The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln : Chapter 5 - The Champion of Freedom

None

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five of the Boy's Life of Abraham Lincoln by
Helen Nicolay. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain
recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks dot Com, Chapter five,
The Champion of Freedom. For four or five years after
his return from Congress, Lincoln remained in Springfield, working industriously

(00:23):
at his profession. He was offered a law partnership in Chicago,
but declined on the ground that his health would not
stand the confinement of a great city. His business increased
in volume and importance as the months went by, and
it was during this time that he engaged in what
is perhaps the most dramatic, as well as the best known,
of all his law cases, his defense of Jack Armstrong's

(00:46):
son on a charge of murder. A knot of young
men had quarreled one night on the outskirts of a
camp meeting. One was killed, and suspicion pointed strongly toward
young Armstrong as the murderer. Lincoln, for his old friendship's sake,
offered to defend him, an offer most gratefully accepted by
his family. The principal witness swore that he had seen

(01:09):
young Armstrong strike the fatal blow had seen him distinctly
by the light of a bright moon. Lincoln made him
repeat the statement until it seemed as if he were
sealing the death warrant of the prisoner. Then Lincoln began
his address to the jury. He was not there as
a hired attorney, he told them, but because of friendship.

(01:30):
He told of his old relations with Jack Armstrong, of
the kindness the prisoner's mother had shown him in New Salem,
how he had himself rocked the prisoner to sleep when
the latter was a little child. Then he reviewed the testimony,
pointing out how completely everything depended on the statements of
this one witness, and ended by proving beyond question that

(01:52):
his testimony was false, since, according to the almanac, which
he produced in court and showed to the judge and jury,
there was no moon in the sky that night at
the hour the murder was committed. The jury brought in
a verdict of not guilty, and the prisoner was discharged.
Lincoln was always strong with the jury. He knew how

(02:13):
to handle men, and he had a direct way of
going to the heart of things. He had, moreover, unusual
powers of mental discipline. It was after his return from Congress,
when he had long been acknowledged one of the foremost
lawyers of the state, that he made up his mind
he lacked the power of close and sustained reasoning, and
set himself, like a schoolboy, to study works of logic

(02:36):
and mathematics to remedy the defect. At this time he
committed to memory six books of the propositions of Euclid,
And as always he was an eager reader on many subjects,
striving in this way to make up for the lack
of education he had had as a boy. He was
always interested in mechanical principles and their workings, and in

(02:57):
May eighteen forty nine passed and a device for lifting
vessels over shoals, which had evidently been dormant in his
mind since the days of his early Mississippi River experiences.
The little model of a boat whittled out with his
own hand, that he sent to the patent office when
he filed his application is still shown to visitors, though

(03:17):
the invention itself failed to bring about any change in
steamboat architecture. In work and study time slipped away. He
was the same cheery companion as of old, much sought
after by his friends, but now more often to be
found in his office surrounded by law books and papers
than had been the case before his term in Congress.

(03:40):
His interest in politics seemed almost to have ceased, when
in eighteen fifty four something happened to rouse that and
his sense of right and justice as they had never
been roused before. This was the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
a law passed by Congress in the year eighteen twenty
allowing Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state,

(04:01):
but positively forbidding slavery in all other territory of the
United States lying north of latitude thirty six degrees thirty minutes,
which was the southern boundary line in Missouri. Up to
that time, the southern states, where slavery was lawful, had
been as wealthy and quite as powerful in politics as
the northern of free states. The great unoccupied territory lying

(04:24):
to the west, which in years to come was sure
to be filled with people and made into new states, lay, however,
mostly north of thirty six degrees thirty minutes, and it
was easy to see that as new free states came
one after the other into the Union, the importance of
the South must grow less and less because there was
little or no territory left out of which slave states

(04:45):
could be made to offset them. This South, therefore had
been anxious to have the Missouri Compromise repeal. The people
of the North, on the other hand, were not all
wise or disinterested in their way of attacking slavery. As
always happens, self interest and moral purpose mingled the both sides,
But as a whole it may be said that they

