taxed the energies of the Legislature in 1839, and for some years after. It was a dismal and disheartening task. Blue Monday had come after these years of intoxication, and a crus.h.i.+ng debt rested upon a people who had been deceiving themselves with the fallacy that it would somehow pay itself by acts of the Legislature.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "COLONEL E. D. BAKER."]

Many were the schemes devised for meeting these oppressive obligations without unduly taxing the voters; one of them, not especially wiser than the rest, was contributed by Mr. Lincoln. It provided for the issue of bonds for the payment of the interest due by the State, and for the appropriation of a special portion of State taxes to meet the obligations thus incurred. He supported his bill in a perfectly characteristic speech, making no effort to evade his share of the responsibility for the crisis, and submitting his views with diffidence to the approval of the a.s.sembly. His plan was not adopted; it was too simple and straightforward, even if it had any other merits, to meet the approval of an a.s.sembly intent only upon getting out of immediate embarra.s.sment by means which might save them future trouble on the stump. There was even an undercurrent of sentiment in favor of repudiation. But the payment of the interest for that year was provided for by an ingenious expedient which s.h.i.+fted upon the Fund Commissioners the responsibility of deciding what portion of the debt was legal, and how much interest was therefore to be paid. Bonds were sold for this purpose at a heavy loss.

This session of the Legislature was enlivened by a singular contest between the Whigs and Democrats in relation to the State banks. Their suspension of specie payments had been legalized up to "the adjournment of the next session of the Legislature." They were not now able to resume, and it was held by the Democrats that if the special session adjourned sine die the charter of the banks would be forfeited, a purpose the party was eager to accomplish. The Whigs, who were defending the banks, wished to prevent the adjournment of the special session until the regular session should begin, during the course of which they expected to renew the lease of life now held under sufferance by the banks-in which, it may be here said, they were finally successful. But on one occasion, being in the minority, and having exhausted every other parliamentary means of opposition and delay, and seeing the vote they dreaded imminent, they tried to defeat it by leaving the house in a body, and, the doors being locked, a number of them, among whom Mr. Lincoln's tall figure was prominent, jumped from the windows of the church where the Legislature was then holding its sessions. "I think," says Mr. Joseph Gillespie, who was one of those who performed this feat of acrobatic politics, "Mr. Lincoln always regretted it, as he deprecated everything that savored of the revolutionary."

Two years later the persecuted banks, harried by the demagogues and swindled by the State, fell with a great ruin, and the financial misery of the State was complete. Nothing was left of the brilliant schemes of the historic Legislature of 1836 but a load of debt which crippled for many years the energies of the people, a few miles of embankments which the gra.s.s hastened to cover, and a few abutments which stood for years by the sides of leafy rivers, waiting for their long delaying bridges and trains.

During the winter of 1840-1 occurred the first clash of opinion and principle between Mr. Lincoln and his life-long adversary, Mr. Douglas. There are those who can see only envy and jealousy in that strong dislike and disapproval with which Mr. Lincoln always regarded his famous rival. But we think that few men have ever lived who were more free from those degrading pa.s.sions than Abraham Lincoln, and the personal reprobation with which he always visited the public acts of Douglas arose from his sincere conviction that, able as Douglas was, and in many respects admirable in character, he was essentially without fixed political morals. They had met for the first time in 1834 at Vandalia, where Douglas was busy in getting the circuit attorneys.h.i.+p away from John J. Hardin. He held it only long enough to secure a nomination to the Legislature in 1836. He went there to endeavor to have the capital moved to Jacksonville, where he lived, but he gave up the fight for the purpose of having himself appointed Register of the Land Office at Springfield. He held this place as a means of being nominated for Congress the next year; he was nominated and defeated. In 1840 he was engaged in another scheme to which we will give a moment's attention, as it resulted in giving him a seat on the Supreme Bench of the State, which he used merely as a perch from which to get into Congress.

