87. The Republican standard, 1860-1861 [322] CHAPTER XV SECESSION THE ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN On February 27, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a distinguished lawyer of Illinois, already widely known for his brilliant debates with Judge Douglas, and enthusiastically boomed for the presidential nomination by the Republicans of the West, made his first speech before an Eastern audience in the great hall of the Cooper Institute in New York City. It was the clearest and most forceful exposition of Republican principles made since the foundation of the party, and answered the extreme proslavery resolutions introduced in the Senate by Jefferson Davis, on February 2.1 After showing that the "Fathers" had no idea that the Constitution limited the Federal government in the control of slavery in the Federal territory, and warning the South against precipitate action, Lincoln concludes: A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great Confederacy shall be at peace and harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider 1 See Muzzey, An American History, pp. 322-323. Horace Greeley said of this speech in 1868: "I do not hesitate to pronounce it the very best political address to which I ever listened — and I have heard some of Webster's grandest."— Century Magazine, July, 1891, p. 373. their demands, and yield to them, if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them. Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their present complaints against us the Territories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are all the rage now.1 Will it satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so know, because we know we never had anything to do with invasions and insurrections, and yet this total abstaining does not exempt us from the charge and the denunciation. The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this: we must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. ... Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them. These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly, done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated; we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We'must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this way. Most of them would probably say to us, "Let us alone, do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But we do let them alone — have never disturbed them; so that, after all, it is what we say that dissatisfies them. . . . 1 Referring to John Brown's "raid" of the previous autumn. See Muzzey, An American History, pp. 321-322. I am also aware that they have not yet, in terms, demanded the overthrow of our free-State constitutions. ... [But] demanding what they do, and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short of this consummation.1 Holding as they do that slavery is morally right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease to demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a social blessing. Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground, save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to its nationality—its universality! if it is wrong, they cannot justly insist on its extension — its enlargement. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.. Can we cast our votes with their view and against our own? In view of our moral, social, and political responsibilities, can we do this? Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let slavery alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in the free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored, contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should 1 In a speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 16, 1858, accepting the nomination for the United States senatorship, Lincoln had expressed the idea thus: "A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this 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, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it . . . or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new- - North as well as South.” — Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, p. 137. be neither a living man nor a dead man, such a policy of "don't care," on a question about which all true men do care, such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunion; reversing the divine rule, and calling not the sinners but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington said and to undo what Washington did. Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it. Between the Cooper Institute speech and the first inaugural address (from which the following extract is taken) events had moved rapidly. Lincoln had been nominated and elected, South Carolina and six of her sister states of the South had seceded from the Union, a Confederate government had been organized, and the batteries in Charleston harbor had fired on the Star of the West bearing supplies to Fort Sumter under the American flag. Lincoln's magnificent plea for calm deliberation and patient hope of harmony came too late. FELLOW-CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES: Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of these speeches when I declare that "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." . . . I now reiterate these sentiments. ... I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will cheerfully be given to all the States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause as cheerfully to one section as to another. I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual.... The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union." But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, then the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.... It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary according to circumstances. I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins on me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. . . . In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. . . That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor deny1; but if there be such, I 1 Lincoln might have affirmed it with perfect truth. Only two days before he made this inaugural address Senator Wigfall of Texas made the following remarks in the United States Senate: "This Federal Government is dead........ Believing — no, sir, not believing, but knowing — - |