(05:07):
wished to get rid of slavery because they felt it
to be wrong and totally out of place in a
country devoted to freedom and liberty. The quarrel between them
was as old as a nation, and it had been
gaining steadily in intensity. At first, only a few persons
in each section had been really interested. By the year
eighteen fifty it had come to be a question of

(05:30):
much greater moment, and during the ten years that followed,
was to increase in bitterness until it absorbed the thoughts
of the entire people and plunged the country into a
terrible civil war. Abraham Lincoln had grown to manhood while
the question was gaining an importance. As a youth. During
his flatboat voyages to New Orleans, he had seen negroes

(05:51):
chained and beaten, and the injustice of slavery had been
stamped upon his soul. The uprightness of his mind abhorred
a system that kept men in bondage merely because they
happened to be black. The intensity of his feeling on
the subject had made him a wig when, as a
friendless boy he lived in a town where Whig ideas
were much in disfavor. The same feeling, growing stronger as

(06:15):
he grew older, had inspired the Lincoln Stone Protest and
the Bill to Free the Slaves in the District of Columbia,
and had caused him to vote at least forty times
against slavery in one form or another during his short
term in Congress. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, throwing
open once more to slavery a vast amount of territory

(06:35):
from which it had been shut out, could not fail
to move him deeply. His sense of justice and his
strong powers of reasoning were equally stirred, and from that
time until slavery came to its end through his own act,
he gave his time and all his energies to the
cause of freedom. Two points served to make the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise a special interest to Lincoln. The

(06:59):
first was person in that the man who championed the measure,
and whose influence in Congress alone made it possible, was
Senator Stephen A. Douglas, who had been his neighbor in
Illinois for many years. The second was deeper. He realized
that the struggle meant much more than the freedom or
bondage of a few million black men, that it was,

(07:19):
in reality a struggle for the central idea of our
American Republic, the statement in our Declaration of Independence that
all men are created equal. He made no public speeches
until autumn, but in the meantime studied be question with
great care, both as to its past history and present state.

(07:41):
When he did speak, it was with a force and
power that startled Douglas, and it is said brought him
privately to Lincoln with the proposition that neither of them
should address a public meeting again until after the next election.
Douglas was a man of great ambition as well as
of unusual political skill. Until recently, he had been heartily

(08:02):
in favor of keeping slavery out of the Northwest Territory.
But he had set his heart upon being President of
the United States, and he thought that he saw chance
of this if he helped the South to repeal the
Missouri Compromise, and thus gained its gratitude and its votes.
Without hesitation, he plunged into the work and labored successfully

(08:22):
to overthrow this law of more than thirty years standing.
Lincoln's speech against the repeal had made a deep impression
in Illinois, where he was at once recognized as the
people's spokesman in the cause of freedom. His statements were
so clear, his language so eloquent, the stand he took
so just that all had to acknowledge his power. He

(08:45):
did not, then, nor for many years afterwards, say that
the slaves ought to be immediately set free. What he
did insist upon was that slavery was wrong, and that
it must not be allowed to spread into territory already free,
but that gradually, in ways lawful and just to masters
and slaves alike, the country should strive to get rid

(09:05):
of it in places where it already existed. He never
let his hearers lose sight of the great underlying moral fact. Slavery,
he said, is found in the selfishness of man's nature.
Opposition to it in his love of justice. Even Senator
Douglas was not prepared to admit that slavery was right.

(09:25):
He knew that if he said that, he could never
be president, for the whole North would rise against him.
He wished to please both sides, so he argued that
it was not a question for him or for the
federal government to decide, but one which each state and
territory must settle for itself. In answer to this plea
of his, that it was not a matter of morals
but of states' rights, a mere matter of local self government,

(09:49):
mister Lincoln replied, when the white man governs himself, that
is self government. But when he governs himself and also
governs another man, that is more than self government. That
is despotism. It was on these opposing grounds that the
two men took their stand for the battle of argument
and principle that was to continue for years, to outgrow

