The Thirty-sixth Congress met on the 5th of December, 1859. The first business introduced in the Senate was a resolution from Mason, of Virginia, calling for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the facts attending John Brown's invasion and seizure of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Trumbull offered an amendment proposing that a similar inquiry be made in regard to the seizure in December, 1855, of the United States Arsenal at Liberty, Missouri, and the pillage thereof by a band of Missourians, who were marching to capture and control the ballot-boxes in Kansas. On the following day Trumbull made a brief speech in support of his amendment, in the course of which he commented on the Harper's Ferry affair in words which have never faded from the memory of the present writer. Nobody during the intervening half-century has summed up the moral and legal aspects of the John Brown raid more truly or more forcibly. He said:
I hope this investigation will be thorough and complete. I believe it will do good by disabusing the public mind, in that portion of the Union which feels most sensitive upon this subject, of the idea that the outbreak at Harper's Ferry received any countenance or support from any considerable number of persons in any portion of this Union. No man who is not prepared to subvert the Constitution, destroy the Government, and resolve society into its original elements, can justify such an act. No matter what evils, either real or imaginary, may exist in the body politic, if each individual, or every set of twenty individuals, out of more than twenty millions of people, is to be permitted, in his own way and in defiance of the laws of the land, to undertake to correct those evils, there is not a government on the face of the earth that could last a day. And it seems to me, sir, that those persons who reason only from abstract principles and believe themselves justifiable on all occasions, and in every form, in combating evil wherever it exists, forget that the right which they claim for themselves exists equally in every other person. All governments, the best which have been devised, encroach necessarily more or less on the individual rights of man and to that extent may be regarded as evils. Shall we, therefore, destroy Government, dissolve society, destroy regulated and constitutional liberty, and inaugurate in its stead anarchy—a condition of things in which every man shall be permitted to follow the instincts of his own passions, or prejudices, or feelings, and where there will be no protection to the physically weak against the encroachments of the strong? Till we are prepared to inaugurate such a state as this, no man can justify the deeds done at Harper's Ferry. In regard to the misguided man who led the insurgents on that occasion, I have no remarks to make. He has already expiated upon the gallows the crime which he committed against the laws of his country; and to answer for his errors, or his virtues, whatever they may have been, he has gone fearlessly and willingly before that Judge who cannot err; there let him rest.
The debate continued several days and took a pretty wide range, the leading Senators on both sides taking part in it. Trumbull bore the brunt of it on the Republican side, and was cross-examined in courteous but searching terms by Yulee, of Florida, Chesnut, of South Carolina, and Clay, of Alabama, who conceived that the teachings of the Republican party tended to produce such characters as John Brown. Trumbull answered all their queries promptly, fully, and satisfactorily to his political friends, if not to his questioners. Nothing in his senatorial career brought him more cordial letters of approval than this debate. One such came from Lincoln:
Springfield, December 25, 1859.
Hon. Lyman Trumbull,
Dear Sir: I have carefully read your speech, and I judge that, by the interruptions, it came out a much better speech than you expected to make when you began. It really is an excellent one, many of the points being most admirably made.
I was in the inside of the post-office last evening when a mail came bringing a considerable number of your documents, and the postmaster said to me: "These will be put in the boxes, and half will never be called for. If Trumbull would send them to me, I would distribute a hundred where he will get ten distributed this way." I said: "Shall I write this to Trumbull?" He replied: "If you choose you may." I believe he was sincere, but you will judge of that for yourself.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
The next in chronological order of the letters of Lincoln to Trumbull is the following:
Springfield, March 16, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: When I first saw by the dispatches that Douglas had run from the Senate while you were speaking, I did not quite understand it; but seeing by the report that you were cramming down his throat that infernal stereotyped lie of his about "negro equality," the thing became plain.