There had been a difference of opinion in Illinois for some years as to whether the Const.i.tution, which made voters of all white male inhabitants of six months' residence, meant to include aliens in that category. As the aliens were nearly all Democrats, that party insisted on their voting, and the Whigs objected. The best lawyers in the State were Whigs, and so it happened that most of the judges were of that complexion. A case was made up for decision and decided adversely to the aliens, who appealed it to the Supreme Court. This case was to come on at the June term in 1840, and the Democratic counsel, chief among whom was Mr. Douglas, were in some anxiety, as an unfavorable decision would lose them about ten thousand alien votes in the Presidential election in November. In this conjuncture one Judge Smith, of the Supreme Court, an ardent Democrat, willing to enhance his value in his party, communicated to Mr. Douglas two important facts: first, that a majority of the court would certainly decide against the aliens; and, secondly that there was a slight imperfection in the record by which counsel might throw the case over to the December term, and save the alien vote for Van Buren and the Democratic ticket. This was done, and when the Legislature came together with its large Democratic majority, Mr. Douglas handed in a bill "reforming" the Judiciary-for they had learned that serviceable word already. The circuit judges were turned out of office, and five new judges were added to the Supreme Court, who were to perform circuit duty also. It is needless to say that Judge Douglas was one of these, and he had contrived also in the course of the discussion to disgrace his friend Smith so thoroughly by quoting his treacherous communication of matters which took place within the court, that Smith was no longer a possible rival for political honors.

It was useless for the Whigs to try to prevent this degradation of the bench. There was no resource but a protest, and here again Lincoln uttered the voice of the conscience of the party. He was joined on this occasion by Edward D. Baker [Footnote: Afterwards senator from Oregon, and as colonel of the 71st Pennsylvania (called the 1st California) killed at Ball's Bluff.] and some others, who protested against the act because

1st. It violates the principles of free government by subjecting the Judiciary to the Legislature.

2d. It is a fatal blow at the independence of the judges and the const.i.tutional term of their offices.

3d. It is a measure not asked for or wished for by the people.

4th. It will greatly increase the expense of our courts or else greatly diminish their utility.

5th. It will give our courts a political and partisan character, thereby impairing public confidence in their decisions.

6th. It will impair our standing with other States and the world.

7th. It is a party measure for party purposes from which no practical good to the people can possibly arise, but which may be the source of immeasurable evils.

The undersigned are well aware that this protest will be altogether unavailing with the majority of this body. The blow has already fallen; and we are compelled to stand by, the mournful spectators of the ruin it will cause.

[Sidenote: Ford's "History," p. 221.]

It will be easy to ridicule this indignant protest as the angry outcry of beaten partisans; but fortunately we have evidence which cannot be gainsaid of the justice of its sentiments and the wisdom of its predictions. Governor Ford, himself a Democratic leader as able as he was honest, writing seven years after these proceedings, condemns them as wrong and impolitic, and adds, "Ever since this reforming measure the Judiciary has been unpopular with the Democratic majorities. Many and most of the judges have had great personal popularity-so much so as to create complaint of so many of them being elected or appointed to other offices. But the Bench itself has been the subject of bitter attacks by every Legislature since." It had been soiled by unclean contact and could not be respected as before.

CHAPTER X

EARLY LAW PRACTICE

During all the years of his service in the Legislature, Lincoln was practicing law in Springfield in the dingy little office at the corner of the square. A youth named Milton Hay, who afterwards became one of the foremost lawyers of the State, had made the acquaintance of Lincoln at the County Clerk's office and proposed to study law with him. He was at once accepted as a pupil, and his days being otherwise employed he gave his nights to reading, and as his vigils were apt to be prolonged he furnished a bedroom adjoining the office, where Lincoln often pa.s.sed the night with him. Mr. Hay gives this account of the practice of the law in those days:

"In forming our ideas of Lincoln's growth and development as a lawyer, we must remember that in those early days litigation was very simple as compared with that of modern times. Population was spa.r.s.e and society scarcely organized, land was plentiful and employment abundant. There was an utter absence of the abstruse questions and complications which now beset the law. There was no need of that close and searching study into principles and precedents which keeps the modern law-student buried in his office. On the contrary, the very character of this simple litigation drew the lawyer into the street and neighborhood, and into close and active intercourse with all cla.s.ses of his fellow-men. The suits consisted of actions of tort and a.s.sumpsit. If a man had a debt not collectible, the current phrase was, 'I'll take it out of his hide.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: LINCOLN AND STUART'S LAW-OFFICE, SPRINGFIELD.]