(10:11):
the bounds of the state, to focus the attention of
the whole country upon them, and in the end to
have far reaching consequences of which neither at that time dreamed.
At first, the field appeared much narrower, though even then
the reward was a large one. Lincoln had entered the
contest with no thought of political gain, but it happened

(10:32):
that a new United States Senator from Illinois had to
be chosen about that time. Senators are not voted for
by the people, but by the legislatures of their respective states,
and as a first result of all this discussion about
the right and wrong of slavery, it was found that
the Illinois legislature, instead of having its usual large Democratic majority,
was almost evenly divided. Lincoln seemed the most likely candidate,

(10:57):
and he would have undoubtedly been chosen senator had not
five men whose votes were absolutely necessary stoutly refused to
vote for a Whig, no matter what his views upon
slavery might be, keeping stubbornly aloof the cast ballots time
after time. For Lyman Trumbull, who was a Democrat, although
as strongly opposed to slavery as Lincoln himself, a term

(11:20):
of six years in the United States Senate must have
seemed a great prize to Lincoln just then, possibly the
largest he might ever hope to gain, and it must
have been a hard trial to feel it so near
and then see it slipping away from him. He did
what few men would have had the courage or the
unselfishness to do, putting aside all personal considerations an intent

(11:44):
only on making sure of an added vote against slavery
in the Senate, he begged his friends to cease voting
for him and to unite with those five Democrats to
elect Trumbull. I regret my defeat moderately, he wrote to
a sympathizing friend. But I am not nervous about it yet.
It must have been particularly trying to know that, with

(12:04):
forty five votes in his favor and only five men
standing between him in success, he had been forced to
give up his own chances and help elect the very
man who had defeated him. The voters of Illinois were
quick to realize the sacrifice he had made. The five
stubborn men became his most devoted personal followers, and his

(12:25):
action at this time did much to bring about a
great political change in the state. All over the country,
old party lines were beginning to break up and reform
themselves on this one question of slavery. Keeping its old name,
the Democratic Party became the party in favor of slavery,
while the Northern Whigs and all those Democrats who objected

(12:46):
to slavery joined in what became known as the Republican Party.
It was at a great mass convention held in Bloomington
in May eighteen fifty six that the Republican Party of
Illinois took final shape, and it was here that Lincoln
made the wonderful address which has become famous in party
history as his Lost Speech. There had been much enthusiasm,

(13:10):
favored speakers had already made stirring addresses that had been
listened to with eagerness and heartily applauded. But hardly a
man moved from his seat until Lincoln should be heard.
It was he who had given up the chance of
being senator to help on the cause of freedom. He
alone had successfully answered Douglas. Everyone felt the fitness of

(13:31):
his making the closing speech, and right nobly did he
honor the demand. The spell of the hour was visibly
upon him, standing upon the platform before the members of
the convention, his tall figure drawn up to its full height,
his head thrown back, and his voice ringing with eagerness,
he denounced the evil they had to fight in his speech,

(13:53):
whose force and power carried his hearers by storm, ending
with a brilliant appeal to all who loved liberty and
justice to come as the winds come, when farres are rendered,
come as the waves come when navies are stranded, and
unite with the Republican Party against this great wrong. The
audience rose and answered him with cheer upon cheer. Then,

(14:15):
after the excitement had died down, it was found that
neither a full report, nor even trustworthy notes of his
speech had been taken. The sweep and magnetism of his
oratory had carried everything before it. Even the reporters had
forgotten their duty, and their pencils had fallen idle. So
it happened that the speech as a whole was lost.

