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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII, by John
+Lord
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII
+
+Author: John Lord
+
+Release Date: January 8, 2004  [eBook #10647]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME
+XII***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+LORD'S LECTURES
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY, VOLUME XII
+
+AMERICAN LEADERS.
+
+BY JOHN LORD, LL.D.,
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE OLD ROMAN WORLD," "MODERN EUROPE,"
+ETC., ETC.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PUBLISHERS' PREFACE.
+
+
+The remarks made in the preface to the volume on "American Founders" are
+applicable also to this volume on "American Leaders." The lecture on
+Daniel Webster has been taken from its original position in "Warriors
+and Statesmen" (a volume the lectures of which are now distributed for
+the new edition in more appropriate groupings), and finds its natural
+neighborhood in this volume with the paper on Clay and Calhoun.
+
+Since the intense era of the Civil War has passed away, and Northerners
+and Southerners are becoming more and more able to take dispassionate
+views of the controversies of that time, finding honorable reasons for
+the differences of opinion and of resultant conduct on both sides, it
+has been thought well to include among "American Leaders" a man who
+stands before all Americans as the chief embodiment of the "cause" for
+which so many gallant soldiers died--Robert E. Lee. His personal
+character was so lofty, his military genius so eminent, that North and
+South alike looked up to him while living and mourned him dead. His
+career is depicted by one who has given it careful study, and who,
+himself a wounded veteran officer of the Union army, and regarding the
+Southern cause as one well "lost," as to its chief aims of Secession and
+protection to Slavery, in the interest of civilization and of the South
+itself, yet holds a high appreciation of the noble man who is its chief
+representative. The paper on "Robert E. Lee: The Southern Confederacy,"
+is from the pen of Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, Chancellor of the University
+of Nebraska.
+
+NEW YORK, September, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+_ANDREW JACKSON_.
+
+PERSONAL POLITICS.
+
+Early life of Jackson
+Studies law
+Popularity and personal traits
+Sent to Congress
+A judge in Tennessee
+Major-general of militia
+Indian fighter and duellist
+The Creek war
+Tecumseh
+Massacre at Fort Mims
+Jackson made major-general of the regular army
+The Creek war
+At Pensacola
+At Mobile
+At New Orleans
+The battle of New Orleans
+Effect of his successes
+The Seminole war
+Jackson as governor of Florida
+Senator in Congress
+President James Monroe
+President John Quincy Adams
+Election of Jackson as president
+Jackson's speeches
+Cabinet
+The "Kitchen Cabinet"
+System of appointments
+The "Spoils System"
+Hostile giants in the Senate
+Jackson's opposition to tariffs
+Financial policy
+The democracy hostile to a money power
+War on the United States Bank
+Nicholas Biddle
+Isaac Hill and Secretary Ingham
+Opposition to the re-charter of the bank
+The President's veto
+Removal of deposits
+Jackson's high-handed measures
+The mania for speculation
+"Pet Banks"
+Commercial distress
+Nullification
+Sale of public lands
+John C. Calhoun
+The president's proclamation against the nullifiers
+Compromise tariff
+Morgan and anti-masonry
+Private life of Jackson
+His public career
+Eventful administration
+
+
+_HENRY CLAY_.
+
+COMPROMISE LEGISLATION.
+
+Birth and education
+Studies law
+Favorite in society
+Settles in Lexington, Ky.
+Absorbed in politics
+Marriage; personal appearance
+Member of Congress
+Speaker of the House
+Advocates war with Great Britain
+His speeches
+Comparison with Webster
+Peace commissioner at Ghent
+Returns to Lexington
+Re-elected speaker
+The tariff question
+The tariff of 1816
+The charter of the United States Bank
+Beginning of slavery agitation
+Beecher in England, on cotton as affecting slavery
+The Missouri question
+Clay as a pacificator
+Internal improvements
+Greek struggle for liberty
+Tariff of 1824
+The "American system"
+The cotton lords
+Clay's aspirations for the presidency
+His competitors
+Clay secretary of state for Adams
+Jackson's administration
+Clay as orator
+His hatred of Jackson
+The tariff of 1832
+The compromise tariff of 1833
+Clay again candidate for the presidency
+Political disappointments
+Bursting of the money bubble
+Harrison's administration
+Repeal of the Sub-Treasury Act
+Slavery agitation
+Annexation of Texas under Polk
+Clay as pacificator of slavery agitation
+John C. Calhoun
+Anti-slavery leaders
+Passage of Clay's compromise bill of 1850
+Fugitive-slave law
+Clay's declining health
+Death
+Services
+Character
+
+
+_DANIEL WEBSTER_.
+
+THE AMERICAN UNION.
+
+General character and position of Webster
+Birth and early life
+Begins law-practice; enters Congress
+His legal career
+His oratory
+Congressional services; finance
+Industrial questions
+Defender of the Constitution
+Reply to Hayne of South Carolina
+Webster's ambition
+His political relations to the South
+The antislavery agitation
+Webster's 7th of March Speech
+His loyalty to the Constitution and the Union
+His political errors
+Greatness and worth of his career
+His death
+His defects of character
+His counterbalancing virtues
+Permanence of his ideas and his fame
+
+
+_JOHN C. CALHOUN_.
+
+THE SLAVERY QUESTION.
+
+Rapid Rise of Calhoun
+Education; lawyer; member of Congress
+Early speeches
+His enlightened mind
+Secretary of war
+Condition of the South
+Calhoun's dislike of Jackson
+The tariff question
+Bears heavily on the South
+Calhoun a defender of Southern interests
+Nullification
+The tariff of 1832
+Clay's compromise bill
+Jackson's war on the bank
+Calhoun in the Senate
+His detestation of politics as a game
+Lofty private life
+Early speeches
+The original abolitionists
+Radicalism
+Northern lecturers
+Calhoun's foresight
+Calhoun as logician
+Southern view of slavery
+Anti-slavery agitation
+Slavery in the District of Columbia
+John Quincy Adams and anti-slavery petitions
+Southern opposition to them
+Clay on petitions
+Violence of the abolitionists
+Misery of the slaves
+Admission of Michigan and Arkansas into the Union
+Triumphs of the South
+Growth of the abolitionists
+"Dough-Faces"
+Texan independence
+Annexation of Texas
+The Mexican war
+The war of ideas
+Prophetic utterances of Calhoun
+His obstinacy and arrogance
+Admission of California into the Union
+Clay's concessions
+Calhoun dying
+Compromise bill
+Calhoun's career
+His want of patriotism in later life
+Nullification doctrines
+Calhoun contrasted with Clay
+His character
+
+
+_ABRAHAM LINCOLN_.
+
+CIVIL WAR AND PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.
+
+Lincoln's parentage
+Rail splitter; country merchant
+In the Black Hawk war
+Postmaster
+His aspirations and passion for politics
+Stump speaker
+Surveyor
+Elected to the legislature
+Lincoln as politician
+Admitted to the bar
+Elected member of Congress
+His marriage
+Lincoln as lawyer
+Orator
+On the slavery question
+Anti-slavery agitation
+The compromise of 1850
+Stephen A. Douglas
+Repeal of the Missouri Compromise
+Charles Sumner
+Dred Scott decision
+Lincoln's antagonism to Douglas
+His commitment to anti-slavery cause
+Rise of the Republican party
+Lincoln's debates with Douglas
+Speaks in New York
+Lincoln as statesman
+Nomination for the presidency
+His election
+Inauguration
+Lincoln's cabinet; Jefferson Davis
+Fort Sumter
+War
+Lincoln as president
+Bull Run
+Concentration of troops in Washington
+General McClellan
+His dilatory measures
+Gloomy times
+Retirement of McClellan
+General Pope
+McClellan restored, fights the battle of Antietam
+Inaction and final retirement of McClellan
+Burnside and the battle of Fredericksburg
+Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
+General Hooker
+Lee's raid in Pennsylvania
+General Meade and the battle of Gettysburg
+Lincoln overworked
+Siege of Vicksburg
+General Grant
+Battle of Chattanooga
+Grant made general-in-chief
+March of Grant on Richmond
+Military sacrifices
+Siege of Petersburg
+Surrender of Lee
+Results of the war
+Strained relations between Chase and Lincoln
+Chase chief-justice
+Lincoln's second inaugural
+His profound wisdom
+His assassination
+Great services
+Position in history
+
+
+_ROBERT E. LEE_.
+
+THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
+
+BY E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, LL.D.
+
+Birth, lineage, personal appearance, and early career.
+
+A Virginian, he joins his State and the South in secession.
+
+His seven days' fighting against McClellan; forces the latter to raise
+the siege of Richmond.
+
+"Stonewall" Jackson and his efficient fighting machine.
+
+Wins at Antietam and Fredericksburg.
+
+Outmanoeuvres Hooker at Chancellorsville.
+
+Successes at Gettysburg and at the second battle of Bull Run.
+
+Grant changes the fortune of war for the North.
+
+Confederate dearth of necessaries and "dear money".
+
+Lee's retreat and capitulation at Appomattox.
+
+His personal characteristics.
+
+Skill shown in his military career.
+
+His manoeuvring tactics and masterful strategy.
+
+High name among the great captains of history.
+
+Gains of his leadership, in spite of "a lost cause".
+
+Latter days, and presidency of Washington College, Lexington, Va.
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+VOLUME XII
+
+
+Sherman's March to the Sea
+_After the painting by F.O.C. Darley_.
+
+James Monroe
+_After the painting by Gilbert Stuart, City Hall, New York_.
+
+Andrew Jackson
+_After a photograph from life_.
+
+Henry Clay
+_From a daguerreotype_.
+
+Martin Van Buren
+_From a daguerreotype_.
+
+Daniel Webster
+_After a drawing from a daguerreotype_.
+
+John C. Calhoun
+_From a daguerreotype_.
+
+James K. Polk
+_From a daguerreotype_.
+
+Abraham Lincoln
+_After an unretouched negative from life, found in 1870_.
+
+General George B. McClellan
+_After a photograph from life in the possession of the War Department,
+Washington, D.C._
+
+Ulysses S. Grant
+_After the painting by Chappel_.
+
+Assassination of President Lincoln
+_After the drawing by Fr. Roeber_.
+
+Robert E. Lee
+_From a photograph_.
+
+
+
+
+BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY.
+
+
+ANDREW JACKSON.
+
+
+1767-1845.
+
+PERSONAL POLITICS.
+
+
+It is very seldom that a man arises from an obscure and humble position
+to an exalted pre-eminence, without peculiar fitness for the work on
+which his fame rests, and which probably no one else could have done so
+well. He may not be learned, or cultured; he may be even unlettered and
+rough; he may be stained by vulgar defects and vices which are fatal to
+all dignity of character; but there must be something about him which
+calls out the respect and admiration of those with whom he is
+surrounded, so as to give him a start, and open a way for success in the
+business or enterprise where his genius lies.
+
+Such a man was Andrew Jackson. Whether as a youth, or as a man pursuing
+his career of village lawyer in the backwoods of a frontier settlement,
+he was about the last person of whom one would predict that he should
+arise to a great position and unbounded national popularity. His birth
+was plebeian and obscure. His father, of Scotch-Irish descent, lived in
+a miserable hamlet in North Carolina, near the South Carolina line,
+without owning a single acre of land,--one of the poorest of the poor
+whites. The boy Andrew, born shortly after his father's death in 1767,
+was reared in poverty and almost without education, learning at school
+only to "read, write, and cipher;" nor did he have any marked desire for
+knowledge, and never could spell correctly. At the age of thirteen he
+was driven from his native village by its devastation at the hands of
+the English soldiers, during the Revolutionary War. His mother, a worthy
+and most self-reliant woman, was an ardent patriot, and all her
+boys--Hugh, Robert, and Andrew--enlisted in the local home-guard. The
+elder two died, Hugh of exposure and Robert of prison small-pox, while
+Andrew, who had also been captured and sick of the disease, survived
+this early training in the scenes of war for further usefulness. The
+mother made her way on foot to Charleston, S.C., to nurse the sick
+patriots in the prison-ships, and there died of the prison fever, in
+1781. The physical endurance and force of character of this mother
+constituted evidently the chief legacy that Andrew inherited, and it
+served him well through a long and arduous life.
+
+At fifteen the boy was "a homeless orphan, a sick and sorrowful orphan,"
+working for a saddler in Charleston a few hours of the day, as his
+health would permit. With returning strength he got possession of a
+horse; but his army associates had led him into evil ways, and he became
+indebted to his landlord for board. This he managed to pay only by
+staking his horse in a game of dice against $200, which he fortunately
+won; and this squared him with the world and enabled him to start
+afresh, on a better way.
+
+Poor and obscure as he was, and imperfectly educated, he aspired to be a
+lawyer; and at eighteen years of age he became a law-student in the
+office of Mr. Spruce McCay in Salisbury, North Carolina. Two years
+later, in 1787, he was admitted to the bar. Not making much headway in
+Salisbury, he wandered to that part of the State which is now Tennessee,
+then an almost unbroken wilderness, exposed to Indian massacres and
+depredations; and finally he located himself at Nashville, where there
+was a small settlement,--chiefly of adventurers, who led lives of
+license and idleness.
+
+It seems that Jackson, who was appointed district-attorney, had a
+considerable practice in his profession of a rough sort, in that
+frontier region where the slightest legal knowledge was sufficient for
+success. He was in no sense a student, like Jefferson and Madison in the
+early part of their careers in Virginia as village lawyers, although he
+was engaged in as many cases, and had perhaps as large an income as
+they. But what was he doing all this while, when he was not in his
+log-office and in the log-court-room, sixteen feet square? Was he
+pondering the principles or precedents of law, and storing his mind with
+the knowledge gained from books? Not at all. He was attending
+horse-races and cock-fightings and all the sports which marked the
+Southern people one hundred years ago; and his associates were not the
+most cultivated and wealthy of them either, but ignorant, rough,
+drinking, swearing, gambling, fighting rowdies, whose society was
+repulsive to people of taste, intelligence, and virtue.
+
+The young lawyer became a favorite with these men, and with their wives
+and sisters and daughters. He could ride a horse better than any of his
+neighbors; he entered into their quarrels with zeal and devotion; he was
+bold, rash, and adventurous, ever ready to hunt a hostile Indian, or
+fight a duel, or defend an innocent man who had suffered injury and
+injustice. He showed himself capable of the warmest and most devoted
+friendship as well as the bitterest and most unrelenting hatred. He was
+quick to join a dangerous enterprise, and ever showing ability to lead
+it,--the first on the spot to put out a fire; the first to expose
+himself in a common danger; commanding respect for his honesty,
+sincerity, and integrity; exciting fear from his fierce wrath when
+insulted,--a man terribly in earnest; always as courteous and chivalric
+to women as he was hard and savage to treacherous men. Above all, he was
+now a man of commanding stature, graceful manners, dignified deportment,
+and a naturally distinguished air; so that he was looked up to by men
+and admired by women. What did those violent, quarrelsome, adventurous
+settlers on the western confines of American civilization care whether
+their favorite was learned or ignorant, so long as he was manifestly
+superior to them in their chosen pursuits and pleasures, was capable of
+leading them in any enterprise, and sympathized with them in all their
+ideas and prejudices,--a born democrat, as well as a born leader. His
+claim upon them, however, was not without its worthy elements. He was
+perfectly fearless in enforcing the law, laughing at intimidation. He
+often had to ride hundreds of miles to professional duties on circuit,
+through forests infested by Indians, and towns cowed by ruffians; and he
+and his rifle were held in great respect. He was renowned as the
+foremost Indian fighter in that country, and as a prosecuting attorney
+whom no danger and no temptation could swerve from his duty. He was
+feared, trusted, and boundlessly popular.
+
+The people therefore rallied about this man. When in 1796 a convention
+was called for framing a State constitution, Jackson was one of their
+influential delegates; and in December of that year he was sent to
+Congress as their most popular representative. Of course he was totally
+unfitted for legislative business, in which he never could have made any
+mark. On his return in 1797, a vacancy occurring in the United States
+Senate, he was elected senator, on the strength of his popularity as
+representative. But he remained only a year at Philadelphia, finding his
+calling dull, and probably conscious that he had no fitness for
+legislation, while the opportunity for professional and pecuniary
+success in Tennessee was very apparent to him.
+
+Next we read of his being made chief-justice of the Superior Court of
+Tennessee, with no more fitness for administering the law than he had
+for making it, or interest in it. Mr. Parton tells an anecdote of
+Jackson at this time which, whether true or not, illustrates his
+character as well as the rude conditions amid which he made himself
+felt. He was holding court in a little village in Tennessee, when a
+great, hulking fellow, armed with a pistol and bowie-knife, paraded
+before the little court-house, and cursed judge, jury, and all
+assembled. Jackson ordered the sheriff to arrest him, but that
+functionary failed to do it, either alone or with a posse. Whereupon
+Jackson caused the sheriff to summon _him_ as posse, adjourned court
+for ten minutes, walked out and told the fellow to yield or be shot.
+
+In telling why he surrendered to one man, when he had defied a crowd,
+the ruffian afterwards said: "When he came up I looked him in the eye,
+and I saw _shoot_. There wasn't _shoot_ in nary other eye in the crowd.
+I said to myself, it is about time to sing small; and so I did."
+
+It was by such bold, fearless conduct that Jackson won admiration,--not
+by his law, of which he knew but little, and never could have learned
+much. The law, moreover, was uncongenial to this man of action, and he
+resigned his judgeship and went for a short time into business,--trading
+land, selling horses, groceries, and dry-goods,--when he was appointed
+major-general of militia. This was just what he wanted. He had now found
+his place and was equal to it. His habits, enterprises, dangers, and
+bloody encounters, all alike fitted him for it. Henceforth his duty and
+his pleasure ran together in the same line. His personal peculiarities
+had made him popular; this popularity had made him prominent and secured
+to him offices for which he had no talent, seeing which he dropped them;
+but when a situation was offered for which he was fitted, he soon gained
+distinction, and his true career began.
+
+It was as an Indian fighter that he laid the foundation of his fame.
+His popularity with rough people was succeeded by a series of heroic
+actions which brought him before the eyes of the nation. There was no
+sham in these victories. He fairly earned his laurels, and they so
+wrought on the imagination of the people that he quickly became famous.
+
+But before his military exploits brought him a national reputation he
+had become notorious in his neighborhood as a duellist. He was always
+ready to fight when he deemed himself insulted. His numerous duels were
+very severely commented on when he became a candidate for the
+presidency, especially in New England. But duelling was a peculiar
+Southern institution; most Southern people settled their difficulties
+with pistols. Some of Jackson's duels were desperate and ferocious. He
+was the best shot in Tennessee, and, it is said, could lodge two
+successive balls in the same hole. As early as 1795 he fought with a
+fellow lawyer by the name of Avery. In 1806 he killed in a duel Charles
+Dickinson, who had spoken disparagingly of his wife, whom he had lately
+married, a divorced woman, but to whom he was tenderly attached as long
+as she lived. Still later he fought with Thomas H. Benton, and received
+a wound from which he never fully recovered.
+
+Such was the life of Jackson until he was forty-five years of age,--that
+of a violent, passionate, arbitrary man, beloved as a friend, and feared
+as an enemy. It was the Creek war and the war with England which
+developed his extraordinary energies. When the war of 1812 broke out he
+was major-general of Tennessee militia, and at once offered his services
+to the government, which were eagerly accepted, and he was authorized to
+raise a body of volunteers in Tennessee and to report with them at New
+Orleans. He found no difficulty in collecting about sixteen hundred men,
+and in January, 1813, took them down the Cumberland, the Ohio, and
+Mississippi to Natchez, in such flat-bottomed boats as he could collect;
+another body of mounted men crossed the country five hundred miles to
+the rendezvous, and went into camp at Natchez, Feb. 15, 1813.
+
+The Southern Department was under the command of General James
+Wilkinson, with headquarters at New Orleans,--a disagreeable and
+contentious man, who did not like Jackson. Through his influence the
+Tennessee detachment, after two months' delay in Natchez, was ordered by
+the authorities at Washington to be dismissed,--without pay, five
+hundred miles from home. Jackson promptly decided not to obey the
+command, but to keep his forces together, provide at his own expense for
+their food and transportation, and take them back to Tennessee in good
+order. He accomplished this, putting sick men on his own three horses,
+and himself marching on foot with the men, who, enthusiastic over his
+elastic toughness, dubbed him "Old Hickory,"--a title of affection that
+is familiar to this day. The government afterwards reimbursed him for
+his outlay in this matter, but his generosity, self-denial, energy, and
+masterly force added immensely to his popularity.
+
+Jackson's disobedience of orders attracted but little attention at
+Washington, in that time of greater events, while his own patriotism and
+fighting zeal were not abated by his failure to get at the enemy. And
+very soon his desires were to be granted.
+
+In 1811, before the war with England was declared, a general
+confederation of Indians had been made under the influence of the
+celebrated Tecumseh, a chief of the Shawanoc tribe. He was a man of
+magnificent figure, stately and noble as a Greek warrior, and withal
+eloquent. With his twin brother, the Prophet, Tecumseh travelled from
+the Great Lakes in the North to the Gulf of Mexico, inducing tribe after
+tribe to unite against the rapacious and advancing whites. But he did
+not accomplish much until the war with England broke out in 1812, when
+he saw a possibility of realizing his grand idea; and by the summer of
+1813 he had the Creek nation, including a number of tribes, organized
+for war. How far he was aided by English intrigues is not fully known,
+but he doubtless received encouragement from English agents. From the
+British and the Spaniards, the Indians received arms and ammunition.
+
+The first attack of these Indians was on August 13, 1813, at Fort Mims,
+in Alabama, where there were nearly two hundred American troops, and
+where five hundred people were collected for safety. The Indians,
+chiefly Creeks, were led by Red Eagle, who utterly annihilated the
+defenders of the fort under Major Beasley, and scalped the women and
+children. When reports of this unexpected and atrocious massacre reached
+Tennessee the whole population was aroused to vengeance, and General
+Jackson, his arm still in a sling from his duel with Benton, set out to
+punish the savage foes. But he was impeded by lack of provisions, and
+quarrels among his subordinates, and general insubordination. In
+surmounting his difficulties he showed extraordinary tact and energy.
+His measures were most vigorous. He did not hesitate to shoot, whether
+legally or illegally, those who were insubordinate, thus restoring
+military discipline, the first and last necessity in war. Soldiers soon
+learn to appreciate the worth of such decision, and follow such a leader
+with determination almost equal to his own. Jackson's troops did
+splendid marching and fighting.
+
+So rapid and relentless were his movements against the enemy that the
+campaign lasted but seven months, and the Indians were nearly all
+killed or dispersed. I need not enumerate his engagements, which were
+regarded as brilliant. His early dangers and adventures, and his
+acquaintance with Indian warfare ever since he could handle a rifle, now
+stood him in good stead. On the 21st of April, 1814, the militia under
+his command returned home victorious, and Jackson for his heroism and
+ability was made a major-general in the regular army, he then being
+forty-seven years of age. It was in this war that we first hear of the
+famous frontiersman Davy Crockett, and of Sam Houston, afterwards so
+unique a figure in the war for Texan independence. In this war, too,
+General Harrison gained his success at Tippecanoe, which was never
+forgotten; but his military genius was far inferior to that of Jackson.
+It is probable that had Jackson been sent to the North by the Secretary
+of War, he would have driven the British troops out of Canada. There is
+no question about his military ability, although his reputation was
+sullied by high-handed and arbitrary measures. What he saw fit to do, he
+did, without scruples or regard to consequences. In war everything is
+tested by success; and in view of that, if sufficiently brilliant,
+everything else is forgotten.
+
+The successful and rapid conquest of the Creeks opened the way for
+Jackson's Southern campaign against the English. As major-general he was
+sent to conclude a treaty with the Indians, which he soon arranged, and
+was then put in command of the Southern Division of the army, with
+headquarters at Mobile. The English made the neutral Spanish territory
+of Florida a basis of operations along the shores of the Gulf of Mexico,
+thus putting in peril both Mobile and New Orleans. They virtually
+possessed Pensacola, the Spanish force being too feeble to hold it, and
+made it the rendezvous of their fleets. The Spanish authorities made a
+show, indeed, of friendship with the United States, but the English flag
+floated over the forts of the city, and the governor was in sympathy
+with England. Such was the state of affairs when Jackson arrived at
+Mobile at the head of parts of three regiments of regulars, with a
+thousand miles of coast to defend, and without a fort adequately armed
+or garrisoned. He applied to the Secretary of War for permission to take
+Pensacola; but the government hesitated to attack a friendly power
+without further knowledge of their unfriendly acts, and the delayed
+response, ordering caution and waiting, did not reach him. Thrown upon
+his own resources, asking for orders and getting none, he was obliged to
+act without instructions, in face of vastly superior forces. And for
+this he can scarcely be blamed, since his situation demanded vigorous
+and rapid measures, before they could be indorsed by the Secretary of
+War. Pensacola, at the end of a beautiful bay, ten miles from the sea,
+with a fine harbor, was defended by Fort Barrancas, six miles from the
+town. Before it lay eight English men-of-war at anchor, the source of
+military supplies for the fort, on which floated the flags of both
+England and Spain. The fleet was in command of Captain Lord Percy, whose
+flagship was the "Hermes," while Colonel Nichols commanded the troops.
+This latter boastful and imprudent officer was foolish enough to issue a
+proclamation to the inhabitants of Louisiana and Kentucky to take up
+arms against their country. A body of Indians were also drilled in the
+service of the British, so far as Indians can be drilled to
+regular warfare.
+
+As soon as the true intentions of the English were known to General
+Jackson, who had made up his mind to take possession of Pensacola, he
+wrote to the Spanish governor,--a pompous, inefficient old grandee,--and
+demanded the surrender of certain hostile Creek chieftains, who had
+taken refuge in the town.
+
+The demand was haughtily rejected. Jackson waited until three thousand
+Tennessee militia, for whom he had urgently sent, arrived at Mobile,
+under the command of General Coffee, one of his efficient coadjutors in
+the Creek War, and Colonel Butler, and then promptly and successfully
+stormed Pensacola, driving out the British, who blew up Fort Barrancas
+and escaped to their ships. After which he retired to Mobile to defend
+that important town against the British forces, who threatened
+an attack.
+
+The city of Mobile could be defended by fortifications on Mobile Point,
+thirty miles distant, at the mouth of the bay, since opposite it was a
+narrow channel through which alone vessels of any considerable size
+could enter the bay. At this point was Fort Bowyer, in a state of
+dilapidation, mounting but a few pieces of cannon. Into this fort
+Jackson at once threw a garrison of one hundred and sixty regular
+infantry under Major Lawrence, a most gallant officer. These troops were
+of course unacquainted with the use of artillery, but they put the fort
+in the best condition they could, and on the 12th of September the enemy
+appeared, the fleet under Captain Percy, and a body of marines and
+Indians under Colonel Nichols. Jackson, then at Mobile, apprised of the
+appearance of the British, hastily reinforced the fort, about to be
+attacked by a large force confident of success. On the 15th of September
+the attack began; the English battered down the ramparts of the
+fortifications, and anchored their ships within gun-shot of the fort;
+but so gallant was the defence that the ships were disabled, and the
+enemy retreated, with a loss of about one hundred men. This victory
+saved Mobile; and more, it gave confidence to the small army on whom
+the defence of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico depended.
+
+Jackson forthwith issued his bulletins or proclamations in a truly
+Napoleonic style to the inhabitants of Louisiana, to rally to the
+defence of New Orleans, which he saw would probably be the next object
+of attack on the part of the British. On the 2d of December he
+personally reached that city and made preparations for the expected
+assault, and, ably assisted by Edward Livingston, the most prominent
+lawyer of the city, enlisted for the defence the French creoles, the
+American residents, and a few Spaniards.
+
+New Orleans was a prize which the English coveted, and to possess it
+that government had willingly expended a million of pounds sterling. The
+city not only controlled the commerce of the Mississippi, but in it were
+stored one hundred and fifty thousand bales of cotton, and eight hundred
+and ten thousand hogsheads of sugar, all of which the English government
+expected to seize. It contained at that time about twenty thousand
+people,--less than half of whom were whites, and these chiefly French
+creoles,--besides a floating population of sailors and traders.
+
+New Orleans is built on a bend in the Mississippi, in the shape of a
+horse-shoe, about one hundred miles from where by a sinuous
+southeasterly course the river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. At the
+city the river was about a mile wide, with a current of four miles an
+hour, and back of the town was a swamp, draining to the north into Lake
+Ponchartrain, and to the east into Lake Borgne, which opens out into the
+Gulf east of the city. It was difficult for sailing-vessels at that time
+to ascend the river one hundred miles against the current, if forts and
+batteries were erected on its banks; and a sort of back entrance was
+afforded to the city for small vessels through lakes and lagoons at a
+comparatively short distance. On one of these lakes, Lake Borgne, a
+flotilla of light gunboats was placed for defence, under the command of
+Lieutenant Jones, but on December 14th an overpowering force of small
+British vessels dispersed the American squadron, and on the
+twenty-second about fifteen hundred regulars, the picked men of the
+British army, fresh from European victories under Wellington, contrived
+to find their way unperceived through the swamps and lagoons to the belt
+of plantations between the river and the swamps, about nine miles below
+New Orleans.
+
+When the news arrived of the loss of the gunboats, which made the enemy
+the masters of Lake Borgne, a panic spread over the city, for the forces
+of the enemy were greatly exaggerated. But Jackson was equal to the
+emergency, though having but just arrived. He coolly adopted the most
+vigorous measures, and restored confidence. Times of confusion,
+difficulty, and danger were always his best opportunities. He proclaimed
+martial law; he sent in all directions for reinforcements; he called
+upon the people to organize for defence; he released and enlisted the
+convicts, and accepted the proffered services of Jean Lafitte, the
+ex-"pirate"--or, rather, smuggler--of the Gulf, with two companies of
+his ex-buccaneers; he appealed to "the noble-hearted, generous, free men
+of color" to enlist, and the whole town was instantly transformed into a
+military camp. Within a fortnight he had five thousand men, one-fifth
+regulars and the rest militia. General Jackson's address to his soldiers
+was spirited but inflated, encouraging and boastful, with a great
+patriotic ring, and, of course effective. The population of the city was
+united in resolving to make a sturdy defence.
+
+Had the British marched as soon as they landed, they probably would have
+taken the city, in the existing consternation. But they waited for
+larger forces from their ships, which carried six thousand troops, and
+in their turn exaggerated the number of the defenders, which at the
+first were only about two thousand badly frightened men. The delay was a
+godsend to the Americans, who now learned the strength of the enemy.
+
+On the 23d--as always, eager to be at his enemy, and moving with his
+characteristic energy--Jackson sent a small force down to make a night
+attack on the British camp; also a schooner, heavily armed with cannon,
+to co-operate from the river. It was a wild and inconsequent fight; but
+it checked the advance of the British, who now were still more impressed
+with the need of reinforcements; it aroused the confidence and fighting
+spirit of the Americans, and it enabled Jackson to take up a defensive
+line behind an old canal, extending across the plain from river to
+swamp, and gave him time to fortify it. At once he raised a formidable
+barricade of mud and timber, and strengthened it with cotton-bales from
+the neighboring plantations. The cotton, however, proved rather a
+nuisance than a help, as it took fire under the attack, and smoked,
+annoying the men. The "fortifications of cotton-bales" were only a
+romance of the war.
+
+On the 25th arrived Sir Edward Pakenham, brother-in-law of Wellington
+and an able soldier, to take command, and on the 28th the British
+attacked the extemporized but strong breastworks, confident of success.
+But the sharp-shooters from the backwoods of Tennessee under Carroll,
+and from Kentucky under Coffee, who fought with every advantage,
+protected by their mud defences, were equally confident. The slaughter
+of the British troops, utterly unprotected though brave and gallant, was
+terrible, and they were repulsed. Preparations were now made for a
+still more vigorous, systematic, and general assault, and a force was
+sent across the river to menace the city from that side.
+
+On the 8th of January the decisive battle was fought which extinguished
+forever all dreams of the conquest of America, on the part of the
+British. General Pakenham, who commanded the advancing columns in
+person, was killed, and their authorities state their loss to have been
+two thousand killed, wounded, and missing. The American loss was eight
+killed and thirteen wounded. It was a rash presumption for the British
+to attack a fortified entrenchment ten feet high in some places, and ten
+feet thick, with detached redoubts to flank it and three thousand men
+behind it. The conflict was not strictly a battle,--not like an
+encounter in the open field, where the raw troops under Jackson, most of
+them militia, would have stood no chance with the veterans whom
+Wellington had led to victory and glory.
+
+Jackson's brilliant defence at New Orleans was admirably planned and
+energetically executed. It had no effect on the war, for the treaty of
+peace, although not yet heard of, had been signed weeks before; but it
+enabled America to close the conflict with a splendid success, which
+offset the disasters and mistakes of the Northern campaigns. Naturally,
+it was magnified into a great military exploit, and raised the fame of
+Jackson to such a height, all over the country, that nothing could ever
+afterwards weaken his popularity, no matter what he did, lawful or
+unlawful. He was a victor over the Indians and over the English, and all
+his arbitrary acts were condoned by an admiring people who had but few
+military heroes to boast of.
+
+His successes had a bad effect on Jackson himself. He came to feel that
+he had a right to ride over precedents and law when it seemed to him
+expedient. He set up his will against constituted authorities, and
+everybody who did not endorse his measures he regarded as a personal
+enemy, to be crushed if possible. It was never said of him that he was
+unpatriotic in his intentions, only that he was wilful, vindictive, and
+ignorant. From the 8th of January, 1815, to the day of his death he was
+the most popular man that this country ever saw,--excepting, perhaps,
+Washington and Lincoln,--the central figure in American politics, with
+prodigious influence even after he had finally retired from public life.
+Immediately after the defence of New Orleans the legislatures of
+different States, and Congress itself, passed grateful resolutions for
+his military services, and the nation heaped all the honor on the hero
+that was in its power to give,--medals, swords, and rewards, and
+Congress remitted a fine which had been imposed by Judge Hall, in New
+Orleans, for contempt of court. Jackson's severity in executing six
+militia-men for mutiny was approved generally as a wholesome exercise of
+military discipline, and all his acts were glorified. Wherever he went
+there was a round of festivities. He began to be talked about, as soon
+as the war was closed, as a candidate for the presidency, although when
+the idea was first proposed to him he repelled it with genuine
+indignation.
+
+Scarcely had the British troops been withdrawn from the Gulf of Mexico
+to fight more successfully at Waterloo, when Jackson was called to put
+an end to the Seminole war in Florida, which Spanish territory he
+occupied on the ground of self-defence. The Indians--Seminoles and
+Creeks--with many runaway negroes, had been pillaging the border of
+Georgia. Jackson drove them off, seized the Spanish fort on Appalachee
+Bay, and again took possession of Pensacola on the plea that the Spanish
+officials were aiding the Indians. It required all the skill of the
+government at Washington to defend his despotic acts, for he was as
+complete an autocrat in his limited sphere as Caesar or Napoleon. The
+only limits he regarded were the limits to his power. But in whatever he
+did, he had a firm conviction that he was right. Even John Quincy Adams
+justified his acts in Florida, when his enemies were loud in their
+complaints of his needless executions, especially of two British
+traders, Arbuthnot and Ambruter, whom he had court-martialled and shot
+as abettors of the Indians. He had invaded the territory of a neutral
+power and driven off its representatives; but everything was condoned.
+And when, shortly after, Florida became United States territory by
+purchase from Spain, he was made its first governor,--a new field for
+him, but an appointment which President Monroe felt it necessary
+to make.
+
+In April, 1821, having resigned his commission in the army, Jackson left
+Nashville with his family to take up his residence in Pensacola,
+enchanted with its climate and fruits and flowers, its refreshing
+sea-breezes, and its beautiful situation, in spite of hot weather. As
+governor of Florida he was invested with extraordinary powers. Indeed,
+there was scarcely any limit to them, except that he had no power to
+levy and collect taxes, and seize the property of the mixed races who
+dwelt in the land of oranges and flowers. It would appear that, aside
+from arbitrary acts, he did all he could for the good of the territory,
+under the influence of his wife, a Christian woman, whom he indulged in
+all things, especially in shutting up grog-shops, putting a stop to
+play-going, and securing an outward respect for the Sabbath. His term of
+office, however, was brief, and as his health was poor, for he was never
+vigorous, in November of the same year he gladly returned to Nashville,
+and about this time built his well-known residence, the "Hermitage." As
+a farmer he was unusually successful, making agriculture lucrative even
+with slave-labor.
+
+Jackson had now become a prominent candidate for the presidency, and as
+a part of the political plan, he was, in 1823, made senator from
+Tennessee in Congress, where he served parts of two terms, without,
+however, distinguishing himself as a legislator. He made but few
+speeches, and these were short, but cast his vote on occasions of
+importance, voting against a reduction of duty on iron and woollen and
+cotton goods, against imprisonment for debt, and favoring some internal
+improvements. In 1824 he wrote a letter advocating a "careful tariff,"
+so far as it should afford revenues for the national defence, and to pay
+off the national debt, and "give a proper distribution of our labor;"
+but a tariff to enrich capitalists at the expense of the laboring
+classes, he always abhorred.
+
+The administration of James Monroe, in two full terms, from 1817 to
+1825, had not been marked by any great events or popular movements of
+especial historical interest. It was "the era of good feeling." The
+times were placid, and party animosities had nearly subsided. The
+opening of the slavery discussions resulted in the Missouri Compromise
+of 1820, and the irritations of that great topic were allayed for the
+time. Like all his predecessors after Washington, Monroe had been
+successively a diplomatist and Secretary of State, and the presidency
+seemed to fall to him as a matter of course. He was a most respectable
+man, although not of commanding abilities, and discharged his duties
+creditably in the absence of exciting questions. The only event of his
+administration which had a marked influence on the destinies of the
+United States was the announcement that the future colonization of the
+country by any European State would not be permitted. This is called the
+"Monroe doctrine," and had the warm support of Webster and other leading
+statesmen. It not only proclaimed the idea of complete American
+independence of all foreign powers, but opposed all interference of
+European States in American affairs. The ultimate influence of the
+application of this doctrine cannot be exaggerated in importance,
+whether it originated with the President or not. Monroe was educated for
+the bar, but was neither a good speaker nor a ready writer. Nor was he a
+man of extensive culture or attainments. The one great idea attributed
+to him was: "America for the Americans." He was succeeded, however, by a
+man of fine attainments and large experience, who had passed through the
+great offices of State with distinguished credit.
+
+In February, 1824, Jackson was almost unanimously nominated for the
+presidency by the Democratic party, through the convention in
+Harrisburg, and John C. Calhoun was nominated for the vice-presidency.