Another matter; our friend Delahay wants to be one of the Senators from Kansas. Certainly it is not for outsiders to obtrude their interference. Delahay has suffered a great deal in our cause and been very faithful to it, as I understand. He writes me that some of the members of the Kansas legislature have written you in a way that your simple answer might help him. I wish you would consider whether you cannot assist that far, without impropriety. I know it is a delicate matter; and I do not wish to press you beyond your own judgment.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.37
CHAPTER VII
THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN—SECESSION
The nomination of Lincoln for President by the Republican National Convention in 1860 was a rather impromptu affair. In the years preceding 1858 he had not been accounted a party leader of importance in national politics. The Republican party was still inchoate. Seward and Chase were its foremost men. Next to them in rank were Sumner, Fessenden, Hale, Collamer, Wade, Banks, and Sherman. Lincoln was not counted even in the second rank until after the joint debates with Douglas. Attention was riveted upon him because his antagonist was the most noted man of the time. After the contest of 1858 was ended, although ended in defeat, Lincoln was certainly elevated in public estimation to a good place in the second rank of party leadership. It was not until the beginning of 1860, however, that certain persons in Illinois began to think of him as a possible nominee for the Presidency. Lincoln did not think of himself in that light until the month of March, about ten weeks before the convention met. His estimate of his own chances was sufficiently modest, and even that was shared by few. After the event his nomination was seen to have been a natural consequence of preëxisting facts. Seward was the logical candidate of the party if, upon a comparison of views, it were believed that he could be elected. One third of the delegates of Illinois desired his nomination and intended to vote for him after a few complimentary votes for Lincoln.
There were some indispensable states, however, which, many people believed, Seward could not carry. In Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Rhode Island he was accounted too radical for the temper of the electors. Illinois was reckoned by Trumbull and other experienced politicians as doubtful if Seward should be the standard-bearer. A conservative candidate of good repute, and sufficiently well known to the public, seemed to be a desideratum. Nobody had as yet thought of seeking a radical candidate, who was generally reputed to be a conservative. Bates, of Missouri, and McLean, of Ohio, were the men most talked about by those who hesitated to take Seward. McLean was a judge of the Supreme Court appointed by President Jackson. He had been Postmaster-General under Monroe and John Quincy Adams, and was now seventy-five years of age. Trumbull considered him the safest candidate, for vote-getting purposes, as regarded Illinois, if Lincoln were not nominated. In a letter dated April 7, Lincoln had said that "if McLean were ten years younger he would be our best candidate." Bates was regarded by both Lincoln and Trumbull as a fairly good candidate, but Trumbull had been advised by Koerner, the most influential German in Illinois, that Bates could not command the German vote. Koerner had said also (in a letter dated March 15) that he had made himself acquainted with the contents of more than fifty German Republican newspapers in the United States and had found that they were nearly unanimous for Seward, or Frémont, as first choice, but that they would cordially support Lincoln or Chase.
On the 24th of April, Trumbull wrote to Lincoln in reference to the Chicago nomination. He said that his own impression was that, as between Lincoln and Seward, the latter would have the larger number of delegates and would be likely to succeed; and that this was the prevailing belief in Washington, even among those who did not want Seward nominated. He was also of the opinion that Seward could not be elected if nominated. The Congressmen from the doubtful states were generally of that opinion, and his own correspondence from central and southern Illinois pointed the same way. The next question was whether the nomination of Seward could be prevented. It was Trumbull's opinion that McLean was the only man who could succeed in the convention as against Seward, and he could do so only as a compromise candidate, beginning with a few votes, but being the second choice of a sufficient number to outvote Seward in the end. As to Lincoln's chances he said:
Now I wish you to understand that I am for you first and foremost, and want our state to send not only delegates instructed in your favor, but your friends, who will stand by you and nominate you if possible, never faltering unless you yourself shall so advise.
In conclusion he asked Lincoln's opinion about McLean. Lincoln replied in the following letter:
Springfield, April 29, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: Yours of the 24th was duly received, and I have postponed answering it, hoping by the result at Charleston, to know who is to lead our adversaries, before writing. But Charleston hangs fire, and I wait no longer.
As you request, I will be entirely frank. The taste is in my mouth a little; and this, no doubt, disqualifies me, to some extent, to form correct opinions. You may confidently rely, however, that by no advice or consent of mine shall my pretensions be pressed to the point of endangering our common cause.