(14:37):
Mister Lincoln himself could never recall what he had said,
but the hundreds who heard him never forgot the scene
for the lifting inspiration of his words. Three weeks later,
the first National Convention of the Republican Party was held.
John C. Fremont was nominated for president, and Lincoln received
over one hundred votes for vice president, but fortunately, as

(14:59):
it proved, was not selected, the honor of falling to
William L. Dayton of New Jersey. The Democratic candidate for
president that year was James Buchanan, a northern man with
Southern principles very strongly in favor of slavery. Lincoln took
an active part in the campaign against him, making more
than fifty speeches in Illinois and the adjoining states. The

(15:23):
Democrats triumphed and Buchanan was elected president, but Lincoln was
not discouraged, for the new Republican Party had shown unexpected
strength throughout the North. Indeed, Lincoln was seldom discouraged. He
had an abiding faith that the people would in the
long run vote wisely, and the cheerful hope he was
able to inspire in his followers was always a strong

(15:45):
point in his leadership. In eighteen fifty eight, two years
after this, another election took place in Illinois on which
the choice of a United States Senator depended. This time
it was the term of Stephen A. Douglas that was
drawing to a close. He greatly desired re election. There
was but one man in the state who could hope

(16:07):
to rival him, and with a single voice, the Republicans
of Illinois called upon Lincoln to oppose him. Douglas was
indeed an opponent not to be despised. His friends and
followers called him the Little Giant. He was plausible, popular
quick witted, had winning manners, was most skillful in the
use of words, both to convince his hearers and at

(16:29):
times to height his real meaning. He and Lincoln were
old antagonists. They had first met in the far away
Vandalia days of the Illinois Legislature. In Springfield, Douglas had
been the leader of the young Democrats, while Lincoln had
been the leader of the younger Whigs. Their rivalry had
not always been confined to politics, for gossip asserted that

(16:51):
Douglas had been one of Miss Todd's most favored suitors.
Douglas in those days had no great opinion of the tall,
young lawyer, while Lincoln is said to have described Douglas
as the least man I ever saw, although that referred
to his rival's small stature and boyish figure, not to
his mental qualities. Douglas was not only ambitious to be president.

(17:14):
He had staked everything on the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise and his statement that this question of slavery was
one that every state and territory must settle for itself,
but with which the federal government had nothing to do. Unfortunately,
his own party no longer agreed with him, since Buchanan
had become president, the Democrats had advanced their ground. They

(17:38):
now claimed that while a state might properly say whether
or not it would tolerate slavery, slavery ought to be
lawful in all the territories, no matter whether their people
liked it or not. A famous law case called the
dread Scott case, lately decided by the Supreme Court of
the United States went far toward making this really the

(17:58):
law of the land. In its decision, the Court positively
stated that neither Congress nor a territorial legislature had power
to keep slavery out of any United States territory. This
decision placed Senator Douglas in a most curious position. It
justified him in repealing the Missouri Compromise, but at the

(18:19):
same time it absolutely denied his statement that the people
of a territory had a right to settle the slavery
question to suit themselves. Being a clever juggler with words,
he explained away the difference by saying that a master
might have a perfect right to his slave in a territory,
and yet that right could do him no good unless

(18:40):
it were protected by laws in force where his slave
happened to be such laws depended entirely on the will
of the people living in the territory, and so after all,
they had the deciding voice. This reasoning brought upon him
the displeasure of President Buchanan and all the Democrats who
believed as he did, and Douglas found himself forced either

(19:02):
to deny what he had already told the voters of
Illinois or to begin to quarrel with the President. He
chose the latter, well, knowing that to lose his reelection
to the Senate at this time would end his political career.
His fame, as well as his quarrel with the President,
served to draw immense crowds to his meetings when he
returned to Illinois and began speech making, and his followers

(19:24):
so inspired these meetings with their enthusiasm that for a
time it seemed as though all real discussion would be
swallowed up in noise and shouting. Mister Lincoln, acting on
the advice of his leading friends, sent Douglas a challenge
to joint debate. Douglas accepted, though not very willingly, and
it was agreed that they should address the same meetings

(19:45):
at seven towns in the state on dates extending through August, September,
and October. The terms were that one should speak an
hour in opening, the other an hour and a half
in reply, and the first again with half an hour
to close. Douglas was to open the meeting at one place,
Lincoln at the next. It was indeed a memorable contest. Douglas,

(20:07):
the most skilled and plausible speaker in the Democratic Party,
was battling for his political life. He used every art,
every resource at his command. Opposed to him was a
veritable giant in stature, a man whose qualities of mind
and of body were as different from those of the
little giant as could be well imagined. Lincoln was direct, forceful, logical,

