August 19, 2025 • 17 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 four 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 Leader. The Story of Abraham Lincoln by
Mary A. Hamilton, Chapter four, Lincoln the Lawyer. Two years
(00:23):
after Lincoln entered the Illinois Parliament, its meetings, which had
been held at Vandalia, were transferred to Springfield. In Springfield,
Lincoln lived for the next five and twenty years until
he left it to go to Washington as President of
the United States. Springfield was a country town which thought
itself rather important. The people paid a good deal of
(00:47):
attention to dress. They gave evening parties of a quiet sort,
where they played cards and talk politics. The business of
the most prominent persons in the town was law. Almost
all the members of parliament were lawyers. Lincoln found that
his surveying did not occupy his time or bring in
a very large income. He had studied law books and
(01:10):
knew very nearly as much as most of the young
barristers of Springfield. Major Stuart, under whom he had served
in the War against Blackhawk took him into partnership. The
partnership was not very successful. Lincoln was rather ignorant, and
Stuart was too much occupied with his duties as Member
of Congress the American Parliament to teach him much. After
(01:34):
four years, Lincoln left Stuart and joined another friend, Judge
Stephen D. Logan. Logan had made Lincoln's acquaintance at the
time of his first unsuccessful candidature for the Illinois Parliament.
He had then greatly admired the young man's pluck and
good sense, and the cheerful way in which he accepted
his defeat. Later, he had been struck by the sound
(01:56):
reasoning of his political speeches. Logan himself was not only
a first rate lawyer, he was a man of wide
education and culture. Abraham learned more than law from him.
Even after Lincoln left the partnership and set up an
office of his own, the two men remained close friends.
Although busy during the winter in parliament, Lincoln worked very
(02:19):
hard at his business. He knew that no one could
succeed in anything without hard work, and he saw that
to become a really good lawyer would help him in
politics and make him a more useful citizen of the state. Moreover,
he understood more clearly than most men have done, that
every deed in life is connected to every other. No
(02:40):
man can escape the consequences of what he is and does.
Every act and every speech is important. Lincoln was four
times elected to the Illinois Parliament, that is, he sat
in it for eight years. For four years, between eighteen
forty five and forty nine, he was member for Illaes
in Congress. In Congress, he spoke and voted against the
(03:04):
war that was being waged against Mexico. The aim of
the war was the conquest of Texas and California. The
South urged this because they wanted the number of slave
owning states to be equal to the number of free states.
They were always afraid that new states would be created
out of the undeveloped territory in the northwest, and if
(03:24):
this were to happen, the slave states would be in
a minority in Congress. If Texas were added as a
slave state, the slave states would have a majority of one.
There would be fourteen free and fifteen slave states. The
northern members, for the most part, did not see the point.
They did not unite against the Southern demands, and consequently
(03:46):
the South succeeded in the war, Mexico was defeated, and
Texas was added to the Union. At the end of
his last year of membership eighteen forty nine, Lincoln applied
for a post in the government office. Why he did
so it is difficult to understand, for it would have
put an end to his political career, as officials may
(04:09):
not sit in the House. Fortunately, his request was refused.
He returned to his home in Springfield, where he lived
in a big, plain house painted a dirty yellow, with
a big piece of untidy garden behind in a small
field at the side. He had married seven years before
and had now three sons. He was devoted to these
(04:32):
boys and used to play all sorts of games with
them as they grew bigger. For the next five years
he devoted himself mainly to his work as a lawyer.
He was now forty years of age. In Springfield and
everywhere in Illinois, he was admired, respected and loved, but
the high opinion of other people never made him easily
(04:54):
satisfied with himself. To the end of his life, he
never stopped working and learning. He now resolved to become
a really good lawyer. He knew that in law, he
could learn the art of persuading people and of expressing
clearly what he wanted to say. To help in this,
he took up the study of mathematics with extraordinary energy.
(05:16):
Examining his own speeches, he seemed to find in them
some confusion of thought. To make his own ideas clear,
and to be sure that he expressed them clearly and truly,
and never conveyed to others an impression that was not true,
he bought a text book of Euclid. The first six
books of this he learnt by heart. He said, I
(05:38):
wanted to know what was the meaning of the word demonstrate.
Euclid taught me what demonstration was. After a year or two,
Lincoln was regarded as the equal of any lawyer in Springfield.
