August 19, 2025 • 18 mins
In Story of Abraham Lincoln, Mary A. Hamilton offers a unique British perspective on the life of the 16th President of the United States, presenting a heartfelt tribute to “Honest Abe.” She explores Lincoln’s ancestral roots, his humble beginnings in Kentucky, his formative years in Indiana, and his impactful adult life in Illinois, culminating in his presidency and the trials of the White House. The biography also delves into the American Civil War, providing valuable context on its causes and developments. While Hamilton’s narrative is engaging, it does contain some historical inaccuracies, such as misidentifying Jefferson Davis as the Southern Democratic candidate in the 1860 election instead of John C. Breckinridge. Nevertheless, The Story of Abraham Lincoln remains an intriguing and accessible account of Lincolns life, principles, and political legacy. Please note Chapter 7 includes a single use of an epithet for African-Americans from a British magazine quote, and Chapter 8 features an example of a stereotypical Southern black dialect that may be considered offensive. (Summary by John Lieder.)
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter three of the Story of Abraham Lincoln. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by John Leeder. The Story of Abraham Lincoln by
Mary A. Hamilton. Chapter three Slavery. It would be a
(00:24):
great mistake to think that Abraham Lincoln won success easily.
Looking back over the lives of great men, one is
apt to think how fortune helped them, What astonishing luck
they must have had. When one knows the end, it
seems certain from the beginning. But when you know more
about any one really great man, you are sure to
(00:47):
find that he has risen only by endless hard work,
and by knowing from the beginning what he wanted to
be and do, and thinking only of that. Success is
never easy, and for Lincoln the path to it was
a hard and uphill way. You have seen in what
difficulties his life began, how he taught himself everything he learned,
(01:09):
and made for himself every penny that he possessed. His
first effort to get into parliament, like his first efforts
to make a living, seemed a failure. But this did
not make him despair. Other people had risen, and he
was going to rise. He was sure of one thing
that there is always plenty of room at the top,
(01:30):
and he meant to reach the top. There is always
a place for a man of strong purpose, who is honest,
and who can think for himself. If a man really
wants to serve his country, nothing need prevent him from
doing it. And Lincoln saw that the first step to
serving your country well is to be a good workman,
(01:51):
a good friend, and a good citizen of your own town.
When the next election came, he stood again, and this
time he was elected, And after his two years of
service came to an end, he was elected again. For
eight years he was a member of the parliament of
his own state of Illinois. Then, after four years away
(02:11):
from politics, he was made member of Congress, that is,
of the American parliament to which the states send representatives.
To be in parliament was to be in touch with
the big world, to have a share in the settlement
of big questions. In the Illinois Parliament, Lincoln met a
great many clever men, men who rose to important posts Slater.
(02:35):
Few of them suspected that this tall, awkward country looking
young lawyer who did not speak much, but could tell
such extraordinarily funny stories when he chose was going to
rise to be American president, to prove himself greater than
any American of their time. Most of the members were
small lawyers, like himself. They were sent to Parliament because
(02:59):
they were men in whom their fellow citizens had confidence.
They were honest men, but few of them had any
more knowledge of politics than Lincoln himself. The state of
Illinois was very new, and its affairs had not yet
become complicated. Lincoln soon learnt the ins and outs of
parliamentary business, and he only found one man who was
(03:20):
a better speaker than himself. This was a man with
whom he was to have a great deal to do
all his life, a man already well known in politics
and followed by a large party. His name was Stephen
Arnold Douglas. He was two years younger than Lincoln. Like him,
he had been brought up in the rough surroundings of
(03:42):
the West, where he had gone as a boy. His
father was poor, but he was a gentleman, well educated himself.
He had given his son a good education of a sort.
When he was twenty one, Douglas became a lawyer very soon.
He became the foremost barrister in northern Illinois, and soon
(04:02):
entered the state parliament. In the year of Lincoln's election,
he had been made Secretary of State. He was therefore
a person of importance. Douglas was extremely clever as a boy.