+Jackson's main rivals in the election which followed were John Quincy
+Adams and Henry Clay, both of whom had rendered great civil services,
+and were better fitted for the post. But Jackson was the most popular,
+and he obtained ninety-nine electoral votes, Adams eighty-four, and Clay
+thirty-seven. No one having a majority, the election was thrown into the
+House of Representatives. Clay, who never liked nor trusted Jackson,
+threw his influence in favor of Adams, and Adams was elected by the vote
+of thirteen States. Jackson and his friends always maintained that he
+was cheated out of the election,--that Adams and Clay made a bargain
+between themselves,--which seemed to be confirmed by the fact that Clay
+was made Secretary of State in Adams's cabinet; although this was a
+natural enough sequence of Clay's throwing his political strength to
+make Adams president. Jackson returned, wrathful and disappointed, to
+his farm, but amid boisterous demonstrations of respect wherever he
+went. If he had not cared much about the presidency before, he was now
+determined to achieve it, and to crush his opponents, whom he promptly
+regarded as enemies.
+
+John Quincy Adams entered upon office in 1825, free from "personal
+obligations" and "partisan entanglements," but with an unfriendly
+Congress. This, however, was not of much consequence, since no great
+subjects were before Congress for discussion. It was a period of great
+tranquillity, fitted for the development of the peaceful arts, and of
+internal improvements in the land, rather than of genius in the
+presidential chair. Not one public event of great importance occurred,
+although many commercial treaties were signed, and some internal
+improvements were made. Mr. Adams lived in friendly relations with his
+cabinet, composed of able men, and he was generally respected for the
+simplicity of his life, and the conscientious discharge of his routine
+duties. He was industrious and painstaking, rising early in the morning
+and retiring early in the evening. He was not popular, being cold and
+austere in manner, but he had a lofty self-respect, disdaining to
+conciliate foes or reward friends,--a New England Puritan of the
+severest type, sternly incorruptible, learned without genius, eloquent
+without rhetoric, experienced without wisdom, religious without
+orthodoxy, and liberal-minded with strong prejudices.
+
+Perhaps the most marked thing in the political history of that
+administration was the strife for the next presidency, and the beginning
+of that angry and bitter conflict between politicians which had no
+cessation until the Civil War. The sessions of Congress were occupied
+in the manufacture of political capital; for a cloud had arisen in the
+political heavens, portending storms and animosities, and the discussion
+of important subjects of national scope, such as had not agitated the
+country before,--pertaining to finances, to tariffs, to constitutional
+limitations, to retrenchments, and innovations. There arose new
+political parties, or rather a great movement, extending to every town
+and hamlet, to give a new impetus to the Democratic sway. The leaders in
+this movement were the great antagonists of Clay and Webster,--a new
+class of politicians, like Benton, Amos Kendall, Martin Van Buren, Duff
+Green, W.B. Lewis, and others. A new era of "politics" was inaugurated,
+with all the then novel but now customary machinery of local clubs,
+partisan "campaign newspapers," and the organized use of pledges and
+promises of appointments to office to reward "workers." This system had
+been efficiently perfected in New York State under Mr. Van Buren and
+other leaders, but now it was brought into Federal politics, and the
+whole country was stirred into a fever heat of party strife.
+
+In a political storm, therefore, Jackson was elected, and commenced his
+memorable reign in 1829,--John Quincy Adams retiring to his farm in
+disgust and wrath. The new president was carried into office on an
+avalanche of Democratic voters, receiving two hundred and sixty-one
+electoral votes, while Adams had only eighty-three, notwithstanding his
+long public services and his acknowledged worth. This was too great a
+disappointment for the retiring statesman to bear complacently, or even
+philosophically. He gave vent to his irritated feelings in unbecoming
+language, exaggerating the ignorance of Jackson and his general
+unfitness for the high office,--in this, however, betraying an estimate
+of the incoming President which was common among educated and
+conservative men. I well remember at college the contempt which the
+president and all the professors had for the Western warrior. It was
+generally believed by literary men that "Old Hickory" could scarcely
+write his name.
+
+But the speeches of Jackson were always to the point, if not studied and
+elaborate, while his messages were certainly respectable, though rather
+too long. It is generally supposed that he furnished the rough drafts to
+his few intimate friends, who recast and polished them, while some think
+that William Lewis, Amos Kendall, and others wrote the whole of them, as
+well as all his public papers. In reading the early letters of Jackson,
+however, it is clear that they are anything but illiterate, whatever
+mistakes in spelling and grammatical errors there may be. His ideas were
+distinct, his sentiments unmistakable; and although he was fond of a
+kind of spread-eagle eloquence, his views on public questions were
+generally just and vigorously expressed. A Tennessee general, brought up
+with horse-jockeys, gamblers, and cock-fighters, and who never had even
+a fair common-school education, could not be expected to be very
+accomplished in the arts of composition, whatever talents and good sense
+he naturally may have had. Certain it is that Jackson's mind was clear
+and his convictions were strong upon the national policy to be pursued
+by him; and if he opposed banks and tariffs it was because he believed
+that their influence was hostile to the true interests of the country.
+He doubtless well understood the issues of great public questions; only,
+his view of them was contrary to the views of moneyed men and bankers
+and the educated classes of his day generally. It is to be remarked,
+however, that the views he took on questions of political economy are
+now endorsed by many able college professors and some American
+manufacturers who are leading public opinion in opposition to tariffs
+for protection and in the direction of free trade.
+
+The first thing for Jackson to do after his inauguration was to select
+his cabinet. It was not a strong one. He wanted clerks, not advisers. He
+was all-sufficient to himself. He rarely held a cabinet meeting. In a
+very short time this cabinet was dissolved by a scandal. General Eaton,
+Secretary of War, had married the daughter of a tavern-keeper, who was
+remarkable for her wit and social brilliancy. The aristocratic wives of
+the cabinet ministers would not associate with her, and the President
+took the side of the neglected woman, in accordance with his chivalric
+nature. His error was in attempting to force his cabinet to accord to
+her a social position,--a matter which naturally belonged to women to
+settle. So bitter was the quarrel, and so persistent was the President
+in attempting to produce harmony in his cabinet on a mere social
+question that the ministers resigned rather than fight so obstinate and
+irascible a man as Jackson in a matter which was outside his proper
+sphere of action.
+
+The new cabinet was both more able and more subservient. Edward
+Livingston of Louisiana, who wrote most of Jackson's documents when he
+commanded in New Orleans, was made Secretary of State, Louis McLane of
+Delaware, Secretary of the Treasury; Lewis Cass, governor for
+nineteen years of Michigan, Secretary of War; Levi Woodbury of New
+Hampshire, Secretary of the Navy; Roger B. Taney of Maryland,
+Attorney-General,--all distinguished for abilities. But even these able
+men were seldom summoned to a cabinet meeting. The confidential advisers
+of the President were Amos Kendall, afterwards Postmaster-General; Duff
+Green, a Democratic editor; Isaac Hill, a violent partisan, who edited a
+paper in Concord, New Hampshire, and was made second auditor of the
+treasury; and William B. Lewis, an old friend of the general in
+Tennessee,--all able men, but unscrupulous politicians, who enjoyed
+power rather than the display of it. These advisers became known in the
+party contests of the time as the president's "Kitchen Cabinet."
+
+Jackson had not been long inaugurated before the influence of the
+"Kitchen Cabinet" was seen and felt; for it was probably through the
+influence of these men that the President brought about a marked change
+in the policy of the government; and it is this change which made
+Jackson's administration so memorable. It was the intrusion of
+personality, instead of public policy, into the management of party
+politics. Madison did not depart from the general policy of Jefferson,
+nor did Monroe. "The Virginia dynasty" kept up the traditions of the
+government as originally constituted. But Jackson cut loose from all
+traditions and precedents, especially in the matter of assuming
+responsibilities, and attempted to carry on the government independently
+of Congress in many important respects. It is the duty of the President
+to execute the laws as he finds them, until repealed or altered by the
+national Legislature; but it was the disposition of Jackson to
+disregard those laws which he disapproved,--an encroachment hard to be
+distinguished from usurpation. And this is the most serious charge
+against him as President; not his ignorance, but his despotic temper,
+and his self-conceit in supposing himself wiser than the collected
+wisdom and experience of the representatives of the nation,--a notion
+which neither Washington nor Jefferson nor Madison ever entertained.
+
+Again, Jackson's system of appointments to office--the removal of men
+already satisfactorily doing the work of the government, in order to
+make places for his personal and political supporters--was a great
+innovation, against all the experience of governments, whether despotic
+or constitutional. It led to the reign of demagogues, and gave rewards,
+not to those who deserved promotion from their able and conscientious
+discharge of duty in public trusts, but to those who most unscrupulously
+and zealously advocated or advanced the interests of the party in power.
+It led to perpetual rotations in office without reasonable cause, and
+made the election of party chiefs of more importance than the support of
+right principles. The imperfect civil service reforms which have been
+secured during the last few years with so much difficulty show the
+political mischief for which Jackson is responsible, and which has
+disgraced every succeeding administration,--an evil so gigantic that no
+president has been strong enough to overcome it; not only injurious to
+the welfare of the nation by depriving it of the services of experienced
+men, but inflicting an onerous load on the President himself which he
+finds it impossible to shake off,--the great obstacle to the proper
+discharge of his own public duties, and the bar to all private
+enjoyment. What is more perplexing and irritating to an incoming
+president than the persistent and unreasonable demands of
+office-seekers, nine out of ten of whom are doomed to disappointment,
+and who consequently become enemies rather than friends of the
+administration?
+
+This "spoils system" which Jackson inaugurated has proved fatal to all
+dignity of office, and all honesty in elections. It has divested
+politics of all attraction to superior men, and put government largely
+into the hands of the most venal and unblushing of demagogues. It has
+proved as great and fatal a mistake as has the establishment of
+universal suffrage which Jefferson encouraged,--a mistake at least in
+the great cities of the country,--an evil which can never be remedied
+except by revolution. Doubtless it was a generous impulse on the part of
+Jackson to reward his friends with the spoils of office, as it was a
+logical sequence of the doctrine of political equality to give every man
+a vote, whether virtuous or wicked, intelligent or ignorant. Until
+Jackson was intrusted with the reins of government, no president of the
+United States, however inclined to reward political friends, dared to
+establish such a principle as rotation in office or removal without
+sufficient cause. Not one there was who would not have shrunk from such
+a dangerous precedent, a policy certain to produce an inferior class of
+public servants, and take away from political life all that is lofty and
+ennobling, except in positions entirely independent of presidential
+control, such as the national legislature.
+
+The Senate, especially during Jackson's administration, was composed of
+remarkably gifted men, the most distinguished of whom opposed and
+detested the measures and policy he pursued, with such unbending
+obstinacy that he was filled with bitterness and wrath. This feeling was
+especially manifested towards Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, the great
+lights of the Senate Chamber,--although Jackson's party had the majority
+of both Houses much of the time, and thus, while often hindered, he was
+in the end unchecked in his innovations and hostilities. But these three
+giants he had to fight during most of his presidential career, which
+kept him in a state of perpetual irritation. Their opposition was to him
+a bitter pill. They were beyond his power, as independent as he. Until
+then, in his military and gubernatorial capacity, his will had been
+supreme. He had no opponents whom he could not crush. He was accustomed
+to rule despotically. As president he could be defied and restrained by
+Congress. His measures had to be of the nature of recommendation, except
+in the power of veto which he did not hesitate to use unsparingly; but
+the Senate could refuse to ratify his appointments, and often did
+refuse, which drove him beyond the verge of swearing. Again, in the
+great questions which came up for discussion, especially those in the
+domain of political economy, there would be honest differences of
+opinion; for political economy has settled very little, and is not,
+therefore, strictly a science, any more than medicine is. It is a system
+of theories based on imperfect inductions. There can be no science
+except what is based on _indisputable_ facts, or accepted principles.
+There are no incontrovertible doctrines pertaining to tariffs or
+financial operations, which are modified by circumstances.
+
+The three great things which most signally marked the administration of
+Jackson were the debates on the tariffs, the quarrel with the United
+States Bank, and the Nullification theories of Calhoun. It would seem
+that Jackson, when inaugurated, was in favor of a moderate tariff to aid
+military operations and to raise the necessary revenue for federal
+expenses, but was opposed to high protective duties. Even in 1831 he
+waived many of his scruples as to internal improvements in deference to
+public opinion, and signed the bills which made appropriations for the
+improvement of harbors and rivers, for the continuation of the
+Cumberland road, for the encouragement of the culture of the vine and
+olive, and for granting an extended copyright to authors. It was only
+during his second term that his hostility to tariffs became a
+passion,--not from any well-defined views of political economy, for
+which he had no adequate intellectual training, but because "protection"
+was unpopular in the southwestern States, and because he instinctively
+felt that it favored monopolists at the expense of the people. What he
+hated most intensely were capitalists and moneyed institutions; like
+Jefferson, he feared their influence on elections. As he was probably
+conscious of his inability to grasp the complex questions of political
+economy, he was not bitter in his opposition to tariffs, except on
+political grounds. Hence, generally speaking, he left Congress to
+discuss that theme. We shall have occasion to look into it in the
+lecture on Henry Clay, and here only mention the great debates of
+Jackson's time on the subject,--a subject on which Congress has been
+debating for fifty years, and will probably be debating for fifty years
+to come, since the whole matter depends practically on changing
+circumstances, whatever may be the abstract theories of doctrinaires.
+
+While Jackson, then, on the whole, left tariffs to Congress, he was not
+so discreet in matters of finance. His war with the United States Bank
+was an important episode in his life, and the chief cause of the enmity
+with which the moneyed and conservative classes pursued him to the end
+of his days. Had he let the Bank alone he would have been freed from
+most of the vexations and turmoils which marked his administration. He
+would have left a brighter name. He would not have given occasion for
+those assaults which met him on every hand, and which history justifies.
+He might even have been forgiven for his spoils system and unprecedented
+removals from office. In attacking the Bank he laid a profane touch upon
+a sacred ark and handled untempered mortar. He stopped the balance-wheel
+which regulated the finances of the country, and introduced no end of
+commercial disorders, ending in dire disasters. Like the tariff,
+finances were a question with which he was not competent to deal. His
+fault was something more than the veto on the recharter of the Bank by
+Congress, which he had a constitutional right to make; it was a
+vindictive assault on an important institution before its charter had
+expired, even in his first message to Congress. In this warfare we see
+unscrupulous violence,--prompted, not alone by his firm hostility to
+everything which looked like a monopoly and a moneyed power, but by the
+influence of advisers who hated everything like inequality of position,
+especially when not usable for their own purposes. They stimulated his
+jealousy and resentments. They played on his passions and prejudices.
+They flattered him as if he were the monarch of the universe, incapable
+of a wrong judgment.
+
+Hostility to the money-power, however, is older than the public life of
+Jackson. It existed among the American democracy as early as the time of
+Alexander Hamilton. When he founded the first Bank of the United States
+he met with great opposition from the followers of Jefferson, who were
+jealous of the power it was supposed to wield in politics. When in 1810
+the question came up of renewing the charter of the first United States
+Bank, the Democratic-Republicans were bitter in their opposition; and so
+effective was the outcry that the bank went into liquidation, its place
+being taken by local banks. These issued notes so extravagantly that the
+currency of the country, as stated by Professor Sumner, was depreciated
+twenty-five per cent. So great was the universal financial distress
+which followed the unsound system of banking operations that in 1816 a
+new bank was chartered, on the principles which Hamilton had laid down.
+
+This Bank was to run for twenty years, and its capital was thirty-five
+millions of dollars, seven of which were taken by the United States;
+many of its stockholders were widows, charitable institutions, and
+people of small means. Its directors were chosen by the stockholders
+with the exception of five appointed by the President of the United
+States and confirmed by the Senate. The public money was deposited in
+this Bank; it could be removed by the Secretary of the Treasury, but by
+him only on giving his reasons to Congress. The Bank was located in
+Philadelphia, then the money-centre of the country, but it had
+twenty-five branches in different cities, from Portsmouth, N.H., to New
+Orleans. The main institution could issue notes, not under five dollars,
+but the branches could not. Langdon Cleves, of South Carolina, was the
+first president, succeeded in 1823 by Nicholas Biddle, of
+Philadelphia,--a man of society, of culture, and of leisure,--a young
+man of thirty-seven, who could talk and write, perhaps, better than he
+could manage a great business.
+
+The affairs of the Bank went on smoothly for ten or twelve years, and
+the financial condition of the country was never better than when
+controlled by this great central institution. Nicholas Biddle of course
+was magnified into a great financier of uncommon genius,--the first
+business man in the whole country, a great financial autocrat, the idol
+of Philadelphia. But he was hated by Democratic politicians as a man
+who was intrusted with too much power, which might be perverted to
+political purposes, and which they asserted was used to help his
+aristocratic friends in difficulty. Moreover, they looked with envy on
+the many positions its offices afforded, which, as it was a "government
+institution," they thought should be controlled by the governing party.
+
+Among Biddle's especial enemies were the members of the "Kitchen
+Cabinet," who with sycophantic adroitness used Jackson as a tool.
+
+Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, was one of the most envenomed of these
+politicians, who hated not only Biddle but those who adhered to the old
+Federalist party, and rich men generally. He had sufficient plausibility
+and influence to enlist Levi Woodbury, Senator from New Hampshire, to
+forward his schemes.
+
+In consequence, Woodbury, on June 27, 1829, wrote to Ingham, Secretary
+of the Treasury, making complaints against the president of the branch
+bank in Portsmouth for roughness of manner, partiality in loans, and
+severity in collections. The accused official was no less a man than
+Jeremiah Mason, probably the greatest lawyer in New England, if not of
+the whole country, the peer as well as the friend of Webster. Ingham
+sent Woodbury's letter to Biddle, intimating that it was political
+partiality that was complained of. Then ensued a correspondence between
+Biddle and Ingham,--the former defending Mason and claiming complete
+independence for the Bank as to its management, so long as it could not
+be shown to be involved in political movements; and the latter accusing,
+threatening to remove deposits, attempting to take away the pension
+agency from the Portsmouth branch, _et cetera_. It was a stormy summer
+for the Bank.
+
+Thus things stood until November, when a letter appeared in the New York
+"Courier and Inquirer," stating that President Jackson, in his
+forthcoming first annual message to Congress, would come out strongly
+against the Bank itself. And sure enough, the President, in his message,
+astonished the whole country by a paragraph attacking the Bank, and
+opposing its recharter. The part of the message about the Bank was
+referred to both Houses of Congress. The committees reported in favor of
+the Bank, as nothing could be said against its management. Again, in the
+message of the President in 1830, he attacked the Bank, and Benton, one
+of the chief supporters of Jackson in spite of their early duel,
+declared in the Senate that the charter of the Bank ought not to be
+renewed. Here the matter dropped for a while, as Jackson and his friends
+were engrossed in electioneering schemes for the next presidential
+contest, and the troubles of the cabinet on account of the Eaton scandal
+had to be attended to. As already noted, they ended in its dissolution,
+followed by a new and stronger cabinet, in which Ingham was succeeded as
+Secretary of the Treasury by Louis McLane.
+
+It was not till 1832,--the great session of Jackson's
+administrations,--that the contest was taken up again. The Bank aimed to
+have its charter renewed, although that would not expire for five years
+yet; and as the Senate was partly hostile to the President, it seemed a
+propitious time for the effort. Jackson, on the other hand, fearing that
+the Bank would succeed in getting its charter renewed with a friendly
+Congress, redoubled his energies to defeat it. The more hostile the
+President showed himself, the more eager were the friends of the Bank
+for immediate action. It was, with them, now or never. If the matter
+were delayed, and Jackson were re-elected, it would be impossible to
+secure a renewal of the charter, while it was hoped that Jackson would
+not dare to veto the charter on the eve of a presidential election, and
+thus lose, perhaps, the vote of the great State of Pennsylvania. So it
+was resolved by the friends of the Bank to press the measure.
+
+Five months were consumed in the discussion of this important matter, in
+which the leading members of the Senate, except Benton, supported the
+Bank. The bill to renew the charter passed the Senate on the 11th of
+June, by a vote of twenty-eight to twenty, and the House on the 3d of
+July by a majority of thirty-three. It was immediately vetoed by the
+President, on the ground that the Bank was an odious monopoly, with
+nearly a third of its stock held by foreigners, and not only odious, but
+dangerous as a money-power to bribe Congress and influence elections.
+The message accompanying the veto was able, and was supposed to be
+written by Edward Livingston or Amos Kendall. Biddle remained calm and
+confident. Like Clay, he never dreamed that Jackson would dare to
+persist in a hostility against the enlightened public sentiment of the
+country. But Jackson was the idol of the Democracy, who would support
+all his measures and condone all his faults, and the Democracy
+ruled,--as it always will rule, except in great public dangers, when
+power naturally falls into the hands of men of genius, honesty, and
+experience, almost independently of their political associations.
+
+The veto aroused a thunder of debate, Webster and Clay leading the
+assault upon it, and Benton, with other Jacksonians, defending it. The
+attempt to pass the re-charter bill over the veto failed of the
+necessary two-thirds majority, and the President was triumphant.
+
+Jackson had no idea of yielding his opinions or his will to anybody,
+least of all to his political enemies. The war with the Bank must go on;
+but its charter had three or four years still to run. All he could do
+legally was to cripple it by removing the deposits. His animosity,
+inflamed by the denunciations of Benton, Kendall, Blair, Hill, and
+others, became ungovernable.
+
+McLane was now succeeded in the Treasury department by Mr. Duane of
+Philadelphia, the firmest and most incorruptible of men, for whom the
+President felt the greatest respect, but whom he expected to bend to his
+purposes as he had Ingham. Only the Secretary of the Treasury could
+remove the deposits, and this Mr. Duane unexpectedly but persistently
+refused to do. Jackson brought to bear upon him all his powers of
+persuasion and friendship; Duane still stood firm. Then the President
+resorted to threats, all to no purpose; at length Duane was dismissed
+from his office, and Roger B. Taney became Secretary of the Treasury,
+23d of September, 1833. Three days afterwards, Taney directed collectors
+to deposit the public money in certain banks which he designated. It
+seems singular that the man who two years later was appointed Chief
+Justice of the Supreme Court, and who discharged the duties of that
+office so ably and uprightly, should so readily have complied with the
+President's desire; but this must be accounted for by the facts that in
+regard to the Bank Taney's views were in harmony with those of Jackson,
+and that the removal of the deposits, however arbitrary, was not
+unconstitutional.
+
+The removal of more than nine millions from the Bank within the period
+of nine months caused it necessarily to curtail its discounts, and a
+financial panic was the result, which again led to acrimonious debates
+in Congress, in which Clay took the lead. His opposition exasperated the
+President in the highest degree. Calhoun equalled Clay in the vehemence
+of his denunciation, for his hatred of Jackson was greater than his
+hostility to moneyed corporations. Webster was less irritating, but
+equally strong in his disapproval. Jackson, in his message of December,
+1833, reiterated his charge against the Bank as "a permanent
+electioneering engine," attempting "to control public opinion through
+the distresses of some, and the fears of others." The Senate passed
+resolutions denouncing the high-handed measures of the government,
+which, however, were afterwards expunged when the Senate had become
+Democratic. One of the most eloquent passages that Clay ever uttered was
+his famous apostrophe to Vice President Van Buren when presiding over
+the Senate, in reference to the financial distress which existed
+throughout the country, and which, of course, he traced to the removal
+of the deposits. Deputations of great respectability poured in upon the
+President from every quarter to induce him to change his policy,--all of
+which he summarily and rudely dismissed. All that these deputations
+could get out of him was, "Go to Nicholas Biddle; he has all the money."
+In 1834, during the second term of Jackson's office, there were
+committees sent to investigate the affairs of the Bank, who were very
+cavalierly treated by Biddle, so that their mission failed, amid much
+derision. He was not dethroned from his financial power until the United
+States Bank of Pennsylvania--the style under which the United States
+Bank accepted a State charter in 1836, when its original national
+charter expired--succumbed to the general crash in 1837.
+
+It is now generally admitted that Jackson's war on the Bank was violent
+and reckless, although it would be difficult to point out wherein his
+hostility exceeded constitutional limits. The consequences were most
+disastrous to the immediate interests of the country, but probably not
+to its ultimate interests. The substitution of "pet banks" for
+government deposits led to a great inflation of paper money, followed by
+a general mania for speculation. When the bubble burst these banks were
+unable to redeem their notes in gold and silver, and suspended their
+payments. Then the stringency of the money market equalled the previous
+inflation. In consequence there were innumerable failures and everything
+fell in value,--lands, houses, and goods. Such was the general
+depression and scarcity of money that in many States it was difficult
+to raise money even to pay necessary taxes. I have somewhere read that
+in one of the Western States the sheriffs sold at auction a good
+four-horse wagon for five dollars and fifty cents, two horses for four
+dollars, and two cows for two dollars. The Western farmers were driven
+to despair. Such was the general depression that President Van Buren was
+compelled in 1837 to call an extra session of Congress; nor were the
+difficulties removed until the celebrated Bankrupt Law was passed in
+1840, chiefly through the efforts of Daniel Webster, which virtually
+wiped out all debts of those who chose to avail themselves of the
+privilege. What a contrast was the financial state of the country at
+that time, to what it was when Jackson entered upon his administration!
+
+It is not just to attribute all the commercial disasters which followed
+the winding up of the old United States Bank to General Jackson, and to
+the financial schemes of Van Buren. It was the spirit of speculation,
+fostered by the inflation of paper money by irresponsible banks when the
+great balance-wheel was stopped, which was the direct cause. The
+indirect causes of commercial disaster, however, may be attributed to
+Jackson's war on the Bank. The long fight in Congress to secure a
+recharter of the Bank, though unsuccessful, was dignified and
+statesmanlike; but the ungoverned passions displayed by the removal of
+deposits resulted in nothing, and could have resulted in nothing of
+advantage to any theory of the Bank's management; and it would be
+difficult to say who were most to blame for the foolish and undignified
+crimination and recrimination which followed,--the President, or the
+hostile Senate. It was, at any rate, a fight in which Jackson won, but
+which, from the animosities it kindled, brought down his gray hairs in
+sorrow to the grave. It gave him a doubtful place in the history of
+the nation.
+
+If Jackson's hostility to the United States Bank was inexpedient and
+violent, and resulted in financial disasters, his vigorous efforts to
+put down Nullification were patriotic, and called forth the approval and
+gratitude of the nation. This was a real service of immense value, and
+it is probable that no other public man then on the stage could have
+done this important work so well. Like all Jackson's measures, it was
+summary and decided.
+
+Nullification grew out of the tariffs which Congress had imposed. The
+South wanted no protective duties at all; indeed, it wanted absolute
+free trade, so that planters might obtain the articles which they needed
+at the smallest possible cost, and sell as much cotton and tobacco as
+they could with the least delay and embarrassment. Professor Sumner
+argues that Southern industries either supported the Federal
+government, or paid tribute to the Northern manufacturers, and that
+consequently the grievances of the Southern States were natural and
+just,--that their interests were sacrificed to national interests, as
+the New England interests had been sacrificed to the national interests
+at the time of the Embargo. Undoubtedly, the South had cause of
+complaint, and we cannot wonder at its irritation and opposition to the
+taxes imposed on all for the protection of American manufactures. On the
+other hand, it was a grave question whether the interests of the nation
+at large should be sacrificed to build up the interests of the
+South,--to say nothing of the great moral issues which underlie all
+material questions. In other words, in matters of national importance,
+which should rule? Should the majority yield to the minority, or the
+minority to the majority? In accordance with the democratic principles
+on which this government is founded, there is only one reply to the
+question: The majority must rule. This is the basal stone of all
+constitutional government, whose disruption would produce revolution and
+anarchy. It is a bitter and humiliating necessity which compels the
+intellect, the wealth, the rank, and the fashion of England to yield to
+the small majority in the House of Commons, in the matter of Irish Home
+Rule, but an Irishman's vote is as good as that of the son of an
+English peer. The rule of the majority is the price of political
+liberty, for which enlightened nations are willing to pay.
+
+Henry Clay deserves great praise and glory for his persistent efforts at
+conciliation,--not only in matters pertaining to the tariff, but in the
+question of slavery to harmonize conflicting interests. But Calhoun--the
+greatest man whom the South has produced--would listen to no
+concessions, foreseeing that the slightest would endanger the
+institution with which the interests and pride of the Southern States
+were identified. At this crisis the country needed a man at the helm
+whose will was known to be inflexible.
+
+In the session of 1830, on a question concerning the sales of public
+(U.S.) lands in the several States, arose the great debate between
+Colonel R.Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, and Daniel Webster on the
+limitations of Federal power; and Hayne's declaration of the right of a
+State to nullify a Federal law that was prejudicial to its interests
+gained him great applause throughout the South. John C. Calhoun, United
+States Senator from South Carolina, was at the head of the extreme State
+Sovereignty party, and at a banquet celebrating the birthday of
+Jefferson, January 13, 1830, he proffered the toast "The Union: next to
+Liberty, the most dear; may we all remember that it can only be
+preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing
+equally the benefit and burden of the Union." Jackson, as President, and
+practical chief of the Democracy, was of course present at this
+political banquet. His profound patriotism and keen political instinct
+scented danger, and with his usual impulse to go well forward to meet an
+enemy, he gave, "The Federal Union: it must be preserved." This simple
+declaration was worth more than all the wordy messages and proclamations
+he ever issued; it not only served notice upon the seceders of his time
+that they had a great principle to deal with, but it echoed after him,
+and was the call to which the nation victoriously rallied in its supreme
+struggle with treason, thirty years later.
+
+Notwithstanding the evident stand taken by the President, the Calhoun
+party continued their opposition on State lines to the Federal
+authority. And when Congress passed the tariff of July, 1832, the South
+Carolina legislature in the autumn called a convention, which pronounced
+that Act and the Tariff Act of 1828 unconstitutional,--"null and void,
+and no law;" called on the State legislature to pass laws to prevent the
+execution of the Federal revenue acts; and declared that any attempt at
+coercion on the part of the Federal authorities would be regarded as
+absolving South Carolina and all its people from all further obligation
+to retain their union with the other States, and that they should then
+forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, as a sovereign and
+independent State.
+
+If such a man as Buchanan had then been in the presidential chair there
+probably would have been a Southern Confederacy; and in 1832 it might
+have been successful. But Jackson was a man of different mould. Democrat
+and Southern sympathizer as he was, he instantly took the most vigorous
+measures to suppress such a thing in the bud, before there was time to
+concert measures of disunion among the other Southern States. He sent
+General Scott to Charleston, with a body of troops stationed not far
+away. He ordered two war-vessels to the harbor of the misguided and
+rebellious city. On December 4 in his annual message he called the
+attention of Congress to the opposition to the revenue laws and
+intimated that he should enforce them. On December 11 he issued a
+proclamation to the inhabitants of South Carolina, written by
+Livingston, moderate in tone, in which it was set forth that the power
+of one State to annul a law of the United States was incompatible with
+the existence of the Union, and inconsistent with the spirit of the
+constitution. Governor Hayne issued a counter-proclamation, while
+Calhoun resigned the vice-presidency in order to represent South
+Carolina on the floor of the Senate. In January the President sent
+another message to Congress asking for authority to suppress rebellion.
+
+Congress rallied around the Executive and a bill was passed providing
+for the enforcement of the collection of the customs at Charleston, and
+arming the President with extraordinary powers to see that the dangers
+were averted. Most of the States passed resolutions against
+Nullification, and there was general approval of the vigorous measures
+to be enforced if necessary. The Nullifiers, unprepared to resist the
+whole military power of the country, yielded, but with ill grace, to the
+threatened force. Henry Clay in February introduced a compromise tariff,
+and on the 27th of that month it was completed, together with an
+Enforcement Act. On March 3 it became a law, and on March 11 the South
+Carolina Nullifiers held an adjourned meeting of their convention and
+nullified their previous nullification. The triumph of Jackson was
+complete, and his popularity reached its apex.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the collection of duties in Southern parts
+was the only cause of Nullification. The deeper cause was not at first
+avowed. It was the question of slavery, which is too large a topic to be
+discussed in this connection. It will be treated more fully in a
+subsequent lecture.
+
+An important event took place during the administration of Jackson,
+which demands our notice, although it can in no way be traced to his
+influence; and this was the Anti-Masonic movement, ending in the
+formation of a new political party.
+
+The beginning of this party was obscure enough. One Morgan in Western
+New York was abducted and murdered for revealing the alleged secrets of
+Freemasonry. These were in reality of small importance, but Morgan had
+mortally offended a great secret society of which he was a member, by
+bringing it into public contempt. His punishment was greater than his
+crime, which had been not against morality, but against a powerful body
+of men who never did any harm, but rather much good in the way of
+charities. The outrage aroused public indignation,--that a man should be
+murdered for making innocent revelations of mere ceremonies and
+pretensions of small moment; and as the Masons would make no apologies,
+and no efforts to bring the offenders to justice, it was inferred by the
+credulous public that Masons were not fit to be entrusted with political
+office. The outrage was seized upon by cunning politicians to make
+political capital. Jackson was a Mason. Hence the new party of
+Anti-Masons made war against him. As they had been his supporters, the
+Democratic party of the State of New York was divided.
+
+The leading Democratic leaders had endeavored to suppress this schism;
+but it daily increased, founded on popular ignorance and prejudice,
+until it became formidable. In 1830, four years after the murder, the
+Anti-Masons had held conventions and framed a political platform of
+principles, the chief of which was hostility to all secret societies.
+The party, against all reason, rapidly spread through New York,
+Pennsylvania, and New England,--its stronghold being among the farmers
+of Vermont. Ambitious politicians soon perceived that a union with this
+party would favor their interests, and men of high position became its
+leaders. In 1831 the party was strong enough to assemble a convention in
+Baltimore to nominate candidates for the presidency, and William Wirt,
+the great Maryland lawyer, was nominated, not with any hope of election,
+but with the view of dividing the ranks of the Democratic party, and of
+strengthening the opposition headed by Clay,--the National Republican
+party, which in the next campaign absorbed all the old Federalist
+remnants, and became the Whig party.
+
+All opposition to Jackson, however, was to no purpose. He was elected
+for his second term, beginning in 1833. The Anti-Masonic movement
+subsided as rapidly as it was created, having no well-defined principles
+to stand upon. It has already passed into oblivion.
+
+I have now presented the principal subjects which made the
+administrations of Jackson memorable. There are others of minor
+importance which could be mentioned, like the removal of the Indians to
+remote hunting-grounds in the West, the West India trade, the successful
+settlement of the Spoliation Claims against France, which threatened to
+involve the country in war,--prevented by the arbitration of England;
+similar settlements with Denmark, Spain, and Naples; treaties of
+commerce with Russia and Turkey; and other matters in which Jackson's
+decided character appeared to advantage. But it is not my purpose to
+write a complete history of Jackson or of his administrations. Those who
+want fuller information should read Parton's long biography, in which
+almost every subject under the sun is alluded to, and yet which, in
+spite of its inartistic and unclassical execution, is the best thesaurus
+I know of for Jacksonian materials. More recent histories are
+dissertations in disguise, on disputed points.
+
+Here, then, I bring this lecture to a close with a brief allusion to
+those things which made up the character of a very remarkable man, who
+did both good and evil in his public career. His private life is
+unusually interesting, by no means a model for others to imitate, yet
+showing great energy, a wonderful power of will, and undoubted honesty
+of purpose. His faults were those which may be traced to an imperfect
+education, excessive prejudices, a violent temper, and the incense of
+flatterers,--which turned his head and of which he was inordinately
+fond. We fail to see in him the modesty which marked Washington and most
+of the succeeding presidents. As a young man he fought duels without
+sufficient provocation. He put himself in his military career above the
+law, and in his presidential career above precedents and customs, which
+subjected him to grave animadversion. As a general he hanged two
+respectable foreigners as spies, without sufficient evidence. He
+inflicted unnecessary cruelties in order to maintain military
+discipline,--wholesome, doubtless, but such as less arbitrary commanders
+would have hesitated to do. He invaded the territory of a neutral state
+on the plea of self-defence. In his conversation he used expletives not
+considered in good taste, and which might be called swearing, without
+meaning any irreverence to the Deity, although in later life he seldom
+used any other oath than "By the Eternal!"
+
+Personally, Jackson's habits were irreproachable. In regard to the
+pleasures of the table he was temperate, almost abstemious. He was
+always religiously inclined and joined the Church before he
+died,--perhaps, however, out of loyalty to his wife, whom he adored,
+rather than from theological convictions. But whatever he deemed his
+duty, he made every sacrifice to perform. Although fond of power, he
+was easily accessible, and he was frank and genial among his intimate
+friends. With great ideas of personal dignity, he was unconventional in
+all his habits, and detested useless ceremonies and the etiquette of
+courts. He put a great value on personal friendships, and never broke
+them except under necessity. For his enemies he cherished a vindictive
+wrath, as unforgiving as Nemesis.
+
+In the White House Jackson was remarkably hospitable, and he returned to
+his beloved Hermitage poorer than when he left it. He cared little for
+money, although an excellent manager of his farm. He was high-minded and
+just in the discharge of debts, and, although arbitrary, he was
+indulgent to his servants.
+
+He loved frankness in his dealings with advisers, although he was easily
+imposed upon. While he leaned on the counsels of his "Kitchen Cabinet"
+he rarely summoned a council of constitutional advisers. He parted with
+one of the ablest and best of his cabinet who acted from a sense of duty
+in a matter where he was plainly right. Toward Nicholas Biddle and Henry
+Clay he cherished the most inexorable animosity for crossing his path.
+
+When we remember his lack of political knowledge, his "spoils system,"
+his indifference to internal improvements, his war on the United States
+Bank, and his arbitrary conduct in general, we feel that Jackson's
+elevation to the presidency was a mistake and a national misfortune,
+however popular he was with the masses. Yet he was in accord with his
+generation.
+
+It is singular that this man did nothing to attract national notice
+until he was forty-five years of age. The fortune of war placed him on a
+throne, where he reigned as a dictator, so far as his powers would
+allow. Happily, in his eventful administration he was impeded by hostile
+and cynical senators; but this wholesale restraint embittered his life.
+His great personal popularity continued to the end of his life in 1845,
+but his influence is felt to this day, both for good and for evil. His
+patriotism and his prejudices, his sturdy friendships and his relentless
+hatreds, his fearless discharge of duty and his obstinacy of self-will,
+his splendid public services and the vast public ills he inaugurated,
+will ever make this picturesque old hero a puzzle to moralists. His life
+was turbulent, and he was glad, when the time came, to lay down his
+burden and prepare himself for that dread Tribunal before which all
+mortals will be finally summoned,--the one tribunal in which he
+believed, and the only one which he was prompt to acknowledge.
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The works written on Jackson are very numerous. Probably the best is the
+biography written by Parton, defective as it is. Professor W.E. Sumner's
+work, in the series of "American Statesmen," is full of interesting and
+important facts, especially in the matters of tariff and finance. See
+also Benton's Thirty Years in the United States Senate; Cobbett's Life
+of Jackson; Curtis's Life of Webster; Colton's Life and Times of Henry
+Clay, as well as Carl Schurz on the same subject; Von Holst, Life of
+Calhoun; Memoir of John Quincy Adams; Tyler's Life of Taney; Sargent's
+Public Men; the Speeches of Webster, Clay, and Calhoun.
