The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (76 page)

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented
him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! “And this, too, shall pass away.” And yet, let us hope, it is not quite true. Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world beneath and around us, and the best intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Between Lincoln’s address at Milwaukee and this letter to J. W. Fell, a whole act in the drama of America had been played. John Brown had made his attempt to capture Harper’s Ferry; he had failed, been captured, tried, convicted and hanged. The entire nation had been tremendously disturbed by what had happened, but Lincoln said practically nothing on the subject during the time it was happening, although he had been in Kansas on a speaking tour early in December, and Kansas was the scene of many of John Brown’s first struggles against slavery. At the time he wrote this letter, the Presidential election of 1860 was actively being prepared for in political circles. Lincoln had been approached by Fell for some information about himself; he writes to give this brief autobiographical sketch which should be compared with the more elaborate one he wrote later (June 1, 1860).

Springfield, December 20, 1859

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me. If anything be made out of it, I wish it to be modest, and not to go beyond the material. If it were thought necessary to incorporate anything from any of my
speeches, I suppose there would be no objection. Of course it must not appear to have been written by myself.

I was born February 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon County, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky about 1781 or 1782, where a year or two later
²⁰
he was killed by the Indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were Quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.
^20a

My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age, and he grew up literally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer County, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called, but no qualification was ever required of a teacher beyond “readin’, writin’, and cipherin’ ” to the rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happen to sojourn in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course, when I came of age I did not know much. Still, somehow, I could read, write,
and cipher to the rule of three, but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty-two. At twenty-one I came to Illinois, Macon County. Then I got to New Salem, at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard County, where I remained a year as a sort of clerk in a store. Then came the Black Hawk War; and I was elected a captain of volunteers, a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the legislature the same year (1832), and was beaten—the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next and three succeeding biennial elections I was elected to the legislature. I was not a candidate afterward. During this legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practise it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practised law more assiduously than ever before. Always a Whig in politics; and generally on the Whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said I am, in height, six feet four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing on an average one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes. No other marks or brands recollected.

Abraham Jonas, an English-born Jew living in Quincy, Illinois, was a good friend of Lincoln, as is evidenced by this letter. The book to which Lincoln refers is a collection of his debates with Douglas, published in Columbus, Ohio, under the title
Political Debates Between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas in the Celebrated Campaign of 1858 in Illinois.

Springfield, Feb. 4, 1860

Hon. A. Jonas

M
Y DEAR
S
IR
: Yours of the 3rd inquiring how you can get a copy of the debates now being published in Ohio is received. As you are one of my most valued friends, and have complimented me by the expression of a wish for the book, I propose doing myself the honor of presenting you with one, as soon as I can. By the arrangement our Ohio friends have made with the publishers, I am to have one hundred copies gratis. When I shall receive them I will send you one by express. I understand they will not be out before March and I probably shall be absent about that time, so that you must not be disappointed if you do not receive yours before about the middle of the month.

This speech was one of the greatest efforts of Lincoln’s career—a keystone in the edifice of his writings and his attitudes toward the life-long struggle in which he was engaged. It was his first important and widely publicized appearance before an Eastern audience. He chose his words carefully, using as a starting point Douglas’s statement that the founders of the nation had known what they were doing about slavery when they had created the American Government. The first part of the speech is an elaborate historical survey, much in the nature of the Peoria address of October 16, 1854; the second part deals with issues that were before the country in 1860. He pleads with the Southern people for a better understanding; he repudiates John Brown; he tries to free the central core of his party from the charge that some of its more radical abolitionist members had made use of Helper’s book
, The Impending Crisis of the South,
as an argument to serve their cause. Helper was a Southerner of poor-white origin who had written a book to show that slavery was a bad thing for the white people of the South. His book had precipitated a quarrel at the opening of Congress in December. It had gained enormously from this publicity, and at the time Lincoln spoke at Cooper Union, it had become the national best seller of the day. Lincoln goes out of his way during his address to state the conservative point of view represented by men like himself in the Republican party. Nevertheless, the patience and the nerves of the people of the North had become so irritated by the South’s attitude that Lincoln himself, even in making a conservative speech, expresses some of this irritation. He closes with an appeal to the people of the North to stand fast and not to let themselves be frightened out of their belief in the rightness of their own cause. The audience before which he spoke was a very distinguished one, although a snowstorm had cut down attendance to fifteen hundred. William Cullen Bryant introduced the speaker, whose new suit of clothes had
become badly creased from packing. A member of the committee in charge of the arrangements wrote of him: “His form and manner were indeed very odd, and we thought him the most unprepossessing public man we had ever met.” Yet at the conclusion of the address, Noah Brooks, writing for the Tribune, said: “No man ever made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience.”

February 27, 1860

M
R
. P
RESIDENT AND
F
ELLOW
-C
ITIZENS OF
N
EW
Y
ORK
: The facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observations following that presentation. In his speech last autumn at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in
The New-York Times
, Senator Douglas said:

Our fathers, when they framed the government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?

What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be, “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

What is the frame of government under which we live? The answer must be, “The Constitution of the United States.” That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787, and under which the present government first went into operation, and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of which were framed in 1789.

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? I
suppose the “thirty-nine” who signed the original instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to quite all, need not now be repeated.

I take these “thirty-nine,” for the present, as being “our fathers who framed the government under which we live.” What is the question which, according to the text, those fathers understood “just as well, and even better, than we do now”?

It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?

Upon this, Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue; and this issue—this question—is precisely what the text declares our fathers understood “better than we.” Let us now inquire whether the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, ever acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon it—how they expressed that better understanding. In 1784, three years before the Constitution, the United States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the “thirty-nine” who afterward framed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. The other of the four, James McHenry,
voted against the prohibition, showing that for some cause he thought it improper to vote for it.

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the convention was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern Territory still was the only Territory owned by the United States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the Territory again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two more of the “thirty-nine” who afterward signed the Constitution were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They were William Blount and William Few; and they both voted for the prohibition—thus showing that in their understanding no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became a law, being part of what is now well known as the ordinance of ’87.

The question of Federal control of slavery in the Territories seems not to have been directly before the convention which framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded that the “thirty-nine,” or any of them, while engaged on that instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordinance of ’87, including the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was reported by one of the “thirty-nine”—Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches without ayes and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer,
Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll and James Madison.