He had one weakness, however, if he did not believe
in the justice of his case, or if he thought
(05:59):
the man for whom whom he had to speak was
not quite honest, he did not defend well. His friend,
Judge Davis, says a wrong cause was poorly defended by him.
A story is told of a man who came to
Lincoln's office and asked his help in getting six hundred
dollars from a poor widow. Lincoln listened to the man
and then said, yes, there is no reasonable doubt, but
(06:22):
I can gain your case for you. I can set
a whole neighborhood at Loggerheads. I can distress a widowed
mother under six fatherless children, and thereby get for you
six hundred dollars, which rightfully belong, as it appears to me,
as much to them as it does to you. I
advise you to try your hand at making six hundred
dollars some other way. Everyone in Springfield valued honest Abe's opinion.
(06:49):
All sorts of people brought their troubles to him. His
sympathy and his tenderness of heart made them trust him.
He was one of the people. He never felt himself
a bit above them. To the end of his life,
he did not grow proud, and he was never ashamed
of his early poverty. When he was president, he told
some of his friends of a dream he had had
(07:11):
which might very well have been true. He dreamt that
at some big public meeting, he was walking through the
hall up to the platform from which he was going
to speak, as he passed a lady sitting at the
end of one of the rows of seats, said to
another sitting next to her, so loudly that he could hear.
Is that, mister Lincoln, while he looks a very common
(07:32):
sort of person? I thought to myself in my dream,
said Lincoln that it was true, but that God Almighty
seemed to prefer common people, for he had made so
many of them. Nothing in Lincoln is more truly great
than his power of seeing the value of common things
and common people. He knew that the things which appeal
(07:54):
to men as men, which are common to humanity, are
the most valuable of all. He counted on this when
he abolished slavery. Freedom is a right common to all men,
and there is somewhere in everyone an instinct which knows
that it is wrong to make other people do things
which are too disagreeable to do yourself. During these years
(08:18):
at Springfield, Abraham read a great deal. Shakespeare and Burns
were his favorite poets. He knew Shakespeare better than any
other book except the Bible. He read and thought unceasingly
about politics, and he talked about them with his friends.
The history of America he studied until he knew everything
(08:38):
there was to know. Above all, he thought about slavery
events were taking place that made it plain that the
question of slavery could not be left where it was.
It was no longer possible to act as if the
difference between North and South did not exist. As years
went on, the difference came more and more plain. The North,
(09:02):
which had been poor and barren, only half cultivated by
ignorant and uneducated settlers, was growing richer than the prosperous,
lazy South. Workmen came to the North from all parts
of the world, poor men with good brains and strong arms,
ready and able to work intelligently to improve the land,
to make wheat grow where stones and bushes had been.
(09:25):
None of these men went to the South, for their
work was done by slaves so cheaply that no paid
worker had a chance. But the difference between the intelligent
labor of free men working for themselves a mechanical labor
of slaves working for their masters soon began to tell.
In the North, schools sprang up everywhere. The people became
(09:48):
better and better educated. Men who had grown up in
the backwoods, like Abraham Lincoln, taught themselves and rose to
be lawyers and statesmen by their own efforts. Others who
who had the chance of being taught did the same.
It was possible for any man of brains to rise
from the bottom to the top. Inventions were made which
(10:09):
enabled all kinds of new work to be done and
new wealth produced. The North was rich in material, richer
in the men she had to work it, who were
helped and encouraged by the freedom which through every career
opened to real talent. In the South, all power was
in the hands of the aristocratic families, who had had
(10:31):
it always. The work was done by slaves. Owners did
not want to educate their slaves, for then they were
afraid that they would want their freedom. The coal mines
of the South were not discovered. They could not have
been worked by slaves. The South began to be very
jealous of the North, and the North began to disapprove
(10:53):
of the South. More and more people began to see
that slavery was wrong. People were not yet ready to
say that slavery ought to cease to be but they
were ready to say that it must not be extended.
At the time of the Mexican War, the South had
shown that it wanted to extend slavery. This frightened the North.
(11:15):
In eighteen fifty an agreement was made, known as the
Missouri Compromise. By this a line thirty six degrees thirty minutes,
called Mason and Dixon's line, was drawn across the map
of America. North of this line, slavery was never to exist.