+
+
+
+HENRY CLAY.
+
+
+1777-1852.
+
+COMPROMISE LEGISLATION.
+
+All the presidents of the United States, with the exception of three or
+four, must yield in influence to Henry Clay, so far as concerns
+directing the policy, and shaping the institutions of this country. Only
+two other American statesmen--Hamilton and Webster--can be compared to
+him in genius, power, and services. These two great characters will be
+found treated elsewhere.
+
+In regard to what is called "birth," Clay was not a patrician, like
+Washington, nor had he so humble an origin as Andrew Jackson or Abraham
+Lincoln. Like most other great men, he was the architect of of his own
+fortunes, doomed to drudgeries in the early part of his career, and
+climbing into notice by energy and force of character.
+
+He was born, 1777, in a little Virginian hamlet called the "Slashes,"
+in Hanover County, the son of a Baptist minister, who preached to poor
+people, and who died when Henry was four years old, leaving six other
+children and a widow, with very scanty means of support. The little
+country school taught him "the rudiments," and his small earnings as
+plough-boy and mill-boy meantime helped his mother. The mother was
+marked by sterling traits of character, and married for her second
+husband a Captain Watkins, of Richmond. This worthy man treated his
+step-son kindly, and put him into a retail store at the age of fourteen,
+no better educated than most country lads,--too poor to go to college,
+but with aspirations, which all bright and ambitious boys are apt to
+have, especially if they have no fitness for selling the common things
+of life, and are fond of reading. Henry's step-father, having an
+influential friend, secured for the disgusted and discontented youth a
+position in the office of the Clerk of the High Court of Chancery, of
+which the eminent jurist, George Wythe, was chancellor. The judge and
+the young copyist thus naturally became acquainted, and acquaintance
+ripened into friendship, for the youth was bright and useful, and made
+an excellent amanuensis to the learned old lawyer, in whose office both
+Thomas Jefferson and John Marshall had been students of law.
+
+After serving four years, Clay resolved to become a lawyer, entered the
+office of the Attorney-General of the State, and one year after was
+admitted to the bar, having in all probability acquired much legal
+knowledge from the communicative Chancellor, whom everybody loved and
+honored,--one of the earliest in Virginia to emancipate his slaves, and
+provide for their support. The young fellow's reading, also, had been
+guided by his learned friend, in the direction of history, English
+grammar, and the beginnings of law.
+
+The young lawyer, with his pleasing manners, quick intelligence, and
+real kindness of heart soon became a favorite in Richmond society. He
+was neither handsome, nor elegant, nor aristocratic, but he had personal
+geniality, wit, brilliancy in conversation, irreproachable morals, and
+was prominent in the debating society,--a school where young men learn
+the art of public speaking, like Gladstone at Oxford. It is thought
+probable that Clay's native oratorical ability, which he assiduously
+cultivated,--the gift which, as Schurz says, "enabled him to make little
+tell for much, and to outshine men of vastly greater learning,"--misled
+him as to the necessity for systematic and thorough study. Lack of
+thoroughness and of solid information was his especial weakness through
+life, in spite of the charm and power of his personal oratory.
+
+It is always up-hill work for a young lawyer to succeed in a
+fashionable city, where there is more intellect than business, and when
+he himself has neither family, nor money, nor mercantile friends. So
+Henry Clay, at twenty-one, turned his eyes to the West,--the land of
+promise, which was especially attractive to impecunious lawyers, needy
+farmers, spendthrift gentlemen, merchants without capital, and vigorous
+men of enterprise,--where everybody trusts and is trusted, and where
+talents and character are of more value than money. He had not much
+legal knowledge, nor did he need much in the frontier settlements on the
+Ohio and its valleys; the people generally were rough and illiterate,
+and attached more importance to common-sense and industry than to legal
+technicalities and the subtle distinctions of Coke and Blackstone. If an
+advocate could grasp a principle which appealed to consciousness, and
+enforce it with native eloquence, he was more likely to succeed than one
+versed in learned precedents without energy or plausible utterances.
+
+The locality which Clay selected was Lexington in Kentucky,--then a
+small village in the midst of beautiful groves without underbrush, where
+the soil was of virgin richness, and the landscape painted with almost
+perpetual verdure; one of the most attractive spots by nature on the
+face of the earth,--a great contrast to the flat prairies of Illinois,
+or the tangled forests of Michigan, or the alluvial deposits of the
+Mississippi. It was a paradise of hills and vales, easily converted into
+lawns and gardens, such as the primitive settlers of New England would
+have looked upon with blended envy and astonishment.
+
+Lexington in 1797, the year that Clay settled in it as a lawyer, was
+called "the intellectual centre of the Far West," as the Ohio valley was
+then regarded. In reality it was a border-post, the inhabitants of which
+were devoted to horse-racing, hunting, and whiskey-drinking, with a
+sprinkling of educated people, among whom the young lawyer soon
+distinguished himself,--a born orator, logical as well as rhetorical.
+
+Clay's law practice at first was chiefly directed to the defence of
+criminals, and it is said that no murderer whom he defended was ever
+hanged; but he soon was equally successful in civil cases, gradually
+acquiring a lucrative practice, without taking a high rank as a jurist.
+He was never a close student, being too much absorbed in politics,
+society, and pleasure, except on rare occasions, for which he "crammed."
+His reading was desultory, and his favorite works were political
+speeches, many of which he committed to memory and then declaimed, to
+the delight of all who heard him. His progress at the bar must have been
+remarkably rapid, since within two years he could afford to purchase six
+hundred acres of land, near Lexington, and take unto himself a
+wife,--domestic, thrifty, painstaking, who attended to all the details
+of the farm, which he called "Ashland." As he grew in wealth, his
+popularity also increased, until in all Kentucky no one was so generally
+beloved as he. Yet he would not now be called opulent, and he never
+became rich, since his hospitalities were disproportionate to his means,
+and his living was more like that of a Virginia country gentleman than
+of a hard-working lawyer.
+
+At this time Clay was tall, erect, commanding, with long arms, small
+hands, a large mouth, blue, electrical eyes, high forehead, a sanguine
+temperament, excitable, easy in his manners, self-possessed, courteous,
+deferential, with a voice penetrating and musical, with great command of
+language, and so earnest that he impressed everybody with his blended
+sincerity and kindness of heart.
+
+The true field for such a man was politics, which Clay loved, so that
+his duties and pleasures went hand in hand,--an essential thing for
+great success. His first efforts were in connection with a
+constitutional convention in Kentucky, when he earnestly advocated a
+system of gradual emancipation of slaves,--unpopular as that idea was
+among his fellow-citizens. It did not seem, however, to hurt his
+political prospects, for in 1803 he was solicited to become a member of
+the State legislature, and was easily elected, being a member of the
+Democratic-Republican party as led by Jefferson. He made his mark at
+once as an orator, and so brilliant and rapid was his legislative career
+that he was elected in 1806 to the United States Senate to fill the
+unexpired term, of John Adair,--being only twenty-nine years old, the
+youngest man that ever sat in that body of legislators. All that could
+then be said of him was that he made a good impression in the debates
+and on the committees, and was a man of great promise, a favorite in
+society, attending all parties of pleasure, and never at home in the
+evening. On his return to Kentucky he was again elected as a member of
+the lower House in the State legislature, and chosen Speaker,--an
+excellent training for the larger place he was to fill. In the winter of
+1809-10 he was a second time sent to the United States Senate, for two
+years, to fill the unexpired term of Buckner Thurston, where he made
+speeches in favor of encouraging American manufacturing industries, not
+to the extent of exportation,--which he thought should be confined to
+surplus farm-produce,--but enough to supply the people with clothing and
+to make them independent of foreign countries for many things
+unnecessarily imported. He also made himself felt on many other
+important topics, and was recognized as a rising man.
+
+When his term had expired in the Senate, he was chosen a member of the
+House of Representatives at Washington,--a more agreeable field to him
+than the Senate, as giving him greater scope for his peculiar eloquence.
+He was promptly elected Speaker, which position, however, did not
+interfere with his speech-making whenever the House went into Committee
+of the Whole. It was as Speaker of the House of Representatives that
+Clay drew upon himself the eyes of the nation; and his truly great
+congressional career began in 1811, on the eve of the war with Great
+Britain in Madison's administration.
+
+Clay was now the most influential, and certainly the most popular man in
+public life, in the whole country, which was very remarkable,
+considering that he was only thirty-seven years of age. Daniel Webster
+was then practising law in Portsmouth, N.H., two years before his
+election to Congress, and John C. Calhoun had not yet entered the
+Senate, but was chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations in the
+House of Representatives, and a warm friend of the Speaker.
+
+The absorbing subject of national interest at that time was the
+threatened war with England, which Clay did his best to bring about, and
+Webster to prevent. It was Webster's Fourth-of-July Oration at
+Portsmouth, in 1812, which led to his election to Congress as a
+Federalist, in which oration he deprecated war. The West generally was
+in favor of it, having not much to lose or to fear from a contest which
+chiefly affected commerce, and which would jeopardize only New England
+interests and the safety of maritime towns. Clay, who had from his first
+appearance at Washington made himself a champion of American interests,
+American honor, and American ideas generally, represented the popular
+party, and gave his voice for war, into which the government had drifted
+under pressure of the outrages inflicted by British cruisers, the
+impressment of our seamen, and the contempt with which the United States
+were held and spoken of on all occasions by England,--the latter an
+element more offensive to none than to the independent and bellicose
+settlers in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
+
+Clay is generally credited with having turned the scales in favor of the
+war with Great Britain, when the United States comprised less than eight
+millions of people, when the country had no navy of any account, and a
+very small army without experienced officers, while Great Britain was
+mistress of the seas, with an enormous army, and the leader of the
+allied Powers that withstood Napoleon in Spain and Portugal. To the eyes
+of the Federalists, the contest was rash, inexpedient, and doubtful in
+its issues; and their views were justified by the disasters that ensued
+in Canada, the incompetency of Hull, the successive defeats of American
+generals with the exception of Jackson, and the final treaty of peace
+without allusion to the main causes which had led to the war. But the
+Republicans claimed that the war, if disastrous on the land, had been
+glorious on the water; that the national honor had been vindicated; that
+a navy had been created; that the impressment of American seamen was
+practically ended forever; and that England had learned to treat the
+great republic with outward respect as an independent, powerful, and
+constantly increasing empire.
+
+As the champion of the war, and for the brilliancy and patriotism of his
+speeches, all appealing to the national heart and to national pride,
+Clay stood out as the most eminent statesman of his day, with unbounded
+popularity, especially in Kentucky, where to the last he retained his
+hold on popular admiration and affection. His speeches on the war are
+more marked for pungency of satire and bitterness of invective against
+England than for moral wisdom. They are appeals to passions rather than
+to reason, of great force in their day, but of not much value to
+posterity. They are not read and quoted like Webster's masterpieces.
+They will not compare, except in popular eloquence, with Clay's own
+subsequent efforts in the Senate, when he had more maturity of
+knowledge, and more insight into the principles of political economy.
+But they had great influence at the time, and added to his fame as
+an orator.
+
+In the summer of 1814 Clay resigned his speakership of the House of
+Representatives to accept a diplomatic mission as Peace Commissioner to
+confer with commissioners from Great Britain. He had as associates John
+Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard, Jonathan Russell, and Albert
+Gallatin--the ablest financier in the country after the death of
+Hamilton. The Commissioners met at Ghent, and spent five tedious months
+in that dull city. The English commissioners at once took very high
+ground, and made imperious demands,--that the territory now occupied by
+the States of Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, and a part of Ohio
+should be set apart for the Indians under an English protectorate; that
+the United States should relinquish the right of keeping armed vessels
+on the great Lakes; that a part of Maine should be ceded to Great
+Britain to make a road from Halifax to Quebec, and that all questions
+relating to the right of search, blockades, and impressment of seamen
+should remain undiscussed as before the war. At these preposterous
+demands Clay was especially indignant. In fact, he was opposed to any
+treaty at all which should not place the United States and Great Britain
+on an equality, and would not have been grieved if the war had lasted
+three years longer. Adams and Gallatin had their hands full to keep the
+Western lion from breaking loose and returning home in disgust, while
+they desired to get the best treaty they could, rather than no treaty at
+all. Gradually the British commissioners abated their demands, and gave
+up all territorial and fishery claims, and on December 14, 1814,
+concluded the negotiations on the basis of things before the war,--the
+_status quo ante bellum_. Clay was deeply chagrined. He signed the
+document with great reluctance, and always spoke of it as "a damned bad
+treaty," since it made no allusion to the grievance which provoked the
+war which he had so eloquently advocated.
+
+Gallatin and Clay spent some time in Paris, and most of the ensuing
+summer in London on further negotiations of details. But Clay had no
+sooner returned to Lexington than he was re-elected to the national
+legislature, where he was again chosen Speaker, December 4, 1815, having
+declined the Russian mission, and the more tempting post of the
+Secretary of War. He justly felt that his arena was the House of
+Representatives, which, as well as the Senate, had a Republican
+majority. It was his mission to make speeches and pull political wires,
+and not perplex himself with the details of office, which required more
+executive ability and better business habits than he possessed, and
+which would seriously interfere with his social life. How could he play
+cards all night if he was obliged to be at his office at ten o'clock in
+the morning, day after day, superintending clerks, and doing work which
+to him was drudgery? Much more pleasant to him was it to preside over
+stormy debates, appoint important committees, write letters to friends,
+and occasionally address the House in Committee of the Whole, when his
+voice would sway the passions of his intelligent listeners; for he had
+the power "to move to pity, and excite to rage."
+
+Besides all this, there were questions to be discussed and settled by
+Congress, important to the public, and very interesting to politicians.
+The war had bequeathed a debt. To provide for its payment, taxes must be
+imposed. But all taxation is unpopular. The problem was, to make taxes
+as easy as possible. Should they be direct or indirect? Should they be
+imposed for a revenue only, or to stimulate and protect infant
+manufactures? The country was expanding; should there be national
+provision for internal improvements,--roads, canals, etc.? There were
+questions about the currency, about commerce, about the Indians, about
+education, about foreign relations, about the territories, which
+demanded the attention of Congress. The most important of these were
+those connected with revenues and tariffs.
+
+It was this latter question, connected with internal improvements and
+the sales of public lands, in which Clay was most interested, and which,
+more than any other, brought out and developed his genius. He is
+generally quoted as "the father of the protective policy," to develop
+American manufactures. The genius of Hamilton had been directed to the
+best way to raise a revenue for a new and impoverished country; that of
+Clay sought to secure independence of those foreign products which go so
+far to enrich nations.
+
+Webster, when reproached for his change of views respecting tariffs, is
+said to have coolly remarked that when he advocated the shipping
+interest he represented a great commercial city; and when he afterwards
+advocated tariffs, he spoke as the representative of a manufacturing
+State,--a sophistical reply which showed that he was more desirous of
+popularity with his constituents than of being the advocate of
+abstract truth.
+
+Calhoun advocated the new tariff as a means to advance the cotton
+interests of the South, and the defence of the country in time of war.
+Thus neither of the great political leaders had in view national
+interests, but only sectional, except Clay, whose policy was more
+far-reaching. And here began his great career as a statesman. Before
+this he was rather a politician, greedy of popularity, and desirous to
+make friends.
+
+The war of 1812 had, by shutting out foreign products, stimulated
+certain manufactures difficult to import, but necessary for military
+operations, like cheap clothing for soldiers, blankets, gunpowder, and
+certain other articles for general use, especially such as are made of
+iron. When the war closed and the ports opened, the country received a
+great inflow of British products. Hence the tariff of 1816, the earliest
+for protection, imposed a tax of about thirty-five per cent on articles
+for which the home industry was unable to supply the demand, and twenty
+per cent on coarse fabrics of cotton and wool, distilled spirits, and
+iron; while those industries which were in small demand were admitted
+free or paid a mere revenue tax. This tariff, substantially proposed by
+George M. Dallas, Secretary of the Treasury, was ably supported by Clay.
+But his mind was not yet fully opened to the magnitude and consequences
+of this measure,--his chief arguments being based on the safety of the
+country in time of war. In this movement he joined hands with Calhoun,
+one of his warmest friends, and one from whose greater logical genius he
+perhaps drew his conclusions.
+
+At that time party lines were not distinctly drawn. The old Federalists
+had lost their prestige and power. The Republicans were in a great
+majority; even John Quincy Adams and his friends swelled their ranks
+Jefferson had lost much of his interest in politics, and was cultivating
+his estates and building up the University of Virginia. Madison was
+anticipating the pleasures of private life, and Monroe, a plain,
+noncommittal man, the last of "the Virginia dynasty," thought only of
+following the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors, and living in
+peace with all men.
+
+The next important movement in Congress was in reference to the charter
+of the newly proposed second United States Bank, and in this the great
+influence of Clay was felt. He was in favor of it, as a necessity, in
+view of the miserable state of the finances, the suspension of specie
+payments, and the multiplication of State banks. In the earlier part of
+his career, in 1811, he had opposed a recharter of Hamilton's National
+Bank as a dangerous money-corporation, and withal unconstitutional on
+the ground that the general government had no power to charter
+companies. All this was in accordance with Western democracy, ever
+jealous of the money-power, and the theorizing proclivities of
+Jefferson, who pretended to hate everything which was supported in the
+old country. But with advancing light and the experience of depreciated
+currency from the multiplication of State banks, Clay had changed his
+views, exposing himself to the charge of inconsistency; which, however,
+he met with engaging candor, claiming rather credit for his ability and
+willingness to see the change of public needs. He now therefore
+supported the bill of Calhoun, which created a national bank with a
+capital of thirty-five million dollars, substantially such as was
+proposed by Hamilton. The charter was finally given in April, 1816, to
+run for twenty years.
+
+Doubtless such a great money-corporation--great for those times--did
+wield a political influence, and it might have been better if the Bank
+had been chartered with a smaller capital. It would have created fewer
+enemies, and might have escaped the future wrath of General Jackson.
+Webster at first opposed the bill of Calhoun; but when it was afterwards
+seen that the Bank as created as an advantage to the country, he became
+one of its strongest supporters. Webster was strongly conservative by
+nature; but when anything was established, like Lord Thurlow he ceased
+all opposition, especially if it worked well.
+
+In 1816 James Monroe was elected President, and Clay expected to be made
+Secretary of State, as a step to the presidency, which he now ardently
+desired. But he was disappointed, John Quincy Adams being chosen by
+Monroe as Secretary of State. Monroe offered to Clay the mission to
+England and the Department of War, both of which he declined, preferring
+the speakership, to which he was almost unanimously re-elected. Here
+Clay brought his influence to bear, in opposition to the views of the
+administration, to promote internal improvements to which some objected
+on constitutional grounds, but which he defended both as a statesman and
+a Western man. The result was a debate, ending in a resolution "that
+Congress has power under the Constitution to appropriate money for the
+construction of post roads, military and other roads, and of canals for
+the improvement of water-courses."
+
+Meanwhile a subject of far greater interest called out the best energies
+of Mr. Clay,--the beginning of a memorable struggle, even the agitation
+of the Slavery question, which was not to end until all the slaves in
+the United States were emancipated by a single stroke of Abraham
+Lincoln's pen. So long as the products of slave labor were unprofitable,
+through the exhaustion of the tobacco-fields, there was a sort of
+sentimental philanthropy among disinterested Southern men tending to a
+partial emancipation; but when the cotton gin (invented in 1793) had
+trebled the value of slaves, and the breeding of them became a
+profitable industry, the philanthropy of the planters vanished. The
+English demand for American cotton grew rapidly, and in 1813 Francis C.
+Lowell established cotton manufactures in New England, so that cotton
+leaped into great importance. Thus the South had now become jealous of
+interference with its "favorite institution."
+
+In an address in Manchester, England, October, 1863,--the first of that
+tremendous series of mob-controlling speeches with which Henry Ward
+Beecher put a check on the English government by convincing the English
+people of the righteousness of the Federal cause during our Civil
+War,--that "minister-plenipotentiary," as Oliver Wendell Holmes called
+him, gave a witty summary of this change. After showing that the great
+Fathers of Revolutionary times, and notably the great Southerners, were
+antislavery men; that the first abolition society was formed in the
+Middle and Border States, and not in the Northeast; and that
+emancipation was enacted by the Eastern and Middle States as a natural
+consequence of the growth of that sentiment, the orator said:--
+
+"What was it, then, when the country had advanced so far towards
+universal emancipation in the period of our national formation, that
+stopped this onward tide? First, the wonderful demand for cotton
+throughout the world, precisely when, from the invention of the cotton
+gin, it became easy to turn it to service. Slaves that before had been
+worth from three to four hundred dollars began to be worth six hundred
+dollars. That knocked away one third of adherence to the moral law. Then
+they became worth seven hundred dollars, and half the law went; then,
+eight or nine hundred dollars, and there was no such thing as moral law;
+then, one thousand or twelve hundred dollars,--and slavery became one of
+the Beatitudes."
+
+Therefore, when in 1818 the territory of Missouri applied for admission
+to the Union as a State, the South was greatly excited by the
+proposition from Mr. Tallmadge, of New York, that its admission should
+be conditioned upon the prohibition of slavery within its limits. It was
+a revelation to the people of the North that so bitter a feeling should
+be aroused by opposition to the extension of an acknowledged evil, which
+had been abolished in all their own States. The Southern leaders, on
+their side, maintained that Congress could not, under the Constitution,
+legislate on such a subject,--that it was a matter for the States alone
+to decide; and that slavery was essential to the prosperity of the
+Southern States, as white men could not labor in the cotton and rice
+fields. The Northern orators maintained that not only had the right of
+Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories been generally
+admitted, but that it was a demoralizing institution and more injurious
+to the whites even than to the blacks. The Southern leaders became
+furiously agitated, and threatened to secede from the Union rather than
+submit to Northern dictation; while at the North the State legislatures
+demanded the exclusion of slaves from Missouri.
+
+Carl Schurz, in his admirable life of Clay, makes a pertinent summary:
+"The slaveholders watched with apprehension the steady growth of the
+Free States in population, wealth, and power.... As the slaveholders
+had no longer the ultimate extinction, but now the perpetuation, of
+slavery in view, the question of sectional power became one of first
+importance to them, and with it the necessity of having more slave
+States for the purpose of maintaining the political equilibrium, at
+least in the Senate. A struggle for more slave States was to them a
+struggle for life."
+
+Thus the two elements of commercial profit and political power were
+involved in the struggle of the South for the maintenance and extension
+of slavery.
+
+The House of Representatives in 1819 adopted the Missouri bill with the
+amendment restricting slavery, but the Senate did not concur; and
+Alabama was admitted as a Territory without slavery restriction. In the
+next Congress Missouri was again introduced, but the antislavery
+amendment was voted down. In 1820 Mr. Thomas, a senator from Illinois,
+proposed, as a mutual concession, that Missouri should be admitted
+without restriction, but that in all that part of the territory outside
+that State ceded by France to the United States, north of the latitude
+of 36 deg. 30' (the southern boundary of Missouri), slaves should
+thereafter be excluded; and this bill was finally passed March 2,1820.
+Mr. Clay is credited with being the father of this compromise, but,
+according to Mr. Schurz, he did not deserve the honor. He adopted it,
+however, and advocated it with so much eloquence and power that it
+owed its success largely to his efforts, and therefore it is still
+generally ascribed to him.
+
+At that time no statesmen, North or South, had fully grasped the slavery
+question. Even Mr. Calhoun once seemed to have no doubt as to the
+authority of Congress to exclude slavery from the Territories, but he
+was decided enough in his opposition when he saw that it involved an
+irreconcilable conflict of interests,--that slavery and freedom are
+antagonistic ideas, concerning which there can be no genuine compromise.
+"There may be compromises," says Von Holst, "with regard to measures,
+but never between principles." And slavery, when the Missouri Compromise
+was started, was looked upon as a measure rather than as a principle,
+concerning which few statesmen had thought deeply. As the agitation
+increased, measures were lost sight of in principles.
+
+The compromise by which Missouri was admitted as a slave State, while
+slavery should be excluded from all territory outside of it north of
+36 deg. 30', was a temporary measure of expediency, and at that period
+was probably a wise one; since, if slavery had been excluded from
+Missouri, there might have been a dissolution of the Union. The
+preservation of the Union was the dearest object to the heart of Clay,
+who was genuinely and thoroughly patriotic. Herein he doubtless
+rendered a great public service, and proved himself to be a broad-minded
+statesman. To effect this compromise Clay had put forth all his
+energies, not only in eloquent speeches and tireless labors in
+committees and a series of parliamentary devices for harmonizing the
+strife, but in innumerable interviews with individuals.
+
+In 1820, Clay retired to private life in order to retrieve his fortunes
+by practice at the bar. Few men without either a professional or a
+private income can afford a long-continued public service. Although the
+members of Congress were paid, the pay was not large enough,--only eight
+dollars a day at that time. But Clay's interval of rest was soon cut
+short. In three years he was again elected to the House of
+Representatives, and in December, 1823, was promptly chosen Speaker by a
+large majority. He had now recovered his popularity, and was generally
+spoken of as "the great pacificator."
+
+In Congress his voice was heard again in defence of internal
+improvements,--the making of roads and canals,--President Monroe having
+vetoed a bill favoring them on the ground that it was unconstitutional
+for Congress to vote money for them. Clay, however, succeeded in
+inducing Congress to make an appropriation for a survey of such roads as
+might be deemed of national importance, which Mr. Monroe did not
+oppose. It was ever of vital necessity, in the eyes of Mr. Clay, to open
+up the West to settlers from the East, and he gloried in the prospect of
+the indefinite expanse of the country even to the Pacific ocean. "Sir,"
+said he, in the debate on this question, "it is a subject of peculiar
+delight to me to look forward to the proud and happy period, distant as
+it may be, when circulation and association between the Atlantic and the
+Pacific and the Mexican Gulf shall be as free and perfect as they are at
+this moment in England, the most highly improved country on the globe.
+Sir, a new world has come into being since the Constitution was
+adopted.... Are we to neglect and refuse the redemption of that vast
+wilderness which once stretched unbroken beyond the Alleghany?" In these
+views he proved himself one of the most far-sighted statesmen that had
+as yet appeared in Congress,--a typical Western man of enthusiasm and
+boundless hope.
+
+Not less enthusiastic was he in his open expressions of sympathy with
+the Greek struggle for liberty; as was the case also with Daniel
+Webster,--both advocating relief to the Greeks, not merely from
+sentiment, but to strike a blow at the "Holy Alliance" of European
+kingdoms, then bent on extinguishing liberty in every country in Europe.
+Clay's noble speech in defence of the Greeks was not, however, received
+with unanimous admiration, since many members of Congress were fearful
+of entangling the United States in European disputes and wars; and the
+movement came to naught.
+
+Then followed the great debates which led to the famous tariff of 1824,
+in which Mr. Clay, although Speaker of the House, took a prominent part
+in Committee of the Whole, advocating an increase of duties for the
+protection of American manufactures of iron, hemp, glass, lead, wool,
+woollen and cotton goods, while duties on importations which did not
+interfere with American manufactures were to be left on a mere revenue
+basis. This tariff had become necessary, as he thought, in view of the
+prevailing distress produced by dependence on foreign markets. He would
+provide a home consumption for American manufactures, and thus develop
+home industries, which could be done only by imposing import taxes that
+should "protect" them against foreign competition. His speech on what he
+called the "American System" was one of the most elaborate he ever made,
+and Mr. Carl Schurz says of it that "his skill of statement, his
+ingenuity in the grouping of facts and principles, his plausibility of
+reasoning, his brilliant imagination, the fervor of his diction, the
+warm patriotic tone of his appeals" presented "the arguments which were
+current among high-tariff men then and which remain so still;" while,
+on the other hand, "his superficial research, his habit of satisfying
+himself with half-knowledge, and his disinclination to reason out
+propositions logically in all their consequences" gave incompleteness to
+his otherwise brilliant effort. It made a great impression in spite of
+its weak points, and called out in opposition the extraordinary
+abilities of Daniel Webster, through whose massive sentences appeared
+his "superiority in keenness of analysis, in logical reasoning, in
+extent and accuracy of knowledge, in reach of thought and mastery of
+fundamental principles," over all the other speakers of the day. And
+this speech of. Mr. Webster's stands unanswered, notwithstanding the
+opposite views he himself maintained four years afterwards, when he
+spoke again on the tariff, but representing manufacturing interests
+rather than those of shipping and commerce, advocating expediency rather
+than abstract principles the truth of which cannot be gainsaid. The bill
+as supported by Mr. Clay passed by a small majority, the members from
+the South generally voting against it.
+
+After the tariff of 1824 the New England States went extensively into
+manufacturing, and the Middle States also. The protective idea had
+become popular in the North, and, under strong protests from the
+agricultural South, in 1828 a new tariff bill was enacted, largely on
+the principle of giving more protection to every interest that asked
+for it. This, called by its opponents "the tariff of abominations," was
+passed while Clay was Secretary of State; the discontent under it was to
+give rise to Southern Nullification, and to afford Clay another
+opportunity to act as "pacificator." All this tariff war is set forth in
+clear detail in Professor Sumner's "Life of Jackson."
+
+This question of tariffs has, for seventy years now, been the great
+issue, next to slavery, between the North and South. More debates have
+taken place on this question than on any other in our Congressional
+history, and it still remains unsettled, like most other questions of
+political economy. The warfare has been constant and uninterrupted
+between those who argue subjects from abstract truths and those who look
+at local interests, and maintain that all political questions should be
+determined by circumstances. When it seemed to be the interest of Great
+Britain to advocate protection for her varied products, protection was
+the policy of the government; when it became evidently for her interest
+to defend free trade, then free trade became the law of Parliament.
+
+On abstract grounds there is little dispute on the question: if all the
+world acted on the principles of free trade, protection would be
+indefensible. Practically, it is a matter of local interest: it is the
+interest of New England to secure protection for its varied industries
+and to secure free raw materials for manufacture; it is the interest of
+agricultural States to buy wares in the cheapest market and to seek
+foreign markets for their surplus breadstuffs. The question, however, on
+broad grounds is whether protection is or is not for the interest of the
+whole country; and on that point there are differences of opinion among
+both politicians and statesmen. Formerly, few discussed the subject on
+abstract principles except college professors and doctrinaires; but it
+is a most momentous subject from a material point of view, and the great
+scale on which protection has been tried in America since the Civil War
+has produced a multiplicity of consequences--industrial and
+economic--which have set up wide-spread discussions of both principles
+and practical applications. How it will be finally settled, no one can
+predict; perhaps through a series of compromises, with ever lessening
+restriction, until the millennial dream of universal free trade shall
+become practicable. Protection has good points and bad ones. While it
+stimulates manufactures, it also creates monopolies and widens the
+distinctions between the rich and the poor. Disproportionate fortunes
+were one of the principal causes of the fall of the Roman Empire, and
+are a grave danger to our modern civilization.
+
+But then it is difficult to point out any period in the history of
+civilization when disproportionate fortunes did not exist, except in
+primitive agricultural States in the enjoyment of personal liberty, like
+Switzerland and New England one hundred years ago. They certainly
+existed in feudal Europe as they do in England to-day. The great cotton
+lords are feudal barons under another name. Where money is worshipped
+there will be money-aristocrats, who in vulgar pride and power rival the
+worst specimens of an hereditary nobility. There is really little that
+is new in human organizations,--little that Solomon and Aristotle had
+not learned. When we go to the foundation of society it is the same
+story, in all ages and countries. Most that is new is superficial and
+transitory. The permanent is eternally based on the certitudes of life,
+which are moral and intellectual rather than mechanical and material.
+Whatever promotes these certitudes is the highest political wisdom.
+
+We now turn to contemplate the beginnings of Mr. Clay's aspirations to
+the presidency, which from this time never left him until he had one
+foot in the grave. As a successful, popular, and ambitious man who had
+already rendered important services, we cannot wonder that he sought the
+envied prize. Who in the nation was more eminent than he? But such a
+consummation of ambition is not attained by merit alone. He had enemies,
+and he had powerful rivals.
+
+In 1824 John Quincy Adams, as Monroe's Secretary of State, was in the
+line of promotion,--a statesman of experience and abilities, the
+superior of Clay in learning, who had spent his life in the public
+service, and in honorable positions, especially as a foreign minister.
+He belonged to the reigning party and was the choice of New England.
+Moreover he had the prestige of a great name. He was, it is true, far
+from popular, was cold and severe in manners, and irritable in
+temperament; but he was public-spirited, patriotic, incorruptible, lofty
+in sentiment, and unstained by vices.
+
+Andrew Jackson was also a formidable competitor,--a military hero, the
+idol of the West, and a man of extraordinary force of character, with
+undoubted executive abilities, but without much experience in civil
+affairs, self-willed, despotic in temper, and unscrupulous. Crawford, of
+Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury, with great Southern prestige, and an
+adroit politician, was also a candidate. Superior to all these
+candidates in political genius was Calhoun of South Carolina, not yet so
+prominent as he afterwards became.
+
+The popular choice in 1824 lay between Jackson and Adams, and as no
+candidate obtained a majority of the electoral votes, the election
+reverted to the House of Representatives, and Adams was chosen, much to
+the chagrin of Jackson, who had the largest number of popular votes, and
+the disappointment of Clay, who did not attempt to conceal it. When the
+latter saw that his own chances were small, however, he had thrown his
+influence in favor of Adams, securing his election, and became his
+Secretary of State. Jackson was indignant, as he felt he had been robbed
+of the prize by a secret bargain, or coalition, between Clay and Adams.
+In retiring from the speakership of the House, which he had held so
+long, Clay received the formal and hearty thanks of that body for his
+undeniably distinguished services as presiding officer. In knowledge of
+parliamentary law and tactics, in prompt decisions,--never once
+overruled in all his long career,--in fairness, courtesy, self-command,
+and control of the House at the stormiest times, he certainly never had
+a superior. Friends and enemies alike recognized and cordially expressed
+their sense of his masterly abilities.
+
+The administration of Adams was not eventful, but to his credit he made
+only four removals from office during his term of service, and these for
+good cause; he followed out the policy of his predecessors, even under
+pressure from his cabinet refusing to recognize either friends or
+enemies as such, but simply holding public officers to their duty. So,
+too, in his foreign policy, which was conservative and prudent, and free
+from entangling alliances, at a time when the struggle for independence
+among the South American republics presented an occasion for
+interference, and when the debates on the Panama mission--a proposed
+council of South and Central American republics at Panama, to which the
+United States were invited to send representatives--were embarrassing to
+the Executive.
+
+The services of Mr. Clay as Secretary of State were not distinguished.
+He made a number of satisfactory treaties with foreign powers, and
+exhibited great catholicity of mind; but he was embroiled in quarrels
+and disputes anything but glorious, and he further found his situation
+irksome. His field was the legislature; as an executive officer he was
+out of place. It may be doubted whether he would have made as good a
+President as many inferior politicians. He detested office labor, and
+was sensitive to hostile criticism. His acceptance of the office of
+Secretary of State was probably a blunder, as his appointment was
+(though unjustly) thought by many to be in fulfilment of a bargain, and
+it did not advance his popularity. He was subject to slanders and
+misrepresentations. The secretaryship, instead of being a step to the
+presidency, was thus rather an impediment in his way. It was not even a
+position of as much power as the speakership. It gave him no excitement,
+and did not keep him before the eyes of the people. His health failed.
+He even thought of resignation.
+
+The supporters of the Adams administration, those who more and more
+came to rank themselves as promoters of tariffs and internal
+improvements, with liberal views as to the constitutional powers of the
+national government, gradually consolidated in opposition to the party
+headed by Jackson. The former called themselves National Republicans,
+and the latter, Democratic Republicans. During the Jacksonian
+administrations they became known more simply as Whigs and Democrats.
+
+On the accession of General Jackson to the presidency in 1829, Mr. Clay
+retired to his farm at Ashland; but while he amused himself by raising
+fine cattle and horses, and straightening out his embarrassed finances,
+he was still the recognized leader of the National Republican party. He
+was then fifty-two years of age, at his very best and strongest period.
+He took more interest in politics than in agriculture or in literary
+matters. He was not a learned man, nor a great reader, but a close
+observer of men and of all political movements. He was a great favorite,
+and received perpetual ovations whenever he travelled, always ready to
+make speeches at public meetings, which were undoubtedly eloquent and
+instructive, but not masterpieces like those of Webster at Plymouth and
+Bunker Hill. They were not rich in fundamental principles of government
+and political science, and far from being elaborate, but were earnest,
+patriotic, and impassioned. Clay was fearless, ingenuous, and chivalric,
+and won the hearts of the people, which Webster failed to do. Both were
+great debaters, the one appealing to the understanding, and the other to
+popular sentiments. Webster was cold, massive, logical, although
+occasionally illuminating his argument with a grand glow of
+eloquence,--the admiration of lawyers and clergymen. Clay was the
+delight of the common people,--impulsive, electrical, brilliant, calling
+out the sympathies of his hearers, and captivating them by his obvious
+sincerity and frankness,--not so much convincing them as moving them and
+stimulating them to action. Webster rarely lost his temper, but he could
+be terribly sarcastic, harsh, and even fierce. Clay was passionate and
+irritable, but forgiving and generous, loath to lose a friend and eager
+for popularity; Webster seemed indifferent to applause, and even to
+ordinary friendship, proud, and self-sustained. Clay was vain and
+susceptible to flattery. No stranger could approach Webster, but Clay
+was as accessible as a primitive bishop. New England was proud of
+Webster, but the West loved Clay. Kentucky would follow her favorite to
+the last, whatever mistakes he might make, but Massachusetts deserted
+Webster when he failed to respond to her popular convictions. Both men
+were disappointed in the prize they sought: one because he was not
+loved by the people, colossal as they admitted him to be,--a frowning
+Jupiter Tonans absorbed in his own majesty; the other because he had
+incurred the hatred of Jackson and other party chiefs who were envious
+of his popularity, and fearful of his ascendency.
+
+The hatred which Clay and Jackson had for each other was inexorable. It
+steeped them both in bitterness and uncompromising opposition. They were
+rivals,--the heads of their respective parties. Clay regarded Jackson as
+an ignorant, despotic, unscrupulous military chieftain, who had been
+raised to power by the blind adoration of military success; while
+Jackson looked upon Clay as an intriguing politician, without honesty,
+industry, or consistency, gifted only in speech-making. Their quarrels
+and mutual abuse formed no small part of the political history of the
+country during Jackson's administration, and have received from
+historians more attention than they deserved. Mr. Colton takes up about
+one half of his first volume of the "Life of Clay" in dismal documents
+which few care about, relating to what he calls the "Great Conspiracy,"
+that is, the intrigues of politicians to rob Clay of his rights,--the
+miserable party warfare which raged so furiously and blindly from 1825
+to 1836. I need not here dwell on the contentions and slanders and
+hatreds which were so prominent at the time the two great national
+parties were formed, and which divided the country until the Civil War.