Now as to my opinion about the chances of others in Illinois, I think neither Seward nor Bates can carry Illinois if Douglas shall be on the track; and that either of them can, if he shall not be. I rather think McLean could carry it, with Douglas on or off. In other words, I think McLean is stronger in Illinois, taking all sections of it, than either Seward or Bates, and I think Seward the weakest of the three. I hear no objection to McLean, except his age, but that objection seems to occur to every one, and it is possible it might leave him no stronger than the others. By the way, if we should nominate him, how should we save ourselves the chance of filling his vacancy in the court? Have him hold on up to the moment of his inauguration? Would that course be no drawback upon us in the canvass?
Recurring to Illinois, we want something quite as much as, and which is harder to get than, the electoral vote,—the legislature,—and it is exactly on this point that Seward's nomination would be hard on us. Suppose he should gain us a thousand votes in Winnebago, it would not compensate for the loss of fifty in Edgar.
A word now for your own special benefit. You better write no letter which can be distorted into opposition, or quasi-opposition, to me. There are men on the constant watch for such things, out of which to prejudice my peculiar friends against you. While I have no more suspicion of you than I have of my best friend living, I am kept in a constant struggle against questions of this sort. I have hesitated some to write this paragraph, lest you should suspect I do it for my own benefit and not for yours, but on reflection I conclude you will not suspect me. Let no eye but your own see this—not that there is anything wrong or even ungenerous in it, but it would be misconstrued.
Your friend as ever,
A. Lincoln.
What happened in the Chicago Convention was widely different from the conjectures of these writers, but the result seemed entirely reasonable after it was reached. Lincoln was as radical as Seward—subsequent events proved him to be more so—but his tone and temper had been more conservative, more sedative, more sympathetic toward "our Southern brethren," as he often called them. He had never endorsed the "higher-law doctrine," with which Seward's name was associated; he believed that the South was entitled, under the Constitution, to an efficient Fugitive Slave Law; he had never incurred the enmity, as Seward had, of the Fillmore men, or of the American party.
These facts, coupled with some personal contact and neighborliness, early attracted the conservative delegates of Indiana. Seward, with his "irrepressible conflict" speech, had been too strong a dose for them, but they were quite willing to take Lincoln, whose phrase, "the house divided against itself," had preceded the irrepressible conflict speech by some months. The example of Indiana bore immediate fruit in other quarters, and especially in Pennsylvania. Curtin, the nominee for governor, was early convinced that Seward could not carry that state, but that Lincoln could. Curtin and Henry S. Lane, the nominee for governor of Indiana, became active torch-bearers for Lincoln.
When those states pronounced for Lincoln, the men of Vermont (the most radical of the New England States), who had been waiting and watching in the Babel of discord for some solid and assured fact, voting meantime for Collamer, turned to Lincoln and gave him their entire vote. Vermont's example was more important than her numerical strength, for it disclosed the inmost thoughts of a group of intelligent, high-principled men, who were moved by an unselfish purpose and a solemn responsibility. Lincoln had now become the cynosure of the conservatives with a first-class radical endorsement to boot, and he deserved both distinctions. His nomination followed on the third ballot.
Dr. William Jayne, Springfield, May 20, wrote to Trumbull:
The National Convention is over and Lincoln is our standard-bearer, much (I doubt not) to his own surprise; I know to the surprise of his friends. They went to Chicago fearful that Seward would be nominated, and ready to unite on any other man, but anxious and zealous for Lincoln. Pennsylvania could agree on no man of her own heartily. Ohio was for Chase and Wade. Indiana was united on Lincoln. That fact made an impression on the New England States. Seward's friends were quite confident after the balloting commenced. Now, if Douglas is not nominated, we will carry the state by thousands. If D. is nominated, we will carry the state, but we will have a hard fight to do it.
Out of a large mass of letters in the Trumbull correspondence touching the nomination of Lincoln, a half-dozen are selected as examples.
Richard Yates, Jacksonville, May 24, 1860, says the Chicago nominations were received with delight, and there is every indication of success in Illinois.