He learned things quickly and remembered them easily, unlike Lincoln,
who learnt very slowly. He had a wonderful power of speech.
(04:24):
He was ready and able to speak on any subject,
and even if he really knew very little about it,
he always gave people the impression that he knew everything.
He used to tell people what they wanted to hear,
whereas Lincoln had a way of speaking the truth, whether
it was pleasant or not. Douglas was very popular. He
(04:45):
understood how to rule men, and he was intensely ambitious.
Ambition was the strongest feeling in his heart, and his
ambition was for himself. He dreamed already of being president
of the United States. He was a short, thickly built man.
But it was the smallness of his mind, his selfish
(05:06):
aims that made Lincoln say that Douglas was the least
man that he had ever met. He seemed to honest,
abe to care not at all for what he said
or did, as long as his own success was safe.
Success was his one object. It was an ambition very
different from Lincoln's. Indeed, Lincoln was unlike any of the
(05:29):
members whom he met. His aims were quite different from theirs.
He looked to a future beyond himself. He did not
think of his own success. What he wanted to attain
by success was the power to help his country. Patriotism
was his first and strongest feeling, and his patriotism was
(05:50):
of the truest kind. He did not want to make
America great, because she ruled over a vast extent of territory.
Such greatness did not appeal to him at all. He
wanted her to be great in the sense that she
really lived up to the ideal set before her forever
in the Declaration of Independence, the ideal of a union
(06:10):
of free men governing themselves well. And Lincoln's ideals were
real to him. In every question, he was guided by
his patriotism. He did not mind saying what he thought
whether people liked him for it or not. They must
like him for what he was, and not for what
he said, and unless they loved what was right, their
(06:32):
liking was not worth having. When, after long thinking, he
came to see what he thought the truth on any subject,
he spoke out, so that every one who heard must understand.
He never said one thing and meant another, as Douglas did.
He was as honest in his thoughts as in his actions. Now,
(06:53):
in American politics, there was one great question more important
than every other, the question of slavery. Cautious politicians, men
with an eye to their own success, thought that this
question had better be left alone. Really thoughtful men, men
like Lincoln, saw that this question could not be left
(07:16):
alone forever someday, and the sooner the better it must
be settled. Anyhow, it was every honest man's duty to
say what he thought. It is difficult now to realize
quite what slavery meant. Perhaps you have read or heard
of a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was written
(07:37):
about this time by an American lady who wanted to
make all Americans see what slavery did mean, how terrible
it could be if you drew a line across America
just south of Lincoln state of Illinois. Slavery did not
exist in the northern States. It did exist in all
the Southern states. Whenever the question was discussed, most people
(08:01):
from the North thought it rather a bad thing. Some
thought it a very bad thing. People from the South
all thought it was a good or at least a
necessary thing. They all agreed as a rule in thinking
that whether it was a good thing or a bad thing,
there it was, and there was no good discussing it.
(08:22):
The real wrong lay far back in the past. Centuries ago,
merchants had brought negroes over from Africa and sold them
in America as slaves. As is all was the case
when once the wrong had been brought in, when the
evil had begun, it was almost impossible to get rid
of it, when people had grown used to it. When
(08:44):
people could buy slaves who did not cost very much
to do work for them, they did not want to
do it themselves, especially if the work was disagreeable. They
began to believe that black men were intended by nature
to do all the disagreeable. English merchants made great fortunes
by bringing slaves to America, and the English government supported them.
(09:09):
And when after the War America was a free country,
the Union of States, which made it so was half
composed of states that held slaves. These slaves were most
valuable property. The men who drew up the Constitution, George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, declared in it,
(09:31):
all men are free and equal. All men possess rights
which no one can take away from them. The northern
states gave up their slaves and decided that slavery was illegal.