+
+The most notable portion of Henry Clay's life was his great career as
+Senator in Congress, which he entered in December, 1831, two years after
+the inauguration of President Jackson. The first subject of national
+importance to which he gave his attention was the one with which his
+name and fame are mostly identified,--the tariff, to a moderate form of
+which the President in 1829 had announced himself to be favorable, but
+which he afterwards more and more opposed, on the ground that the
+revenues already produced were in excess of the needs of the government.
+The subject was ably discussed,--first, in a resolution introduced by
+Senator Clay declarative of principles involving some reduction of
+duties on articles that did not compete with American industries, but
+maintaining generally the "American System" successfully introduced by
+him in the tariff of 1824; and then, in a bill framed in accordance with
+the resolution,--both of which were passed in 1832.
+
+Clay's speeches on this tariff of 1832 were among the strongest and
+ablest he ever delivered. Indeed, he apparently exhausted his subject.
+Little has been added by political economists to the arguments for
+protection since his day. His main points were: that it was beneficial
+to all parts of the Union, and absolutely necessary to much the largest
+portion; that the price of cotton and of other agricultural products had
+been sustained and a decline averted, by the protective system; that
+even if the foreign demand for cotton had been diminished by the
+operation of this system (the plea of the Southern leaders), the
+diminution had been more than compensated in the additional demand
+created at home; that the competition produced by the system reduces the
+price of manufactured articles,--for which he adduced his facts; and
+finally that the policy of free trade, without benefiting any section of
+the Union, would, by subjecting us to foreign legislation, regulated by
+foreign interests, lead to the prostration and ruin of our
+manufactories.
+
+It must be remembered that this speech was made in 1832, before our
+manufactures--really "infant industries"--could compete successfully
+with foreigners in anything. At the present time there are many
+interests which need no protection at all, and the protection of these
+interests, as a matter of course, fosters monopolies. And hence, the
+progress which is continually being made in manufactures, enabling this
+country to be independent of foreign industries, makes protective duties
+on many articles undesirable now which were expedient and even necessary
+sixty years ago,--an illustration of the fallacy of tariffs founded on
+immutable principles, when they are simply matters of expediency
+according to the changing interests of nations.
+
+We have already, in the lecture on Jackson, described the Nullification
+episode, with the threatening protests against the tariff of 1828 and
+its amendments of 1832; Jackson's prompt action; and Clay's patriotic
+and earnest efforts resulting in the Compromise Tariff of March, 1833.
+By this bill duties were to be gradually reduced from 25 per cent _ad
+valorem_ to 20 per cent. Mr. Webster was not altogether satisfied, nor
+were the extreme tariff men, who would have run the risks of the
+threatened nullification by South Carolina. It proved, however, a
+popular measure, and did much to tranquillize the nation; yet it did not
+wholly satisfy the South, nor any extreme partisans, as compromises
+seldom do, and Clay lost many friends in consequence, a result which he
+anticipated and manfully met. It led to one of his finest bursts of
+eloquence.
+
+"I have," said he, "been accused of ambition in presenting this measure.
+Ambition! inordinate ambition! Low, grovelling souls who are utterly
+incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of
+pure patriotism--beings who, forever keeping their own selfish aims in
+view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence on their
+own aggrandizement--judge me by the venal rule which they prescribe for
+themselves. I am no candidate for any office in the gift of these
+States, united or separated. I never wish, never expect to be. Pass this
+bill, tranquillize the country, restore confidence and affection for
+the Union, and I am willing to go to Ashland and renounce public service
+forever. Yes, I have ambition, but it is the ambition of being the
+humble instrument in the hands of Providence to reconcile a divided
+people, once more to revive concord and harmony in a distracted
+land,--the pleasing ambition of contemplating the glorious spectacle of
+a free, united, prosperous, and fraternal people."
+
+The policy which Mr. Clay advocated with so much ability during the
+whole of his congressional life was that manufactures, as well as the
+culture of rice, tobacco, and cotton, would enrich this country, and
+therefore ought to be fostered and protected by Congress, whatever Mr.
+Hayne or Mr. Calhoun should say to the contrary, or even General Jackson
+himself, whose sympathies were with the South, and consequently with
+slavery. Therefore Clay is called the father of the American System,--he
+was the advocate, not of any local interests, but the interests of the
+country as a whole, thus establishing his claim to be a statesman rather
+than a politician who never looks beyond local and transient interests,
+and is especially subservient to party dictation. The Southern
+politicians may not have wished to root out manufacturing altogether,
+but it was their policy to keep the agricultural interests in the
+ascendent.
+
+Soon after the close of the session of the Twenty-Second Congress, Mr.
+Clay, on his return to Ashland, put into execution a project he had long
+contemplated of visiting the Eastern cities. At that period even an
+excursion of one thousand miles was a serious affair, and attended with
+great discomfort. Wherever Mr. Clay went he was received with
+enthusiasm. Receptions, public dinners, and fetes succeeded each other
+in all the principal cities. In Baltimore, in Wilmington, and in
+Philadelphia, he was entertained at balls and banquets. In New York he
+was the guest of the city and was visited by thousands eager to shake
+his hand. The company controlling the line between New York and Boston
+tendered to him the use of one of their fine steamers to Rhode Island,
+where every social honor was publicly given him. In Boston he was
+welcomed by a committee of forty, in behalf of the young men, headed by
+Mr. Winthrop, and was received by a committee of old men, when he was
+eloquently addressed by Mr. William Sullivan, and was subsequently
+waited upon by the mayor and aldermen of the city. Deputations from
+Portland and Portsmouth besought the honor of a visit. At Charlestown,
+on Bunker Hill Edward Everett welcomed him in behalf of the city, and
+pronounced one of his felicitous speeches. At Faneuil Hall a delegation
+of young men presented him with a pair of silver pitchers. He was even
+dragged to lyceum lectures during the two weeks he remained in Boston.
+He thence proceeded amid public demonstrations to Worcester,
+Springfield, Hartford, Northampton, Pittsfield, Troy, Albany, and back
+again to New York. The carriage-makers of Newark begged his acceptance
+of one of their most costly carriages for the use of his wife. No one
+except Washington, Lafayette, and General Grant ever received more
+enthusiastic ovations in New England,--all in recognition of his
+services as a statesman, without his having reached any higher position
+than that of Senator or Secretary of State.
+
+In such a rapid review of the career of Mr. Clay as we are obliged to
+make, it is impossible to enter upon the details of political movements
+and the shifting grounds of party organizations and warfare. We must
+not, however, lose sight of that most characteristic element of Clay's
+public life,--his perennial candidature for the presidency. We have
+already seen him in 1824, when his failure was evident, throwing his
+influence into the scale for John Quincy Adams. In 1828, as Adams'
+Secretary of State, he could not be a rival to his chief, and so escaped
+the whelming overthrow with which Jackson defeated their party. In 1832
+he was an intensely popular candidate of the National Republicans,
+especially the merchants and manufacturers of the North and East and the
+friends of the United States Bank; but Southern hostility to his tariff
+principles and the rally of "the people" in support of Jackson's war on
+moneyed institutions threw him out again in notable defeat. In 1836 and
+again in 1840, Clay was prominent before the Conventions of the Whig or
+National Republican party, but other interests subordinated his claims
+to nomination, and the election of Van Buren by the Democrats in 1836,
+and of Harrison by the Whigs in 1840, kept him still in abeyance. In
+1844 Clay was again the Whig candidate, the chief issue being the
+admission of Texas, but he was defeated by Polk and the Democrats; and
+after that the paramount slavery question pushed him aside, and he
+dropped out of the race.
+
+The bitter war which Clay made on the administration of General Jackson,
+especially in reference to the United States Bank question, has already
+been noticed, and although it is an important passage in his history, I
+must pass it by to avoid repetition, which is always tedious. All I
+would say in this connection is that Clay was foremost among the
+supporters of the Bank, and opposed not only the removal of deposits but
+also the sub-treasury scheme of Mr. Van Buren that followed the failure
+to maintain the Bank. Some of his ablest oratory was expended in the
+unsuccessful opposition to these Democratic measures.
+
+In 1837, came the bursting of the money-bubble, which had turned
+everybody's head and led to the most extravagant speculations, high
+prices, high rents, and lofty expectations in all parts of the country.
+This was followed of course by the commercial crisis, the general
+distress, and all the evils which Clay and Webster had predicted, but to
+which the government of Van Buren seemed to be indifferent while
+enforcing its pet schemes, against all the settled laws of trade and the
+experiences of the past. But the country was elastic after all, and a
+great reaction set in. New political combinations were made to express
+the general indignation against the responsible party in power, and the
+Whig party arose, joined by many leading Democrats like Rives of
+Virginia and Tallmadge of New York, while Calhoun went over to Van
+Buren, and dissolved his alliance with Clay, which in reality for
+several years had been hollow. In the presidential election of 1840 Mr.
+Van Buren was defeated by an overwhelming majority, and the Whigs came
+into power under the presidency of General Harrison, chosen not for
+talents or services, but for his availability.
+
+The best that can be said of Harrison is that he was an honest man. He
+was a small farmer in Ohio with no definite political principles, but
+had gained some military _eclat_ in the War of 1812. The presidential
+campaign of 1840 is well described by Carl Schurz as "a popular frolic,"
+with its "monster mass-meetings," with log-cabins, raccoons, hard
+cider, with "huge picnics," and ridiculous "doggerel about 'Tippecanoe
+and Tyler too.'" The reason why it called out so great enthusiasm was
+frivolous enough in itself, but it expressed the popular reaction
+against the misrule of Jackson and Van Buren, which had plunged the
+country into financial distress, notwithstanding the general prosperity
+which existed when Jackson was raised to power,--a lesson to all future
+presidents who set up their own will against the collected experience
+and wisdom of the leading intellects of the country.
+
+President Harrison offered to the great chieftain of the Whig party the
+first place in his cabinet, which he declined, preferring his senatorial
+dignity and power. Besides, he had been Secretary of State under John
+Quincy Adams and found the office irksome. He knew full well that his
+true arena was the Senate Chamber,--which also was most favorable to his
+presidential aspirations. But Webster was induced to take the office
+declined by Clay, having for his associates in the cabinet such able men
+as Ewing, Badger, Bell, Crittenden, and Granger.
+
+Mr. Clay had lost no time, when Congress assembled in December, 1840, in
+offering a resolution for the repeal of the sub-treasury act; but as the
+Democrats had still a majority in the Senate the resolution failed.
+When the next Congress assembled, General Harrison having lived only one
+month after his inauguration and the Vice-president, John Tyler, having
+succeeded him, the sub-treasury act was repealed; but the President
+refused to give his signature to the bill for the re-charter of the
+United States Bank, to the dismay of the Whigs, and the deep
+disappointment of Clay, who at once severed his alliance with Tyler, and
+became his bitter opponent, carrying with him the cabinet, which
+resigned, with the exception of Webster, who was engaged in important
+negotiations in reference to the northeastern boundary. The new cabinet
+was made up of Tyler's personal friends, who had been Jackson Democrats,
+and the fruits of the great Whig victory were therefore in a measure
+lost. The Democratic party gradually regained its ascendency, which it
+retained with a brief interval till the election of Abraham Lincoln.
+
+A question greater than banks and tariffs, if moral questions are
+greater than material ones, now began again to be discussed in Congress,
+ending only in civil war. This was the slavery question. I have already
+spoken of the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which Mr. Clay has the chief
+credit of effecting, but the time now came for him to meet the question
+on other grounds. The abolitionists, through the constant growth of the
+antislavery sentiment throughout the North, had become a power, and
+demanded that slavery should be abolished in the District of Columbia.
+
+And here again I feel it best to defer what I have to say on antislavery
+agitation to the next lecture, especially as Clay was mixed up in it
+only by his attempt to pour oil on the troubled waters. He himself was a
+Southerner, and was not supposed to take a leading part in the conflict,
+although opposed to slavery on philanthropic grounds. Without being an
+abolitionist, he dreaded the extension of the slave-power; yet as he
+wished to be President he was afraid of losing votes, and did not wish
+to alienate either the North or the South. But for his inordinate desire
+for the presidential office he might have been a leader in the
+antislavery movement. All his sympathies were with freedom. He took the
+deepest interest in colonization, and was president of the Colonization
+Society, which had for its aim the sending of manumitted negroes
+to Liberia.
+
+The question of the annexation of Texas, forced to the front in the
+interest of the slaveholding States, united the Democrats and elected
+James K. Polk President in 1844; while Clay and the Whig Party, who
+confidently expected success, lost the election by reason of the growth
+of the Antislavery or Liberty party which cast a large vote in New
+York,--the pivotal State, without whose support in the Electoral College
+the carrying of the other Northern States went for nought. The Mexican
+War followed; and in 1846 David Wilmot of Pennsylvania moved an
+amendment to a bill appropriating $2,000,000 for final negotiations,
+providing that in all territories acquired from Mexico slavery should be
+prohibited. The Wilmot Proviso was lost, but arose during the next four
+years, again and again, in different forms, but always as the standard
+of the antislavery Northerners.
+
+When the antislavery agitation had reached an alarming extent, and
+threatened to drive the South into secession from the Union, Clay
+appeared once again in his great role as a pacificator. To preserve the
+Union was the dearest object of his public life. He would by a timely
+concession avert the catastrophe which the Southern leaders threatened,
+and he probably warded off the inevitable combat when, in 1850, he made
+his great speech, in favor of sacrificing the Wilmot Proviso, and
+enacting a more stringent fugitive-slave law.
+
+In 1848, embittered by having been set aside as the nominee of the Whig
+party for the presidency in favor of General Taylor, one of the
+successful military chieftains in the Mexican War,--who as a Southern
+man, with no political principles or enemies, was thought to be more
+"available,"--Clay had retired from the Senate, and for a year had
+remained at Ashland, nominally and avowedly "out of politics," but
+intensely interested, and writing letters about the new slavery
+complications. In December, 1849, he was returned to the Senate, and
+inevitably became again one of the foremost in all the debates.
+
+When the conflict had grown hot and fierce, in January, 1850, Clay
+introduced a bill for harmonizing all interests. As to the disputed
+question of slavery in the new territory, he would pacify the North by
+admitting California as a free State, and abolishing slavery and the
+slave-trade in the District of Columbia; while the South was to be
+placated by leaving Utah and New Mexico unrestricted as to slavery, and
+by a more efficient law for the pursuit and capture of fugitive slaves.
+His speech occupied two days, delivered in great physical exhaustion,
+and was "an appeal to the North for concession and to the South for
+peace." Like Webster, who followed with his renowned "Seventh-of-March
+speech" and who alienated Massachusetts because he did not go far enough
+for freedom, Clay showed that there could be no peaceable secession,
+that secession meant war, and that it would be war to propagate a wrong,
+in which the sympathy of all mankind would be against us.
+
+Calhoun followed, defending the interests of slavery, which he called
+"the rights of the South," though too weak to deliver his speech, which
+was read for him. He clearly saw the issue,--that slavery was doomed if
+the Union were preserved,--and therefore welcomed war before the North
+should be prepared for it. It was the South Carolinian's last great
+effort in the Senate, for the hand of death was upon him. He realized
+that if the South did not resist and put down agitation on the slavery
+question, the cause would be lost. It was already virtually lost, since
+the conflict between freedom and slavery was manifestly irrepressible,
+and would come in spite of concessions, which only put off the evil day.
+
+On the 11th of March Seward, of New York, now becoming prominent in the
+Senate, spoke, deprecating all compromise on a matter of principle, and
+declaring that there was a "higher law than the Constitution itself." He
+therefore would at least prevent the extension of slavery by any means
+in the power of Congress, on the ground of moral right, not of political
+expediency, undismayed by all the threats of secession. Two weeks
+afterward Chase of Ohio took the same ground as Seward. From that time
+Seward and Chase supplanted Webster and Clay in the confidence of the
+North, on all antislavery questions.
+
+After seven months of acrimonious debate in both houses of Congress and
+during a session of extraordinary length, the compromise measures of
+Clay were substantially passed,--a truce rather than a peace, which put
+off the dreadful issue for eleven years longer. It was the best thing
+to do, for the South was in deadly earnest, exceedingly exasperated, and
+blinded. A war in 1851 would have had uncertain issues, with such a man
+as Fillmore in the presidential chair, to which he had succeeded on the
+death of Taylor. He was a most respectable man and of fair abilities,
+but not of sufficient force and character to guide the nation. It was
+better to submit for a while to the Fugitive Slave Law than drive the
+South out of the Union, with the logical consequences of the separation.
+But the abolitionists had no idea of submitting to a law which was
+inhuman, even to pacify the South, and the law was resisted in Boston,
+which again kindled the smothered flames, to the great disappointment
+and alarm of Clay, for he thought that his compromise bill had settled
+the existing difficulties.
+
+In the meantime the health of the great pacificator began to decline. He
+was forced by a threatening and distressing cough to seek the air of
+Cuba, which did him no good. He was obliged to decline an invitation of
+the citizens of New York to address them on the affairs of the nation,
+but wrote a long letter instead, addressed more to the South than to the
+North, for he more than any other man, saw the impending dangers.
+Although there was a large majority at the South in favor of Union, yet
+the minority had become furious, and comprised the ablest leaders,
+concerning whose intention such men as Seward and Chase and John P.
+Hale were sceptical. In the ferment of excited passions it is not safe
+to calculate on men's acting according to reason. It is wiser to predict
+that they will act against reason. Here Clay was wiser in his anxiety
+than the Northern statesmen generally, who thought there would be peace
+because it was reasonable.
+
+Clay did not live to see all compromises thrown to the winds. He died
+June 29, 1852, in the seventy-sixth year of his age, at the National
+Hotel in Washington. Imposing funeral ceremonies took place amid general
+lamentation, and the whole country responded with glowing eulogies.
+
+I have omitted allusion to other speeches which the great statesman made
+in his long public career, and have presented only the salient points of
+his life, in which his parliamentary eloquence blazed with the greatest
+heat; for he was the greatest orator, in general estimation, that this
+country has produced, although inferior to Webster in massive power, in
+purity of style, in weight of argument, and breadth of knowledge. To my
+mind his speeches are diffuse and exaggerated, and wanting in
+simplicity. But what reads the best is not always the most effective in
+debate. Certainly no American orator approached him in electrical power.
+No one had more devoted friends. No one was more generally beloved. No
+one had greater experience, or rendered more valuable public services.
+
+And yet he failed to reach the presidency, to which for thirty years he
+had aspired, and which at times seemed within his grasp. He had made
+powerful enemies, especially in Jackson and his partisans, and
+politicians dreaded his ascendency, and feared that as President he
+would be dictatorial, though not perhaps arbitrary like Jackson. He
+would have been a happier man if he had not so eagerly coveted a prize
+which it seems is unattainable by mere force of intellect, and is often
+conferred apparently by accidental circumstances. It is too high an
+office to be sought, either by genius or services, except in the
+military line; but even General Scott, the real hero of the Mexican war,
+failed in his ambitious aspirations, as well as Webster, Clay, Calhoun,
+Benton, Seward, Chase, and Douglas, while less prominent men were
+selected, and probably ever will be. This may be looked at as a rebuke
+to political ambition, which ought to be satisfied with the fame
+conferred by genius rather than that of place, which never yet made a
+man really great. The presidency would have added nothing to the glory
+which Clay won in the Congress of the United States. It certainly added
+nothing to the fame of Grant, which was won on the battlefield, and it
+detracted from that of Jackson. And yet Clay felt keenly the
+disappointment, that with all his talents and services, weaker men were
+preferred to him.
+
+Aside from the weakness of Clay in attempting to grasp a phantom, his
+character stands out in an interesting light on the whole. He had his
+faults and failings which did not interfere with his ambition, and great
+and noble traits which more than balanced them, the most marked of which
+was the patriotism whose fire never went out. If any man ever loved his
+country, and devoted all the energies of his mind and soul to promote
+its welfare and secure its lasting union, that man was the illustrious
+Senator from Kentucky, whose eloquent pleadings were household words for
+nearly half a century throughout the length and breadth of the land.
+With him there was no East, no West, no North, and no South, to be
+especially favored or served, but the whole country, one and indivisible
+for ages to come. And no other man in high position had a more glowing
+conviction of its ever-increasing power and glory than he.
+
+"Whether," says his best biographer, "he thundered against British
+tyranny on the seas, or urged the recognition of the South American
+sister republics, or attacked the high-handed conduct of the military
+chieftain in the Florida war, or advocated protection and internal
+improvements, or assailed the one-man power and spoils politics in the
+person of Andrew Jackson, or entreated for compromise and conciliation
+regarding the tariff or slavery,--there was always ringing through his
+words a fervid plea for his country, a zealous appeal in behalf of the
+honor and the future greatness and glory of the republic, or an anxious
+warning lest the Union be put in jeopardy."
+
+One thing is certain, that no man in the country exercised so great an
+influence, for a generation, in shaping the policy of national
+legislation as Henry Clay, a policy which, on the whole, has proved
+enlightened, benignant, and useful. And hence his name and memory will
+not only be honorably mentioned by historians, but will be fondly
+cherished so long as American institutions shall endure. He is one of
+the greater lights in the galaxy of American stars, as he was the
+advocate of principles which have proved conducive to national
+prosperity in the first century of the nation's history. It is a great
+thing to give shape to the beneficent institutions of a country, and
+especially to be a source of patriotic inspiration to its people. It is
+greater glory than to be enrolled in the list of presidents, especially
+if they are mentioned only as the fortunate occupants of a great office
+to which they were blindly elected. Of the long succession of the
+occupants of the Papal Chair, the most august of worldly dignities, not
+one in twenty has left a mark, or is of any historical importance,
+while hundreds of churchmen and theologians in comparatively humble
+positions have left an immortal fame. The glory of Clay is not dimmed
+because he failed in reaching a worthy object of ambition. It is enough
+to be embalmed in the hearts of the people as a national benefactor, and
+to shine as a star of the first magnitude in the political firmament.
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+Carl Schurz's Life of Henry Clay is far the ablest and most interesting
+that I have read. The Life of Clay by Colton is fuller and more
+pretentious, but is diffuse. Benton's Thirty Years in Congress should be
+consulted; also the various Lives of Webster and Calhoun. See also
+Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America. The writings of
+the political economists, like Sumner, Walker, Carey, and others, should
+be consulted in reference to tariffs. The Life of Andrew Jackson sheds
+light on Clay's hostility to the hero of New Orleans.
+
+
+
+DANIEL WEBSTER.
+
+
+A.D. 1782-1852.
+
+THE AMERICAN UNION.
+
+If I were required to single out the most prominent political genius in
+the history of the United States, after the death of Hamilton, I should
+say it was Daniel Webster. He reigned for thirty years as a political
+dictator to his party, and at the same time was the acknowledged head of
+the American Bar. He occupied two spheres, in each of which he gained
+pre-eminence. But for envy, and the enemies he made, he probably would
+have reached the highest honor that the nation had to bestow. His
+influence was vast, until those discussions arose which provoked one of
+the most gigantic wars of modern times. For a generation he was the
+object of universal admiration for his eloquence and power. In political
+wisdom and experience he had no contemporaneous superior; there was no
+public man from 1820 to 1850 who had so great a prestige, and whose name
+and labors are so well remembered. His speeches and forensic arguments
+are more often quoted than those of any other statesman and lawyer the
+country has produced. His works are in every library, and are still
+read. His fame has not waned, in spite of the stirring events which have
+taken place since his death. Great generals have arisen and passed out
+of mind, but the name and memory of Webster are still fresh. Amid the
+tumults and parties of the war he foresaw and dreaded, his glory may
+have passed through an eclipse, but his name is to-day one of the
+proudest connected with our history. Living men, occupying great
+official positions, are of course more talked about and thought of than
+he; but of those illustrious characters who figured in public affairs a
+generation ago, no one has so great a posthumous fame and influence as
+the distinguished senator from Massachusetts. No man since the days of
+Jefferson is seated on a loftier pedestal; and no one is likely to live
+longer, if not in the nation's heart, yet in its admiration for
+intellectual superiority and respect for political services. While he
+reigned as a political oracle for more than thirty years,--almost an
+idol in the eyes of his constituents,--it was his misfortune to be
+dethroned and reviled, in the last ten years of his life, by the very
+people who had exalted and honored him, and at last to die
+broken-hearted, from the loss of his well-earned popularity and the
+failure of his ambitious expectations. His life is sad as well as
+proud, like that of so many other great men who at one time led, and at
+another time opposed, popular sentiments. Their names stand out on every
+page of history, examples of the mutability of fortune,--alike joyous
+and saddened men, reaping both glory and shame; and sometimes glory for
+what is evil, and shame for what is good.
+
+When Daniel Webster was born,--1782, in Salisbury, New Hampshire, near
+the close of our Revolutionary struggle,---there were very few prominent
+and wealthy families in New England, very few men more respectable than
+the village lawyers, doctors, and merchants, or even thrifty and
+intelligent farmers. Very few great fortunes had been acquired, and
+these chiefly by the merchants of Boston, Salem, Portsmouth, and other
+seaports whose ships had penetrated to all parts of the world Webster
+sprang from the agricultural class,--larger then in proportion to the
+other classes than now at the East,--at a time when manufactures were in
+their infancy and needed protection; when travel was limited; when it
+was a rare thing for a man to visit Europe; when the people were obliged
+to practise the most rigid economy; when everybody went to church; when
+religious scepticism sent those who avowed it to Coventry; when
+ministers were the leading power; when the press was feeble, and
+elections were not controlled by foreign immigrants; when men drank rum
+instead of whiskey, and lager beer had never been heard of, nor the
+great inventions and scientific wonders which make our age an era had
+anywhere appeared. The age of progress had scarcely then set in, and
+everybody was obliged to work in some way to get an honest living; for
+the Revolutionary War had left the country poor, and had shut up many
+channels of industry. The farmers at that time were the most numerous
+and powerful class, sharp, but honest and intelligent; who honored
+learning, and enjoyed discussions on metaphysical divinity. Their sons
+did not then leave the paternal acres to become clerks in distant
+cities; nor did their daughters spend their time in reading French
+novels, or sneering at rustic duties and labors. This age of progress
+had not arisen when everybody looks forward to a millennium of idleness
+and luxury, or to a fortune acquired by speculation and gambling rather
+than by the sweat of the brow,--an age, in many important respects,
+justly extolled, especially for scientific discoveries and mechanical
+inventions, yet not remarkable for religious earnestness or moral
+elevation.
+
+The life of Daniel Webster is familiar to all intelligent people. His
+early days were spent amid the toils and blessedness of a New England
+farm-house, favored by the teachings of intelligent, God-fearing
+parents, who had the means to send him to Phillips Academy in Exeter,
+then recently founded, where he fitted for college, and shortly after
+entered Dartmouth, at the age of fifteen. In connection with Webster, I
+do not read of any remarkable precocity, at school or college, such as
+marked Cicero, Macaulay, and Gladstone; but it seems that he won the
+esteem of both teachers and students, and was regarded as a very
+promising youth. After his graduation he taught an academy at Fryeburg,
+for a time, and then began the study of the law,--first at Salisbury,
+and subsequently in Boston, in the office of the celebrated Governor
+Gore. He was admitted to the bar in 1805, and established himself in
+Boscawen, but soon afterwards removed to Portsmouth, where he entered on
+a large practice, encountering such able lawyers as Jeremiah Mason and
+Jeremiah Smith, who both became his friends and admirers, for Webster's
+legal powers were soon the talk of the State. At the early age of
+thirty-one he entered Congress (1813), and took the whole House by
+surprise with his remarkable speeches, during the war with Great
+Britain,--on such topics as the enlargement of the navy, the repeal of
+the embargo, and the complicated financial questions of the day. In 1815
+he retired awhile from public life, and removed to Boston, where he
+enjoyed a lucrative practice. In 1822 he re-entered Congress. So popular
+was he at this time, that, on his re-election to Congress in 1824, he
+received four thousand nine hundred and ninety votes out of five
+thousand votes cast. In 1827 he entered the Senate, where he was to
+reign as one of its greatest chiefs,--the idol of his party in New
+England, practising his profession at the same time, a leader of the
+American Bar, and an oracle in politics on all constitutional questions.
+
+With this rapid sketch, I proceed to enumerate the services of Daniel
+Webster to his country, since on these enduring fame and gratitude are
+based. And first, I allude to his career as a lawyer,--not a narrow,
+technical lawyer, seeking to gain his case any way he can, with an eye
+on pecuniary rewards alone, but a lawyer devoting himself to the study
+of great constitutional questions and fundamental principles. In his
+legal career, when for nearly forty years he discussed almost every
+issue that can arise between individuals and communities, some
+half-a-dozen cases have become historical, because of the importance of
+the principles and interests involved. In the Gibbons and Ogden case he
+assumed the broad ground that the grant of power to regulate commerce
+was exclusively the right of the General Government. William Wirt, his
+distinguished antagonist,--then at the height of his fame,--relied on
+the coasting license given by States; but the lucid and luminous
+arguments of the young lawyer astonished the court, and made old Judge
+Marshall lay down his pen, drop back in his chair, turn up his
+coat-cuffs, and stare at the speaker in amazement at his powers.
+
+The first great case which gave Webster a national reputation was that
+pertaining to Dartmouth College, his _alma mater_, which he loved as
+Newton loved Cambridge. The college was in the hands of politicians, and
+Webster recovered the college from their hands and restored it to the
+trustees, laying down such broad principles that every literary and
+benevolent institution in this land will be grateful to him forever.
+This case, which was argued with consummate ability, and with words as
+eloquent as they were logical and lucid, melting a cold court into
+tears, placed Webster in the front rank of lawyers, which he kept until
+he died. In the Ogden and Saunders case he settled the constitutionality
+of State bankrupt laws; in that of the United States Bank he maintained
+the right of a citizen of one State to perform any legal act in another;
+in that which related to the efficacy of Stephen Girard's will, he
+demonstrated the vital importance of Christianity to the success of free
+institutions,--so that this very college, which excluded clergymen from
+being teachers in it, or even visiting it, has since been presided over
+by laymen of high religious character, like Judge Jones and Doctor
+Allen. In the Rhode Island case he proved the right of a State to modify
+its own institutions of government. In the Knapp murder case he brought
+out the power of conscience--the voice of God to the soul--with such
+terrible forensic eloquence that he was the admiration of all Christian
+people. No better sermon was ever preached than this appeal to the
+conscience of men.
+
+In these and other cases he settled very difficult and important
+questions, so that the courts of law will long be ruled by his wisdom.
+He enriched the science of jurisprudence itself by bringing out the
+fundamental laws of justice and equity on which the whole science rests.
+He was not as learned as he was logical and comprehensive. His greatness
+as a lawyer consisted in seeing and seizing some vital point not
+obvious, or whose importance was not perceived by his opponent, and then
+bringing to bear on this point the whole power of his intellect. His
+knowledge was marvellous on those points essential to his argument; but
+he was not probably learned, like Kent, in questions outside his
+cases,--I mean the details and technicalities of law. He did, however,
+know the fundamental principles on which his great cases turned, and
+these he enforced with much eloquence and power, so that his ablest
+opponents quailed before him. Perhaps his commanding presence and
+powerful tones and wonderful eye had something to do with his success at
+the Bar as well as in the Senate,--a brow, a voice, and an eye that
+meant war when he was fairly aroused; although he appealed generally to
+reason, without tricks of rhetoric. If he sometimes intimidated, he
+rarely resorted to exaggerations, but confined himself strictly to the
+facts, so that he seemed the fairest of men. This moderation had great
+weight with an intelligent jury and with learned judges. He always paid
+great deference to the court, and was generally courteous to his
+opponents. Of all his antagonists at the Bar, perhaps it was Jeremiah
+Mason and Rufus Choate whom he most dreaded; yet both of these great men
+were his warm friends. Warfare at the Bar does not mean personal
+animosity,--it is generally mutual admiration, except in the antagonism
+of such rivals as Hamilton and Burr. Webster's admiration for Wirt,
+Pinkney, Curtis, and Mason was free from all envy; in fact, Webster was
+too great a man for envy, and great lawyers were those whom he loved
+best, whom he felt to be his brethren, not secret enemies. His
+admiration for Jeremiah Mason was only equalled by that for Judge
+Marshall, who was not a rival. Webster praised Marshall as he might have
+Erskine or Lyndhurst.
+
+Mr. Webster, again, attained to great eminence in another sphere, in
+which lawyers have not always succeeded,--that of popular oratory, in
+the shape of speeches and lectures and orations to the people directly.
+In this sphere I doubt if he ever had an equal in this country,
+although Edward Everett, Rufus Choate, Wendell Phillips, and others were
+distinguished for their popular eloquence, and in some respects were the
+equals of Webster. But he was a great teacher of the people,
+directly,--a sort of lecturer on the principles of government, of
+finance, of education, of agriculture, of commerce. He was superbly
+eloquent in his eulogies of great men like Adams and Jefferson. His
+Bunker Hill and Plymouth addresses are immortal. He lectured
+occasionally before lyceums and literary institutions. He spoke to
+farmers in their agricultural meetings, and to merchants in marts of
+commerce. He did not go into political campaigns to any great extent, as
+is now the custom with political leaders on the eve of important
+elections. He did not seek to show the people how they should vote, so
+much as to teach them elemental principles. He was the oracle, the sage,
+the teacher,--not the politician.
+
+In the popular assemblies--whether for the discussion of political
+truths or those which bear on literature, education, history, finance,
+or industrial pursuits--Mr. Webster was pre-eminent. What audiences were
+ever more enthusiastic than those that gathered to hear his wisdom and
+eloquence in public halls or in the open air? It is true that in his
+later years he lost much of his wonderful personal magnetism, and did
+not rise to public expectation except on great occasions; but in middle
+life, in the earlier part of his congressional career, he had no peer as
+a popular orator. Edward Everett, on some occasions, was his equal, so
+far as manner and words were concerned; but, on the whole, even in his
+grandest efforts, Everett was cold compared with Webster in his palmy
+days. He never touched the heart and reason as did Webster; although it
+must be conceded that Everett was a great rhetorician, and was master of
+many of the graces of oratory.
+
+The speeches and orations of Webster were not only weighty in matter,
+but were wonderful for their style,--so clear, so simple, so direct,
+that everybody could understand him. He rarely attempted to express more
+than one thought in a single sentence; so that his sentences never
+wearied an audience, being always logical and precise, not involved and
+long and complicated, like the periods of Chalmers and Choate and so
+many of the English orators. It was only in his grand perorations that
+he was Ciceronian. He despised purely extemporary efforts; he did not
+believe in them. He admits somewhere that he never could make a good
+speech without careful preparation. The principles embodied in his
+famous reply to Colonel Hayne of South Carolina, in the debate in the
+Senate on the right of "nullification," had lain brooding in his mind
+for eighteen months. To a young minister he said, There is no such
+thing as extemporaneous acquisition.
+
+Webster's speeches are likely to live for their style alone, outside
+their truths, like those of Cicero and Demosthenes, like the histories
+of Voltaire and Macaulay, like the essays of Pascal and Rousseau; and
+they will live, not only for both style and matter, but for the exalted
+patriotism which burns in them from first to last, for those sentiments
+which consecrate cherished institutions. How nobly he recognizes
+Christianity as the bulwark of national prosperity! How delightfully he
+presents the endearments of home, the certitudes of friendship, the
+peace of agricultural life, the repose of all industrial pursuits,
+however humble and obscure! It was this fervid patriotism, this public
+recognition of what is purest in human life, and exalted in aspirations,
+and profound in experience,--teaching the value of our privileges and
+the glory of our institutions,--which gave such effect to his eloquence,
+and endeared him to the hearts of the people until he opposed their
+passions. If we read any of these speeches, extending over thirty years,
+we shall find everywhere the same consistent spirit of liberty, of
+union, of conciliation, the same moral wisdom, the same insight into
+great truths, the same recognition of what is sacred, the same repose on
+what is permanent, the same faith in the expanding glories of this great
+nation which he loved with all his heart. In all his speeches one
+cannot find a sentence which insults the consecrated sentiments of
+religion or patriotism. He never casts a fling at Christianity; he never
+utters a sarcasm in reference to revealed truths; he never flippantly
+aspires to be wiser than Moses or Paul in reference to theological
+dogmas. "Ah, my friends," said he, in 1825, "let us remember that it is
+only religion and morals and knowledge that can make men respectable and
+happy under any form of government; that no government is respectable
+which is not just; that without unspotted purity of public faith,
+without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no mere form of
+government, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society."
+
+Thus did he discourse in those proud days when he was accepted as a
+national idol and a national benefactor,--those days of triumph and of
+victory, when the people gathered around him as they gather around a
+successful general. Ah! how they thronged to the spot where he was
+expected to speak,--as the Scotch people thronged to Edinboro' and
+Glasgow to hear Gladstone:--
+
+     "And when they saw his chariot but appear,
+      Did they not make an universal shout,
+      That Tiber trembled underneath her banks
+      To hear the replication of their sounds
+      Made in her concave shores?"
+
+But it is time that I allude to those great services which Webster
+rendered to his country when he was a member of Congress,--services that
+can never be forgotten, and which made him a national benefactor.
+
+There were three classes of subjects on which his genius pre-eminently
+shone,--questions of finance, the development of American industries,
+and the defence of the Constitution.
+
+As early as 1815, Mr. Webster acquired a national reputation by his
+speech on the proposition to establish a national bank, which he
+opposed, since it was to be relieved from the necessity of redeeming its
+notes in specie. This was at the close of the war with Great Britain,
+when the country was poor, business prostrated, and the finances
+disordered. To relieve this pressure, many wanted an inflated paper
+currency, which should stimulate trade. But all this Mr. Webster
+opposed, as certain to add to the evils it was designed to cure. He
+would have a bank, indeed, but he insisted it should be established on
+sound financial principles, with notes redeemable in gold and silver.
+And he brought a great array of facts to show the certain and utter
+failure of a system of banking operations which disregarded the
+fundamental financial laws. He maintained that an inflated currency
+produced only temporary and illusive benefits. Nor did he believe in
+hopes which were not sustained by experience. "Banks," said he, "are
+not revenue. They may afford facilities for its collection and
+distribution, but they cannot be sources of national income, which must
+flow from deeper fountains. Whatever bank-notes are not convertible into
+gold and silver, at the will of the holder, become of less value than
+gold and silver. No solidity of funds, no confidence in banking
+operations, has ever enabled them to keep up their paper to the value of
+gold and silver any longer than they paid gold and silver on demand."