John Tillson, Quincy, May 28, writes that the nominations are highly acceptable here to every one except the Douglas men, who have just found out that Mr. Seward is the purest, ablest, and most consistent statesman of the age.
J. A. Mills, Atlanta, Logan County, June 4: "I have never seen such enthusiasm, at least since 1840, as is now manifested for Lincoln. Scores of Democrats are coming over to us."
B. Lewis, Jacksonville, June 6: "The Charleston Convention has struck the Democratic party with paralysis wherever Douglas was popular as their leader (and that was pretty much all over the free states), and we have now such an opportunity to make an impression as I never saw before.... We are actually making conversions here every day. The fact tells the whole story. In 1858 I anxiously desired to hear of one occasionally, at least as a sign, but I could never hear of a single one. Now it is all gloriously changed."
W. H. Herndon, Springfield, June 14: "Lincoln is well and doing well. Has hundreds of letters daily. Many visitors every hour from all sections. He is bored, bored badly. Good gracious! I would not have his place and be bored as he is. I could not endure it."
H. G. McPike, Alton, June 29: "We have distributed a large number of speeches as you are aware, the most effective, I think, under all the circumstances, is that of Carl Schurz."
In reply to letters of Trumbull, of which no copies were kept by him, Lincoln wrote the following:
Springfield, May 26, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: I have received your letter since the nomination, for which I sincerely thank you. As you say, if we cannot get our state up now, I do not see when we can. The nominations start well here, and everywhere else as far as I have heard. We may have a back-set yet. Give my respects to the Republican Senators, and especially to Mr. Hamlin, Mr. Seward, Gen. Cameron, and Mr. Wade. Also to your good wife. Write again, and do not write so short letters as I do.
Your friend as ever,
A. Lincoln.
Springfield, Ill., June 5, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: Yours of May 31, inclosing Judge R.'s38 letter is received. I see by the papers this morning, that Mr. Fillmore refused to go with us. What do the New Yorkers at Washington think of this? Governor Reeder was here last evening, direct from Pennsylvania. He is entirely confident of that state and of the general result. I do not remember to have heard Gen. Cameron's opinion of Penn. Weed was here and saw us, but he showed no signs whatever of the intriguer. He asked for nothing and said N. Y. is safe without conditions.
Remembering that Peter denied his Lord with an oath, after most solemnly protesting that he never would, I will not swear I will make no committals, but I do not think I will.
Write me often. I look with great interest for your letters now.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
Notwithstanding the brilliant opening of the campaign, the contest in Illinois was a very stiff one. Dr. Jayne's forecast was confirmed by the result. Lincoln's plurality over Douglas in the state was 11,946, and his majority over all was 4629. Dr. Jayne was himself elected State Senator in the district composed of Sangamon and Morgan counties. The Republican State Committee made extraordinary efforts to carry this district, as they believed that the reëlection of Senator Trumbull would depend upon it. They obtained five thousand dollars as a special fund from New York for this purpose. Jayne was elected by a majority of seven votes, but Douglas received a plurality of one hundred and three over Lincoln in the same district. By the election of Jayne, the Republicans secured a majority of one in the State Senate. This insured the holding of a joint convention of the legislature, at which Trumbull was reëlected Senator.
At Springfield, Illinois, November 20, 1860, there was a grand celebration of the election of Lincoln and Hamlin, at which speeches were made by Trumbull, Palmer, and Yates. Lincoln had been urged to say something at this meeting that would tend to quiet the rising surges of disunion at the South, but he thought that the time for him to speak had not yet come. He wished to let his record speak for him, and to see whether the commotion in the slaveholding states would increase or subside. Meanwhile he desired that the influence of this public meeting at his home should be peaceful and not irritating. To this end he wrote the following words, handed them to Trumbull and asked him to make them a part of his speech:
I have labored in and for the Republican organization with entire confidence that, whenever it shall be in power, each and all of the states will be left in as complete control of their own affairs respectively, and at as perfect liberty to choose and employ their own means of protecting property and preserving peace and order within their respective limits, as they have ever been under any administration. Those who have voted for Mr. Lincoln have expected and still expect this; and they would not have voted for him had they expected otherwise.