The Southern states did not. They refused to join the
Union unless they were allowed to keep their slaves. Now,
(09:51):
of course, it was absurd to call a country free
where slavery existed, or to say that all men have
rights when millions of black men had no rights at all.
To the Southerner, a black man was not a man,
but a piece of property. But it would not be
quite fair to think that the Northerners who gave up
(10:12):
slaves had always more lofty ideas than the Southerners. You
must remember that slaves were much more useful in the
South than in the north. The climate of the North
was cold, and the work not of the sort that
could be well done by untrained negroes. In the South,
it was so hot that it was difficult for white
(10:32):
men to work, and work on the plantations needed no
special skill. At the time when the Declaration of Independence
was drawn up and signed, one thing seemed to every
American more important than anything else. That the country should
be united in one hole. North and South must join together.
(10:53):
No difference could outweigh a common nationality. The Southerners would
not join the union unless they were allowed to keep
their slaves. Therefore, the Northerners left the slavery in the South.
They hoped, however, that it would gradually die out, and
therefore a law was passed which declared that after twenty years,
(11:14):
no more slaves were to be brought from Africa. When
Southerners declared, as they very often did, that slaves were
very well treated, that they were much happier and more
comfortable than if they were free. This was true to
a certain extent those slaves who were employed in the
houses and gardens of their masters. Those who were used
(11:36):
as servants were often very well treated. But however well
they were treated, it was wrong for a man to
have other men entirely in his power, wrong for him
and wrong for them. And although some masters did not
abuse their power, some did, and all could if ever
they wanted to without feeling that they were doing anything wrong.
(11:59):
A white gentlemen could beat his black slave to death
if he chose, He would not be punished any more
than if he beat a dog to death, and his
friends would still think him a gentleman. Moreover, far the
greater number of the slaves were not used as servants,
but used as laborers on the cotton plantations. Here they
(12:19):
were under the charge of an overseer. His one idea
was to get as much work out of them as possible.
They worked all day and at night were often herded
together in any sort of shed. After Eli Whitney, a
young American, invented a machine called the Cotton gin by
using which one Negro could pick twenty times as much
(12:41):
cotton in a day as before. The business of working
the cotton plantations with slaves made the southern landowners very rich.
Slaves were cheap in a few days, they made as
much for their masters as they cost them, and their
masters could make them work as hard as they liked.
They were quite ignorant, Their masters taught them nothing, and
(13:04):
they had no way of escape. They were absolutely at
the mercy of the overseer with his whip the masters
came to regard these black fellow beings simply as property,
not so valuable as a horse, rather more useful than
a dog. They often forgot that they had any feelings.
(13:24):
Children were sold away from their parents, a husband was
sent to one plantation and his wife to another. They
were sometimes beaten for the smallest fault if they tried
to escape. Bloodhounds were used to hunt them down. Dealers
led them about in chains and sold them in the
public market, exactly like animals. People who came from the
(13:47):
north to the South, as Abraham Lincoln did on his
trip down the Ohio and saw how the slaves were treated,
were often shocked, But in the South people were used
to it. North of a certain line, slavery did not exist.
Slaves used sometimes to run away from their masters and
escape across this line, but in every northern state there
(14:10):
was a law that escaped slaves had to be handed
back to their master if he claimed them. The masters
used to offer a reward to any one who handed
back to them the body of their slave, alive or dead.
This led to all sorts of difficulties, because in the
Northern States a great many free negroes lived very often,
(14:32):
some one who was eager for the reward would capture
an innocent, free negro and hand him over to the master,
declaring that he answered to the description of the missing slave.
The question as to whether he was or not was
decided not in the northern state where he had been captured,
but in the southern state, where the master lived, and
(14:55):
no southern court could be trusted to decide fairly in
a case between a white man and to black. Gradually,
this injustice roused a small party in the North which
openly declared that slavery was an abominable thing and ought
not to exist in America. The abolitionists, as they called themselves,
said that it was a disgrace to a free country
(15:17):
that slavery should exist in it, that as long as
it did exist, the Declaration of Independence had no meaning.