(11:35):
Speakers on both sides declared that the Missouri Compromise was
as fixed as the Constitution itself. Stephen Arnold Douglas was
the loudest in expressing this opinion. It is eternal and fundamental,
he declared. Douglas was a trader of the Great Party
(11:55):
known as the Democrats. He held that the people of
every state had a right to decide questions affecting that state,
and not the central American government. Douglas had one great aim,
which was to him far more important than any question
of political right or wrong. He wanted to be made president.
(12:16):
To secure this, he saw that he must get the
support of the South. To win the support of the South,
he took a most dangerous and important step, one which
was the immediate cause of the war which broke out
six years later. He declared that the people of any
state or territory could decide whether or not they would
(12:36):
have slavery in their state, they could establish it or
prohibit it. He went further than this. Two new territories
had been organized in the northwest, Nebraska and Kansas. They
claimed to be admitted to the union est states. Both
states were, of course, north of Mason and Dixon's line,
(12:57):
and therefore, by the Missouri Compromise, they must be free states.
But the South was bent on creating new slave states
as fast as the North could create free states. They
wanted to make Kansas a slave state. Stephen Douglas therefore
introduced in eighteen fifty four the famous Kansas Nebraska Bill.
(13:19):
It declared that Kansas might be slaveholding or free, as
the people of the territory should decide. The result of
this bill was for the first time to unite together
a strong party in the North in opposition to the Democrats,
who were allied to the South. This new party called
itself Republican. Lincoln was a spokesman of their views. They declared, firstly,
(13:45):
that Congress, which is the parliament representing all the states
which together formed the Union, has the right to decide
whether slavery shall be lawful in any particular state or not,
and not the people of that state alone. Secondly, They
declared that in the case of Kansas, Congress had already
(14:06):
four years ago decided that Kansas could not have slavery
because it lay beyond the line north of which slavery
could not exist. Resolutions were passed in many of the
northern state parliaments against the Kansas Nebraska Bill. The Parliament
of Illinois sent one. Now it was quite clear to
(14:26):
keen sighted politicians that while Douglas and his party pretended
that they wanted to give the people of Kansas the
choice between owning slaves and not doing so, what they
really wanted was to force Kansas to have slaves. Those
who supported the Missouri Compromise declared that it was illegal
to give Kansas the choice, however she used it. Events
(14:50):
soon proved that Kansas was not to have any choice
at all. Kansas had few inhabitants, but the opinion of
the people of the state was against slavery. Next Door
to Kansas, however, on the east, was the slave holding
state of Missouri. From Missouri, bands of armed men came
into Kansas in order to vote for slavery at the
(15:13):
election and to prevent the real voters from using their
votes against it. Free fighting went on in the state.
An election was held at which armed men kept away
those who would have voted for freedom, and a pro
slavery man was chosen, but few of the people of
Kansas had been allowed to vote. The Free Party met
at another place afterwards, and a genuine popular vote elected
(15:37):
an anti slavery man. Civil war went on in Kansas
for two years. Now. The importance of these events is this.
Up till now, most people in the North had believed
that slavery ought to be left alone because it would
gradually die out. The Kansas Nebraska Bill and the Kansas
(15:58):
election made it perfectly clear that the South was not
going to let slavery die out. On the contrary, they
wanted to spread it to strengthen themselves against the North.
Douglas was a member for Chicago in the north of Illinois.
He came down to Illinois to win the state to
his views and made a series of speeches there. This
(16:22):
at once called Lincoln to the Four. He saw more clearly,
perhaps than any man in America, what the Kansas Bill meant.
It meant that either North and South must separate as
the abolitionists, that is, the party which held that slavery
ought to cease to be, and some people in the
South hoped or that the North would have to force
(16:44):
the South to abandon the attempt to spread slavery. He
made a series of great speeches in Illinois in which
he made it quite clear that Douglas and his followers
and the men of the South might say that they
wanted to leave states free to have slavery or not,
as they chose, but what they really desired was to
force them to have slavery, whether they chose or not.
(17:07):
Quote this declared indifference. But as I must think covert
real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
I say that no man is good enough to govern
another man without that man's consent. Slavery is founded upon
(17:29):
the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it on his
love of justice. End of Chapter four. Recording by John Leader, Bloomington, Illinois.