I regard it as extremely fortunate for the peace of the whole country that this point, upon which the Republicans have been so long and so persistently misrepresented, is now brought to a practical test and placed beyond the possibility of a doubt. Disunionists per se are now in hot haste to get out of the Union, because they perceive they cannot much longer maintain an apprehension among the Southern people that their homes and firesides and their lives are to be endangered by the action of the Federal Government. With such "Now or never" is the maxim. I am rather glad of the military preparations in the South. It will enable the people the more easily to suppress any uprisings there, which those misrepresentations of purpose may have encouraged.
These words were incorporated in Mr. Trumbull's speech and were printed in the newspapers, and the manuscript in Lincoln's handwriting is still preserved.39
But Mr. Lincoln's record neither hastened nor retarded the secession of the Southern States. The words he had previously spoken or written were as completely disregarded by the promoters of disunion as were those uttered now by Trumbull.
Jefferson Davis was not one of the hot-heads of secession. His speech in the Senate on January 10, 1861, reads like that of a man who sincerely regretted the step that South Carolina had taken, and deprecated that which Mississippi was about to take, although he justified it afterward, but he believed that the coercion of South Carolina would be the death-knell of the Union. His remedy for the existing menace was not to reinforce the garrison at Fort Sumter, but to withdraw it altogether, as a preliminary step to negotiations with the seceding state. Yet he did not say what terms South Carolina would agree to, or that she would agree to any. That Lincoln was in no mood to offer terms to South Carolina or to any seceding states which did not say what would satisfy them, was made emphatic in a letter from Dr. William Jayne to Trumbull, dated Springfield, January 28, saying that Governor Yates had received telegraph dispatches from the governors of Ohio and Indiana, asking whether Illinois would appoint peace commissioners in response to a call sent out by the governor of Virginia to meet at Washington on the 4th of February. "Lincoln," he continued, "advised Yates not to take any action at present. He said he would rather be hanged by the neck till he was dead on the steps of the Capitol than buy or beg a peaceful inauguration."
The following letters from Lincoln throw light on his attitude toward a compromise at a somewhat earlier stage:
Private and Confidential
Springfield, Ill., December 10, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and ere long must be done over again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come; and better now than any time hereafter.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
Confidential
Springfield, Ill., December 17, 1860.
Hon. L. Trumbull,
My dear Sir: Yours enclosing Mr. Wade's letter, which I herewith return, is received. If any of our friends do prove false and fix up a compromise on the territorial question, I am for fighting again—that is all. It is but a repetition for me to say I am for an honest enforcement of the Constitution—the fugitive slave clause included.
Mr. Gilmore of N. C. wrote me, and I answered confidentially, enclosing my letter to Gov. Corwin to be delivered or not as he might deem prudent. I now enclose you a copy of it.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
Confidential
Springfield, Ill., December 21, 1860.
Hon. Lyman Trumbull,
My dear Sir: Thurlow Weed was with me nearly all day yesterday, and left last night with three short resolutions which I drew up, and which, or the substance of which, I think, would do much good if introduced and unanimously supported by our friends. They do not touch the territorial question. Mr. Weed goes to Washington with them; and says that he will first of all confer with you and Mr. Hamlin. I think it would be best for Mr. Seward to introduce them, and Mr. Weed will let him know that I think so. Show this to Mr. Hamlin, but beyond him do not let my name be known in the matter.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
The first of the three resolutions named was to amend the Constitution by providing that no future amendment should be made giving Congress the power to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed by law. The second was for a law of Congress providing that fugitive slaves captured should have a jury trial. The third recommended that the Northern States should "review" their personal liberty laws.
Springfield, Ill., December 24, 1860.
Hon. Lyman Trumbull,
My dear Sir: I expect to be able to offer Mr. Blair a place in the Cabinet, but I cannot as yet be committed on the matter to any extent whatever.
Dispatches have come here two days in succession that the forts in South Carolina will be surrendered by order, or consent, at least, of the President. I can scarcely believe this, but if it prove true, I will, if our friends in Washington concur, announce publicly at once that they are to be retaken after the inauguration. This will give the Union men a rallying cry, and preparations will proceed somewhat on this side as well as on the other.