+Similar sentiments he advanced, in 1816, in his speech on the legal
+currency, and also in 1832, when he said that a disordered currency is
+one of the greatest of political evils,--fatal to industry, frugality,
+and economy. "It fosters the spirit of speculation and extravagance. It
+is the most effectual of inventions to fertilize the rich man's field by
+the sweat of the poor man's brow." In these days, when principles of
+finance are better understood, these remarks may seem like platitudes;
+but they were not so fifty or sixty years ago, for then they had the
+force of new truth, although even then they were the result of political
+wisdom, based on knowledge and experience; and his views were adopted,
+for he appealed to reason.
+
+Webster's financial speeches are very calm, like the papers of Hamilton
+and Jay in "The Federalist," but as interesting and persuasive as those
+of Gladstone, the greatest finance-minister of modern times. They are
+plain, simple, direct, without much attempt at rhetoric. He spoke like a
+great lawyer to a bench of judges. The solidity and soundness of his
+views made him greatly respected, and were remarkable in a young man of
+thirty-four. The subsequent financial history of the country shows that
+he was prophetic. All his predictions have come to pass. What is more
+marked in our history than the extravagance and speculation attending
+the expansion of paper money irredeemable in gold and silver? What
+misery and disappointment have resulted from inflated values! It was
+doubtless necessary to do without gold and silver in our life-and-death
+struggle with the South; but it was nevertheless a misfortune, seen in
+the gambling operations and the wild fever of speculation which attended
+the immense issue of paper money after the war. The bubble was sure to
+burst, sooner or later, like John Law's Mississippi scheme in the time
+of Louis XV. How many thousands thought themselves rich, in New York and
+Chicago, in fact everywhere, when they were really poor,--as any man is
+poor when his house or farm is not worth the mortgage. As soon as we
+returned to gold and silver, or it was known we should return to them,
+then all values shrunk, and even many a successful merchant found he was
+really no richer than he was before the war. It had been easy to secure
+heavy mortgages on inflated values, and also to get a great interest on
+investments; but when these mortgages and investments shrank to what
+they were really worth, the holders of them became embarrassed and
+impoverished. The fit of commercial intoxication was succeeded by
+depression and unhappiness, and the moral evils of inflated values were
+greater than the financial, since of all demoralizing things the spirit
+of speculation and gambling brings, at last, the most dismal train of
+disappointments and miseries. Inflation and uncertainty in values,
+whether in stocks or real estate, alternating with the return of
+prosperity, seem to have marked the commercial and financial history of
+this country during the last fifty years, more than that of any other
+nation under the sun, and given rise to the spirit of extravagant
+speculations, both disgraceful and ruinous.
+
+Equally remarkable were Mr. Webster's speeches on tariffs and protective
+industries. He here seemed to borrow from Alexander Hamilton, who is the
+father of our protective system. Here he co-operated with Henry Clay;
+and the result of his eloquence and wisdom on those great principles of
+political economy was the adherence to a policy--against great
+opposition--which built up New England and did not impoverish the West.
+Where would the towns of Lowell, Manchester, and Lawrence have been
+without the aid extended to manufacturing interests? They made the
+nation comparatively independent of other nations; they enriched the
+country, even as manufactures enriched Great Britain and France. What
+would England be if it were only an agricultural country? It would have
+been impossible to establish manufactures of textile fabrics, without
+protection. Without aid from governments, this branch of American
+industry would have had no chance to contend with the cheap labor of
+European artisans. I do not believe in cheap labor. I do not believe in
+reducing intelligent people to the condition of animals. I would give
+them the chance to rise; and they cannot rise if they are doomed to
+labor for a mere pittance. The more wages men can get for honest labor,
+the better is the condition of the whole country. Withdraw protection
+from infant industries, and either they perish, or those who work in
+them sink to the condition of the laboring classes of Europe. Nor do I
+believe it is a good thing for a nation to have all its eggs in one
+basket. I would not make this country exclusively agricultural because
+we have boundless fields and can raise corn cheap, any more than I would
+recommend a Minnesota farmer to raise nothing but wheat. Insects and
+mildews and unexpected heats may blast a whole harvest, and the farmer
+has nothing to fall back upon. He may make more money, for a time, by
+raising wheat exclusively; but he impoverishes his farm. He should raise
+cattle and sheep and grass and vegetables, as well as wheat or corn.
+Then he is more independent and more intelligent, even as a nation is by
+various industries, which call out all kinds of talent.
+
+I know that this is a controverted point. Everything _is_ controverted
+in political economy. There is scarcely a question which is settled in
+its whole range of subjects; and I know that many intellectual and
+enlightened men are in favor of what they call free-trade, especially
+professors in colleges. But there is no such thing as free-trade,
+strictly, in any nation, or in the history of nations. No nation
+legislates for universal humanity on philanthropic principles; it
+legislates for itself. There is no country where there are not high
+duties on some things, not even England. No nation can be governed on
+abstract principles and in disregard of its necessities. When it was for
+the interest of England to remove duties on corn, in order that
+manufactures might be stimulated, they took off duties on corn, because
+the laboring-classes in the mills had to be fed. Agricultural interests
+gave way, for a time, to manufacturing interests, because the wealth of
+the country was based on them rather than on lands, and because
+landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country
+would interfere with the value of their rents. But England, with all
+her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a
+retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may
+be imperilled. The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot
+afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those
+lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin
+them; nor will they like to be forced to raise vegetables rather than
+wheat, and turn themselves into market-gardeners instead of great
+proprietors. The landlords of Great Britain may yet demand protection
+for themselves, and, as they control Parliament, they will look out for
+themselves by enacting measures of protection, unless they are
+intimidated by the people who demand cheap bread, or unless they submit
+to revolution. It is eternal equity and wisdom that the weak should be
+protected. There may be industries strong enough now to dispense with
+protection; but unless they are assisted when they are feeble, they will
+cease to exist at all. Take our shipping, for instance, with foreign
+ports,--it is not merely crippled, it is almost annihilated. Is it
+desirable to cut off that great arm of national strength? Shall we march
+on to our destiny, blind and lame and halt? What will we do if England
+and other countries shall find it necessary to protect themselves from
+impoverishment, and reintroduce duties on bread-stuffs high enough to
+make the culture of wheat profitable? Where then will our farmers find a
+market for their superfluous corn, except to those engaged in industries
+which we should crush by removing protection?
+
+I maintain that Mr. Webster, in defending our various industries with so
+much ability, for the benefit of the nation on the whole, rendered very
+important services, even as Hamilton and Clay did; although the solid
+South, wishing cheap labor, and engaged exclusively in agriculture, was
+opposed to him. The independent South would have established
+free-trade,--as Mr. Calhoun advocated, and as any enlightened statesman
+would advocate, when any interest can stand alone and defy competition,
+as was the case with the manufactures of Great Britain fifty years ago.
+The interests of the South and those of the North, under the institution
+of slavery, were not identical; indeed, they had been in fierce
+opposition for more than fifty years. Mr. Webster was, in his arguments
+on tariffs and cognate questions, the champion of the North, as Mr.
+Calhoun was of the South; and this opposition and antagonism gave great
+force to Webster's eloquence at this time. His sentences are short,
+interrogative, idiomatic. He is intensely in earnest. He grapples with
+sophistries and scatters them to the winds; both reason and passion
+vivify him.
+
+This was the period of Webster's greatest popularity, as the defender
+of Northern industries. This made him the idol of the merchants and
+manufacturers of New England. He made them rich; no wonder they made him
+presents. They ought, in gratitude, to have paid his debts over and over
+again. What if he did, in straitened circumstances, accept their aid?
+They owed to him more than he owed to them; and with all their favor and
+bounty Webster remained poor. He was never a rich man, but always an
+embarrassed man, because he had expensive tastes, like Cicero at Rome
+and Bacon in England. This, truly, was not to his credit; it was a flaw
+in his character; it involved him in debt, created enemies, and injured
+his reputation. It may have lessened his independence, and it certainly
+impaired his dignity. But there were also patriotic motives which
+prompted him, and which kept him poor. Had he devoted his great talents
+exclusively to the law, he might have been rich; but he gave his time to
+his country.
+
+His greatest services to his country, however, were as the defender of
+the Constitution. Here he soared to the highest rank of political fame.
+Here he was a statesman, having in view the interests of the whole
+country. He never was what we call a politician. He never was such a
+miserable creature as that. I mean a mere politician, whose calling is
+the meanest a man can follow, since it seeks only spoils, and is a
+perpetual deception, incompatible with all dignity and independence,
+whose only watchword is success.
+
+Not such was Webster. He was too proud and too dignified for that form
+of degradation; and he perhaps sacrificed his popularity to his
+intellectual dignity, and the glorious consciousness of being a national
+benefactor,--as a real statesman seeks to be, and is, when he falls back
+on the elemental principles of justice and morality, like a late Premier
+of England, one of the most conscientious statesmen that ever controlled
+the destinies of a nation. Webster, like Burke, was haughty, austere,
+and brave; but such a man is not likely to remain the favorite of the
+people, who prefer an Alcibiades to a Cato, except in great crises, when
+they look to a man who can save them, and whom they can forget.
+
+I cannot enumerate the magnificent bursts of eloquence which electrified
+the whole country when Webster stood out as the defender of the
+Constitution, when he combated secession and defended the Union. How
+noble and gigantic he was when he answered the aspersions of the
+Southern orators,--great men as they were,--and elaborately showed that
+the Union meant something more than a league of sovereign States! The
+great leaders of secession were overthrown in a contest which they
+courted, and in which they expected victory. His reply to Hayne is,
+perhaps, the most masterly speech in American political history. It is
+one of the immortal orations of the world, extorting praise and
+admiration from Americans and foreigners alike. In his various
+encounters with Hayne, McDuffee, and Calhoun, he taught the principles
+of political union to the rising generation. He produced those
+convictions which sustained the North in its subsequent contest to
+preserve the integrity of the Nation. There can be no estimate of the
+services he rendered to the country by those grand and patriotic
+efforts. But for these, the people might have succumbed to the
+sophistries of Calhoun; for he was almost as great a giant as Webster,
+and was more faultless in his private life. He had an immense influence;
+he ruled the whole South; he made it solid. The speeches of Webster in
+the Senate made him the oracle of the North. He was not only the great
+champion of the North, and of Northern interests, but he was the teacher
+of the whole country. He expounded the principles of the
+Constitution,--that this great country is one, to be forever united in
+all its parts; that its stars and stripes were to float over every city
+and fortress in the land, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the
+river St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, and "bearing for their motto
+no such miserable interrogatory as, What are all these worth? nor those
+other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first and Union afterwards;
+but that other sentiment, dear to every American heart, Liberty and
+Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"
+
+It was after his memorable speech in reply to Hayne that I saw Webster
+for the first time. I was a boy in college, and he had come to visit it;
+and well do I remember the unbounded admiration, yea, the veneration,
+felt for him by every young man in that college and throughout the
+town,--indeed, throughout the whole North, for he was the pride and
+glory of the land. It was then that they called him godlike, looking
+like an Olympian statue, or one of the creations of Michael Angelo when
+he wished to represent majesty and dignity and power in repose,--the
+most commanding human presence ever seen in the Capitol at Washington.
+
+When we recall those patriotic and noble speeches which were read and
+admired by every merchant and farmer and lawyer in the country, and by
+which he produced great convictions and taught great lessons, we cannot
+but wonder why his glory was dimmed, and he was pulled down from his
+pedestal, and became no longer an idol. It is affirmed by many that it
+was his famous 7th of March speech which killed him, which disappointed
+his friends and alienated his constituents. I am therefore compelled to
+say something about that speech, and of his history at that time.
+
+Mr. Webster was doubtless an ambitious man. He aspired to the
+presidency. And why not? It is and will be a great dignity, such as
+ought to be conferred on great ability and patriotism. Was he not able
+and patriotic? Had he not rendered great services? Was he not
+universally admired for his genius and experience and wisdom? Who was
+more prominent than he, among the statesmen of the country, or more
+thoroughly fitted to fulfil the duties of that high office? Was it not
+natural that he should have aspired to be one of the successors of
+Washington and Adams and Jefferson? He comprehended the honor and the
+dignity of that office. He did not seek it in order to divide its
+spoils, or to reward his friends; but he did wish to secure the highest
+prize that could be won by political services; he did desire to receive
+the highest honor in the gift of the people, even as Cicero sought the
+consulate at Rome; he did believe himself capable of representing the
+country in its most exacting position. It is nothing against a man that
+he is ambitious, provided his ambition is lofty. Most of the illustrious
+men of history have been ambitious,--Cromwell, Pitt, Thiers, Guizot,
+Bismarck,--but ambitious to be useful to their country, as well as to
+receive its highest rewards. Webster failed to reach the position he
+desired, because of his enemies, and, possibly, from jealousy of his
+towering height,--just as Clay failed, and Aaron Burr, and Alexander
+Hamilton, and Stephen Douglas, and William H. Seward. The politicians,
+who control the people, prefer men in the presidential chair whom they
+think they can manage and use, not those to whom they will be forced to
+succumb. Webster was not a man to be controlled or used, and so the
+politicians rejected him. This he deeply felt, and even resented. His
+failure saddened his latter days and embittered his soul, although he
+was too proud to make loud complaints.
+
+I grant he did not here show magnanimity. He thought that the presidency
+should be given to the ablest and most experienced statesman. He did not
+appear to see that this proud position is too commanding to be bestowed
+except for the most exalted services, and such services as attract the
+common eye, especially in war. Presidents in so great a country as this
+reign, like the old feudal kings, by the grace of God. They are selected
+by divine Providence, as David was from the sheepfold. No American,
+however great his genius, except the successful warrior, can ever hope
+to climb to this dizzy height, unless personal ambition is lost sight of
+in public services. This is wisely ordered, to defeat unscrupulous
+ambition. It is only in England that a man can rise to supreme power by
+force of genius, since he is selected virtually by his peers, and not by
+the popular voice. He who leads Parliament is the real king of England
+for the time, since Parliament is omnipotent. Had Webster been an
+Englishman, and as powerful in the House of Commons as he was in
+Congress at one time, he might have been prime minister. But he could
+not be president of the United States, although the presidential power
+is much inferior to that exercised by an English premier. It is the
+dignity of the office, not its power, which constitutes the value of the
+presidency. And Webster loved dignity even more than power.
+
+In order to arrive at this coveted office,--although its duties probably
+would have been irksome,--it is possible that he sought to conciliate
+the South and win the favor of Southern leaders. But I do not believe he
+ever sought to win their favor by any abandonment of his former
+principles, or by any treachery to the cause he had espoused. Yet it is
+this of which he has been accused by his enemies,--many of those enemies
+his former friends. The real cause of this estrangement, and of all the
+accusations against him, was this,--he did not sympathize with the
+Abolition party; he was not prepared to embark in a crusade against
+slavery, the basal institution of the South. He did not like slavery;
+but he knew it to be an institution which the Constitution, of which he
+was the great defender, had accepted,--accepted as a compromise, in
+those dark days which tried men's souls. Many of the famous statesmen
+who deliberated in that venerated hall in Philadelphia also disliked and
+detested slavery; but they could not have had a constitution, they could
+not have had a united country, unless that institution was acknowledged
+and guaranteed. So they accepted it as the lesser evil. They made a
+compromise, and the Constitution was signed. Now, everybody knows that
+the Abolitionists of the North, about the year 1833, attacked slavery,
+although it was guaranteed by the Constitution; attacked it, not as an
+evil merely, but as a sin; attacked it, by virtue of a higher law than
+constitutional provision. And as an evil, as a stain on our country, as
+an insult to the virtue and intelligence of the age, as a crime against
+humanity, these people of the North declared that slavery ought to be
+swept away. Mr. Webster, as well as Mr. Fillmore, Mr. Lincoln, Mr.
+Everett, and many other acknowledged patriots, was for letting slavery
+alone, as an evil too great to be removed without war; which, moreover,
+could not be removed without an infringement on what the South
+considered as its rights. He was for conciliation, in order to preserve
+the Constitution as well as the Union. The Abolitionists were violent in
+their denunciations. And although it took many years to permeate the
+North with their leaven, they were in earnest; and under persecutions
+and mobs and ostracism and contempt they persevered until they created
+a terrible public opinion. The South had early taken the alarm, and in
+order to protect their peculiar and favorite institution, had at various
+times attempted to extend it into newly acquired territories where it
+did not exist, claiming the protection of the Constitution. Mr. Webster
+was one of their foremost opponents in this, contesting their right to
+do it under the Constitution. But in 1848 the Antislavery opinion at the
+North crystallized in a political organization,--the Free-Soil Party;
+and on the other hand the South proposed to abrogate the Missouri
+Compromise of 1820 as an offset to the admission of California as a free
+State, and at the same time asked in further concession the passage of
+the Fugitive Slave Bill; and, in anticipation of failing to get these,
+threatened secession, which of course meant war.
+
+It was at this crisis that Mr. Webster delivered his celebrated 7th of
+March speech,--in many respects his greatest,--in which he advocated
+conciliation and adherence to the Constitution, but which was
+represented to support Southern interests, which all his life he had
+opposed; and more, to advocate these interests, in order to secure
+Southern votes for the presidency. Some of the rich and influential men
+of Boston who disliked Webster for other reasons,--for he used to snub
+them, even after they had lent him money,--made the most they could of
+that speech, to alienate the people. The Abolitionists, at last hostile
+to Mr. Webster, who stood in their way and would not adopt their
+dictation or advice, also bitterly denounced this speech, until it
+finally came to be regarded by the common people, few of whom ever read
+it, as a very unpatriotic production, entirely at variance with the
+views that Webster formerly advanced; and they forsook him.
+
+Now, what is the real gist and spirit of that speech? The passions which
+agitated the country when it was delivered have passed away, and not
+only can we now calmly criticise it, but people will listen to the
+criticism with all the attention it deserves.
+
+It is my opinion, shared by Peter Harvey and other friends of Mr.
+Webster, that in no speech he ever made are patriotic and Union
+sentiments more fully avowed. Said he, with fiery emphasis:--
+
+"I hear with distress and anguish the word 'secession.' Secession!
+peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see
+that miracle. The dismemberment of this great country without
+convulsion! The breaking up the fountains of the great deep without
+ruffling the surface! There can be no such thing as peaceable secession.
+It is an utter impossibility. Is this great Constitution, under which we
+live, to be melted and thawed away by secession, as the snows on the
+mountains are melted away under the influence of the vernal sun? No,
+sir; I see as plainly as the sun in the heavens what that disruption
+must produce. I see it must produce war."
+
+"Peaceable secession! peaceable secession! What would be the result?
+Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to
+remain American? What am I to be? Am I to be an American no longer,--a
+sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common?
+Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Union to remain? Where is the
+eagle still to tower? What is to become of the army? What is to become
+of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the
+thirty States to defend itself? Will you cut the Mississippi in two,
+leaving free States on its branches and slave States at its mouth? Can
+any one suppose that this population on its banks can be severed by a
+line that divides them from the territory of a foreign and alien
+government, down somewhere,--the Lord knows where,--upon the lower
+branches of the Mississippi? Sir, I dislike to pursue this subject. I
+have utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of national blasts and
+mildews and pestilence and famine, than hear gentlemen talk about
+secession. To break up this great government! To dismember this glorious
+country! To astonish Europe with an act of folly, such as Europe for two
+centuries has never beheld in any government! No, sir; such talk is
+enough to make the bones of Andrew Jackson turn round in his coffin."
+
+Now, what are we to think of these sentiments, drawn from the 7th of
+March speech, so disgracefully misrepresented by the politicians and
+the fanatics? Do they sound like bidding for Southern votes? Can any
+Union sentiments be stronger? Can anything be more decided or more
+patriotic? He warns, he entreats, he predicts like a prophet. He proves
+that secession is incompatible with national existence; he sees nothing
+in it but war. And of all things he dreaded and hated, it was war. He
+knew what war meant. He knew that a civil war would be the direst
+calamity. He would ward it off. He would be conciliating. He would take
+away the excuse of war, by adhering to the Constitution,--the written
+Constitution which our fathers framed, and which has been the admiration
+of the world, under which we have advanced to prosperity and glory as no
+nation ever before advanced.
+
+But a large class regarded the Constitution as unsound, in some respects
+a wicked Constitution, since it recognized slavery as an institution. By
+"the higher law," they would sweep slavery away, perhaps by moral means,
+but by endless agitations, until it was destroyed. Mr. Webster, I
+confess, did not like those agitations, since he knew they would end in
+war. He had a great insight, such as few people had at that time. But
+his prophetic insight was just what a large class of people did not
+like, especially in his own State. He uttered disagreeable truths,--as
+all prophets do,--and they took up stones to stone him,--to stone him
+for the bravest act of his whole life, in which a transcendent wisdom
+appeared, and which will be duly honored when the truth shall be seen.
+
+The fact was, at that time Mr. Webster seemed to be a croaker, a
+Jeremiah, as Burke at one time seemed to his generation, when he
+denounced the recklessness of the French Revolution. Very few people at
+the North dreamed of war. It was never supposed that the Southern
+leaders would actually become rebels. And they, on the other hand, never
+dreamed that the North would rise up solidly and put them down. And if
+war were to happen, it was supposed that it would be brief. Even so
+great and sagacious a statesman as Seward thought this. The South
+thought that it could easily whip the Yankees; and the North thought
+that it could suppress a Southern rebellion in six weeks. Both sides
+miscalculated. And so, in spite of warnings, the nation drifted into
+war; but as it turned out in the end it seems a providential event,
+--the way God took to break up slavery, the root and source of all our
+sectional animosities; a terrible but apparently necessary catastrophe,
+since more than a million of brave men perished, and more than five
+thousand millions of dollars were spent. Had the North been wise, it
+would have compensated the South for its slaves. Had the South been
+wise, it would have accepted the compensation and set them free, But it
+was not to be. That issue could only be settled by the most terrible
+contest of modern times.
+
+I will not dwell on that war, which Webster predicted and dreaded. I
+only wish to show that it was not for want of patriotism that he became
+unpopular, but because he did not fall in with the prevailing passions
+of the day, or with the public sentiment of the North in reference to
+slavery, not as to its evils and wickedness, but as to the way in which
+it was to be opposed. The great reforms of England, since the accession
+of William III., have been effected by using constitutional means,--not
+violence, not revolution, not war; but by an appeal to reason and
+intelligence and justice. No reforms in any nation have been greater and
+more glorious than those of the nineteenth century,--all effected by
+constitutional methods. Mr. Webster vainly attempted constitutional
+means. He was a lawyer. He reverenced the Constitution, with all its
+compromises. He would observe the law of contracts. Yet no man in the
+nation was more impatient than he at the threats of secession. He
+foretold that secession would lead to war. And if Mr. Webster had lived
+to see the war of which he had such anxious prescience, I firmly believe
+that he would have marched under the banner of the North with patriotism
+equal to any man. He would have been where Mr. Everett was. One of his
+own sons was slain in that war. He was not a Northern man with Southern
+principles; his whole life attested his Northern principles. There never
+was a time when he was not hated and mistrusted by the Southern leaders.
+It is not a proof that he was Southern in his sympathies because he was
+not an Abolitionist; and by an Abolitionist I mean what was meant thirty
+years ago,--one who was unscrupulously bent on removing slavery by any
+means, good or bad; since slavery, in his eyes, was a _malum per se_,
+not a misfortune, an evil, a sin, but a crime to be washed out by the
+besom of destruction.
+
+Mr. Webster did not sympathize with these extreme views. He was not a
+reformer; but that does not show that he was unpatriotic, or a Southern
+man in his heart. "The higher law," to him, was the fulfilment of a
+contract; the maintenance of promises made in good faith, whether those
+promises were wise or foolish; the observance of laws so long as they
+were laws. There was, undeniably, a great evil and shame to be removed,
+but he was not responsible for it; and he left that evil in the hands of
+Him who said, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay,"--as He did repay in
+four years' devastations, miseries, and calamities, and these so awful,
+so unexpected, so ill-prepared for, that a thoughtful and kind-hearted
+person, in view of them, will weep rather than rejoice; for it is not
+pleasant to witness chastisements and punishments, even if necessary
+and just, unless the people who suffer are fiends and incarnate devils,
+as very few men are. Human nature is about the same everywhere, and
+individuals and nations peculiarly sinful are generally made so by their
+surroundings and circumstances. The reckless people of frontier mining
+districts are not naturally worse than adventurers in New York or
+Philadelphia; nor is any vulgar and ignorant man, in any part of the
+country, suddenly made rich, probably any coarser in his pleasures, or
+more sensual in his appearance, or more profane in his language, than
+was Vitellius, or Heliogabalus, or Otho, on an imperial throne.
+
+But even suppose Mr. Webster, in the decline of his life, intoxicated by
+his magnificent position or led astray by ambition, made serious
+political errors. What then? All great men have made errors, both in
+judgment and in morals,--Caesar, when he crossed the Rubicon;
+Theodosius, when he slaughtered the citizens of Thessalonica; Luther,
+when he quarrelled with Zwingli; Henry IV., when he stooped at Canossa;
+Elizabeth, when she executed Mary Stuart; Cromwell, when he bequeathed
+absolute power to his son; Bacon, when he took bribes; Napoleon, when he
+divorced Josephine; Hamilton, when he fought Burr. The sun itself passes
+through eclipses, as it gives light to the bodies which revolve around
+it. Even David and Peter stumbled. Because Webster professed to know as
+much of the interests of the country as the shoemakers of Lynn, and
+refused to be instructed in his political duties by Garrison and Wendell
+Phillips, does he deserve eternal reprobation? Because he opposed the
+public sentiments of his constituents on one point, when perhaps they
+were right, is he to be hurled from his lofty pedestal? Are all his
+services to be forgotten because he did not lift up his trumpet voice in
+favor of immediate emancipation? And even suppose he sought to
+conciliate the South when the South was preparing for rebellion,--is
+peace-making such a dreadful thing? Go still farther: suppose he wished
+to conciliate the South in order to get Southern support for the
+presidency--which I grant he wanted, and possibly sought,--is he to be
+unforgiven, and his name to be blasted, and he held up to the rising
+generation as a fallen man? Does a man fall hopelessly because he
+stumbles? Is a man to be dethroned because he is not perfect? When was
+Webster's vote ever bought and sold? Who ever sat with more dignity in
+the councils of the nation? Would he have voted for "back pay"? Would he
+have bought a seat in the Senate, even if he had been as rich as a
+bonanza king?
+
+Consider how few errors Webster really committed in a public career of
+nearly forty years. Consider the beneficence and wisdom of the measures
+which he generally advocated, and which would have been lost but for
+his eloquence and power. Consider the greatness and lustre of his
+congressional career on the whole. Who has proved a greater benefactor
+to this nation, on the floor of Congress, than he? I do not wish to
+eulogize, still less to whitewash, so great a man, but only to render
+simple justice to his memory and deeds. The time has come to lift the
+veil which for thirty years has concealed his noble political services.
+The time has come to cry shame on those boys who mocked a prophet, and
+said, "Go up, thou bald-head!"--although no bears were found to devour
+them. The time has come for this nation to bury the old slanders of an
+exciting political warfare, and render thanks for the services performed
+by the greatest intellectual giant of the past generation,--services
+rendered not on the floor of the Senate alone, not in the national
+legislature for thirty years, but in one of the great offices of State,
+when he made a treaty with England which saved us from an entangling
+war. The Ashburton treaty is the brightest gem in the coronet with which
+he should be crowned. It was the proudest day in Webster's life when
+Rufus Choate announced to him one evening that the Senate had confirmed
+the treaty. It was not when he closed his magnificent argument in behalf
+of Dartmouth College, not when he addressed the intelligence of New
+England at Bunker Hill, not when he demolished Governor Hayne, not when
+he sat on the woolsack with Lord Brougham, not when he was entertained
+by Louis Philippe, that the proudest emotions swelled in his bosom, but
+when he learned that he had prevented a war with England,--for he knew
+that England and America could not afford to fight; that it would be a
+fight where gain is loss and glory is shame.
+
+At last, worn out with labor and disease, and perhaps embittered by
+disappointment, and saddened to see the increasing tendency to elevate
+little men to power,--the "grasshoppers, who make the field ring with
+their importunate chinks, while the great cattle chew the cud and are
+silent,"--Webster died at Marshfield, Oct. 24, 1852, at seventy years of
+age. At the time he was Secretary of State. He died in the consolations
+of a religion in which he believed, surrounded with loving friends; and
+even his enemies felt that a great man in Israel had fallen. Nothing
+then was said of his defects, for great defects he had,--a towering
+intellectual pride like Chatham, an austerity like Gladstone, passions
+like those of Mirabeau, extravagance like that of Cicero, indifference
+to pecuniary obligations, like Pitt and Fox and Sheridan; but these were
+overbalanced by the warmth of his affections for his faithful friends,
+simplicity of manners and taste, courteous treatment of opponents,
+dignity of character, kindness to the poor, hospitality, enjoyment of
+rural scenes and sports, profound religious instincts, devotion to what
+he deemed the welfare of his country, independence of opinions and
+boldness in asserting them at any hazard and against all opposition, and
+unbounded contempt of all lies and shams and tricks. These traits will
+make his memory dear to all who knew him. And as Florence, too late,
+repented of her ingratitude to Dante, and appointed her most learned men
+to expound the "Divine Comedy" when he was dead, so will the writings of
+Webster be more and more a study among lawyers and statesmen. His fame
+will spread, and grow wider and greater, like that of Bacon and Burke,
+and of other benefactors of mankind; and his ideas will not pass away
+until the glorious fabric of American institutions, whose foundations
+were laid by God-fearing people, shall be utterly destroyed, and the
+Capitol, where his noblest efforts were made, shall become a mass of
+broken and prostrate columns beneath the debris of the nation's ruin!
+No, not then shall they perish, even if such gloomy changes are
+possible, any more than the genius of Cicero has faded among the ruins
+of the Eternal City; but they shall shine upon the most distant works of
+man, since they are drawn from the wisdom of all preceding generations,
+and are based on those principles which underlie all possible
+civilizations!
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The Works of Daniel Webster, in eight octavo volumes, including his
+speeches, addresses, orations, and legal arguments; Life of Daniel
+Webster, by G.T. Curtis; Private Correspondence, edited by F. Webster;
+Private Life, by C. Lanman; C.W. March's Reminiscences of Congress;
+Peter Harvey's Reminiscences and Anecdotes; Edward Everett's Oration on
+the Unveiling of the Statue in Boston; R.C. Winthrop and Evarts, on the
+same occasion in New York; Contemporaneous Lives of Clay, Calhoun, and
+Benton; the great Oration on Webster by Rufus Choate at Dartmouth
+College; J. Barnard's Life and Character of Daniel Webster; E.P.
+Whipple's Essay on Webster; Eulogies on the Death of Webster, especially
+those by G.S. Hillard, L. Woods, A. Taft, R.D. Hitchcock, and Theodore
+Parker, also Addresses and Orations on the One Hundredth Anniversary of
+Webster's Birth, too numerous to mention,---especially the address of
+Senator Bayard at Dartmouth College. The complete and exhaustive Life of
+Webster is yet to be written, although the most prominent of his
+contemporaries have had something to say.
+
+
+
+JOHN C. CALHOUN.
+
+
+1782-1850.
+
+THE SLAVERY QUESTION.
+
+The extraordinary abilities of John C. Calhoun, the great influence he
+exerted as the representative of Southern interests in the National
+Legislature, and especially his connection with the Slavery Question,
+make it necessary to include him among the statesmen who, for evil or
+good, have powerfully affected the destinies of the United States. He is
+a great historical character,--the peer of Webster and Clay in
+congressional history, and more unsullied than either of them in the
+virtues of private life. In South Carolina he was regarded as little
+less than a demigod, and until the antislavery agitation began he was
+viewed as among the foremost statesmen of the land. His elevation to
+commanding influence in Congress was very rapid, and but for his
+identification with partisan interests and a bad institution, there was
+no office in the gift of the nation to which he could not reasonably
+have aspired.
+
+John Caldwell Calhoun was born in 1782, of highly respectable
+Protestant-Irish descent, in the Abbeville District in South Carolina.
+He was not a patrician, according to the ideas of rich planters. He had
+but a slender school education in boyhood, but was prepared for college
+by a Presbyterian clergyman, entered the Junior Class of Yale College in
+1802, and was graduated with high honors. He chose the law for his
+profession, studied laboriously for three years, spending eighteen
+months at the then famous law school at Litchfield, Connecticut, and
+gave great promise, in his remarkable logical powers, of becoming an
+eminent lawyer.
+
+Whatever abilities Mr. Calhoun may have had for the law, it does not
+appear that he practised it long, or to any great extent. His taste and
+his genius inclined him to politics. And, having married a lady with
+some fortune, he had sufficient means to live without professional
+drudgery. After serving a short time in the State Legislature of South
+Carolina, he was elected a member of Congress, and took his seat in the
+House of Representatives in 1811, at the age of twenty-nine. From the
+very first his voice was heard. He made a speech in favor of raising ten
+thousand additional men to our army to resist the encroachments of Great
+Britain and prepare for hostilities should the country drift into war.
+It was an able speech for a young man, and its scornful repudiation of
+reckoning the costs of war against insult and violated rights had a
+chivalric ring about it: "Sir, I here enter my solemn protest against a
+low and calculating avarice entering this hall of legislation. It is
+only fit for shops and counting-houses.... It is a compromising spirit,
+always ready to yield a part to save the residue." Here at an early date
+we hear the key-note of his life,--hatred of compromises and
+half-measures. If it were necessary to go to war at all, he would fight
+regardless of expense.
+
+Thus Calhoun began his public career as an advocate of war with Great
+Britain. The old Revolutionary sores had not yet had time to heal, and
+there was general hostility to England, except among the Virginia
+aristocrats and the Federalists of the North. Although a young man,
+Calhoun was placed upon the important committee of Foreign Affairs, of
+which he was soon made chairman.
+
+Calhoun's early speeches in Congress gave promise of rare abilities. The
+most able of them were those on the repeal of the Embargo, in 1814; on
+the commercial convention with Great Britain in 1816; on the United
+States Bank Bill and the tariff the same year; and on the Internal
+Improvement Bill in 1817. The main subject which occupied Congress from
+1812 to 1814 was the war with Great Britain, during the administration
+of Madison; and afterwards, till 1817, the great questions at issue were
+in reference to tariffs and internal improvements.
+
+In the discussion of these subjects Calhoun took broad and patriotic
+ground. At that time we see no sectional interests predominating in his
+mind. He favored internal improvements, great permanent roads, and even
+the protection of manufactures, and a National Bank. On all these
+questions his sectional interests at a later day led him to support the
+exact opposite of these early national views. Says Von Holst: "His
+speech on the new tariff bill (April 6, 1816) was a long and carefully
+prepared argument in favor of the whole economical platform on which the
+Whig party stood to the last day of its existence.... Even Henry Clay
+and Horace Greeley have not been able to put their favorite doctrine
+into stronger language.... His final aim was the industrial independence
+of the United States from Europe; and this, he thought, could be
+obtained by protective duties."
+
+Calhoun's speeches, during the six years that he was a member of the
+House of Representatives, were so able as to attract the attention of
+the nation, and in 1817 Monroe selected him as his Secretary of War. And
+he made a good executive officer in this branch of the public service,
+putting things to rights, and bringing order out of confusion, living on
+terms of friendship with John Quincy Adams and other members of the
+cabinet, planning military roads, introducing a system of strict economy
+in his department, and making salutary reforms. He tolerated no abuses.
+He was disposed to do justice to the Indians, and raise them from their
+degradation, even seeking to educate them, when it was more than
+probable that they would return to their barbaric habits,--a race, as it
+would seem from experience, very difficult to civilize. Adams thus spoke
+of his young colleague: "Mr. Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind,
+of honorable principles, of quick and clear understanding, of cool
+self-possession, of enlarged philosophical views, and of ardent
+patriotism. He is above all sectional and factious prejudices more than
+any other statesman of this Union with whom I have ever acted,"--a very
+different verdict from what he wrote in his diary in 1831. Judge Story
+wrote of him in 1823 in these terms: "I have great admiration for Mr.
+Calhoun, and think few men have more enlarged and liberal views of the
+true policy of the national government."
+
+The post he held, however, was not Calhoun's true arena, but one which
+an ambitious young man of thirty-five could not well decline, from the
+honor it brought. The secretaryship of war is the least important of all
+the cabinet offices in time of peace, and was especially so when the
+army was reduced to six thousand men. Its functions amounted to little
+more than sending small detachments to military posts, making contracts
+for the commissariat, visiting occasionally the forts and
+fortifications, and making a figure in Washington society. It furnished
+no field for extensive operations, or the exercise of remarkable
+qualities of mind. But inasmuch as it made Calhoun a member of the
+cabinet, it gave him an opportunity to express his mind on all national
+issues, and exercise an influence on the President himself. It did not
+make him prominent in the eyes of the nation. He was simply the head of
+a bureau, although an important personage in the eyes of the cadets of
+West Point and of some lazy lieutenants stationed among the Indians. But
+whatever the part he was required to play, he did his duty, showed
+ability, and won confidence. He doubtless added to his reputation, else
+he would not have been talked about as a candidate for the presidency,
+selected as a candidate for the vice-presidency, and chosen to that
+position by Northern votes, as he was in 1824, when the election was
+thrown into the House of Representatives, and the friends of Henry Clay
+made Adams, instead of Jackson, President. Calhoun's popularity with all
+parties resulted in his election as vice-president by a very large
+popular vote. He deserved it. The day had not come for the ascendency of
+mere politicians, and their division of the spoils of office.
+
+The condition of the slaveholding States at this period was most
+prosperous. The culture of cotton had become exceedingly lucrative. Rich
+planters spent their summers at the North in luxurious independence. It
+was the era of general "good feeling." No agitating questions had
+arisen. Young men at the South sought education in the New England
+colleges; manufacturing interests were in their infancy, and had not, as
+yet, excited Southern jealousy. Commercial prosperity in New England was
+the main object desired, although the war with Great Britain had proved
+disastrous to it. Political influence seemed to centre in the Southern
+States. These States had furnished four presidents out of five. The
+great West had not arisen in its might; it had no great cities: but
+Charleston and Boston were centres of culture and wealth, and on good
+terms with each other, both equally free from agitating questions, and
+both equally benignant to the institution of slavery, which the
+Constitution was supposed to have made secure forever. The Adams
+administration was notable for nothing but beginnings of the tariff
+question and the protectionist Act of 1828, the growth of the Democratic
+party, the final intensity of the presidential campaign of 1828, and the
+election of Jackson, with Calhoun as Vice-president.