Slavery ought to be abolished. When Abraham Lincoln was about
twenty one, a paper called The Liberator began to appear.
It was edited by a great man called William Lloyd Garrison.
(15:40):
Its object was to rouse people to see the evils
of slavery and to get it made illegal. The abolitionists
were few in number and very unpopular. They had to
suffer for their beliefs. In the North as well as
in the South, the offices where The Liberator was printed
were attacked by mobs of furious people who burst in
at the doors, broke every pane of glass in the windows,
(16:03):
destroyed the printing press, and threw the type into the river.
In Saint Louis, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged round the
town with a rope round his waist while crowds of
angry people hooted and hissed, spat at him, and threw
rotten eggs and stones at his head. He only just
escaped death. Many of his followers were murdered in the
(16:26):
open streets. Even in Illinois, an innocent preacher who had
sympathized with them was thrown into the river and drowned.
The southern states were roused to fury. In the North,
even sensible people who did not like slavery thought it
very unwise to say anything against it. Slavery was a fact,
(16:47):
it was no good to discuss it. Several northern states
sent petitions to Parliament declaring their opinion that it was
very unwise to discuss abolition. In Illinois, this was the
view taken by nearly all all Lincoln's friends. Lincoln did
not agree with them. He thought the abolitionists very often unwise.
(17:07):
Nothing he saw could be more dangerous than to rouse
the feeling of the South. But nothing could make him
seem to approve of slavery. For Lincoln to see that
any action was right and to do it was the
same thing. He and one other man called Stone sent
in a protest to the Illinois Parliament. In it, they
(17:28):
declared that they believed slavery to be founded upon injustice
and upon bad policy. Lincoln spoke because he must. He
had seen what slavery meant, and he hated slavery. But
he saw that the South would not allow slavery to
be abolished. If the North tried to do it, the
country would be divided into two halves. He was not
(17:52):
ready to face that his love for his country came
before everything. Everything must be born, rather than that it
should be divided. The Abolitionists were a small party, and
for the next seventeen years the question of slavery was
left as it was as far as Parliament was concerned.
During these seventeen years, Lincoln was perpetually turning it over
(18:15):
in his mind, thinking and reading about it, and helping
other people to think about it too, end of Chapter three.
Recording by John Leader, Bloomington, Illinois,
Chapter three of the Story of Abraham Lincoln. This is
a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by John Leeder. The Story of Abraham Lincoln by
Mary A. Hamilton. Chapter three Slavery. It would be a
(00:24):
great mistake to think that Abraham Lincoln won success easily.
Looking back over the lives of great men, one is
apt to think how fortune helped them, What astonishing luck
they must have had. When one knows the end, it
seems certain from the beginning. But when you know more
about any one really great man, you are sure to
(00:47):
find that he has risen only by endless hard work,
and by knowing from the beginning what he wanted to
be and do, and thinking only of that. Success is
never easy, and for Lincoln the path to it was
a hard and uphill way. You have seen in what
difficulties his life began, how he taught himself everything he learned,
(01:09):
and made for himself every penny that he possessed. His
first effort to get into parliament, like his first efforts
to make a living, seemed a failure. But this did
not make him despair. Other people had risen, and he
was going to rise. He was sure of one thing
that there is always plenty of room at the top,
(01:30):
and he meant to reach the top. There is always
a place for a man of strong purpose, who is honest,
and who can think for himself. If a man really
wants to serve his country, nothing need prevent him from
doing it. And Lincoln saw that the first step to
serving your country well is to be a good workman,
(01:51):
a good friend, and a good citizen of your own town.
When the next election came, he stood again, and this
time he was elected, And after his two years of
service came to an end, he was elected again. For
eight years he was a member of the parliament of
his own state of Illinois. Then, after four years away
(02:11):
from politics, he was made member of Congress, that is,
of the American parliament to which the states send representatives.