Yours as ever,
A. Lincoln.
Trumbull's own opinions about compromise were set forth in a correspondence with E. C. Larned, an eminent lawyer of Chicago. Under date January 7, Larned sent him a series of resolutions written by himself which were passed at a great Union meeting composed of Republicans and Democrats in Metropolitan Hall. One of these resolutions suggested "great concessions" to the South without specifying what they should be. Larned asked Trumbull to read them and advise him whether they met his approval. Trumbull replied under date January 16, at considerable length, saying:
In the present condition of things it is not advisable, in my opinion, for Republicans to concede or talk of conceding anything. The people of most of the Southern States are mad and in no condition to listen to reasonable propositions. They persist in misrepresenting the Republicans and many of them are resolved on breaking up the Government before they will consider what guarantees they want. To make or propose concessions to such a people, only displays the weakness of the Government. A Union which can be destroyed at the will of any one state is hardly worth preserving. The first question to be determined is whether we have a Government capable of maintaining itself against a state rebellion. When that question is effectually settled and the Republicans are installed in power, I would willingly concede almost anything, not involving principle, for the purpose of overcoming what I regard the misapprehension and prejudice of the South, but to propose concessions in advance of obtaining power looks to me very much like a confession in advance that the principles on which we carried the election are impracticable and wrong. Had the Republican party from the start as one man refused to entertain or talk compromises and concessions, and given it to be understood that the Union was to be maintained and the laws enforced at all hazards, I do not believe secession would ever have obtained the strength it now has.
The pages of the Congressional Globe of 1860-61 make the two most intensely interesting volumes in our country's history. They embrace the last words that the North and South had to say to each other before the doors of the temple of Janus were thrown open to the Civil War. As the moment of parting approached, the language became plainer, and its most marked characteristic was not anger, not hatred between disputants, but failure to understand each other. It was as though the men on either side were looking at an object through glasses of different color, or arguing in different languages, or worshiping different gods. Typical of the disputants were Davis and Trumbull, men of equally strong convictions and high breeding, and moved equally by love of country as they understood that term. Davis made three speeches, two of which were on the general subject of debate, and one his farewell to the Senate. The first, singularly enough, was called out by a resolution offered by a fellow Southerner and Democrat, Green, of Missouri (December 10, 1860), who proposed that there should be an armed police force provided by Federal authority to guard, where necessary, the boundary line between the slaveholding and the non-slaveholding states, to preserve the peace, prevent invasions, and execute the Fugitive Slave Law. This scheme Davis considered a quack remedy, and he declared that he could not give it his support because it looked to the employment of force to bring about a condition of security which ought to exist without force. The present want of security, he contended, could not be cured by an armed patrol, but only by a change of sentiment in the majority section of the Union toward the minority section. Upon this test he argued in a dispassionate way for a considerable space, ending in these words:
This Union is dear to me as a Union of fraternal states. It would lose its value to me if I had to regard it as a Union held together by physical force. I would be happy to know that every state now felt that fraternity which made this Union possible; and if that evidence could go out, if evidence satisfactory to the people of the South could be given, that that feeling existed in the hearts of the Northern people, you might burn your statute books and we would cling to the Union still. But it is because of their conviction that hostility and not fraternity now exists in the hearts of the Northern people, that they are looking to their reserved rights and to their independent powers for their own protection. If there be any good, then, which we can do, it is by sending evidence to them of that which I fear does not exist—the purpose in your constituents to fulfill in the spirit of justice and fraternity all their constitutional obligations. If you can submit to them that evidence, I feel confidence that with the evidence that aggression is henceforth to cease, will terminate all the measures for defense. Upon you of the majority section it depends to restore peace and perpetuate the Union of equal states; upon us of the minority section rests the duty to maintain our equality and community rights; and the means in one case or the other must be such as each can control.40
This was the explicit confirmation of what Lincoln had said, in his Cooper Institute speech a year earlier, was the chief difficulty of the North: "We must not only let them (the South) alone, but we must somehow convince them that we do let them alone."