Chapter four 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 Leader. The Story of Abraham Lincoln by
Mary A. Hamilton, Chapter four, Lincoln the Lawyer. Two years
(00:23):
after Lincoln entered the Illinois Parliament, its meetings, which had
been held at Vandalia, were transferred to Springfield. In Springfield,
Lincoln lived for the next five and twenty years until
he left it to go to Washington as President of
the United States. Springfield was a country town which thought
itself rather important. The people paid a good deal of
(00:47):
attention to dress. They gave evening parties of a quiet sort,
where they played cards and talk politics. The business of
the most prominent persons in the town was law. Almost
all the members of parliament were lawyers. Lincoln found that
his surveying did not occupy his time or bring in
a very large income. He had studied law books and
(01:10):
knew very nearly as much as most of the young
barristers of Springfield. Major Stuart, under whom he had served
in the War against Blackhawk took him into partnership. The
partnership was not very successful. Lincoln was rather ignorant, and
Stuart was too much occupied with his duties as Member
of Congress the American Parliament to teach him much. After
(01:34):
four years, Lincoln left Stuart and joined another friend, Judge
Stephen D. Logan. Logan had made Lincoln's acquaintance at the
time of his first unsuccessful candidature for the Illinois Parliament.
He had then greatly admired the young man's pluck and
good sense, and the cheerful way in which he accepted
his defeat. Later, he had been struck by the sound
(01:56):
reasoning of his political speeches. Logan himself was not only
a first rate lawyer, he was a man of wide
education and culture. Abraham learned more than law from him.
Even after Lincoln left the partnership and set up an
office of his own, the two men remained close friends.
Although busy during the winter in parliament, Lincoln worked very
(02:19):
hard at his business. He knew that no one could
succeed in anything without hard work, and he saw that
to become a really good lawyer would help him in
politics and make him a more useful citizen of the state. Moreover,
he understood more clearly than most men have done, that
every deed in life is connected to every other. No
(02:40):
man can escape the consequences of what he is and does.
Every act and every speech is important. Lincoln was four
times elected to the Illinois Parliament, that is, he sat
in it for eight years. For four years, between eighteen
forty five and forty nine, he was member for Illaes
in Congress. In Congress, he spoke and voted against the
(03:04):
war that was being waged against Mexico. The aim of
the war was the conquest of Texas and California. The
South urged this because they wanted the number of slave
owning states to be equal to the number of free states.
They were always afraid that new states would be created
out of the undeveloped territory in the northwest, and if
(03:24):
this were to happen, the slave states would be in
a minority in Congress. If Texas were added as a
slave state, the slave states would have a majority of one.
There would be fourteen free and fifteen slave states. The
northern members, for the most part, did not see the point.
They did not unite against the Southern demands, and consequently
(03:46):
the South succeeded in the war, Mexico was defeated, and
Texas was added to the Union. At the end of
his last year of membership eighteen forty nine, Lincoln applied
for a post in the government office. Why he did
so it is difficult to understand, for it would have
put an end to his political career, as officials may
(04:09):
not sit in the House. Fortunately, his request was refused.
He returned to his home in Springfield, where he lived
in a big, plain house painted a dirty yellow, with
a big piece of untidy garden behind in a small
field at the side. He had married seven years before
and had now three sons. He was devoted to these
(04:32):
boys and used to play all sorts of games with
them as they grew bigger. For the next five years
he devoted himself mainly to his work as a lawyer.
He was now forty years of age. In Springfield and
everywhere in Illinois, he was admired, respected and loved, but
the high opinion of other people never made him easily
(04:54):
satisfied with himself. To the end of his life, he
never stopped working and learning. He now resolved to become
a really good lawyer. He knew that in law, he
could learn the art of persuading people and of expressing
clearly what he wanted to say. To help in this,
he took up the study of mathematics with extraordinary energy.
(05:16):
Examining his own speeches, he seemed to find in them
some confusion of thought. To make his own ideas clear,
and to be sure that he expressed them clearly and truly,
and never conveyed to others an impression that was not true,
he bought a text book of Euclid. The first six
books of this he learnt by heart. He said, I
(05:38):
wanted to know what was the meaning of the word demonstrate.
Euclid taught me what demonstration was. After a year or two,
Lincoln was regarded as the equal of any lawyer in Springfield.