To be in parliament was to be in touch with
the big world, to have a share in the settlement
of big questions. In the Illinois Parliament, Lincoln met a
great many clever men, men who rose to important posts Slater.
(02:35):
Few of them suspected that this tall, awkward country looking
young lawyer who did not speak much, but could tell
such extraordinarily funny stories when he chose was going to
rise to be American president, to prove himself greater than
any American of their time. Most of the members were
small lawyers, like himself. They were sent to Parliament because
(02:59):
they were men in whom their fellow citizens had confidence.
They were honest men, but few of them had any
more knowledge of politics than Lincoln himself. The state of
Illinois was very new, and its affairs had not yet
become complicated. Lincoln soon learnt the ins and outs of
parliamentary business, and he only found one man who was
(03:20):
a better speaker than himself. This was a man with
whom he was to have a great deal to do
all his life, a man already well known in politics
and followed by a large party. His name was Stephen
Arnold Douglas. He was two years younger than Lincoln. Like him,
he had been brought up in the rough surroundings of
(03:42):
the West, where he had gone as a boy. His
father was poor, but he was a gentleman, well educated himself.
He had given his son a good education of a sort.
When he was twenty one, Douglas became a lawyer very soon.
He became the foremost barrister in northern Illinois, and soon
(04:02):
entered the state parliament. In the year of Lincoln's election,
he had been made Secretary of State. He was therefore
a person of importance. Douglas was extremely clever as a boy.
He learned things quickly and remembered them easily, unlike Lincoln,
who learnt very slowly. He had a wonderful power of speech.
(04:24):
He was ready and able to speak on any subject,
and even if he really knew very little about it,
he always gave people the impression that he knew everything.
He used to tell people what they wanted to hear,
whereas Lincoln had a way of speaking the truth, whether
it was pleasant or not. Douglas was very popular. He
(04:45):
understood how to rule men, and he was intensely ambitious.
Ambition was the strongest feeling in his heart, and his
ambition was for himself. He dreamed already of being president
of the United States. He was a short, thickly built man.
But it was the smallness of his mind, his selfish
(05:06):
aims that made Lincoln say that Douglas was the least
man that he had ever met. He seemed to honest,
abe to care not at all for what he said
or did, as long as his own success was safe.
Success was his one object. It was an ambition very
different from Lincoln's. Indeed, Lincoln was unlike any of the
(05:29):
members whom he met. His aims were quite different from theirs.
He looked to a future beyond himself. He did not
think of his own success. What he wanted to attain
by success was the power to help his country. Patriotism
was his first and strongest feeling, and his patriotism was
(05:50):
of the truest kind. He did not want to make
America great, because she ruled over a vast extent of territory.
Such greatness did not appeal to him at all. He
wanted her to be great in the sense that she
really lived up to the ideal set before her forever
in the Declaration of Independence, the ideal of a union
(06:10):
of free men governing themselves well. And Lincoln's ideals were
real to him. In every question, he was guided by
his patriotism. He did not mind saying what he thought
whether people liked him for it or not. They must
like him for what he was, and not for what
he said, and unless they loved what was right, their
(06:32):
liking was not worth having. When, after long thinking, he
came to see what he thought the truth on any subject,
he spoke out, so that every one who heard must understand.
He never said one thing and meant another, as Douglas did.
