CHAP. X. governor question is the little one, and the slavery question is the great one? I ask any honest Democrat if the small, the local, the trivial and temporary question is not, Who shall be governor? while the durable, the important, and the mischievous one is, Shall this soil be planted with slavery? This is an idea, I suppose, which has arisen in Judge Douglas's mind from his peculiar structure. I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's back does not hurt him. . . The Dred Scott decision expressly gives every citizen of the United States a right to carry his slaves into the United States Territories. And now there was some inconsistency in saying that the decision was right, and saying, too, that the people of the Territory could lawfully drive slavery out again. When all the trash, the words, the collateral matter was cleared away from it, all the chaff was fanned out of it, it was a bare absurdity; no less than that a thing may be lawfully driven away from where it has a lawful right to be. . . The Judge says the people of the Territories have the right, by his principle, to have slaves if they want them. Then I say that the people in Georgia have the right to buy slaves in Africa if they want them, and I defy any man on earth to show any distinction between the two things-to show that the one is either more wicked or more unlawful; to show on original principles, that one is better or worse than the other; or to show by the Constitution, that one differs a whit from the other. will tell me, doubtless, that there is no constitutional provision against people taking slaves into the new Territories, and I tell him that there is equally no constitutional provision against buying slaves in Africa. . . He Then I say, if this principle is established, that there is no wrong in slavery, and whoever wants it has a right to have it; that it is a matter of dollars and cents; a sort of question how they shall deal with brutes; that between us and the negro here there is no sort of question, but that at the South the question is between the negro and the crocodile; that it is a mere matter of policy; that there is a perfect right according to interest to do just as you please—when this is done, where this doctrine prevails, the miners and sappers will have formed public opinion for the slave trade. Public opinion in this country is everything. In a nation like ours this popular sovereignty and squatter sovereignty have already wrought a change in the public mind to the extent I have stated. There is no man in this crowd who can contradict it. Now, if you are opposed to slavery honestly, as much as anybody, I ask you to note that fact, and the like of which is to follow, to be plastered on layer after layer, until very.soon you are prepared to deal with the negro everywhere as with the brute. If public sentiment has not been debauched already to this point, a new turn of the screw in that direction is all that is wanting; and this is constantly being done by the teachers of this insidious popular sovereignty. You need but one or two turns further until your minds, now ripening under these teachings, will be ready for all these things; and you will receive and support, or submit to, the slave trade revived with all its horrors, a slave code enforced in our Territories, and a new Dred Scott decision to bring slavery up into the very heart of the free North. This Government is expressly charged with the duty of providing for the general welfare. We believe that the spreading out and perpetuity of the institution of slavery impairs the general welfare. We believe — nay, we know, that this is the only thing that has ever threatened the perpetuity of the Union itself. . . I say we must not interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists, because the Constitution forbids it, and the general welfare does not require us to do so. We must not withhold an efficient fugitiveslave law, because the Constitution requires us, as I understand it, not to withhold such a law. But we must prevent the outspreading of the institution, because neither the Constitution nor the general welfare requires СНАР. Х. Lincoln, Columbus Speech, Sept. 16, 1859. Debates, pp. 243-54. CHAP. X. us to extend it. We must prevent the revival of the African slave trade, and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial slave code. We must prevent each of these things being done by either congresses or courts. The Cincinnati people of these United States are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. Lincoln, Speech, Sept. 17, 1859. Debates, pp. 267-8. The Ohio Republicans gained a decided success at the October election. Ascribing this result in a large measure to the influence of Lincoln's speeches, the State Executive Committee resolved to publish in cheap book form the full Illinois joint debates and the two Ohio addresses, to serve as campaign material for the ensuing year. "We regard them," wrote the committee to Lincoln, "as luminous and triumphant expositions of the doctrines of the Republican party, successfully vindicated from the aspersions of its foes, and calculated to make a document of great practical service to Dec. 7, 1859 the Republican party in the approaching Presidential contest." Parsons and others to Lincoln, Debates, preface. Lincoln, thanking them for the flattering terms of their request, explained in his reply: "The copies I send you, are as reported and printed by the respective friends of Senator Douglas and myself at the time—that is, his by his friends, and mine by mine. It would be an unwarrantable liberty for us to change a word or a letter in his, and the changes I have made in mine, you perceive, are, verbal only, and very few in number. I and others, wish the reprint to be precisely as the copies I 1859. Ibid. send, without any comment whatever." Lincoln to Parsons Dec. 19, The enterprise proved a success beyond the most sanguine expectations. A Columbus firm under took the publication, itself assuming all pecuniary CHAP. X. risk. Three large editions were sold directly to the public, without any aid from or any purchase by the committee the third edition containing the announcement that up to that date, June 16, 1860, thirty thousand copies had already been circulated.1 1 The preface to this third edition contains a letter from Douglas, alleging that injustice had been done him because, "the original reports as published in the Chicago Times,' although intended to be fair and just, were necessarily imperfect, and in some respects erroneous"; charging at the same time that Lincoln's speeches had been revised, corrected, and improved.* To this the publishers replied: "The speeches of Mr. Lincoln were never 'revised, corrected, or improved' in the sense you * Douglas to Follet, Foster & Co., June 9, 1860. Debates, third edition, preface. Follet, Foster & Co. to Douglas, June 16, 1860. Ibid. CHAP. XI. TH CHAPTER XI HARPER'S FERRY HERE now occurred another strange event which, if it had been specially designed as a climax for the series of great political sensations since 1852, could scarcely have been more dramatic. This was John Brown's invasion of Harper's Ferry in order to create a slave insurrection. We can only understand the transaction as far as we can understand the man, and both remain somewhat enigmatical. Of Puritan descent, John Brown was born in Connecticut in the year 1800. When he was five years old, the family moved to Ohio, at that time a comparative wilderness. Here he grew up a strong, vigorous boy of the woods. His father taught him the tanner's trade; but a restless disposition drove him to frequent changes of scene and effort when he grew to manhood. He attempted surveying. He became a divinity student. He tried farming and tanning in Pennsylvania, and tanning and speculating in real estate in Ohio. Cattle-dealing was his next venture; from this to sheep-raising; and by a natural transition to the business of a wool-factor in Massachusetts. This not succeeding, he made a trip to Europe. Re |