He had one weakness, however, if he did not believe
in the justice of his case, or if he thought
(05:59):
the man for whom whom he had to speak was
not quite honest, he did not defend well. His friend,
Judge Davis, says a wrong cause was poorly defended by him.
A story is told of a man who came to
Lincoln's office and asked his help in getting six hundred
dollars from a poor widow. Lincoln listened to the man
and then said, yes, there is no reasonable doubt, but
(06:22):
I can gain your case for you. I can set
a whole neighborhood at Loggerheads. I can distress a widowed
mother under six fatherless children, and thereby get for you
six hundred dollars, which rightfully belong, as it appears to me,
as much to them as it does to you. I
advise you to try your hand at making six hundred
dollars some other way. Everyone in Springfield valued honest Abe's opinion.
(06:49):
All sorts of people brought their troubles to him. His
sympathy and his tenderness of heart made them trust him.
He was one of the people. He never felt himself
a bit above them. To the end of his life,
he did not grow proud, and he was never ashamed
of his early poverty. When he was president, he told
some of his friends of a dream he had had
(07:11):
which might very well have been true. He dreamt that
at some big public meeting, he was walking through the
hall up to the platform from which he was going
to speak, as he passed a lady sitting at the
end of one of the rows of seats, said to
another sitting next to her, so loudly that he could hear.
Is that, mister Lincoln, while he looks a very common
(07:32):
sort of person? I thought to myself in my dream,
said Lincoln that it was true, but that God Almighty
seemed to prefer common people, for he had made so
many of them. Nothing in Lincoln is more truly great
than his power of seeing the value of common things
and common people. He knew that the things which appeal
(07:54):
to men as men, which are common to humanity, are
the most valuable of all. He counted on this when
he abolished slavery. Freedom is a right common to all men,
and there is somewhere in everyone an instinct which knows
that it is wrong to make other people do things
which are too disagreeable to do yourself. During these years
(08:18):
at Springfield, Abraham read a great deal. Shakespeare and Burns
were his favorite poets. He knew Shakespeare better than any
other book except the Bible. He read and thought unceasingly
about politics, and he talked about them with his friends.
The history of America he studied until he knew everything
(08:38):
there was to know. Above all, he thought about slavery
events were taking place that made it plain that the
question of slavery could not be left where it was.
It was no longer possible to act as if the
difference between North and South did not exist. As years
went on, the difference came more and more plain. The North,
(09:02):
which had been poor and barren, only half cultivated by
ignorant and uneducated settlers, was growing richer than the prosperous,
lazy South. Workmen came to the North from all parts
of the world, poor men with good brains and strong arms,
ready and able to work intelligently to improve the land,
to make wheat grow where stones and bushes had been.
(09:25):
None of these men went to the South, for their
work was done by slaves so cheaply that no paid
worker had a chance. But the difference between the intelligent
labor of free men working for themselves a mechanical labor
of slaves working for their masters soon began to tell.
In the North, schools sprang up everywhere. The people became
(09:48):
better and better educated. Men who had grown up in
the backwoods, like Abraham Lincoln, taught themselves and rose to
be lawyers and statesmen by their own efforts. Others who
who had the chance of being taught did the same.
It was possible for any man of brains to rise
from the bottom to the top. Inventions were made which
(10:09):
enabled all kinds of new work to be done and
new wealth produced. The North was rich in material, richer
in the men she had to work it, who were
helped and encouraged by the freedom which through every career
opened to real talent. In the South, all power was
in the hands of the aristocratic families, who had had
(10:31):
it always. The work was done by slaves. Owners did
not want to educate their slaves, for then they were
afraid that they would want their freedom. The coal mines
of the South were not discovered. They could not have
been worked by slaves. The South began to be very
jealous of the North, and the North began to disapprove
(10:53):
of the South. More and more people began to see
that slavery was wrong. People were not yet ready to
say that slavery ought to cease to be but they
were ready to say that it must not be extended.
At the time of the Mexican War, the South had
shown that it wanted to extend slavery. This frightened the North.
(11:15):
In eighteen fifty an agreement was made, known as the
Missouri Compromise. By this a line thirty six degrees thirty minutes,
called Mason and Dixon's line, was drawn across the map
of America. North of this line, slavery was never to exist.