He was as honest in his thoughts as in his actions. Now,
(06:53):
in American politics, there was one great question more important
than every other, the question of slavery. Cautious politicians, men
with an eye to their own success, thought that this
question had better be left alone. Really thoughtful men, men
like Lincoln, saw that this question could not be left
(07:16):
alone forever someday, and the sooner the better it must
be settled. Anyhow, it was every honest man's duty to
say what he thought. It is difficult now to realize
quite what slavery meant. Perhaps you have read or heard
of a book called Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was written
(07:37):
about this time by an American lady who wanted to
make all Americans see what slavery did mean, how terrible
it could be if you drew a line across America
just south of Lincoln state of Illinois. Slavery did not
exist in the northern States. It did exist in all
the Southern states. Whenever the question was discussed, most people
(08:01):
from the North thought it rather a bad thing. Some
thought it a very bad thing. People from the South
all thought it was a good or at least a
necessary thing. They all agreed as a rule in thinking
that whether it was a good thing or a bad thing,
there it was, and there was no good discussing it.
(08:22):
The real wrong lay far back in the past. Centuries ago,
merchants had brought negroes over from Africa and sold them
in America as slaves. As is all was the case
when once the wrong had been brought in, when the
evil had begun, it was almost impossible to get rid
of it, when people had grown used to it. When
(08:44):
people could buy slaves who did not cost very much
to do work for them, they did not want to
do it themselves, especially if the work was disagreeable. They
began to believe that black men were intended by nature
to do all the disagreeable. English merchants made great fortunes
by bringing slaves to America, and the English government supported them.
(09:09):
And when after the War America was a free country,
the Union of States, which made it so was half
composed of states that held slaves. These slaves were most
valuable property. The men who drew up the Constitution, George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, declared in it,
(09:31):
all men are free and equal. All men possess rights
which no one can take away from them. The northern
states gave up their slaves and decided that slavery was illegal.
The Southern states did not. They refused to join the
Union unless they were allowed to keep their slaves. Now,
(09:51):
of course, it was absurd to call a country free
where slavery existed, or to say that all men have
rights when millions of black men had no rights at all.
To the Southerner, a black man was not a man,
but a piece of property. But it would not be
quite fair to think that the Northerners who gave up
(10:12):
slaves had always more lofty ideas than the Southerners. You
must remember that slaves were much more useful in the
South than in the north. The climate of the North
was cold, and the work not of the sort that
could be well done by untrained negroes. In the South,
it was so hot that it was difficult for white
(10:32):
men to work, and work on the plantations needed no
special skill. At the time when the Declaration of Independence
was drawn up and signed, one thing seemed to every
American more important than anything else. That the country should
be united in one hole. North and South must join together.
(10:53):
No difference could outweigh a common nationality. The Southerners would
not join the union unless they were allowed to keep
their slaves. Therefore, the Northerners left the slavery in the South.
They hoped, however, that it would gradually die out, and
therefore a law was passed which declared that after twenty years,
(11:14):
no more slaves were to be brought from Africa. When
Southerners declared, as they very often did, that slaves were
very well treated, that they were much happier and more
comfortable than if they were free. This was true to
a certain extent those slaves who were employed in the
houses and gardens of their masters. Those who were used
(11:36):
as servants were often very well treated. But however well
they were treated, it was wrong for a man to
have other men entirely in his power, wrong for him
and wrong for them. And although some masters did not
abuse their power, some did, and all could if ever
they wanted to without feeling that they were doing anything wrong.
(11:59):
A white gentlemen could beat his black slave to death
if he chose, He would not be punished any more
than if he beat a dog to death, and his
friends would still think him a gentleman. Moreover, far the
greater number of the slaves were not used as servants,
but used as laborers on the cotton plantations. Here they
(12:19):
were under the charge of an overseer. His one idea
was to get as much work out of them as possible.
They worked all day and at night were often herded
together in any sort of shed. After Eli Whitney, a
young American, invented a machine called the Cotton gin by
using which one Negro could pick twenty times as much
(12:41):
cotton in a day as before. The business of working
the cotton plantations with slaves made the southern landowners very rich.
Slaves were cheap in a few days, they made as
much for their masters as they cost them, and their
masters could make them work as hard as they liked.
They were quite ignorant, Their masters taught them nothing, and
(13:04):
they had no way of escape. They were absolutely at
the mercy of the overseer with his whip the masters
came to regard these black fellow beings simply as property,
not so valuable as a horse, rather more useful than
a dog. They often forgot that they had any feelings.