+
+As the incumbent of this office for two terms, Mr. Calhoun did not make
+a great mark in history. His office was one of dignity and not of power;
+but during his vice-presidency important discussions took place in
+Congress which placed him, as presiding officer of the Senate, in an
+embarrassing position. He was between two fires, and gradually became
+alienated from the two opposing parties to whom he owed his election. He
+could go neither with Adams nor with Jackson on public measures, and
+both interfered with his aspirations for the presidency. His personal
+relations with Jackson, who had been his warm friend and supporter,
+became strained after his second election as Vice-President. He took
+part against Jackson in the President's undignified attempt to force his
+cabinet to recognize the social position of Mrs. Eaton. Further, it was
+divulged by Crawford, who had been Secretary of the Treasury in Monroe's
+cabinet when Calhoun was Secretary of War, that the latter had in 1818
+favored a censure of Jackson for his unauthorized seizure of Spanish
+territory in the Florida campaign during the Seminole War; and this
+increased the growing animosity. What had been an alienation between the
+two highest officers of the government ripened into intense hatred,
+which was fatal to the aspirations of Calhoun for the presidency; for no
+man could be President against the overpowering influence of Jackson.
+This was a bitter disappointment to Calhoun, for he had set his heart
+on being the successor of Jackson in the presidential chair.
+
+There were two subjects which had arisen to great importance during Mr.
+Calhoun's terms of executive office which not only blasted his prospects
+for the presidency, but separated him forever from his former friends
+and allies.
+
+One of these was the tariff question, which gave him great uneasiness.
+He opened his eyes to see that protection and internal improvements, so
+ably advocated by Henry Clay, and even by himself in 1816, were becoming
+the policy of the government to the enriching of the North. True, it was
+only an economical question, but it seemed to him to lay the axe to the
+root of Southern prosperity. It was his settled conviction that tariffs
+for protection would increase the burdens of the South by raising the
+price of all those articles which it was compelled to buy, and that
+large profits on articles manufactured in the United States would only
+enrich the Northern manufacturers. The South, being an agricultural
+country exclusively, naturally sought to buy in the cheapest market, and
+therefore wanted no tariff except for revenue. When Mr. Calhoun saw that
+protectionist duties were an injury to the slaveholding States he
+reversed entirely his former opinions. And what influence he could
+exert as the presiding officer of the Senate was now displayed against
+the Adams party, which had favored his election to the vice-presidency,
+and of course alienated his Northern supporters, especially Adams, who
+now turned against him, and as bitterly denounced as once he had favored
+and praised him. Calhoun had now both the Jackson and Adams parties
+against him, though for different reasons.
+
+Up to this time, until the agitation of the tariff question began, Mr.
+Calhoun had not been a party man. He was regarded throughout the country
+as a statesman, rather than as a politician.
+
+But when manufactures of cotton and woollen goods were being established
+in Lowell, Lawrence, Dover, Great Falls, and other places in New
+England, wherever there was a water-power to turn the mills, it became
+obvious that a new tariff would be imposed to protect these infant
+industries and manufacturing interests everywhere. The tariff of 1824
+had borne heavily on the South, producing great irritation, and very
+naturally "the planters complained that they had to bear all the burdens
+of protection without enjoying its benefits,--that the things they had
+to buy had become dearer, while the things produced and exported found a
+less market." Financial ruin stared them in the face. It seemed to them
+a great injustice that the interests of the planters should be
+sacrificed to the monopolists of the North.
+
+In the defence of Southern interests Mr. Calhoun in the Senate at first
+appealed to reason and patriotism. It is true that he now became a
+partisan, but he had been sent to Congress as the champion of the cotton
+lords. He was no more unpatriotic than Webster, who at first, as the
+representative of the merchants of Boston, advocated freer trade in the
+interests of commerce, and afterwards, as the representative of
+Massachusetts at large, turned round and advocated protective duties for
+the benefit of the manufacturer. It is a nice question, as to where a
+Congressman should draw the line of advocacy between local and general
+interests. What are men sent to Congress for, except to advance the
+interests intrusted to them by their constituents? When are these to be
+merged in national considerations? Calhoun's mission was to protect
+Southern interests, and he defended them with admirable logical power.
+He was one of three great masters of debate in the Senate. No one could
+reasonably blame him for the opinions he advanced, for he had a right to
+them; and if he took sectional ground he did as most party leaders do.
+It was merely a congressional fight.
+
+But when, after the tariff of 1828, it appeared to Calhoun that there
+was no remedy; that protection had become the avowed and permanent
+policy of the government; that the tobacco and cotton of the South,
+being the chief bulk of our exports, were paying tribute to Northern
+manufactures, which were growing strong under protection of Federal
+taxes on competing imports; and that the South was menaced with
+financial ruin,--he took a new departure, the first serious political
+error of his life, and became disloyal to the Union.
+
+In July, 1831, he made an elaborate address to the people of South
+Carolina, in which, discussing the theoretical relations of the States
+to the Union, he put forth the doctrine that any State could nullify the
+laws of Congress when it deemed them unconstitutional, as he regarded
+the existing tariff to be. He looked upon the State, rather than the
+Union of States, as supreme, and declared that the State could secede if
+the Union enforced unconstitutional measures. This, as Von Hoist points
+out, practically meant that, "whenever different views are entertained
+about the powers conferred by the Constitution upon the Federal
+government, those of the _minority_ were to prevail,"--an evident
+absurdity under a republican government.
+
+In June, 1832, was passed another tariff bill, offering some reductions,
+but still based on protection as the underlying principle. In
+consequence, South Carolina, entirely subservient to the influence of
+Calhoun, who in August issued another manifesto, passed in November the
+nullification ordinance, to take effect the following February. As
+already recited, President Jackson took the most vigorous measures,
+sustained by Congress, and gave the nullifiers clearly to understand
+that if they resisted the laws of the United States, the whole power of
+the government would be arrayed against them. They received the
+proclamation defiantly, and the governor issued a counter one.
+
+It was in this crisis that Calhoun resigned the vice-presidency, and was
+immediately elected to the United States Senate, where he could fight
+more advantageously. Then the President sent a message to Congress
+requesting new powers to put down the nullifiers by force, should the
+necessity arrive, which were granted, for he was now at the height of
+his popularity and influence. The nullifiers enraged him, and though
+they abstained from resorting to extreme measures, they continued their
+threats. The country appeared to be on the verge of war.
+
+The party leaders felt the necessity of a compromise, and Henry Clay
+brought forward in the Senate a bill which, in March, 1833, became a
+law, which reduced the tariff. It apparently appeased the South, not yet
+prepared to go out of the Union, and the storm blew over. There was no
+doubt, however, that, had the South Carolinians resisted the government
+with force of arms they would have been put down, for Jackson was both
+Infuriated and firm. He had even threatened to hang Calhoun as high as
+Haman,--an absurd threat, for he had no power to hang anybody, except
+one with arms in his hands,--and then only through due process of
+law,--while Calhoun was a Senator, as yet using only legitimate means to
+gain his ends.
+
+In the compromise which Clay effected, the South had the best of the
+bargain, and in view of it the culmination of the "irrepressible
+conflict" was delayed nearly thirty years. Calhoun himself maintained
+that the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was due to the resistance which his
+State had made, but he also felt that the Force Bill with which Congress
+had backed up the President was a standing menace, and, as usual with
+him, he looked forward to impending dangers. The Compromise Tariff,
+which reduced duties to twenty per cent in the main, and made provision
+for still further reduction, found great opponents in the Senate, and
+was regarded by Webster as anything but a protection bill; nor was
+Calhoun altogether satisfied with it. It was received with favor by the
+country generally, however, and South Carolina repealed her
+nullification ordinance.
+
+That subject being disposed of for the present, the attention of
+Congress and the country was now turned to the President's war on the
+United States Bank. As this most important matter has already been
+treated in the lecture on Jackson, I have only to show the course Mr.
+Calhoun took in reference to it. He was now fifty-three years old, in
+the prime of his life and the full vigor of his powers. In the Senate he
+had but two peers, Clay and Webster, and was not in sympathy with either
+of them, though not in decided hostility as he was toward Jackson. He
+was now neither Whig nor Democrat, but a South Carolinian, having in
+view the welfare of the South alone, of whose interests he was the
+recognized guardian. It was only when questions arose which did not
+directly bear on Southern interests that he was the candid and patriotic
+statesman, sometimes voting with one party and sometimes with another.
+He was opposed to the removal of deposits from the United States Bank,
+and yet was opposed to a renewal of its charter. His leading idea in
+reference to the matter was, the necessity of divorcing the government
+altogether from the banking system, as a dangerous money-power which
+might be perverted to political purposes. In pointing out the dangers,
+he spoke with great power and astuteness, for he was always on the
+look-out for breakers. He therefore argued against the removal of
+deposits as an unwarrantable assumption of power on the part of the
+President, which could not be constitutionally exercised; here he
+agreed with his great rivals, while he was more moderate than they in
+his language. He made war on measures rather than on men personally,
+regarding the latter as of temporary importance, of passing interest. So
+far as the removal of deposits seemed an arbitrary act on the part of
+the Executive, he severely denounced it, as done with a view to grasp
+unconstitutional power for party purposes, thus corrupting the country,
+and as a measure to get control of money. Said he: "With money we will
+get partisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is the maxim
+of our political pilferers." He regarded the measure as a part of the
+"spoils system" which marked Jackson's departure from the policy of his
+predecessors.
+
+Calhoun detested the system of making politics a game, since it would
+throw the government into the hands of political adventurers and mere
+machine-politicians. He was too lofty a man to encourage anything like
+this, and here we are compelled to do him honor. Whatever he said or did
+was in obedience to his convictions. He was above and beyond all deceit
+and trickery and personal selfishness. His contempt for political
+wire-pullers amounted almost to loathing. He was incapable of doing a
+mean thing. He might be wrong in his views, and hence might do evil
+instead of good, but he was honest. In his severe self-respect and cold
+dignity of character he resembled William Pitt. His integrity was
+peerless. He could neither be bought nor seduced from his course.
+Private considerations had no weight with him, except his aspiration for
+the presidency, and even that seems to have passed away when his
+disagreement with Jackson put him out of the Democratic race, and when
+the new crisis arose in Southern interests, to which he ever after
+devoted himself with entire self-abnegation.
+
+In moral character Calhoun was as reproachless as Washington. He neither
+drank to excess, nor gambled, nor violated the seventh commandment. He
+had no fellowship with either fools or knaves. He believed that the
+office of Senator was the highest to which Americans could ordinarily
+attain, and he gave dignity to it, and felt its responsibilities. He
+thought that only the best and most capable men should be elevated to
+that post. Nor would he seek it by unworthy ends. The office sought him,
+not he the office. It was this pure and exalted character which gave him
+such an ascendency at the South, as much as his marvellous logical
+powers and his devotion to Southern interests. His constituents believed
+in him and followed him, perhaps blindly. Therefore, when we consider
+what are generally acknowledged as his mistakes, we should bear in mind
+the palliating circumstances.
+
+Calhoun was the incarnation of Southern public opinion,--bigoted,
+narrow, prejudiced, but intense in its delusions and loyal to its
+dogmas. Hence he enslaved others as he was himself enslaved. He was
+alike the idol and the leader of his State, impossible to be dethroned,
+as Webster was with the people of Massachusetts until he misrepresented
+their convictions. The consistency of his career was marvellous,--not
+that he did not change some of his opinions, for there is no
+intellectual progress to a man who does not. How can a young man,
+however gifted, be infallible? But whatever the changes through which
+his mind passed, they did not result from self-interest or ambition, but
+were the result of more enlightened views and enlarged experience.
+Political wisdom is not a natural instinct, but a progressive growth,
+like that of Burke,--the profoundest of all the intellects of his
+generation.
+
+Calhoun made several great speeches in the Senate of the United States,
+besides those in reference to a banking system connected with the
+government, which, whether wise or erroneous, contained some important
+truths. But the logical deduction of them all may be summed up in one
+idea,--the supremacy of State rights in opposition to a central
+government. This, from the time when the diverging interests of the
+North and the South made him feel the dangers in "the unchecked will of
+a majority of the whole," was the dogma of his life, from which he
+never swerved, and which he pursued to all its legitimate conclusions.
+Whatever measure tended to the consolidation of central power, whether
+in reference to the encroachments of the Executive or the usurpations of
+Congress, he denounced with terrible earnestness and sometimes with
+great eloquence. This is the key to the significant portion of his
+political career.
+
+In his speech on the Force Bill, in 1834, he says:
+
+"If we now raise our eyes and direct them towards that once beautiful
+system, with all its various, separate, and independent parts blended
+into one harmonious whole, we must be struck with the mighty change! All
+have disappeared, gone,--absorbed, concentrated, and consolidated in
+this government, which is left alone in the midst of the desolation of
+the system, the sole and unrestricted representative of an absolute and
+despotic majority.... In the place of their admirably contrived system,
+the act proposed to be repealed has erected our great Consolidated
+Government. Can it be necessary for me to show what must be the
+inevitable consequences?... It was clearly foreseen and foretold on the
+formation of the Constitution what these consequences would be. All the
+calamities we have experienced, and those which are yet to come, are the
+result of the consolidating tendency of this government; and unless this
+tendency be arrested, all that has been foretold will certainly befall
+us,--even to the pouring out of the last vial of wrath, military
+despotism."
+
+That was what Mr. Calhoun feared,--that the consolidation of a central
+power would be fatal to the liberties of the country and the rights of
+the States, and would introduce a system of spoils and the reign of
+demagogues, all in subserviency to a mere military chieftain, utterly
+unfit to guide the nation in its complicated interests. But his gloomy
+predictions fortunately were not fulfilled, in spite of all the misrule
+and obstinacy of the man he intensely distrusted and disliked. The
+tendency has been to usurpations by Congress rather than by the
+Executive.
+
+It is impossible not to admire the lofty tone, free from personal
+animus, which is seen in all Calhoun's speeches. They may have been
+sophistical, but they appealed purely to the intellect of those whom he
+addressed, without the rhetoric of his great antagonists. His speeches
+are compact arguments, such as one would address to the Supreme Court on
+his side of the question.
+
+Thus far his speeches in the Senate had been in reference to economic
+theories and legislation antagonistic to the interests of the South, and
+the usurpations of executive power, which threatened directly the rights
+of independent States, and indirectly the liberties of the people and
+the political degradation of the nation; but now new issues arose from
+the agitation of the slavery question, and his fame chiefly rests on his
+persistent efforts to suppress this agitation, as logically leading to
+the dissolution of the Union and the destruction of the institution
+with which its prosperity was supposed to be identified.
+
+The early Abolitionists, as I remember them, were, as a body, of very
+little social or political influence. They were earnest, clear-headed,
+and uncompromising in denouncing slavery as a great moral evil, indeed
+as a sin, disgraceful to a free people, and hostile alike to morality
+and civilization. But in the general apathy as to an institution with
+which the Constitution did not meddle, and the general government could
+not interfere, except in districts and territories under its exclusive
+control, the Abolitionists were generally regarded as fanatical and
+mischievous. They had but few friends and supporters among the upper
+classes and none among politicians. The pulpit, the bar, the press, and
+the colleges were highly conservative, and did not like the popular
+agitation much better than the Southerners themselves. But the leaders
+of the antislavery movement persevered in their denunciations of
+slaveholders, and of all who sympathized with them; they held public
+meetings everywhere and gradually became fierce and irritating.
+
+It was the period of lyceum lectures, when all moral subjects were
+discussed before the people with fearlessness, and often with acrimony.
+Most of the popular lecturers were men of radical sympathies, and were
+inclined to view all evils on abstract principles as well as in their
+practical effects. Thus, the advocates of peace believed that war under
+all circumstances was wicked. The temperance reformers insisted that the
+use of alcoholic liquors in all cases was a sin. Learned professors in
+theological schools attempted to prove that the wines of Palestine were
+unfermented, and could not intoxicate. The radical Abolitionists, in
+like manner, asserted that it was wicked to hold a man in bondage under
+any form of government, or under any guarantee of the Constitution.
+
+At first they were contented to point out the moral evils of slavery,
+both on the master and the slave; but this did not provoke much
+opposition, since the evils were open and confessed, even at the South;
+only, it was regarded as none of their business, since the evils could
+not be remedied, and had always been lamented. That slavery was simply
+an evil, and generally acknowledged to be, both North and South, was
+taking rather tame ground, even as peace doctrines were unexciting when
+it was allowed that, if we must fight, we must. But there was some
+excitement in the questions whether it were allowable to fight at all,
+or drink wine at any time, or hold a slave under any circumstances. The
+lecturers must take stronger grounds if they wished to be heard or to
+excite interest. So they next unhesitatingly assumed the ground that war
+was a _malum per se_, and wine-drinking also, and all slave-holding,
+and a host of other things. Their discussions aroused the intellect, as
+well as appealed to the moral sense. Even "strong-minded" women
+fearlessly went into fierce discussions, and became intolerant.
+Gradually the whole North and West were aroused, not merely to the moral
+evils of slavery, which were admitted without discussion, but to the
+intolerable abomination of holding a slave under any conditions, as
+against reason, against conscience, and against humanity.
+
+The Southerners themselves felt that the evil was a great one, and made
+some attempt to remedy it by colonization societies. They would send
+free blacks to Liberia to Christianize and civilize the natives, sunk in
+the lowest abyss of misery and shame. Many were the Christian men and
+women at the South who pitied the hard condition under which their
+slaves were born, and desired to do all they could to ameliorate it.
+
+But when the Abolitionists announced that all slaveholding was a sin,
+and when public opinion at the North was evidently drifting to this
+doctrine, then the planters grew indignant and enraged. It became
+unpleasant for a Northern merchant or traveller to visit a Southern
+city, and equally unpleasant for a Southern student to enter a Northern
+college, or a planter to resort to a Northern watering-place. The
+common-sense of the planter was outraged when told that he was a sinner
+above all others. He was exasperated beyond measure when incendiary
+publications were transmitted through Southern mails. He did not believe
+that he was necessarily immoral because he retained an institution
+bequeathed to him by his ancestors, and recognized by the Constitution
+of the United States.
+
+Calhoun was the impersonation of Southern feelings as well as the
+representative of Southern interests. He intensely felt the indignity
+which the Abolitionists cast upon his native State, and upon its
+peculiar institution. And he was clear-headed enough to see that if
+public opinion settled down into the conviction that slavery was a sin
+as well as an inherited evil, the North and South could not long live
+together in harmony and peace. He saw that any institution would be
+endangered with the verdict of the civilized world against it. He knew
+that public opinion was an amazing power, which might be defied, but not
+successfully resisted. He saw no way to stop the continually increasing
+attacks of the antislavery agitators except by adopting an entirely new
+position,--a position which should unite all the slaveholding States in
+the strongest ties of interest.
+
+Accordingly he declared, as the leader of Southern opinions and
+interests, that slavery was neither an evil nor a sin, but a positive
+good and blessing, supported even by the Bible as well as by the
+Constitution, In assuming these premises he may have argued logically,
+but he lost the admiration he had gained by twenty years' services in
+the national legislature. His premises were wrong, and his arguments
+would necessarily be sophistical and fall to the ground. He stepped down
+from the lofty pedestal he had hitherto occupied, to become not merely a
+partisan, but an unscrupulous politician. He had a right to defend his
+beloved institutions as the leader of interests intrusted to him to
+guard. His fault was not in being a partisan, for most politicians are
+party men; it was in advancing a falsehood as the basis of his
+arguments. But, if he had stultified his own magnificent intellect, he
+could not impose on the convictions of mankind. From the time he assumed
+a ground utterly untenable, whatever were his motives or real
+convictions, his general influence waned. His arguments did not
+convince, since they were deductions from wrong premises, and premises
+which shocked and insulted the reason.
+
+Calhoun now became a man of one idea, and that a false one. He was a
+gigantic crank,--an arch-Jesuit, indifferent to means so long as he
+could bring about his end; and he became not merely a casuist, but a
+dictatorial and arrogant politician. He defied that patriotic burst of
+public opinion which had compelled him to change his ground, that
+mighty wave of thought, no more to be resisted than a storm upon the
+ocean, and which he saw would gradually sweep away his cherished
+institution unless his constituents and the whole South should be made
+to feel that their cause was right and just; that slavery had not only
+materially enriched the Southern States, but had converted fetich
+idolaters to the true worship of God, and widened the domain of
+civilization. The planters, one and all, responded to this sophistical
+and seductive plea, and said to one another, "Now we can defy the
+universe on moral grounds. We stand united,--what care we for the
+ravings of fanatics outside our borders, so long as our institution is a
+blessing to us, planted on the rock of Christianity, and endorsed by the
+best men among us!" The theologians took up the cause, both North and
+South, and made their pulpits ring with appeals to Scripture. "Were
+not," they said, "the negroes descendants of Ham, and had not these
+descendants been cursed by the Almighty, and given over to the control
+of the children of Shem and Japhet,--not, indeed, to be trodden down
+like beasts, but to be elevated and softened by them, and made useful in
+the toils which white men could not endure?" Ultra-Calvinists united
+with politicians in building up a public sentiment in favor of slavery
+as the best possible condition for the ignorant, sensuous, and
+superstitious races who, when put under the training and guardianship
+of a civilized and Christian people, had escaped the harder lot which
+their fathers endured in the deserts and the swamps of Africa.
+
+The agitation at the North had been gradually but constantly increasing.
+In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison started "The Liberator;" in 1832 the New
+England Antislavery Society was founded in Boston; in 1833 New York had
+a corresponding society, and Joshua Leavitt established "The
+Emancipator." Books, tracts, and other publications began to be
+circulated. By lectures, newspapers, meetings, and all manner of means
+the propagandism was carried on. On the other hand, the most violent
+opposition had been manifested throughout the North to these so-called
+"fanatics." No language was too opprobrious to apply to them. The
+churches and ministry were either dumb on the subject, or defended
+slavery from the Scriptures. Mobs broke up antislavery meetings, and in
+some cases proceeded even to the extreme of attack and murder,--as in
+the case of Lovejoy of Illinois. The approach of the political campaign
+of 1836, when Van Buren was running as the successor of Jackson,
+involved the Democratic party as the ally of the South for political
+purposes, and "Harmony and Union" were the offsets to the cry for
+"Emancipation."
+
+By 1835 the excitement was at its height, and especially along the line
+of the moral and religious argumentation, where the proslavery men met
+talk with talk. What could the Abolitionists do now with their Northern
+societies to show that slavery was a wrong and a sin? Their weapons fell
+harmless on the bucklers of warriors who supposed themselves fighting
+under the protection of Almighty power in order to elevate and
+Christianize a doomed race. Victory seemed to be snatched from victors,
+and in the moral contest the Southern planters and their Northern
+supporters swelled the air with triumphant shouts. They were impregnable
+in their new defences, since they claimed to be in the right. Both
+parties had now alike appealed to reason and Scripture, and where were
+the judges who could settle conflicting opinions? The Abolitionists,
+somewhat discouraged, but undaunted, then changed their mode of attack.
+They said, "We will waive the moral question, for we talk to men without
+conscience, and we will instead make it a political one. We will appeal
+to majorities. We will attack the hostile forces in a citadel which they
+cannot hold. The District of Columbia belongs to Congress. Congress can
+abolish slavery if it chooses in its own territory. Having possession of
+this great fortress, we can extend our political warfare to the vast and
+indefinite West, and, at least, prevent the further extension of
+slave-power. We will trust to time and circumstance and truth to do the
+rest. We will petition Congress itself."
+
+And from 1835 onward petitions rolled into both Houses from all parts of
+the North and West to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, which
+Congress could constitutionally do. The venerable and enlightened John
+Quincy Adams headed the group of petitioners in the House of
+representatives. There were now two thousand antislavery societies in
+the United States. In 1837 three hundred thousand persons petitioned for
+the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The legislatures
+of Massachusetts and Vermont had gone so far as to censure Congress for
+its inaction and indifference to the rights of humanity.
+
+But it was in January, 1836, that John C. Calhoun arose in his wrath and
+denied the right of petition. The indignant North responded to such an
+assumption in flaming words. "What," said the leaders of public opinion,
+"cannot the lowest subjects of the Czar or the Shah appeal to ultimate
+authority? Has there ever been an empire so despotic as to deny so
+obvious a right? Did not Caesar and Cyrus, Louis and Napoleon receive
+petitions? Shall an enlightened Congress reject the prayers of the most
+powerful of their constituents, and to remove an evil which people
+generally regard as an outrage, and all people as a misfortune?"
+
+"We will not allow the reception of petitions at all," said the
+Southern leaders, "for they will lead to discussion on a forbidden
+subject. They are only an entrance wedge to disrupt the Union. The
+Constitution has guaranteed to us exclusively the preservation of an
+institution on which our welfare rests. You usurp a privilege which you
+call a right. Your demands are dangerous to the peace of the Union, and
+are preposterous. You violate unwritten law. You seek to do what the
+founders of our republic never dreamed of. When two of the States ceded
+their own slave territory to the central government, it was with the
+understanding that slavery should remain as it was in the district we
+owned and controlled. You cannot lawfully even discuss the matter. It is
+none of your concern. It is an institution which was the basis of that
+great compromise without which there never could have been a united
+nation,--only a league of sovereign States. We have the same right to
+exclude the discussion of this question from these halls as from the
+capitals of our respective States. The right of petition on such a
+subject is tantamount to consideration and discussion, which would be
+unlawful interference with our greatest institution, leading
+legitimately and logically to disunion and war. Is it right, is it
+generous, is it patriotic to drive us to such an alternative? We only
+ask to be let alone. You assail a sacred ark where dwell the seraphim
+and cherubim of our liberties, of our honor, of our interests, of our
+loyalty itself. To this we never will consent."
+
+Mr. Clay then came forward in Congress as an advocate for considering
+the question of petitions. He was for free argument on the subject. He
+admitted that the Abolitionists were dangerous, but he could not shut
+his eyes to an indisputable right. So he went half-way, as was his
+custom, pleasing neither party, and alienating friends; but at the same
+time with great tact laying out a middle ground where the opposing
+parties could still stand together without open conflict. "I am no
+friend," said he, "to slavery. The Searcher of hearts knows that every
+pulsation of mine beats high and strong in the cause of civil liberty.
+Wherever it is practicable and safe I desire to see every portion of the
+human family in the enjoyment of it; but I prefer the liberty of my own
+country to that of other people. The liberty of the descendants of
+Africa in the United States is incompatible with the liberty and safety
+of the European descendants." Such were the sentiments of the leading
+classes of the North, not yet educated up to the doctrines which
+afterwards prevailed. But the sentiments declared by Clay lost him the
+presidency. His political sins, like those of Webster, were sins of
+omission rather than of commission. Neither of them saw that the little
+cloud in the horizon would soon cover the heavens, and pour down a
+deluge to sweep away abominations worse than Ahab ever dreamed of. Clay
+did not go far enough to please the rising party. He did not see the
+power or sustain the rightful exercise of this new moral force, but he
+did argue on grounds of political expediency for the citizens' right of
+petition,--a right conceded even to the subjects of unlimited despotism.
+An Ahasuerus could throw petitions into the mire, without reading, but
+it was customary to accept them.
+
+The result was a decision on the part of Congress to admit the
+petitions, but to pay no further attention to them.
+
+The Abolitionists, however, had resorted to less scrupulous measures.
+They sent incendiary matter through the mails, not with the object of
+inciting the slaves to rebellion,--this was hopeless,--but with the
+design of aiding their escape from bondage, and perchance of influencing
+traitors in the Southern camp. To this new attack Calhoun responded with
+dignity and with logic. And we cannot reasonably blame him for repelling
+it. The Southern cities had as good a right to exclude inflammatory
+pamphlets as New York or Boston has to prevent the introduction of the
+cholera. It was the instinct of self-preservation; whatever may be said
+of their favorite institution on ethical grounds, they had the legal
+right to protect it from incendiary matter.
+
+But what was incendiary matter? Who should determine that point?
+President Jackson in 1835 had recommended Congress to pass a law
+prohibiting under severe penalties the circulation in the Southern
+States, through the mails, of incendiary publications. But this did not
+satisfy the Southern dictator. He denied the right of Congress to
+determine what publications should be or should not be excluded. He
+maintained that this was a matter for the States alone to decide. He
+would not trust postmasters, for they were officers of the United States
+government. It was not for them to be inquisitors, nor for the Federal
+government to interfere, even for the protection of a State institution,
+with its own judgment. He proposed instead a law forbidding Federal
+postmasters to deliver publications prohibited by the laws of a State,
+Territory, or District. In this, as in all other controverted questions,
+Calhoun found means to argue for the supremacy of the State and the
+subordination of the Union. His bill did not pass, but the force of his
+argument went forth into the land.
+
+How far antislavery documents had influence on the slaves themselves, it
+is difficult to say. They could neither read nor write; but it is
+remarkable that from this period a large number of slaves made their
+escape from the South and fled to the North, protected by
+philanthropists, Abolitionists, and kind-hearted-people generally.
+
+How they contrived to travel a thousand miles without money, without
+suitable clothing, pursued by blood-hounds and hell-hounds, hiding in
+the daytime in swamps, morasses, and forests, walking by night in
+darkness and gloom, until passed by friendly hands through "underground
+railroads" until they reached Canada, is a mystery. But these efforts to
+escape from their hard and cruel masters further intensified the
+exasperation of the South.
+
+It was in 1836 that Michigan and Arkansas applied for admission as
+States into the Union,--one free and the other with slavery. Discussions
+on some technicalities concerning the conditions of Michigan's admission
+gave Mr. Calhoun a chance for more argumentation about the sovereignty
+of a State, which, considering the fact that Michigan had not then been
+admitted but was awaiting the permission of Congress _to be_ a State,
+showed the weakness of his logic in the falsity of his premise. Besides
+Arkansas, the slave-power also gained access to a strip of free
+territory north of the compromise line of 36 deg.30' and the Missouri
+River. In 1837 John Quincy Adams, "the old man eloquent" of the House
+of Representatives, narrowly escaped censure for introducing a petition
+from slaves in the District of Columbia. In 1838 Calhoun introduced
+resolutions declaring that petitions relative to slavery in the District
+were "a direct and dangerous attack on the institutions of all the
+slave-holding States." In 1839 Henry Clay offered a petition for the
+repression of all agitation respecting slavery in the District. Calhoun
+saw and constantly denounced the danger. He knew the power of public
+opinion, and saw the rising tide. Conservatism heeded the warning, and
+the opposition to agitation intensified all over the South and the
+North; but to no avail. New societies were formed; new papers were
+established; religious bodies began to take position for and against the
+agitation; the Maine legislature passed in the lower House, and almost
+in the upper, resolutions denouncing slavery in the District; while the
+Abolitionists labored incessantly and vigorously to "Blow the trumpet;
+cry aloud and spare not; show my people their sins," as to slavery.
+
+In 1840 Van Buren and Harrison, the Democratic and Whig candidates for
+the presidency were both in the hands of the slave-power; and Tyler, who
+as Vice-President succeeded to the Executive chair on Harrison's death,
+was a Virginian slaveholder. The ruling classes and politicians all over
+the land were violently opposed to the antislavery cause, and every test
+of strength gave new securities and pledges to the Southern elements and
+their Northern sympathizers.
+
+Notwithstanding the frequent triumphs of the South, aided by Whigs and
+Democrats from the North, who played into the hands of Southern
+politicians, Mr. Calhoun was not entirely at rest in his mind. He saw
+with alarm the increasing immigration into the Western States, which
+threatened to disturb the balance of power which the South had ever
+held; and with the aid of Southern leaders he now devised a new and bold
+scheme, which was to annex Texas to the United States and thus enlarge
+enormously the area of slavery. It was probably his design, not so much
+to strengthen the slaveholding interests of South Carolina, as to
+increase the political power of the South. By the addition of new slave
+States he could hope for more favorable legislation in Congress. The
+arch-conspirator--the haughty and defiant dictator--would not only
+exclude Congress from all legislation over its own territory in the
+national District, but he now would make Congress bolster up his cause.
+He could calculate on a "solid South," and also upon the aid of the
+leaders of the political parties at the North,--"Northern men with
+Southern principles,"--who were strangely indifferent to the extension
+of slavery.
+
+The Abolitionists were indeed now a power, but the antislavery sentiment
+had not reached its culmination, although it had become politically
+organized. For the campaign of 1840, seeing the futility of petition
+and the folly of expecting action on issues foreign to those on which
+Congressmen had been elected, the Abolitionists boldly called a National
+Convention, in which six States were represented, and nominated
+candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency. It was a small and
+despised beginning, but it was the germ of a mighty growth. From that
+time the Liberty Party began to hold State and National Conventions, and
+to vote directly on the question of representatives. They did not for
+years elect anybody, but they defeated many an ultra pro-slavery man,
+and their influence began to be felt. In 1841 Joshua R. Giddings, from
+Ohio, and in 1843 John P. Hale from New Hampshire and Hannibal Hamlin
+from Maine brought in fresh Northern air and confronted the slave-power
+in Congress, in alliance with grand old John Quincy Adams,--whose last
+years were his best years, and have illumined his name.
+
+Most of the antislavery men were still denounced as fanatics, meddling
+with what was none of their business. In 1843 they had not enrolled in
+their ranks the most influential men in the community. Ministers,
+professors, lawyers, and merchants generally still held aloof from the
+controversy, and were either hostile or indifferent to it. So, with the
+aid of the "Dough-Faces," as they were stigmatized by the progressive
+party, Calhoun was confident of success in the Texan scheme.
+
+At that time many adventurers had settled in Texas, which was then a
+province of Mexico, and had carried with them their slaves. In 1820
+Moses Austin, a Connecticut man, long resident in Missouri, obtained
+large grants of land in Texas from the Mexican government, and his son
+Stephen carried out after the father's death a scheme of colonization of
+some three hundred families from Missouri and Louisiana. They were a
+rough and lawless population, but self-reliant and enterprising. They
+increased rapidly, until, in 1833, being twenty thousand in number, they
+tried to form a State government under Mexico; and, this being denied
+them, declared their independence and made revolution. They were headed
+by Sam Houston, who had fought under General Jackson, and had been
+Governor of Tennessee. In 1836 the independence of Texas was proclaimed.
+Soon after followed the battle of San Jacinto, in which Santa Anna, the
+President of the Mexican republic and the commander of the Mexican
+forces, was taken prisoner.
+
+Immediately after this battle Mr. Calhoun tried to have it announced as
+the policy of the government to recognize the independence of Texas.
+When Tyler became President, by the death of Harrison, although elected
+by Whig votes he entered heart and soul into the schemes of Calhoun,
+who, to forward them, left the Senate, and became Secretary of State, as
+successor to Mr. Upshur. In 1843 it became apparent that Texas would be
+annexed to the United States. In that same year Iowa and Florida--one
+free, the other slave--were admitted to the Union.
+
+The Liberty party beheld the proposed annexation of Texas with alarm,
+and sturdily opposed it as far as they could through their friends in
+Congress, predicting that it would be tantamount to a war with Mexico.
+The Mexican minister declared the same result. But "Texas or Disunion!"
+became the rallying cry of the South. The election of Polk, the
+annexationist Democrat, in 1844, was seized upon as a "popular mandate"
+for annexation, although had not the Liberty Party, who like the Whigs
+were anti-annexationists, divided the vote in New York State, Clay would
+have been elected. The matter was hurried through Congress; the Northern
+Democrats made no serious opposition, since they saw in this annexation
+a vast accession of territory around the Gulf of Mexico, of indefinite
+extent. Thus, Texas, on March 1, 1845, was offered annexation by a Joint
+Resolution of the Senate and House of Representatives, in the face of
+protests from the wisest men of the country, and in spite of certain
+hostilities with Mexico. On the following fourth of July Texas,
+accepting annexation, was admitted to the Union as a slave State, to the
+dismay of Channing, of Garrison, of Phillips, of Sumner, of Adams, and
+of the whole antislavery party, now aroused to the necessity of more
+united effort, in view of this great victory to the South; for it was
+provided that at any time, by the consent of its own citizens, Texas
+might be divided into four States, whenever its population should be
+large enough; its territory was four times as large as France.
+
+The Democratic President Polk took office in March, 1845; the Mexican
+War, beginning in May, 1846, was fought to a successful close in a year
+and five months, ending September, 1847; the fertile territory of
+Oregon, purchased from Spain, had been peaceably occupied by rapid
+immigration and by settlement of disputed boundaries with Great Britain;
+California--a Mexican province--had been secured to the American
+settlers of its lovely hills and valleys by the prompt daring of Capt.
+John C. Fremont; and the result of the war was the formal cession to the
+United States by Mexico of the territories of California and New Mexico,
+and recognition of the annexation and statehood of Texas.
+
+Both the North and the South had thus gained large possibilities, and at
+the North the spirit of enterprise and the clear perception of the
+economic value of free labor as against slave labor were working
+mightily to help men see the moral arguments of the antislavery people.
+The division of interest was becoming plain; the forces of good sense
+and the principles of liberty were consolidating the North against
+farther extension of the slave-power. The perils foreseen by Calhoun,
+which he had striven to avoid by repression of all political discussion
+of slavery, were nigh at hand. The politicians of the North, too,
+scented the change, and began to range themselves with their section;
+and, while there was a long struggle yet ahead before the issues would
+be made up, to the eye of faith the end was already in sight, and the
+"Free-Soilers" now redoubled their efforts both in discussion and in
+political action.
+
+Thus far, most of the political victories had been with the slave-power,
+and the South became correspondently arrogant and defiant. The war of
+ideas against Southern interests now raged with ominous and increasing
+force in all the Northern States. Public opinion became more and more
+inflamed. Passions became excited in cities and towns and villages which
+had been dormant since the Constitution had been adopted. The decree of
+the North went forth that there should be no more accession of slave
+territory; and, more than this, the population spread with unexampled
+rapidity toward the Pacific Ocean in consequence of the discovery of
+gold in California, in 1848, and attracted by the fertile soil of
+Oregon. Immigrants from all nations came to seek their fortunes in
+territories north of 36 deg.30'.
+
+What Calhoun had anticipated in 1836, when he cast his eyes on Texas,
+did not take place. Slave territory indeed was increased, but free
+territory increased still more rapidly. The North was becoming richer
+and richer, and the South scarcely held its own. The balance which he
+thought would be in favor of the South, he now saw inclining to the
+North. Northern States became more numerous than Southern ones, and more
+populous, more wealthy, and more intelligent. The political power of the
+Union, when Mr. Polk closed his inglorious administration, was
+perceptibly with the North, and not political power only, but moral
+power. The great West was the soil of freemen.