(11:35):
Speakers on both sides declared that the Missouri Compromise was
as fixed as the Constitution itself. Stephen Arnold Douglas was
the loudest in expressing this opinion. It is eternal and fundamental,
he declared. Douglas was a trader of the Great Party
(11:55):
known as the Democrats. He held that the people of
every state had a right to decide questions affecting that state,
and not the central American government. Douglas had one great aim,
which was to him far more important than any question
of political right or wrong. He wanted to be made president.
(12:16):
To secure this, he saw that he must get the
support of the South. To win the support of the South,
he took a most dangerous and important step, one which
was the immediate cause of the war which broke out
six years later. He declared that the people of any
state or territory could decide whether or not they would
(12:36):
have slavery in their state, they could establish it or
prohibit it. He went further than this. Two new territories
had been organized in the northwest, Nebraska and Kansas. They
claimed to be admitted to the union est states. Both
states were, of course, north of Mason and Dixon's line,
(12:57):
and therefore, by the Missouri Compromise, they must be free states.
But the South was bent on creating new slave states
as fast as the North could create free states. They
wanted to make Kansas a slave state. Stephen Douglas therefore
introduced in eighteen fifty four the famous Kansas Nebraska Bill.
(13:19):
It declared that Kansas might be slaveholding or free, as
the people of the territory should decide. The result of
this bill was for the first time to unite together
a strong party in the North in opposition to the Democrats,
who were allied to the South. This new party called
itself Republican. Lincoln was a spokesman of their views. They declared, firstly,
(13:45):
that Congress, which is the parliament representing all the states
which together formed the Union, has the right to decide
whether slavery shall be lawful in any particular state or not,
and not the people of that state alone. Secondly, They
declared that in the case of Kansas, Congress had already
(14:06):
four years ago decided that Kansas could not have slavery
because it lay beyond the line north of which slavery
could not exist. Resolutions were passed in many of the
northern state parliaments against the Kansas Nebraska Bill. The Parliament
of Illinois sent one. Now it was quite clear to
(14:26):
keen sighted politicians that while Douglas and his party pretended
that they wanted to give the people of Kansas the
choice between owning slaves and not doing so, what they
really wanted was to force Kansas to have slaves. Those
who supported the Missouri Compromise declared that it was illegal
to give Kansas the choice, however she used it. Events
(14:50):
soon proved that Kansas was not to have any choice
at all. Kansas had few inhabitants, but the opinion of
the people of the state was against slavery. Next Door
to Kansas, however, on the east, was the slave holding
state of Missouri. From Missouri, bands of armed men came
into Kansas in order to vote for slavery at the
(15:13):
election and to prevent the real voters from using their
votes against it. Free fighting went on in the state.
An election was held at which armed men kept away
those who would have voted for freedom, and a pro
slavery man was chosen, but few of the people of
Kansas had been allowed to vote. The Free Party met
at another place afterwards, and a genuine popular vote elected
(15:37):
an anti slavery man. Civil war went on in Kansas
for two years. Now. The importance of these events is this.
Up till now, most people in the North had believed
that slavery ought to be left alone because it would
gradually die out. The Kansas Nebraska Bill and the Kansas
(15:58):
election made it perfectly clear that the South was not
going to let slavery die out. On the contrary, they
wanted to spread it to strengthen themselves against the North.
Douglas was a member for Chicago in the north of Illinois.
He came down to Illinois to win the state to
his views and made a series of speeches there. This
(16:22):
at once called Lincoln to the Four. He saw more clearly,
perhaps than any man in America, what the Kansas Bill meant.
It meant that either North and South must separate as
the abolitionists, that is, the party which held that slavery
ought to cease to be, and some people in the
South hoped or that the North would have to force
(16:44):
the South to abandon the attempt to spread slavery. He
made a series of great speeches in Illinois in which
he made it quite clear that Douglas and his followers
and the men of the South might say that they
wanted to leave states free to have slavery or not,
as they chose, but what they really desired was to
force them to have slavery, whether they chose or not.
(17:07):
Quote this declared indifference. But as I must think covert
real zeal for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate.
I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.
I say that no man is good enough to govern
another man without that man's consent. Slavery is founded upon
(17:29):
the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it on his
love of justice. End of Chapter four. Recording by John Leader, Bloomington, Illinois.
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