(13:24):
Children were sold away from their parents, a husband was
sent to one plantation and his wife to another. They
were sometimes beaten for the smallest fault if they tried
to escape. Bloodhounds were used to hunt them down. Dealers
led them about in chains and sold them in the
public market, exactly like animals. People who came from the
(13:47):
north to the South, as Abraham Lincoln did on his
trip down the Ohio and saw how the slaves were treated,
were often shocked, But in the South people were used
to it. North of a certain line, slavery did not exist.
Slaves used sometimes to run away from their masters and
escape across this line, but in every northern state there
(14:10):
was a law that escaped slaves had to be handed
back to their master if he claimed them. The masters
used to offer a reward to any one who handed
back to them the body of their slave, alive or dead.
This led to all sorts of difficulties, because in the
Northern States a great many free negroes lived very often,
(14:32):
some one who was eager for the reward would capture
an innocent, free negro and hand him over to the master,
declaring that he answered to the description of the missing slave.
The question as to whether he was or not was
decided not in the northern state where he had been captured,
but in the southern state, where the master lived, and
(14:55):
no southern court could be trusted to decide fairly in
a case between a white man and to black. Gradually,
this injustice roused a small party in the North which
openly declared that slavery was an abominable thing and ought
not to exist in America. The abolitionists, as they called themselves,
said that it was a disgrace to a free country
(15:17):
that slavery should exist in it, that as long as
it did exist, the Declaration of Independence had no meaning.
Slavery ought to be abolished. When Abraham Lincoln was about
twenty one, a paper called The Liberator began to appear.
It was edited by a great man called William Lloyd Garrison.
(15:40):
Its object was to rouse people to see the evils
of slavery and to get it made illegal. The abolitionists
were few in number and very unpopular. They had to
suffer for their beliefs. In the North as well as
in the South, the offices where The Liberator was printed
were attacked by mobs of furious people who burst in
at the doors, broke every pane of glass in the windows,
(16:03):
destroyed the printing press, and threw the type into the river.
In Saint Louis, William Lloyd Garrison was dragged round the
town with a rope round his waist while crowds of
angry people hooted and hissed, spat at him, and threw
rotten eggs and stones at his head. He only just
escaped death. Many of his followers were murdered in the
(16:26):
open streets. Even in Illinois, an innocent preacher who had
sympathized with them was thrown into the river and drowned.
The southern states were roused to fury. In the North,
even sensible people who did not like slavery thought it
very unwise to say anything against it. Slavery was a fact,
(16:47):
it was no good to discuss it. Several northern states
sent petitions to Parliament declaring their opinion that it was
very unwise to discuss abolition. In Illinois, this was the
view taken by nearly all all Lincoln's friends. Lincoln did
not agree with them. He thought the abolitionists very often unwise.
(17:07):
Nothing he saw could be more dangerous than to rouse
the feeling of the South. But nothing could make him
seem to approve of slavery. For Lincoln to see that
any action was right and to do it was the
same thing. He and one other man called Stone sent
in a protest to the Illinois Parliament. In it, they
(17:28):
declared that they believed slavery to be founded upon injustice
and upon bad policy. Lincoln spoke because he must. He
had seen what slavery meant, and he hated slavery. But
he saw that the South would not allow slavery to
be abolished. If the North tried to do it, the
country would be divided into two halves. He was not
(17:52):
ready to face that his love for his country came
before everything. Everything must be born, rather than that it
should be divided. The Abolitionists were a small party, and
for the next seventeen years the question of slavery was
left as it was as far as Parliament was concerned.
During these seventeen years, Lincoln was perpetually turning it over
(18:15):
in his mind, thinking and reading about it, and helping
other people to think about it too, end of Chapter three.
Recording by John Leader, Bloomington, Illinois,
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