(20:30):
and filled with a purpose as lofty as his sense
of right and justice was strong. He cared much for
the senatorship, but he cared far more to right the
wrong of slavery and to warn people of the peril
that menaced the land. Already in June he had made
a speech that greatly impressed his heroes. A house divided
against itself cannot stand, he told them. I believe this

(20:53):
government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I
do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do
not expect the house to fall, but I do expect
it will cease to be divided. It will become all
one thing for all the other. And he went on
to say that there was grave danger it might become
all slave. He showed how little by little slavery had

(21:17):
been gaining ground until all at lacked. Now was another
Supreme Court decision to make it a light lawful in
all the states north as well as south. The warning
came home to the people of the North with startling force,
and thereafter all eyes were fixed upon the senatorial campaign
in Illinois. The battle continued for nearly three months. Besides

(21:40):
the seven great joint debates, each man spoke daily, sometimes
two or three times a day, at meetings of his own,
once before their audiences. Douglas's dignity as a senator afforded
him no advantage. Lincoln's popularity gave him little help. Face
to face with the followers at each gathered in immense

(22:01):
numbers and alert with jealous watchfulness, there was no escaping
the rigid test of skill in argument and truth in principle,
the processions in banners, the music and fireworks of both
parties were stilled, then forgotten while the people listened to
the three hours battle of mind against mine. Northern Illinois
had been peopled largely from the Free States, and Southern

(22:23):
Illinois from the Slave States. Thus the feeling about slavery
in the two parts was very different. To take advantage
of this, Douglas, in the very first debate, which took
place at Ottawa in northern Illinois, asked Lincoln seven questions,
hoping to make him answer in a way that would
be unpopular farther south. In the second debate, Lincoln replied

(22:45):
to these very frankly, and in his turn asked Douglas
four questions, the second of which was whether, in Douglas's opinion,
the people of any territory could, in any lawful way,
against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
are out slavery before that territory became a state. Mister
Lincoln had long and carefully studied the meaning and effect

(23:08):
of this question. If Douglas said no, he would please
Buchanan and the administration Democrats, but at the cost of
denying his own words. If he said yes, he would
make enemies of every Democrat in the South. Lincoln's friends
all advised against asking the question. They were sure that
Douglas would answer yes, and that this would win for

(23:31):
him the election. If you ask it, you can never
be senator, they told Lincoln. Gentlemen here replied, I am
killing larger game. If Douglas answers, he can never be president.
And the Battle of eighteen sixty is worth one hundred
of this. Both prophecies were fulfilled. Douglas answered as was expected,

(23:52):
and though in actual numbers the Republicans of Illinois cast
more votes than the Democrats, a legislature was chosen that
rejected him to the Senate. Two years later, Lincoln, who
in eighteen fifty eight had not the remotest dream of
such a thing, found himself the successful candidate of the
Republican Party or president of the United States. To see

(24:14):
how little Lincoln expected such an outcome, it is only
necessary to glance at the letters he wrote to friends
at the end of his campaign against Douglas. Referring to
the election to be held two years later, he said,
in that day I shall fight in the ranks, but
I shall be in no one's way for any of
the places. To another correspondent, he expressed himself even more frankly.

(24:38):
Of course I wished, but I did not much expect
a better result. I am glad I made the late race.
It gave me a hearing of the great durable question
of the age, which I could have had in no
other way. And though I now sink out of you
and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some
marse which will tell for the cause of civil liberty
long after I am gone. But he was not to

(25:01):
sink out of view and be forgotten. Douglas himself contributed
not a little toward keeping his name before the public.
For shortly after their contest was ended, the re elected
Senator started on a trip through the South to set
himself right again with the Southern voters, and in every
speech that he made he referred to Lincoln as the
champion of abolitionism. In this way, the people were not

(25:25):
allowed to forget the stand Lincoln had taken, and during
the year eighteen fifty nine they came to look upon
him as the one man who could be relied on
at all times to answer Douglas and Douglas's arguments. In
the autumn of that year, Lincoln was asked to speak
in Ohio, where Douglas was again referring to him by name.

