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what increased his habitual melancholy. He was sensitive, too, and the campaign soon furnished him with personal abuse more bitter than any he had yet endured. The first important news, however, which he received after his nomination was encouraging. The Democrats met again in convention on June 18, and made the division in their ranks more nearly hopeless than ever. Douglas was nominated, and on June 28, at Baltimore also, the Southern wing of the Democracy met in convention and nominated John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. The Republicans, already ardent with the inspiration of clear conviction, were spurred to greater efforts by the confidence of victory given by the disturbed condition of their opponents. The famous Wide-Awake Clubs began the system, now grown tame and perfunctory, of torch-light processions, and they marched every night all over the North. The appeal to the average voter was made partly on the origin of the candidate. As General Harrison had been carried to victory on a wave of enthusiasm created not only by his military record but by his logcabin origin, the rails, which had done such flamboyant work at Springfield, continued to be one of the favorite symbols of the campaign, and Honest Abe and the Rail Splitter became common appellations.

It was easier to make the idea of Lincoln

appeal to the public than to recommend it to the cultivated leaders of the East. In spite of his Douglas debates, his Cooper Union speeches, his term in Congress, his long leadership in Illinois, beginning by the time he was thirty years old, his reputation was not sufficiently national and tested to satisfy the men who had wanted some candidate with the prominence of Seward. Charles Francis Adams, Lincoln's minister to England, said, after the President's death: "I must then affirm, without hesitation, that in the history of our government, down to this hour, no experiment so rash has ever been made as that of elevating to the head of affairs a man with so little previous preparation for his task as Mr. Lincoln." False to absurdity as this affirmation is, it was made by many at the time. "When Lincoln was nominated," said Emerson in 1865, "we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so great a trust in such anxious times;" but Emerson is wise enough to see that the result was not disconnected with the profound good opinion of Lincoln which was held by the people of Illinois and the neighboring states. Wendell Phillips wished to know, "Who is this huckster in politics? Who is this country court advocate?" This was the same man, who, fairly representing the extreme and cultivated abolitionists, pub

lished an article called "Abraham Lincoln, the Slave-Hound of Illinois," because Lincoln had not been in favor of wholly abolishing the fugitive slave laws.

Most violent of all his opponents, naturally enough, were the Southerners, who were taught to look upon him as the incarnation of the abolition spirit. After the election they were fiercest, but they were sufficiently harsh before. Negrolover was one of their milder epithets. He was described as a "nigger," and some of the papers said his father was an imported gorilla from Mozambique. The campaign picture reproduced here is typical of many portraits which helped to furnish the idea of his appearance to the voting masses. Lincoln read the papers more or less, and, especially after the election until his inauguration, the Richmond and Charleston journals. It was always his habit to know the objections to what he was doing, and all through his presidential career he read the discontented papers, like the New York Tribune and the Cincinnati Commercial, more than he did those which agreed with his own policy.

He did not take the stump during the campaign, as Douglas did, undoubtedly because he believed that the cause was so likely to win if it was not tinkered with that the safest course was silence. His friend, Swett, is quoted as saying:

"He employed tactics wholly different from any other politician we ever had. He believed in the results to which certain great causes tend, and did not believe those results could be hastened, changed, or impeded by personal interference. Hence he was no political manipulator." This statement is inaccurate, but it is true that there were times when he thought interference would be dangerous, and this was one of them. Swett also says that after Lincoln was nominated, and on account of the signs of lukewarmness in the East friends proposed sending delegates there to induce union and partisan activity, he alone opposed it. Late in the summer he consented that Judge Davis should go, purely on his own behalf, on a tour of inspection, but even this consent was reluctant.

He stayed quietly in Springfield and watched the signs. He gave up his law practice, although not his partnership with Herndon, and spent his time in the Governor's room in the State House, which was set aside for his use. There he talked with everybody, important visitors and intruders alike, but consulted almost nobody. Judge Davis, who was supposed to have influence with him, said that Lincoln never asked his advice on any subject, except occasionally on money. Swett says that in his eleven years with him at the bar the only time he knew him to come anywhere

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A NEWSPAPER CUT OF LINCOLN MADE IN 1860 FROM AN EARLIER PORTRAIT BY THE SAME ARTIST, THE LATE THOS. HICKS, N. A.

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