+
+But the haughty and defiant spirit of Calhoun was not broken. He
+prophesied woes. He became sad and dejected, but more and more
+uncompromising, more and more dictatorial. He would not yield. "If we
+yield an inch," said he, "we are lost." The slightest concession, in his
+eyes, would be fatal. When he declared his nullification doctrines it
+was because he thought that State rights were invaded by hostile
+tariffs. But after the Mexican War slavery was to him a matter of life
+and death. He made many excellent and powerful speeches, which tasked
+the intellect of Webster to refute; but, whatever the subject, it was
+seen only through his Southern spectacles, and argued from partisan
+grounds and with partisan zeal. Everything he uttered was with a view of
+consolidating the South, and preparing it for disunion and secession, as
+the only way to preserve the beloved institution. In his eyes, slavery
+and the Union could not co-exist. This he saw plainly, but if either
+must perish it should be the Union; and this doctrine he so constantly
+reiterated that he won over to it nearly the entire South. But in
+consolidating the South, he also consolidated the North. He forced on
+the issue, believing that even yet the South, united with Northern
+allies, was the stronger, and that it could establish its independence
+on a slavery basis. The Union was no union at all, and its Constitution
+was a worthless parchment. "He proposed a convention of the Southern
+States which should agree that, until full justice was rendered to the
+South, all the Southern ports should be closed to the sea-going vessels
+of the North." He arrogantly would deprive the North even of its
+constitutional rights in reference to the exclusion of slavery from the
+Territories. In no way should the North meddle with the slavery
+question, on penalty of secession; and the sooner this was understood
+the better. "We are," said he, "relatively stronger than we shall be
+hereafter, politically and morally."
+
+The great fight arose in 1849. The people in the Northwestern
+territories had been encouraged to form governments, and had already
+tasted the delights of self-rule. President Polk had recommended the
+extension of the old Missouri Compromise line of 36 deg. 30' westward to
+the Pacific, leaving the territory south of that open to slavery. This
+would divide California, and was opposed by all parties. Calhoun now
+went so far as to claim the constitutional right to take slaves into
+any Territory, while Webster argued the power of Congress to rule the
+Territories until they should become States. So excited was the
+discussion that a convention of Southern States was held to frame a
+separate government for the "United States South." The threat of
+secession was ever their most potent argument. The contest in Congress
+centred upon the admission of California as a State and the condition
+of slavery in the Territories of Utah and New Mexico.
+
+A great crisis had now arrived. Clay, "the great pacificator," once more
+stepped into the arena with a new compromise. To provide for concessions
+on either side, he proposed the admission of California (whose new
+constitution prohibited slavery); the organization of Utah and New
+Mexico as Territories without mention of slavery (leaving it to the
+people); the arrangement of the boundary of Texas; the abolition of
+slavery in the District of Columbia; and the enactment of a more
+stringent fugitive-slave law, commanding the assistance of people in the
+free States to capture runaways, when summoned by the authorities.
+
+The general excitement over the discussion of this bill will never be
+forgotten by those who witnessed it. The South raged, and the North
+blazed with indignation,--especially over the Fugitive-Slave Bill.
+
+Meanwhile Calhoun was dying. His figure was bent, his voice was feeble,
+his face was haggard, but his superb intellect still retained its vigor
+to the last. Among the multitude of ringing appeals to the reason and
+moral sense of the North was a newspaper article from _The Independent_
+of New York, by a young Congregational minister, Henry Ward Beecher. It
+was entitled "Shall we Compromise?" and made clear and plain the issue
+before the people: "Slavery is right; Slavery is wrong: Slavery shall
+live; Slavery shall die: are these conflicts to be settled by any mode
+of parcelling out certain Territories?" This article was read to Calhoun
+upon his dying bed. "Who wrote that?" he asked. The name was given him.
+"That man understands the thing. He has gone to the bottom of it. He
+will be heard from again." It was what the great Southerner had
+foreseen and foretold from the first.
+
+The compromise bill at last became a law. It averted the final outbreak
+for ten years longer, but contained elements that were to be potent
+factors in insuring the final crisis.
+
+With the burden of the whole South upon his shoulders Calhoun tottered
+to the grave a most unhappy man, for though he saw the "irrepressible
+conflict" as clearly as Seward had done, he also saw that the South,
+even if successful, as he hoped, must go through a sea of tribulation.
+When he was no longer able to address the Senate in person he still
+waged the battle. His last great speech was read to the Senate by Mr.
+Mason of Virginia, on the 4th of March, 1850. It was not bitter, nor
+acrimonious; it was a doleful lament that the Southern States could not
+long remain in the Union with any dignity, now that the equilibrium was
+destroyed. He felt that he had failed, but also that he had done his
+duty; and this was his only consolation in view of approaching
+disasters. On the last day of March he died, leaving behind him his
+principles, so full of danger and sophistries, but at the same time an
+unsullied name, and the memory of earlier public services and of private
+virtues which had secured to him the respect of all who knew him.
+
+In reviewing the career of Mr. Calhoun it would seem that the great
+error and mistake of his life was his disloyalty to the Union. When he
+advocated State rights as paramount over those of the general government
+he merely took the ground which was discussed over and over again at the
+formation of the Constitution, and which resulted in a compromise that,
+with control over matters of interest common to all States, the central
+government should have no power over the institution of slavery, which
+was a domestic affair in the Southern States. Only these States, it was
+settled, had supreme control over their own "peculiar institution." As a
+politician, representing Southern interests, he cannot be severely
+condemned for his fear and anger over the discussion of the slavery
+question, which, politically considered, was out of the range of
+Congressional legislation or popular agitation. But when he advocated or
+threatened the secession of the Southern States from the Union, unless
+the slavery question was let alone entirely both by Congress and the
+Northern States, he was unpatriotic, false in his allegiance, and
+unconstitutional in his utterances. A State has a right to enter the
+Union or not, remaining of course, in either case, United States
+territory, over which Congress has legislative power. But when once it
+has entered into the Union, it must remain there as a part of the whole.
+Otherwise the States would be a mere league, as in the Revolutionary
+times.
+
+Mr. Calhoun had a right to bring the whole pressure of the slave States
+on a congressional vote on any question. He could say, as the Irish
+members of Parliament say, "Unless you do this or that we will obstruct
+the wheels of government, and thus compel the consideration of our
+grievances, so long as we hold the balance of power between contending
+parties." But it is quite another thing for the Irish legislators to
+say, "Unless you do this or that, we will secede from the Union," which
+Ireland could not do without war and revolution. Mr. Calhoun, in his
+onesidedness, entirely overlooked the fact that the discontented States
+could not secede without a terrible war; for if there is one sentiment
+dear to the American people, it is the preservation of the Union, and
+for it they will make any sacrifice.
+
+And the same may be said in reference to Calhoun's nullification
+doctrines. He would, if he could, have taken his State out of the Union,
+because he and the South did not like the tariff. He had the right, as a
+Senator in Congress, to bring all the influence he could command to
+compel Congress to modify the tariff, or abolish it altogether. And with
+this he ought to have been contented. With a solid South and a divided
+North, he could have compelled a favorable compromise, or prevented any
+legislation at all. It is legitimate legislation for members of Congress
+to maintain their local and sectional interest at any cost, short of
+disunion; only, it may be neither wise nor patriotic, since men who are
+supposed to be statesmen would by so doing acknowledge themselves to be
+mere politicians, bound hand and foot in subjection to selfish
+constituents, and indifferent to the general good.
+
+Mr. Calhoun became blind to general interests in his zeal to perpetuate
+slavery, or advance whatever would be desirable to the South,
+indifferent to the rest of the country; and thus he was a mere partisan,
+narrow and local. What made him so powerful and popular at the South
+equally made him to be feared and distrusted at the North. He was a
+firebrand, infinitely more dangerous and incendiary than any
+Abolitionist whom he denounced. Calhoun's congressional career was the
+opposite of that of Henry Clay, who was more patriotic and more of a
+statesman, for he always professed allegiance to the whole Union, and
+did all he could to maintain it. His whole soul was devoted to tariffs
+and internal improvements, but he would yield important points to
+produce harmony and ward off dangers. Calhoun, with his
+State-sovereignty doctrines, his partisanship, and his unscrupulous
+defiance of the Constitution, forfeited his place among great statesmen,
+and lost the esteem and confidence of a majority of his countrymen,
+except so far as his abilities and his unsullied private life entitled
+him to admiration.
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+I know of no abler and more candid life of Calhoun than that of Von
+Holst. Although deficient in incidents, it is no small contribution to
+American literature, apparently drawn from a careful study of the
+speeches of the great Nullifier. If the author had had more material to
+work upon, he would probably have made a more popular work, such as Carl
+Schurz has written of Henry Clay, and Henry Cabot Lodge of Daniel
+Webster and Alexander Hamilton. In connection read the biographies of
+Clay, Webster, and Jackson; see Wilson's History of the Rise and Fall of
+the Slave Power, also Benton's Thirty Years of Congressional History,
+and Calhoun's Speeches.
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
+
+
+1809-1865.
+
+CIVIL WAR: PRESERVATION OF THE UNION.
+
+In the year 1830, or thereabouts, a traveller on the frontier
+settlements of Illinois (if a traveller was ever known in those dreary
+regions) might have seen a tall, gaunt, awkward, homely, sad-looking
+young man of twenty-one, clothed in a suit of brown jean dyed with
+walnut-bark, hard at work near a log cabin on the banks of the river
+Sangamon,--a small stream emptying into the Illinois River. The man was
+splitting rails, which he furnished to a poor woman in exchange for some
+homespun cloth to make a pair of trousers, at the rate of four hundred
+rails per yard. His father, one of the most shiftless of the poor whites
+of Kentucky, a carpenter by trade, had migrated to Indiana, and, after a
+short residence, had sought another home on a bluff near the Sangamon
+River, where he had cleared, with the assistance of his son, about
+fifteen acres of land. From this he gained a miserable and
+precarious living.
+
+The young rail-splitter had also a knack of slaughtering hogs, for
+which he received thirty cents a day. Physically he had extraordinary
+strength, and no one could beat him in wrestling and other athletic
+exercises. Mentally, he was bright, inquiring, and not wholly
+illiterate. He had learned, during his various peregrinations, to read,
+write, and cipher. He was reliable and honest, and had in 1828 been
+employed, when his father lived in Indiana, by a Mr. Gentry, to
+accompany his son to New Orleans, with a flat-boat of produce, which he
+sold successfully.
+
+It is not my object to dwell on the early life of Abraham Lincoln. It
+has been made familiar by every historian who has written about him, in
+accordance with the natural curiosity to know the beginnings of
+illustrious men; and the more humble, the more interesting these are to
+most people. It is quite enough to say that no man in the United States
+ever reached eminence from a more obscure origin.
+
+Rail-splitting did not achieve the results to which the ambition of
+young Lincoln aspired, so he contrived to go into the grocery business;
+but in this he was unsuccessful, owing to an inherent deficiency in
+business habits and aptitude. He was, however, gifted with shrewd sense,
+a quick sense of humor with keen wit, and a marked steadiness of
+character, which gained him both friends and popularity in the miserable
+little community where he lived; and in 1832 he was elected captain of
+a military company to fight Indians in the Black Hawk War. There is no
+evidence that he ever saw the enemy. He probably would have fought well
+had he been so fortunate as to encounter the foe; for he was cool,
+fearless, strong, agile, and active without rashness. In 1833 he was
+made postmaster of a small village; but the office paid nothing, and his
+principal profit from it was the opportunity to read newspapers and some
+magazine trash. He was still very poor, and was surrounded with rough
+people who lived chiefly on corn bread and salt pork, who slept in
+cabins without windows, and who drank whiskey to excess, yet who were
+more intelligent than they seemed.
+
+Such was Abraham Lincoln at the age of twenty-four,--obscure, unknown,
+poverty-stricken, and without a calling. Suppose at that time some
+supernatural being had appeared to him in a dream, and announced that he
+would some day be President of the United States; and not merely this,
+but that he would rule the nation in a great crisis, and save it from
+dismemberment and anarchy by force of wisdom and character, and leave
+behind him when he died a fame second only to that of Washington! Would
+he not have felt, on awaking from his dream, pretty much as did the aged
+patriarch whose name he bore, when the angel of the Lord assured him
+that he would be the father of many nations, that his seed would
+outnumber the sands of the sea, and that through him all humanity would
+be blessed from generation to generation? Would he not have felt as the
+stripling David, among the sheep and the goats of his father's flocks,
+when the prophet Samuel announced to him that he should be king over
+Israel, and rule with such success and splendor that the greatness and
+prosperity of the Jewish nation would be forever dated from his
+matchless reign?
+
+The obscure postmaster, without a dollar in his pocket, and carrying the
+mail in his hat, had indeed no intimation of his future elevation: but
+his career was just as mysterious as that of David, and an old-fashioned
+religious man would say that it was equally providential; for of all the
+leading men of this great nation it would seem that he turned out to be
+the fittest for the work assigned to him,--chosen, not because he was
+learned or cultivated or experienced or famous, or even interesting, but
+because his steps were so ordered that he fell into the paths which
+naturally led to his great position, although no genius could have
+foreseen the events which logically controlled the result. If Lincoln
+had not been gifted with innate greatness, though unknown to himself and
+all the world, to be developed as occasions should arise, no fortunate
+circumstances could have produced so extraordinary a career. If Lincoln
+had not the germs of greatness in him,--certain qualities which were
+necessary for the guidance of a nation in an emergency,--to be developed
+subsequently as the need came, then his career is utterly insoluble
+according to any known laws of human success; and when history cannot
+solve the mysteries of human success,--in other words, "justify the ways
+of Providence to man,"--then it loses half its charm, and more than half
+its moral force. It ceases to be the great teacher which all nations
+claim it to be.
+
+However obscure the birth of Lincoln, and untoward as were all the
+circumstances which environed him, he was doubtless born ambitious, that
+is, with a strong and unceasing desire to "better his condition." That
+at the age of twenty-four he ever dreamed of reaching an exalted
+position is improbable. But when he saw the ascendency that his wit and
+character had gained for him among rude and uncultivated settlers on the
+borders of civilization, then, being a born leader of men, as Jackson
+was, it was perfectly natural that he should aspire to be a politician.
+Politics ever have been the passion of Western men with more than
+average ability, and it required but little learning and culture under
+the sovereignty of "squatters" to become a member of the State
+legislature, especially in the border States, where population was
+sparse, and the people mostly poor and ignorant.
+
+Hence, "smart" young men, in rude villages, early learned to make
+speeches in social and political meetings. Every village had its
+favorite stump orator, who knew all the affairs of the nation, and a
+little more, and who, with windy declamation, amused and delighted his
+rustic hearers. Lincoln was one of these. There was never a time, even
+in his early career, when he could not make a speech in which there was
+more wit than knowledge; although as he increased in knowledge he also
+grew in wisdom, and his good sense, with his habit of patient thinking,
+gave him the power of clear and convincing statement. Moreover, at
+twenty-four, he was already tolerably intelligent, and had devoured all
+the books he could lay his hand upon. Indeed, it was to the reading of
+books that Lincoln, like Henry Clay, owed pretty much all his schooling.
+Beginning with Weems's "Life of Washington" when a mere lad, he
+perseveringly read, through all his fortunes, all manner of books,--not
+only during leisure hours by day, when tending mill or store, but for
+long months by the light of pine shavings from the cooper's shop at
+night, and in later times when traversing the country in his various
+callings. And his persistent reading gave him new ideas and
+broader views.
+
+With his growing thoughts his aspirations grew. So, like others, he took
+the stump, and as early as 1832 offered himself a candidate for the
+State legislature. His maiden speech in an obscure village is thus
+reported: "Fellow citizens, I am humble Abraham Lincoln. My politics are
+short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a National
+Bank, of internal improvements, and a high protective tariff. These are
+my sentiments. If elected, I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all
+the same."
+
+Lincoln was not elected, although supported by the citizens of New
+Salem, where he lived, and to whom he had promised the improvement of
+the Sangamon River. Disappointed, he went into the grocery business once
+again, and again failed, partly because he had no capital, and partly
+because he had no business talents in that line; although from his known
+integrity he was able to raise what money he needed. He then set about
+the study of the law, as a step to political success, read books, and
+the occasional newspapers, told stories, and kept his soul in
+patience,--which was easier to him than to keep his body in
+decent clothes.
+
+It was necessary for him to do something for a living while he studied
+law, since the grocery business had failed, and hence he became an
+assistant to John Calhoun, the county surveyor, who was overburdened
+with work. Just as he had patiently worked through an English Grammar,
+to enable him to speak correctly, he took up a work on surveying and
+prepared himself for his new employment in six weeks. He was soon
+enabled to live more decently, and to make valuable acquaintances,
+meanwhile diligently pursuing his law studies, not only during his
+leisure, but even as he travelled about the country to and from his
+work; on foot or on horseback, his companion was sure to be a law-book.
+
+In 1834 a new election of representatives for the State legislature took
+place, and Lincoln became a candidate,--this time with more success,
+owing to the assistance of influential friends. He went to Vandalia, the
+State capital, as a Whig, and a great admirer of Henry Clay. He was
+placed on the Committee of Public Accounts and Expenditures, but made no
+mark; yet that he gained respect was obvious from the fact that he was
+re-elected by a very large vote. He served a second term, and made
+himself popular by advocating schemes to "gridiron" every county with
+railroads, straighten out the courses of rivers, dig canals, and cut up
+the State into towns, cities, and house-lots. One might suppose that a
+man so cool and sensible as he afterwards proved himself to be must have
+seen the absurdity of these wild schemes, and hence only fell in with
+them from policy as a rising member of the legislature, to gain favor
+with his constituents. Yet he and his colleagues were all crude and
+inexperienced legislators, and it is no discredit to Lincoln that he was
+borne along with the rest in an enthusiasm for "developing the country."
+The mania for speculation was nearly universal, especially in the new
+Western States. Illinois alone projected 1,350 miles of railroad,
+without money and without credit to carry out this Bedlam legislation,
+and in almost every village there were "corner lots" enough to be sold
+to make a great city. Aside from this participation in a bubble destined
+to burst, and to be followed by disasters, bankruptcies, and universal
+distress, Lincoln was credited with steadiness, and gained great
+influence. He was prominent in securing the passage of a bill which
+removed the seat of government to Springfield, and was regarded as a
+good debater. In this session, too, he and Daniel Stone, the two
+representatives from Sangamon County, introduced a resolution declaring
+that the institution of slavery was "founded on both injustice and bad
+policy;" that the Congress had no power to interfere with slavery in the
+States; that it had power in the District of Columbia, but should not
+exercise it unless at the request of the people of the District. There
+were no votes for these resolutions, but it is interesting to see how
+early Lincoln took both moral and constitutional ground concerning
+national action on this vexed question.
+
+In March, 1837, Lincoln, then twenty-eight years old, was admitted to
+the bar, and made choice of Springfield, the new capital, as a
+residence, then a thriving village of one or two thousand inhabitants,
+with some pretension to culture and refinement. It was certainly a
+political, if not a social, centre. The following year he was again
+elected to the legislature, and came within a few votes of being made
+Speaker of the House. He carried on the practice of the law with his
+duties as a legislator. Indeed, law and politics went hand in hand; as a
+lawyer he gained influence in the House of Representatives, and as a
+member of the legislature he increased his practice in the courts. He
+had for a partner a Major Stuart, who in 1841 left him, having been
+elected Representative in Congress, and was succeeded in the firm by
+Stephen T. Logan. Lincoln's law practice was far from lucrative, and he
+was compelled to live in the strictest economy. Litigation was very
+simple, and it required but little legal learning to conduct cases. The
+lawyers' fees were small among a people who were mostly poor.
+Considering, however, his defective education and other disadvantages,
+Lincoln's success as a lawyer was certainly respectable, if not great,
+in his small sphere.
+
+In 1840, three years after his admission to the bar, Lincoln was chosen
+as an elector in the Harrison presidential contest, and he stumped the
+State, frequently encountering Stephen A. Douglas in debate, with great
+credit to himself, for Douglas was the most prominent political orator
+of the day. The heart of Lincoln, from the start, was in politics rather
+than the law, for which he had no especial liking. He was born to make
+speeches in political gatherings, and not to argue complicated legal
+questions in the courts. All his aspirations were political. As early as
+1843 he aspired to be a member of Congress, but was defeated by Colonel
+Baker. In 1846, however, his political ambition was gratified by an
+election to the House of Representatives. His record in Congress was a
+fair one; but he was not distinguished, although great questions were
+being discussed in connection with the Mexican War. He made but three
+speeches during his term, in the last of which he ridiculed General
+Cass's aspiration for the presidency with considerable humor and wit,
+which was not lost on his constituents. His career in Congress
+terminated in 1848, he not being re-elected.
+
+In the meantime Lincoln married, in 1842, Miss Mary Todd, from
+Lexington, Kentucky, a lady of good education and higher social position
+than his own, whom he had known for two or three years. As everybody
+knows, this marriage did not prove a happy one, and domestic troubles
+account, in a measure, for Lincoln's sad and melancholy countenance.
+Biographers have devoted more space than is wise to this marriage since
+the sorrows of a great man claim but small attention compared with his
+public services. Had Lincoln not been an honorable man, it is probable
+that the marriage would never have taken place, in view of
+incompatibilities of temper which no one saw more clearly than he
+himself, and which disenchanted him. The engagement was broken, and
+renewed, for, as the matter stood,--the lady being determined and the
+lover uncertain,--the only course consistent with Lincoln's honor was to
+take the risk of marriage, and devote himself with renewed ardor to his
+profession,--to bury his domestic troubles in work, and persistently
+avoid all quarrels. And this is all the world need know of this sad
+affair, which, though a matter of gossip, never was a scandal. It is
+unfortunate for the fame of many great men that we know too much of
+their private lives. Mr. Froude, in his desire for historical
+impartiality, did no good to the memory of his friend Carlyle. Had the
+hero's peculiarities been vices, like those of Byron, the biographer
+might have cited them as warnings to abate the ardor of popular idolatry
+of genius. If we knew no more of the private failings of Webster than we
+do of those of Calhoun or Jefferson Davis, he might never have been
+dethroned from the lofty position he occupied, which, as a public
+benefactor, he did not deserve to lose.
+
+After his marriage, Lincoln was more devoted to his profession, and
+gradually became a good lawyer; but I doubt if he was ever a great one,
+like his friend Judge Davis. His law partner and biographer, William H.
+Herndon, who became associated with him in 1845, is not particularly
+eulogistic as to his legal abilities, although he concedes that he had
+many of the qualities of a great lawyer, such as the ability to see
+important points, lucidity of statement, and extraordinary logical
+power. He did not like to undertake the management of a case which had
+not justice and right on its side. He had no method in his business, and
+detested mechanical drudgery. He rarely studied law-books, unless in
+reference to a case in which he was employed. He was not learned in the
+decisions of the higher courts. He was a poor defender of a wrong cause,
+but was unappalled by the difficulties of an intricate case; was patient
+and painstaking, and not imposed upon by sophistries.
+
+Lincoln's love of truth, for truth's sake, even in such a technical
+matter as the law, was remarkable. No important error ever went
+undetected by him. His intellectual vision was clear, since he was
+rarely swayed by his feelings. As an advocate he was lucid, cold, and
+logical, rather than rhetorical or passionate. He had no taste for
+platitudes and "glittering generalities." There was nothing mercenary in
+his practice, and with rare conscientiousness he measured his charges
+by the services rendered, contented if the fees were small. He carried
+the strictest honesty into his calling, which greatly added to his
+influence. If there was ever an honest lawyer he was doubtless one. Even
+in arguing a case, he never misrepresented the evidence of a witness,
+and was always candid and fair. He would frequently, against his own
+interest, persuade a litigant of the injustice of his case, and induce
+him to throw it up. If not the undisputed leader of his circuit, he was
+the most beloved. Sometimes he disturbed the court by his droll and
+humorous illustrations, which called out irrepressible laughter but
+generally he was grave and earnest in matters of importance; and he was
+always at home in the courtroom, quiet, collected, and dignified,
+awkward as was his figure and his gesticulation.
+
+But it was not as a lawyer that Lincoln was famous. Nor as a public
+speaker would he compare with Douglas in eloquence or renown. As a
+member of Congress it is not probable that he would ever have taken a
+commanding rank, like Clay or Webster or Calhoun, or even like Seward.
+His great fame rests on his moral character, his identification with a
+great cause, his marvellous ability as a conservative defender of
+radical principles, and his no less wonderful tact as a leader of men.
+
+The cause for which he stands was the Antislavery movement, as it grew
+into a political necessity rather than as a protest against moral evil.
+Although from his youth an antislavery man, Lincoln was not an
+Abolitionist in the early days of the slavery agitation. He rather kept
+aloof from the discussion, although such writers as Theodore Parker, Dr.
+Channing, and Horace Greeley had great charm for him. He was a
+politician, and therefore discreet in the avowal of opinions. His turn
+of mind was conservative and moderate, and therefore he thought that all
+political action should be along the lines established by law under the
+Constitution.
+
+But when the Southern leaders, not content with non-interference by
+Congress with their favorite institution in their own States, sought to
+compel Congress to allow the extension of slavery in the Territories it
+controlled, then the indignation of Lincoln burst the bounds, and he
+became the leader in his State in opposition to any movement to
+establish in national territory that institution "founded on both
+injustice and bad policy." Although he was in Congress in 1847-8, his
+political career really began about the year 1854, four years after the
+death of Calhoun.
+
+As has been shown in previous chapters, the great slavery agitation of
+1850, when the whole country was convulsed by discussions and ominous
+threats of disunion, was laid at rest for a while by the celebrated
+compromise bill which Henry Clay succeeded in passing through Congress.
+By the terms of this compromise California was admitted to the Union as
+a free State; the Territories of New Mexico and Utah were organized to
+come in as States, with or without slavery as their people might
+determine when the time should arrive; the domestic slave-trade in the
+District of Columbia was abolished; a more stringent fugitive-slave law
+was passed; and for the adjustment of State boundaries, which reduced
+the positive slave-area in Texas and threw it into the debatable
+territory of New Mexico, Texas received ten millions of dollars.
+Although this adjustment was not entirely satisfactory to either the
+North or the South, the nation settled itself for a period of quiet to
+repair the waste and utilize the conquests of the Mexican War. It became
+absorbed in the expansion of its commerce, the development of its
+manufactures, and the growth of its emigration, all quickened by the
+richness of its marvellous new gold-fields,--until, unexpectedly and
+suddenly, it found itself once again plunged into political controversy
+more distracting and more ominous than the worst it had yet experienced.
+
+For, while calmly accepting the divers political arrangements made for
+distant States and Territories, the men of the North, who had fumed and
+argued against the passage of the Fugitive-Slave Law, when its
+enforcement was attempted in their very presence were altogether
+outraged. When the "man-hunters" chased and caught negroes in their
+village market-places and city streets, when free men were summoned to
+obey that law by helping to seize trembling fugitives and send them back
+to worse than death, then they burst forth in a fierce storm of rage
+that could not be quieted. The agitation rose and spread; lecturers
+thundered; newspapers denounced; great meetings were held; politicians
+trembled. And even yet the conservatism of the North was not wholly
+inflamed; for political partisanship is in itself a kind of slavery, and
+while the Northern Democrats stood squarely with the South, the Northern
+Whigs, fearing division and defeat, made strenuous efforts to stand on
+both sides, and, admitting slavery to be an "evil," to uphold the
+Fugitive-Slave Law because it was a part of the "great compromise." In
+Congress and out, in national conventions, and with all the power of the
+party press, this view was strenuously advocated; but in 1852 the
+Democrats elected Franklin Pierce as President, while the compromising
+Whigs were cast out. Webster, the leader of the compromisers, had not
+even secured a nomination, but General Scott was the Whig candidate;
+while William H. Seward, at the head of the Antislavery Whigs, had at
+least the satisfaction of seeing that, amid the dissolving elements of
+the Whig party, the antislavery sentiment was gaining strength day by
+day. The old issues of tariffs and internal improvements were losing
+their vitality, while _Freedom_ and _Slavery_ were the new poles about
+which new crystallizations were beginning to form.
+
+But the Compromise of 1850 had loosed from its Pandora's box another
+fomenter of trouble, in the idea of leaving to the people of the
+Territories the settlement of whether their incoming States should be
+slave or free,--the doctrine of "popular sovereignty" as it was called.
+The nation had accepted that theory as a makeshift for the emergency of
+that day; but slave cultivation had already exhausted much of the
+Southern land, and, not content with Utah and New Mexico for their
+propagandism, the slaveholders cast envious eyes upon the great
+territory of the Northwest, stretching out from the Missouri border,
+although it was north of the prohibited line of 36 deg. 30'. And so it came
+about that, within four short years after the compromise of 1850, the
+unrest of the North under the Fugitive-Slave Law, followed by the
+efforts of the South to break down the earlier compromise of 1821, awoke
+again with renewed fierceness the slavery agitation, in discussing the
+bill for the organization of the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska,--an
+immense area, extending from the borders of Missouri, Iowa, and
+Minnesota, west to the Rocky Mountains, and from the line of 36 deg. 30'
+north to British America.
+
+The mover of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from
+Illinois, a Democrat and a man of remarkable abilities, now came into
+prominent notice. He wanted to be President of the United States, and
+his popularity, his legal attainments, his congressional services, his
+attractive eloquence and skill in debate, marked him out as the rising
+man of his party, He was a Vermonter by birth, and like Lincoln had
+arisen from nothing,--a self-made man, so talented that the people
+called him "the little giant," but nevertheless inferior to the giants
+who had led the Senate for twenty years, while equal to them in
+ambition, and superior as a wire-pulling politician. He was among those
+who at first supposed that the Missouri Compromise of 1821 was a final
+settlement, and was hostile to the further agitation of the slavery
+question. He was a great believer in "American Destiny," and the
+absorption of all North America in one grand confederation, in certain
+portions of which slavery should be tolerated. As chairman of the Senate
+Committee on Territories he had great influence in opening new routes of
+travel, and favored the extension of white settlements, even in
+territory which had been given to the Indians.
+
+To further his ambitious aspirations, Douglas began now to court the
+favor of Southern leaders, and introduced his famous Kansas-Nebraska
+Bill, which was virtually the repeal of the Missouri Compromise,
+inasmuch as it opened the vast territories to the north of 36 deg. 30' to
+the introduction of slavery if their people should so elect. This the
+South needed, to secure what they called the balance of power, but what
+was really the preponderance of the Slave States, or at least the
+curtailment of the political power of the Free States. In 1854, during
+the administration of Franklin Pierce, and under the domination of the
+Democratic party, which played into the hands of the Southern leaders,
+the compromise which Clay had effected in 1821 was repealed under the
+influence of his compromise of 1850, and the slavery question was thus
+reopened for political discussion in every State of the Union,--showing
+how dangerous it is to compromise principle in shaping a policy.
+
+Popular indignation at the North knew no bounds at this new retrograde
+movement. The Whigs uttered protests, while the Free-Soil party, just
+coming into notice, composed mainly of moderate antislavery men from
+both the old parties, were loud in their denunciations of the
+encroachments of the South. Even some leading Democrats opened their
+eyes, and joined the rising party. The newspapers, the pulpits, and the
+platforms sent forth a united cry of wrath. The Whigs and the
+Abolitionists were plainly approaching each other. The year 1854 saw a
+continuous and solid political campaign to repress the further spread of
+slavery. The Territories being then thrown open, there now began an
+intense emulation to people them, on the one hand, with advocates of
+slavery, and on the other, with free-soilers. Emigration societies were
+founded to assist _bona fide_ settlers, and a great tide of families
+poured into Kansas from the Northern States; while the Southern States,
+and chiefly Missouri, sent also large numbers of men.
+
+At the South the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was universally
+welcomed, and the Southern leaders felt encouragement and exultation.
+The South had gained a great victory, aided by Northern Democrats, and
+boldly denounced Chase, Hale, Sumner, Seward, and Giddings in the
+Congress as incendiaries, plotting to destroy precious rights. A
+memorable contest took place in the House of Representatives to prevent
+the election of Banks of Massachusetts as Speaker. But the tide was
+beginning to turn, and Banks, by a vote of 113 against 104, obtained the
+Speakership.
+
+Then followed "border ruffianism" in Kansas, when armed invaders from
+Missouri, casting thousands of illegal votes, elected, by fraud and
+violence, a legislature favorable to slavery, accompanied with civil
+war, in which the most disgraceful outrages were perpetrated, the
+central government at Washington being blind and deaf and dumb to it
+all. The _bona fide_ settlers in Kansas who were opposed to slavery then
+assembled at Topeka, refused to recognize the bogus laws, and framed a
+constitution which President Pierce--"a Northern man with Southern
+principles," gentlemanly and cultivated, but not strong--pronounced to
+be revolutionary. Nor was ruffianism confined to Kansas. In 1856 Charles
+Sumner of Massachusetts, one of the most eloquent and forceful
+denunciators of all the pro-slavery lawlessness, was attacked at his
+desk in the Senate chamber, after an adjournment, and unmercifully
+beaten with a heavy cane by Preston Brooks, a member of the House of
+Representatives, and nephew of Senator Butler of South Carolina. It took
+years for Sumner to recover, while the aristocratic ruffian was
+unmolested, and went unpunished; for, though censured by the House and
+compelled to resign his seat, he was immediately re-elected by his
+constituents.
+
+But this was not all. In that same year the Supreme Court came to the
+aid of the South, already supported by the Executive and the Senate. Six
+judges out of nine, headed by Chief Justice Taney, pronounced judgment
+that slaves, whether fugitive or taken by their masters into the free
+States, should be returned to their owners. This celebrated case arose
+in Missouri, where a negro named Dred Scott--who had been taken by his
+master to States where slavery was prohibited by law, who had, with his
+master's consent, married and had children in the free States, and been
+brought back to Missouri--sued for his freedom. The local court granted
+it; the highest court of the State reversed the decision; and on appeal
+to the Supreme Court of the United States the case was twice argued
+there, and excited a wide and deep interest. The court might have simply
+sent it back, as a matter belonging to the State court to decide; but it
+permitted itself to argue the question throughout, and pronounced on the
+natural inferiority of the negro, and his legal condition as property,
+the competence of the State courts to decide his freedom or slavery, and
+the right of slaveholders under the Constitution to control their
+property in the free States or Territories, any legislation by Congress
+or local legislatures to the contrary notwithstanding. This was the
+climax of slavery triumphs. The North and West, at last aroused,
+declared in conventions and legislative halls that slavery should
+advance no further. The conflict now indeed became "irrepressible."
+
+At this crisis, Abraham Lincoln stepped upon the political stage, and
+his great career began.
+
+As a local lawyer, even as a local politician, his work was practically
+done. He came forth as an avowed antagonist of Douglas, who was the
+strongest man in Illinois, and the leader of the Democratic party in
+Congress. He came forth as the champion of the antislavery cause in his
+native State, and soon attracted the eyes of the whole nation. His
+memorable controversy with Douglas was the turning-point of his life. He
+became a statesman, as well as a patriot, broad, lofty, and indignant at
+wrongs. Theretofore he had been a conservative Whig, a devoted follower
+of Clay. But as soon as the Missouri Compromise was repealed he put
+forth his noblest energies in behalf of justice, of right, and
+of humanity.
+
+As he was driving one day from a little town in which court had been
+held, a brother lawyer said to him, "Lincoln, the time is coming when we
+shall either be Abolitionists or Democrats;" to which he replied,
+musingly, "When that time comes, my mind is made up, for I believe the
+slavery question can never be successfully compromised." And when his
+mind was made up, after earnest deliberation, he rarely changed it, and
+became as firm as a rock. His convictions were exceedingly strong, and
+few influences could shake them. That quiet conversation in his buggy,
+in a retired road, with a brother lawyer, was a political baptism. He
+had taken his stand on one side of a great question which would rend in
+twain the whole country, and make a mighty conflagration, out of whose
+fires the truth should come victorious.
+
+The Whig party was now politically dead, and the Republican party
+arose, composed of conscientious and independent-minded men from all the
+old organizations, not afraid to put principle before party,
+conservative and law-abiding, yet deeply aroused on the great
+issue of the day, and united against the further extension of
+slavery,--organizing with great enthusiasm for a first presidential
+campaign in 1856, under Fremont, "the Pathfinder," as their candidate.
+They were defeated, and James Buchanan, the Democratic candidate, became
+President; but, accepting defeat as a lesson toward victory, they grew
+stronger and stronger every day, until at last they swept the country
+and secured to the principle "non-extension of slavery" complete
+representation in the national government.
+
+Lincoln, who was in 1857 the Republican candidate for United States
+Senator from Illinois, while Douglas sought the votes of the Democracy,
+first entered the lists against his rival at Springfield, in a speech
+attacking that wily politician's position as to the Dred-Scott decision.
+He tried to force Douglas to a declaration of the logical consequence of
+his position, namely, that, while he upheld the decision as a wise
+interpretation of the rights of the slave-owners to hold slaves in the
+Territories, yet the people of a Territory, under "the great principle
+of Popular Sovereignty" (which was Douglas's chief stock in trade),
+could exclude slavery from its limits even before it had formed a State
+constitution. "If we succeed in bringing him to this point," he wrote a
+friend, "he will say that slavery cannot actually exist in the
+Territories unless the people desire it, which will offend the South."
+If Douglas did not answer Lincoln's question he would jeopardize his
+election as Senator; if he did answer he would offend the South, for his
+doctrine of "squatter sovereignty" conflicted not only with the
+interests of slavery, but with his defence of the Dred-Scott
+decision,--a fact which Lincoln was not slow to point out. Douglas did
+answer, and the result was as Lincoln predicted.
+
+The position taken by Lincoln himself in the debate was bold and clear.
+Said he, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this
+government cannot endure half-slave and half-free. Either the opponents
+of slavery will avert the further spread of it, and place it where the
+public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
+ultimate extinction, 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." When his friends objected that this kind of talk would
+defeat him for senatorship, he replied, "But it is _true_ ... I would
+rather be defeated with these expressions in my speech held up and
+discussed before the people than be victorious without it." He was
+defeated: but the debates made his fame national and resulted in his
+being president; while the politic Douglas gained the senatorship and
+lost the greater prize.
+
+In these famous debates between the leaders, Lincoln proved himself
+quite the equal of his antagonist, who was already famous as a trained
+and prompt debater. Lincoln canvassed the State. He made in one campaign
+as many as fifty speeches. It is impossible, within my narrow limits, to
+go into the details of those great debates. In them Lincoln rose above
+all technicalities and sophistries, and not only planted himself on
+eternal right, but showed marvellous political wisdom. The keynote of
+all his utterances was that "a house divided against itself could not
+stand." Yet he did not pass beyond the constitutional limit in his
+argument: he admitted the right of the South to a fugitive-slave law,
+and the right of a Territory to enact slavery for itself on becoming a
+State; he favored abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia only
+on the request of its inhabitants, and would forward the colonization of
+the negroes in Liberia if they wished it and their masters consented. He
+was a pronounced antislavery man, but not an Abolitionist, and took with
+the great mass of the Northerners a firm stand against the _extension_
+of slavery. It was this intuitive perception of the common-sense of the
+situation that made him and kept him the remarkable representative of
+the Northern people that he was to the very end.