(25:46):
In December, he was invited to address meetings in various
towns in Kansas, and early in eighteen sixty he made
a speech in New York that raised him suddenly and
unquestionably to the position of a national leader. It was
delivered in the hall of Cooper Institute on the evening
of February twenty seven, eighteen sixty, before an audience of

(26:06):
men and women remarkable for their culture, wealth, and influence.
Mister Lincoln's name and the words had filled so large
a space in the Eastern papers of late that his
listeners were very eager to see and hear this rising
Western politician. The West, even at that late day, was
still imperfectly understood by the East. It was looked upon

(26:27):
as a land of bowie knives and pistols, of steamboat explosions,
of mobs, of wild speculation and wilder adventure. What then,
would be the type, the character, the language of this speaker?
How would he impress the great editor Horace Greeley, who
sat among the invited guests, David Dudley Field, the great lawyer,

(26:47):
who escorted him to the platform William Cullen Bryant, the
great poet, who presided over the meeting. The audience quickly
forgot these questioning doubts. They had but time to note
mister Lincoln's unusual height, his rugged, strongly marked features, the
clear ring of his high pitched voice, the commanding, earnestness

(27:08):
of his manner. Then they became completely absorbed in what
he was saying. He began quietly, soberly, almost as if
he were arguing a case before at court. In his
entire address he uttered neither an antidote nor a jest.
If any of his hearers came expecting the style or
manner of the western stump speaker, they met novelty of

(27:30):
an unlooked for kind. For such was the apt choice
of words, the simple strength of his reasoning, the fairness
of every point he made, the force of every conclusion.
He drew that his listeners followed him spellbound. He spoke
on the subject that he had so thoroughly mastered, and
that was now uppermost in men's minds, the right or

(27:52):
wrong of slavery. He laid bare the complaints and demands
of the Southern leaders, pointed out the injustice of their
threat to break up the Union if their claims were
not granted, stated forcibly the stand taken by the Republican Party,
and brought his speech to a close with a short
and telling appeal, Let us have faith that right makes might,

(28:14):
and in that faith led us to the end, dare
to do our duty as we understand it. The attention
with which it was followed, the applause that greeted its
telling points, and the enthusiasm of the Republican journals next
morning showed that Lincoln's Cooper Institute's speech had taken New
York by storm. It was printed in full in four

(28:36):
of the leading daily newspapers of the city, and immediately
reprinted in pamphlet form. From New York. Mister Lincoln made
a tour of speech making through several of the New
England states, where he was given a hearty welcome and
listened to with an eagerness that showed a marked result
at the spring elections. The interest of the workingmen who

(28:56):
heard these addresses was equaled, perhaps excelled by the plea
surprise of college professors and men of letters when they
found that the style and method of this self taught
popular Western orator would stand the test of their most
searching professional criticism. One other audience he had during this trip,
if we may trust, report, which, while neither as learned

(29:17):
as the college professors, nor perhaps as critical as the factoryman,
was quite as hard to please, and the winning of
whose approval shows another side of this great and many
sided man. A teacher in a Sunday school in the
Five Points district of New York, at that time, one
of the worst parts of the city, has told how
one morning, a tall, thin, unusual looking man entered and

(29:41):
sat quietly listening to the exercises. His face showed such
genuine interest that he was asked if he would like
to speak to the children. Accepting the invitation with evident pleasure,
he stepped forward and began a simple address that quickly
charmed the roomful of youngsters into silence. Language was singularly beautiful,

(30:02):
his voice musical with deep feeling. The faces of his
little listeners drooped into sad earnestness at his words of warning,
and brightened again when he spoke of cheerful promises. Go on,
Oh do go on, they begged, when at last he
tried to stop as he left the room, somebody asked
his name. Abraham Lincoln from Illinois was the courteous reply.

(30:25):
End of Chapter five recording by Tom Weiss Tom's audiobooks
dot com