+
+Lincoln gained so much fame from his contest with Douglas that he was,
+during the spring of the following year, invited to speak in the Eastern
+States; and in the great hall of the Cooper Institute in New York, in
+February, 1860, he addressed a magnificent audience presided over by
+Bryant the poet. He had made elaborate preparation for this speech,
+which was a careful review of the slavery question from the foundation
+of the republic to that time, and a masterly analysis of the relative
+positions of political parties to it. The address made a deep
+impression. The speaker was simply introduced as a distinguished
+politician from the West. The speech was a surprise to those who were
+familiar with Western oratory. There was no attempt at rhetoric, but the
+address was pure logic from beginning to end, like an argument before
+the Supreme Court, and exceedingly forcible. The chief point made was
+the political necessity of excluding slavery from the Territories. The
+orator did not dwell on slavery as a crime, but as a wrong which had
+gradually been forced upon the nation, the remedy for which was not in
+violent denunciations. He did not abuse the South; he simply pleaded for
+harmony in the Republican ranks, and avoided giving offence to extreme
+partisans on any side, contending that if slavery could be excluded
+from the Territories it would gradually become extinct, as both
+unprofitable and unjust. He would tolerate slavery within its present
+limits, and even return fugitive slaves to their owners, according to
+the laws, but would not extend the evil where it did not at present
+exist. As it was a wrong, it must not be perpetuated.
+
+The moderation of this speech, coming from an Illinois politician, did
+much to draw attention to him as a possible future candidate for the
+presidency, to which, by this time, he undoubtedly aspired. And why not?
+He was the leader of his party in Illinois, a great speech-maker, who
+had defeated Douglas himself in debate, a shrewd, cool, far-sighted man,
+looking to the future rather than the present; and political friends had
+already gathered about him as a strong political factor.
+
+Mr. Lincoln after his great speech in New York returned to his home. He
+had a few years before given some political speeches in Boston and the
+adjacent towns, which were well received, but made no deep
+impression,--from no fault of his, but simply because he had not the
+right material to work upon, where culture was more in demand than vigor
+of intellect.
+
+Indeed, one result of the election of Lincoln, and of the war which
+followed, was to open the eyes of Eastern people to the intellect and
+intelligence of the West. Western lawyers and politicians might not have
+the culture of Sumner, the polished elocution of Everett, the urbanity
+of Van Buren, and the courtly manners of Winthrop, but they had
+brain-power, a faculty for speech-making, and great political sagacity.
+And they were generally more in sympathy with the people, having mostly
+sprung from their ranks. Their hard and rugged intellects _told_ on the
+floor of Congress, where every one is soon judged according to his
+merits, and not according to his clothes. And the East saw that
+thereafter political power would centre in the West, and dominate the
+whole country,--against which it was useless to complain or rebel,
+since, according to all political axioms, the majority will rule, and
+ought to rule. And the more the East saw of the leading men of the West,
+the more it respected their force of mind, their broad and comprehensive
+views, and their fitness for high place under the government.
+
+It was not the people of the United States who called for the nomination
+of Lincoln, as in the case of General Jackson. He was not much known
+outside of Illinois, except as a skilful debater and stump orator. He
+had filled no high office to bring him before the eyes of the nation. He
+was not a general covered with military laurels, nor a Senator in
+Congress, nor governor of a large State, nor a cabinet officer. No man
+had thus far been nominated for President unless he was a military
+success, or was in the line of party promotion. Though a party leader in
+Illinois, Lincoln was simply a private citizen, with no antecedents
+which marked him out for such exalted position. But he was
+"available,"--a man who could be trusted, moderate in his views, a Whig
+and yet committed to antislavery views, of great logical powers, and
+well-informed on all the political issues of the day. He was not likely
+to be rash, or impulsive, or hasty, or to stand in the way of political
+aspirants. He was eminently a safe man in an approaching crisis, with a
+judicial intellect, and above all a man without enemies, whom few
+envied, and some laughed at for his grotesque humor and awkward manners.
+He was also modest and unpretending, and had the tact to veil his
+ambition. In his own State he was exceedingly popular. It was not
+strange, therefore, that the Illinois Republican State Convention
+nominated him as their presidential candidate, to be supported in the
+larger national convention about to assemble.
+
+In May, 1860, the memorable National Republican Convention met in
+Chicago, in an immense building called the Wigwam, to select a candidate
+for the presidency. Among the prominent Republican leaders were Seward,
+Chase, Cameron, Dayton, and Bates. The Eastern people supposed that
+Seward would receive the nomination, from his conceded ability, his
+political experience, his prominence as an antislavery Whig, and the
+prestige of office; but he had enemies, and an unconciliatory
+disposition. It soon became evident that he could not carry all the
+States. The contest was between Seward, Chase, and Lincoln; and when, on
+the third ballot, Lincoln received within a vote and a-half of the
+majority, Ohio gave him four votes from Chase, and then delegation after
+delegation changed its vote for the victor, and amid great enthusiasm
+the nomination became unanimous.
+
+The election followed, and Lincoln, the Republican, received one hundred
+and eighty electoral votes; Breckinridge, the Southern Democrat,
+seventy-two; Bell, of the Union ticket--the last fragment of the old
+Whig party--thirty-nine; and Douglas, of the Northern Democracy, but
+twelve. The rail-splitter became President of the United States, and
+Senator Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, Vice President. It was a victory of
+ideas. It was the triumph of the North over the South,--of the aroused
+conscience and intelligence of the people against bigotry, arrogance,
+and wrong. Men and measures in that great contest paled before the
+grandeur of everlasting principles. It was not for Lincoln that bonfires
+were kindled and cannons roared and bells were rung and huzzas ascended
+to heaven, but for the great check given to the slave-power, which,
+since the formation of the Constitution, had dominated the nation. The
+Republicans did not gain a majority of the popular vote, as the combined
+opposing tickets cast 930,170 votes more than they; but their vote was
+much larger than that for any other ticket, and gave them a handsome
+majority in the electoral college.
+
+Between the election in November, 1860, and the following March, when
+Lincoln took the reins of government, several of the Southern States had
+already seceded from the Union and had organized a government at
+Montgomery. Making the excuse of the election of a "sectional and
+minority president," they had put into effect the action for which their
+leaders during several months had been secretly preparing. They had
+seized nearly all the Federal forts, arsenals, dock-yards,
+custom-houses, and post-offices within their limits, while a large
+number of the officers of the United States army and navy had resigned,
+and entered into their service, on the principle that the authority of
+their States was paramount to the Federal power.
+
+Amid all these preparations for war on the part of the seceding States,
+and the seizure of Federal property, Buchanan was irresolute and
+perplexed. He was doubtless patriotic and honest, but he did not know
+what to do. The state of things was much more serious than when South
+Carolina threatened to secede in the time of General Jackson. The want
+of firmness and decision on the part of the President has been severely
+criticised, but it seems to me to have been not without excuse in the
+perplexing conditions of the time, while it was certainly fortunate that
+he did not precipitate the crisis by sending troops to reinforce Fort
+Sumter, in Charleston harbor, which was invested and threatened by South
+Carolina troops. The contest was inevitable anyway, and the management
+of the war was better in the hands of Lincoln than it could have been in
+those of Buchanan, with traitors in his cabinet, or even after they had
+left and a new and loyal cabinet was summoned, but with an undecided man
+at the head. There was needed a new and stronger government when
+hostilities should actually break out.
+
+On the 4th of March, 1861, the inauguration of Lincoln took place, and
+well do I remember the ceremony. The day was warm and beautiful, and
+nature smiled in mockery of the bloody tragedy which was so soon to
+follow. I mingled with the crowd at the eastern portico of the Capitol,
+and was so fortunate as to hear and see all that took place,--the high
+officials who surrounded the President, his own sad and pensive face,
+his awkward but not undignified person arrayed in a faultless suit of
+black, the long address he made, the oath of office administered by
+Chief Justice Taney, and the dispersion of the civil and military
+functionaries to their homes. It was not a great pageant, but was an
+impressive gathering. Society, in which the Southern element
+predominated, sneered at the tall ruler who had learned so few of its
+graces and insincerities, and took but little note of the thunder-clouds
+in the political atmosphere,--the distant rumblings which heralded the
+approaching storm so soon to break with satanic force.
+
+The inaugural address was not only an earnest appeal for peace, but a
+calm and steadfast announcement of the law-abiding policy of the
+government, and a putting of the responsibility for any bloodshed upon
+those who should resist the law. Two brief paragraphs contain
+the whole:--
+
+"The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
+property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the
+duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects
+there will be no invasion, no use of force among the people anywhere.
+
+"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is
+the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.
+You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."
+
+This was the original chart of the course which the President followed,
+and his final justification when by use of "the power confided to him"
+he had accomplished the complete restoration of the authority of the
+Federal Union over all the vast territory which the seceded States had
+seized and so desperately tried to control.
+
+Lincoln was judicious and fortunate in his cabinet. Seward, the ablest
+and most experienced statesman of the day, accepted the office of
+Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, who had been governor of Ohio, and
+United States Senator, was made Secretary of the Treasury; Gideon
+Welles, of great executive ability and untiring energy, became Secretary
+of the Navy; Simon Cameron, an influential politician of Pennsylvania,
+held the post of Secretary of War for a time, when he was succeeded by
+Edwin M. Stanton, a man of immense capacity for work; Montgomery Blair,
+a noted antislavery leader, was made Postmaster-General; Caleb B. Smith
+became Secretary of the Interior; and Edward Bates, of Missouri,
+Attorney-General. Every one of these cabinet ministers was a strong man,
+and was found to be greater than he had seemed.
+
+Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, an old-time Democrat, was elected
+President of the Southern Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens, a
+prominent Whig of Georgia, Vice-President. Davis was born in Kentucky in
+1808, and was a graduate of West Point. He was a Congressman on the
+outbreak of the Mexican War, resigned his seat, entered the army, and
+distinguished himself, rising to the rank of colonel. He was Secretary
+of War in President Pierce's cabinet, and Senator from Mississippi on
+the accession of President Buchanan,--a position which he held until the
+secession of his State. He thus had had considerable military and
+political experience. He was a man of great ability, but was proud,
+reserved, and cold, "a Democrat by party name, an autocrat in feeling
+and sentiment,--a type of the highest Southern culture, and exclusive
+Southern caste." To his friends--and they were many, in spite of his
+reserve--there was a peculiar charm in his social intercourse; he was
+beloved in his family, and his private life was irreproachable. He
+selected an able cabinet, among whom were Walker of Alabama, Toombs of
+Georgia, and Benjamin of Louisiana. The Provisional Congress authorized
+a regular army of ten thousand men, one hundred thousand volunteers, and
+a loan of fifteen millions of dollars.
+
+But actual hostilities had not as yet commenced. The Confederates,
+during the close of Buchanan's administration, were not without hopes of
+a peaceful settlement and recognition of secession, and several
+conferences had taken place,--one overture being made even to the new
+administration, but of course in vain.
+
+The spark which kindled the conflagration--but little more than a month
+after Lincoln's inauguration, April 12, 1861--was the firing on Fort
+Sumter, and its surrender to the South Carolinians. This aroused both
+the indignation and the military enthusiasm of the North, which in a
+single day was, as by a lightning flash, fused in a white heat of
+patriotism and a desire to avenge the dishonored flag. For the time all
+party lines disappeared, and the whole population were united and solid
+in defence of the Union. Both sides now prepared to fight in good
+earnest. The sword was drawn, the scabbard thrown away. Both sides were
+confident of victory. The Southern leaders were under the delusion that
+the Yankees would not fight, and that they cared more for dollars than
+for their country. Moreover, the Southern States had long been training
+their young men in the military schools, and had for months been
+collecting materials of war. As cotton was an acknowledged "king," the
+planters calculated on the support of England, which could not do
+without their bales. Lastly, they knew that the North had been divided
+against itself, and that the Democratic politicians sympathized with
+them in reference to slavery. The Federal leaders, on the other hand,
+relied on the force of numbers, of wealth, and national prestige. Very
+few supposed that the contest would be protracted. Seward thought that
+it would not last over three months. Nor did the South think of
+conquering the North, but supposed it could secure its own
+independence. It certainly was resolved on making a desperate fight to
+defend its peculiar institution. As it was generally thought in England
+that this attempt would succeed, as England had no special love for the
+Union, and as the Union, and not opposition to slavery, was the rallying
+cry of the North, England gave to the South its moral support.
+
+Lincoln assumed his burden with great modesty, but with a steady
+firmness and determination, and surprised his cabinet by his force of
+will. Nicolay and Hay relate an anecdote of great significance. Seward,
+who occupied the first place in the cabinet, which he deserved on
+account of his experience and abilities, was not altogether pleased with
+the slow progress of things, and wrote to Lincoln an extraordinary
+letter in less than a month after his inauguration, suggesting more
+active operations, with specific memoranda of a proposed policy.
+"Whatever policy we adopt," said he, "there must be an energetic
+prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody's business to
+pursue and direct it incessantly. Either the President must do it
+himself, or devolve it on some member of his cabinet. It is not my
+especial province; but I neither seek to evade nor assume
+responsibility." In brief, it was an intimation, "If you feel not equal
+to the emergency, perhaps you can find a man not a thousand miles away
+who is equal to it."
+
+Lincoln, in his reply, showed transcendent tact. Although an
+inexperienced local politician, suddenly placed at the head of a great
+nation, in a tremendous crisis, and surrounded in his cabinet and in
+Congress by men of acknowledged expert ability in statecraft, he had his
+own ideas, but he needed the counsel and help of these men as well. He
+could not afford to part with the services of a man like Seward, nor
+would he offend him by any assumption of dignity or resentment at his
+unasked advice. He good-naturedly replied, in substance: "The policy
+laid down in my inaugural met your distinct approval, and it has thus
+far been exactly followed. As to attending to its prosecution, if this
+must be done, I must do it, and I wish, and suppose I am entitled to
+have, the advice of all the cabinet."
+
+After this, no member of the cabinet dared to attempt to usurp any
+authority which belonged to the elected Commander-in-chief of the army
+and navy,--unless it were Chase, at a later time. As the head of the
+government in whom supreme Federal power was invested in time of war,
+Lincoln was willing and eager to consult his cabinet, but reserved his
+decisions and assumed all responsibilities. He probably made mistakes,
+but who could have done better on the whole? The choice of the nation
+was justified by results.
+
+It is not my object in this paper to attempt to compress the political
+and military history of the United States during the memorable
+administration of Mr. Lincoln. If one wishes to know the details he must
+go to the ten octavo biographical volumes of Lincoln's private
+secretaries, to the huge and voluminous quarto reports of the
+government, to the multifarious books on the war and its actors. I can
+only glance at salient points, and even here I must confine myself to
+those movements which are intimately connected with the agency and
+influence of Lincoln himself. It is his life, and not a history of the
+war, that it is my business to present. Nor has the time come for an
+impartial and luminous account of the greatest event of modern times.
+The jealousy and dissensions of generals, the prejudices of the people
+both North and South, the uncertainty and inconsistency of much of the
+material published, and the conceit of politicians, alike prevent a
+history which will be satisfactory, no matter how gifted and learned may
+be the historian. When all the actors of that famous tragedy, both great
+and small, have passed away, new light will appear, and poetry will add
+her charms to what is now too hideous a reality, glorious as were the
+achievements of heroes and statesmen.
+
+After the Battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861, won by the Confederate
+General Beauregard over General McDowell, against all expectation, to
+the dismay and indignation of the whole North,--the result of
+over-confidence on the part of the Union troops, and a wretchedly
+mismanaged affair,--the attention of the Federal government was mainly
+directed to the defence of Washington, which might have fallen into the
+hands of the enemy had the victors been confident and quick enough to
+pursue the advantage they had gained; for nothing could exceed the panic
+at the capital after the disastrous defeat of McDowell. The
+demoralization of the Union forces was awful. Happily, the condition of
+the Confederate troops was not much better.
+
+But the country rallied after the crisis had passed. Lincoln issued his
+proclamation for five hundred thousand additional men. Congress
+authorized as large a loan as was needed. The governors of the various
+States raised regiment after regiment, and sent them to Washington, as
+the way through Maryland, at first obstructed by local secessionists,
+was now clear, General Butler having intrenched himself at Baltimore.
+Most fortunately the governor of Maryland was a Union man, and with the
+aid of the Northern forces had repressed the rebellious tendency in
+Maryland, which State afterward remained permanently in the Union, and
+offered no further resistance to the passage of Federal troops.
+Arlington Heights in Virginia, opposite Washington, had already been
+fortified by General Scott; but additional defences were made, and the
+capital was out of danger.
+
+With the rapid concentration of troops at Washington, the government
+again assumed the offensive. General George B. McClellan, having
+distinguished himself in West Virginia, was called to Washington, at the
+recommendation of the best military authorities, and intrusted with the
+command of the Army of the Potomac; and soon after, on the retirement of
+General Scott, now aged and infirm, and unable to mount a horse,
+McClellan took his place as commander of all the forces of the
+United States.
+
+At the beginning of the rebellion McClellan was simply a captain, but
+was regarded as one of the most able and accomplished officers of the
+army. His promotion was rapid beyond precedent; but his head was turned
+by his elevation, and he became arrogant and opinionated, and before
+long even insulted the President, and assumed the airs of a national
+liberator on whose shoulders was laid the burden of the war. He
+consequently estranged Congress, offended Scott, became distrusted by
+the President, and provoked the jealousies of the other generals. But he
+was popular with the army and his subordinates, and if he offended his
+superiors his soldiers were devoted to him, and looked upon him as a
+second Napoleon.
+
+The best thing that can be said of this general is that he was a great
+organizer, and admirably disciplined for their future encounters the raw
+troops which were placed under his command. And he was too prudent to
+risk the lives of his men until his preparations were made, although
+constantly urged to attempt, if not impossibilities, at least what was
+exceedingly hazardous.
+
+It was expected by the President, the Secretary of War, and Congress,
+that he would hasten his preparations, and advance upon the enemy, as he
+had over one hundred thousand men; and he made grand promises and gave
+assurances that he would march speedily upon Richmond. But he did not
+march. Delay succeeded delay, under various pretences, to the
+disappointment of the country, and the indignation of the responsible
+government. It was not till April, 1862, after five months of inaction,
+that he was ready to move upon Richmond, and then not according to
+pre-arranged plans, but by a longer route, by the way of Fortress
+Monroe, up the Peninsula between the York and James rivers, and not
+directly across Virginia by Manassas Junction, which had been evacuated
+in view of his superior forces,--the largest army theretofore seen on
+this continent.
+
+It is not for me, utterly ignorant of military matters, to make any
+criticism of the plan of operations, in which the President and
+McClellan were at issue, or to censure the general in command for the
+long delay, against the expostulations of the Executive and of Congress.
+He maintained that his army was not sufficiently drilled, or large
+enough for an immediate advance, that the Confederate forces were
+greater than his own, and were posted in impregnable positions. He was
+always calling for reinforcements, until his army comprised over two
+hundred thousand men, and when at last imperatively commanded to move,
+some-whither,--at any rate to move,--he left Washington not sufficiently
+defended, which necessitated the withdrawal of McDowell's corps from him
+to secure the safety of the capital. Without enumerating or describing
+the terrible battles on the Peninsula, and the "change of base," which
+practically was a retreat, and virtually the confession of failure, it
+may be said in defence or palliation of McClellan that it afterwards
+took Grant, with still greater forces, and when the Confederates were
+weakened and demoralized, a year to do what McClellan was expected to do
+in three months.
+
+The war had now been going on for more than a year, without any decisive
+results so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned, but on the
+contrary with great disasters and bitter humiliations. The most
+prodigious efforts had been made by the Union troops without success,
+and thus far the Confederates had the best of it, and were filled with
+triumph. As yet no Union generals could be compared with Lee, or
+Johnston, or Longstreet, or Stonewall Jackson, while the men under their
+command were quite equal to the Northern soldiers in bravery and
+discipline.
+
+The times were dark and gloomy at the North, and especially so to the
+President, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, after all the
+energies he put forth in the general direction of affairs. He was
+maligned and misrepresented and ridiculed; yet he opened not his mouth,
+and kept his soul in patience,--magnanimous, forbearing, and modest. In
+his manners and conduct, though intrusted with greater powers than any
+American before him had ever exercised, he showed no haughtiness, no
+resentments, no disdain, but was accessible to everybody who had any
+claim on his time, and was as simple and courteous as he had been in a
+private station. But what anxieties, what silent grief, what a burden,
+had he to bear! And here was his greatness, which endeared him to the
+American heart,--that he usurped no authority, offended no one, and
+claimed nothing, when most men, armed as he was with almost unlimited
+authority, would have been reserved, arrogant, and dictatorial. He did
+not even assume the cold dignity which Washington felt it necessary to
+put on, but shook hands, told stories, and uttered jokes, as if he were
+without office on the prairies of Illinois; yet all the while resolute
+in purpose and invincible in spirit,--an impersonation of logical
+intellect before which everybody succumbed, as firm, when he saw his way
+clear, as Bismarck himself.
+
+His tact in managing men showed his native shrewdness and kindliness, as
+well as the value of all his early training in the arts of the
+politician. Always ready to listen, and to give men free chance to
+relieve their minds in talk, he never directly antagonized their
+opinions, but, deftly embodying an argument in an apt joke or story,
+would manage to switch them off from their track to his own without
+their exactly perceiving the process. His innate courtesy often made him
+seem uncertain of his ground, but he probably had his own way quite as
+frequently as Andrew Jackson, and without that irascible old
+fighter's friction.
+
+But darker days were yet to come, and more perplexing duties had yet to
+be discharged. The President was obliged to retire McClellan from his
+command when, in August, 1862, that general's procrastination could no
+longer be endured. McClellan had made no fatal blunders, was endeared to
+his men, and when it was obvious that he could not take Richmond,
+although within four miles of it at one time, he had made a successful
+and masterly retreat to Harrison's Landing; yet the campaign against the
+Confederate capital had been a failure, as many believed, by reason of
+unnecessary delays on the part of the commander, and the President had
+to take the responsibility of sustaining or removing him. He chose
+the latter.
+
+What general would Lincoln select to succeed McClellan? He chose General
+John Pope, but not with the powers which had been conferred on
+McClellan. Pope had been graduated at West Point in 1842, had served
+with distinction in the Mexican War, and had also done good service in
+the West. But it was his misfortune at this time to lose the second
+battle of Bull Run, or Manassas, when there was no necessity of
+lighting. He himself attributed his disaster to the inaction and
+disobedience of General Porter, who was cashiered for it,--a verdict
+which was reversed by a careful military inquiry after the war. Pope's
+defeat was followed, although against the advice of the cabinet, by the
+restoration of McClellan, since Washington was again in danger. After he
+had put the capital in safety, McClellan advanced slowly against Lee,
+who had crossed the Potomac into Maryland with designs on Pennsylvania.
+He made his usual complaint of inadequate forces, and exaggerated the
+forces of the enemy. He won, however, the battle of Antietam,--for,
+although the Confederates afterwards claimed that it was a drawn battle,
+they immediately retired,--but even then failed to pursue his advantage,
+and allowed Lee to recross the Potomac and escape, to the deep disgust
+of everybody and the grief of Lincoln. Encouraged by McClellan's
+continued inaction, Lee sent his cavalry under Stuart, who with two
+thousand men encircled the Federal army, and made a raid into
+Pennsylvania, gathering supplies, and retired again into Virginia,
+unhindered and unharmed. The President now deprived McClellan again of
+his command, and that general's military career ended. He retired to
+private life, emerging again only as an unsuccessful Democratic
+candidate for the presidency against Lincoln in 1864.
+
+It was a difficult matter for Lincoln to decide upon a new general to
+command the Army of the Potomac. He made choice of Ambrose E. Burnside,
+the next in rank,--a man of pleasing address and a gallant soldier, but
+not of sufficient abilities for the task imposed upon him. The result
+was the greatest military blunder of the whole war. With the idea of
+advancing directly upon Richmond through Fredericksburg, Burnside made
+the sad error of attacking equal forces strongly intrenched on the
+Fredericksburg Heights, while he advanced from the valley of the
+Rappahannock below, crossing the river under a plunging fire, and
+attacking the enemy on the hill. It was a dismal slaughter, but Burnside
+magnanimously took the whole blame upon himself, and was not disgraced,
+although removed from his command. He did good service afterwards as a
+corps-commander.
+
+It was soon after Burnside's unfortunate failure at Fredericksburg,
+perhaps the gloomiest period of the war, when military reverses saddened
+the whole North, and dissensions in the cabinet itself added to the
+embarrassments of the President, that Lincoln performed the most
+momentous act of his life, and probably the most important act of the
+whole war, in his final proclamation emancipating the slaves, and
+utilizing them in the Union service, as a military necessity.
+
+Ever since the beginning of hostilities had this act been urged upon the
+President by the antislavery men of the North,--a body growing more
+intense and larger in numbers as the war advanced. But Lincoln remained
+steady to his original purpose of _saving the Union,_---whether with or
+without slavery. Naturally, and always opposed to slavery, he did not
+believe that he had any right to indulge his private feeling in
+violation of the Constitutional limitations of his civil power, unless,
+as he said, "measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by
+becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through
+the preservation of the nation."
+
+Thus when in 1861 Fremont in Missouri proclaimed emancipation to the
+slaves of persistent rebels, although this was hailed with delight by
+vast numbers at the North, the President countermanded it as not yet an
+indispensable necessity. In March, 1862, he approved Acts of Congress
+legalizing General B.F. Butler's shrewd device of declaring all slaves
+of rebels in arms as "contraband of war," and thus, when they came
+within the army lines, to be freed and used by the Northern armies. In
+March, May, and July, 1862, he made earnest appeals to the Border States
+to favor compensated emancipation, because he foresaw that military
+emancipation would become necessary before long. When Lee was in
+Maryland and Pennsylvania, he felt that the time had arrived, and
+awaited only some marked military success, so that the measure should
+seem a mightier blow to the rebels and not a cry for help. And this was
+a necessary condition, for, while hundreds of thousands of Democrats had
+joined the armies and had become Republicans for the war,--in fact, all
+the best generals and a large proportion of the soldiers of the North
+had been Democrats before the flag was fired on,--yet the Democratic
+politicians of the proslavery type were still alive and active
+throughout the North, doing all they could to discredit the national
+cause, and hinder the government; and Lincoln intuitively knew that this
+act must commend itself to the great mass of the Northern people, or it
+would be a colossal blunder.
+
+Therefore, when Lee had been driven back, on September 22, 1862, the
+President issued a preliminary proclamation, stating that he should
+again recommend Congress to favor an Act tendering pecuniary aid to
+slaveholders in States not in rebellion, who would adopt immediate or
+gradual abolishment of slavery within their limits; but that on the
+first day of January, 1863, "all persons held as slaves within any
+State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall be in
+rebellion against the United States, shall be thenceforward and forever
+free." And accordingly,--in spite of Burnside's dreadful disaster before
+Fredericksburg on December 13, unfavorable results in the fall elections
+throughout the North, much criticism of his course in the
+newly-assembled Congress, and the unpopular necessity of more men and
+more money to be drawn from the loyal States,--on January 1, 1863, the
+courageous leader sent forth his final and peremptory Decree of
+Emancipation. He issued it, "by virtue of the power in me vested as
+commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States in time of
+actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the
+United States, and as a fit and necessary war-measure for suppressing
+said rebellion."
+
+Of course such an edict would have no immediate force in the remoter
+States controlled by the Confederate government, nor at the time did it
+produce any remarkable sensation except to arouse bitter animadversion
+at the North and renewed desperation of effort at the South; but it
+immediately began to reduce the workers on intrenchments and
+fortifications along the Confederate front and to increase those of the
+Federal forces, while soon also providing actual troops for the Union
+armies; and, since it was subsequently indorsed by all the States,
+through an amendment to the Constitution by which slavery was forever
+prohibited in the States and Territories of the United States, and in
+view of its immense consequences, the Emancipation Proclamation of
+Lincoln must be regarded as perhaps the culminating event in the war. It
+was his own act; and he accepted all the responsibilities. The abolition
+of slavery is therefore forever identified with the administration
+of Lincoln.
+
+In the early part of 1863 Lincoln relieved Burnside of his command, and
+appointed General Joseph Hooker to succeed him. This officer had
+distinguished himself as a brilliant tactician; he was known as
+"fighting Joe;" but he was rash. He made a bold and successful march,
+crossed the Rappahannock and Rapidan rivers and advanced upon the enemy,
+but early in May, 1863, was defeated at Chancellorsville, in one of the
+bloodiest battles of the war. The Confederates were now exceedingly
+elated; and Lee, with a largely increased army of ninety thousand
+splendid fighting men, resolved on invading Pennsylvania in force.
+Evading Hooker, he passed through the Shenandoah Valley, and about the
+middle of June was in Pennsylvania before the Union forces could be
+gathered to oppose him. He took York and Carlisle and threatened
+Harrisburg. The invasion filled the North with dismay. Hooker, feeling
+his incompetency, and on bad terms with Halleck, the general-in-chief,
+asked to be relieved, and his request was at once granted.
+
+General George C. Meade was appointed his successor on June 28. Striking
+due north with all speed, ably supported by a remarkable group of
+corps-commanders and the veteran Army of the Potomac handsomely
+reinforced and keenly eager to fight, Meade brought Lee to bay near the
+village of Gettysburg, and after three days of terrific fighting, in
+which the losses of the two armies aggregated over forty-five thousand
+men, on the 3d of July he defeated Lee's army and turned it rapidly
+southward. This was the most decisive battle of the war, and the most
+bloody, finally lost by Lee through his making the same mistake that
+Burnside did at Fredericksburg, in attacking equal forces intrenched on
+a hill. Nothing was left to Lee but retreat across the Potomac, and
+Meade--an able but not a great captain--made the mistake that McClellan
+had made at Antietam in not following up his advantage, but allowing Lee
+to escape into Virginia.
+
+To cap the climax of Union success, on the 4th of July General Ulysses
+S. Grant, who had been operating against Vicksburg on the Mississippi
+during four months, captured that city, with thirty-two thousand
+prisoners, and a few days later Port Hudson with its garrison fell into
+his hands. The signal combination of victories filled the North with
+enthusiasm and the President with profoundest gratitude. It is true,
+Meade's failure to follow and capture Lee was a bitter disappointment to
+Lincoln. The Confederate commander might have been compelled to
+surrender to a flushed and conquering army a third larger than his own,
+had Meade pursued and attacked him, and the war might perhaps virtually
+have ended. Yet Lee's army was by no means routed, and was in dangerous
+mood, while Meade's losses had been really larger than his; so that the
+Federal general's caution does not lack military defenders.
+Nevertheless, he evidently was not the man that had been sought for.
+
+More than two years had now elapsed since the Army of the Potomac had
+been organized by McClellan, and yet it was no nearer the end which the
+President, the war minister, the cabinet, and the generals had in
+view,--the capture of Richmond. Thus far, more than one hundred thousand
+men had been lost in the contest which the politicians had supposed was
+to be so brief. Not a single general had arisen at the East equal to the
+occasion. Only a few of the generals had seen important military service
+before the war, and not one had evinced remarkable abilities, although
+many had distinguished themselves for bravery and capacity to manage
+well an army corps. Each army commander had failed when great
+responsibilities had been imposed upon him. Not one came up to popular
+expectation. The great soldier must be "born" as well as "made."
+
+It must be observed that up to this time, in the autumn of 1863, the
+President had not only superintended the Army of the Potomac, but had
+borne the chief burden of the government and the war at large. Cabinet
+meetings, reports of generals, quarrels of generals, dissensions of
+political leaders, impertinence of editors, the premature pressure to
+emancipate slaves, Western campaigns, the affairs of the navy, and a
+thousand other things pressed upon his attention. It was his custom to
+follow the movements of every army with the map before him, and to be
+perfectly familiar with all the general, and many of the detailed,
+problems in every part of the vast field of the war. No man was ever
+more overworked. It may be a question how far he was wise in himself
+attending to so many details, and in giving directions to generals in
+high command, and sometimes against the advice of men more experienced
+in military matters. That is not for me to settle. He seemed to bear the
+government and all the armies on head and heart, as if the
+responsibility for everything was imposed upon him. What had been the
+history? In the East, two years clouded by disasters, mistakes, and
+national disappointments, with at last a breaking of the day,--and that,
+in the West.
+
+Was ever a man more severely tried! And yet, in view of fatal errors on
+the part of generals, the disobedience of orders, and the unfriendly
+detractions of Chase,--his able, but self-important Secretary of the
+Treasury,--not a word of reproach had fallen from him; he was still
+gentle, conciliatory, patient, forgiving on all occasions, and
+marvellously reticent and self-sustained. His transcendent moral
+qualities stood out before the world unquestioned, whatever criticisms
+may be made as to the wisdom of all his acts.
+
+But a brighter day was at hand. The disasters of the East--for
+Gettysburg was but the retrieving of a desperate situation--were
+compensated by great success in the West. Fort Donelson and Columbus in
+1862, Vicksburg and Port Hudson in 1863, had been great achievements.
+The Mississippi was cleared of hostile forts upon its banks, and was
+opened to its mouth. New Orleans was occupied by Union troops. The
+finances were in good condition, for Chase had managed that great
+problem with brilliant effect. The national credit was restored. The
+navy had done wonders, and the southern coast was effectually blockaded.
+A war with England had been averted by the tact of Lincoln rather than
+the diplomacy of Seward.
+
+Lincoln cordially sustained in his messages to Congress the financial
+schemes of the Secretary of the Treasury, and while he carefully
+watched, he did not interfere with, the orders of the Secretary of the
+Navy. To Farragut, Foote, and Porter was great glory due for opening the
+Mississippi, as much as to Grant and Sherman for cutting the Confederate
+States in twain. Too much praise cannot be given to Chase for the
+restoration of the national credit, and Lincoln bore patiently his
+adverse criticism in view of his transcendent services.
+
+At this stage of public affairs, in the latter part of 1863, General
+Grant was called from the West to take command of the Army of the
+Potomac. His great military abilities were known to the whole nation.
+Although a graduate of West Point, who had, when young, done good
+service under General Scott, his mature life had been a failure; and
+when the war broke out he was engaged in the tanning business at Galena,
+Illinois, at a salary of $800. He offered his services to the governor
+of Illinois, and was made a colonel of volunteers. Shortly after
+entering active service he was made brigadier-general, and his ability
+as a commander was soon apparent. He gradually rose to the command of
+the military district of Southeast Missouri; then to the command of the
+great military rendezvous and depot at Cairo. Then followed his
+expedition, assisted by Commodore Foote, against Fort Henry on the
+Tennessee River, in the early part of 1862, with no encouragement from
+Halleck, the commanding-general at St. Louis. The capture of Fort
+Donelson on the Cumberland River came next, to the amazement and chagrin
+of the Confederate generals; for which he was made a major-general of
+volunteers. This was a great service, which resulted in the surrender of
+Generals Buckner and Johnston with 15,000 Confederate soldiers, 20,000
+stands of arms, 48 pieces of artillery, and 3,000 horses. But this great
+success was nothing to the siege and capture of Vicksburg, July 4, 1863,
+which opened the Mississippi and divided the Confederacy, to say nothing
+of the surrender of nearly 30,000 men, 172 cannon, and 60,000 muskets.
+Then followed the great battle of Chattanooga, which shed glory on
+Thomas, Sherman, Burnside, and Hooker, and raised still higher the
+military fame of Grant, who had planned and directed it. No general in
+the war had approached him in success and ability. The eyes of the
+nation were now upon him. Congress revived for him the grade of
+lieutenant-general, and the conqueror of Vicksburg and Chattanooga
+received the honor on March 3, 1864, the first on whom the full rank had
+been conferred since Washington. The lieutenant-generalcy conferred on
+Winfield Scott after the Mexican War was a special brevet title of
+honor, that rank not existing in our army.
+
+On the 8th of March the President met the successful and fortunate
+general for the first time, and was delighted with his quiet modesty; on
+the next day he gave him command of all the armies of the United States.
+Grant was given to understand that the work assigned to him personally
+was the capture of Richmond. But he was left to follow out his own
+plans, and march to the Confederate capital by any route he saw fit.
+Henceforth the President, feeling full confidence, ceased to concern
+himself with the plans of the general commanding the Army of the
+Potomac. He did not even ask to know them. All he and the Secretary of
+War could do was to forward the plans of the Lieutenant-General, and
+provide all the troops he wanted. Lincoln's anxieties of course
+remained, and he watched eagerly for news, and was seen often at the war
+department till late at night, waiting to learn what Grant was doing;
+but Grant was left with the whole military responsibility, because he
+was evidently competent for it; the relief to Lincoln must have been
+immense. The history of the war, from this time, belongs to the life of
+Grant rather than of Lincoln. Suggestions to that successful soldier
+from civilians now were like those of the Dutch Deputies when they
+undertook to lecture the great Marlborough on the art of war. To bring
+the war to a speedy close required the brain and the will and the energy
+of a military genius, and the rapid and concentrated efforts of veteran
+soldiers, disciplined by experience, and inured to the toils and
+dangers of war.
+
+The only great obstacle was the difficulty of enlisting men in what was
+now more than ever to be dangerous work. When Grant began his march to
+Richmond probably half-a-million of soldiers had perished on each side,
+and a national debt had been contracted of over two thousand millions of
+dollars. In spite of patriotic calls, in spite of bounties, it became
+necessary to draft men into the service,--a compulsory act of power to
+be justified only by the exigencies of the country. In no other way
+could the requisite number of troops be secured. Multitudes of the
+survivors have been subsequently rewarded, at least partially, by
+pensions. The pension list, at the close of Harrison's administration in
+1892, amounted to a sum greater than Germany annually expends on its
+gigantic army. So far as the pensioners are genuinely disabled veterans,
+the people make no complaint, appreciating the sacrifices which the
+soldiers were compelled to make in the dreadful contest. But so vast a
+fund for distribution attracted the inevitable horde of small lawyers
+and pension agents, who swelled the lists with multitudes of sham
+veterans and able-bodied "cripples," until many eminent ex-soldiers
+cried out for a purgation of that which should be a list of honor.
+
+Nor is it disloyal or unpatriotic to shed a tear for the brave but
+misguided men whom the Southern leaders led to destruction without any
+such recompense for their wounds and hardships,--for the loss of their
+property, loss of military prestige, loss of political power, loss of
+everything but honor. At first we called them Rebels, and no penalties
+were deemed too severe for them to suffer; but later we called them
+Confederates, waging war for a cause which they honestly deemed sacred,
+and for which they cheerfully offered up their lives,--a monstrous
+delusion, indeed, but one for which we ceased to curse them, and soon
+learned to forgive, after their cause was lost. Resentment gave place to
+pity, and they became like erring brothers, whom it was our duty to
+forgive, and in many respects our impulse to admire,--not for their
+cause, but for their devotion to it. All this was foreseen and foretold
+by Edward Everett during the war, yet there were but few who agreed
+with him.
+
+I can devote but little space to the military movements of General Grant
+in Virginia until Richmond surrendered and the rebellion collapsed.
+There was among the Southerners no contempt of this leader, fresh from
+the laurels of Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga; and the
+Confederates put forth almost superhuman efforts to defend their capital
+against the scientific strategy of the most successful general of the
+war, supported as he was by almost unlimited forces, and the unreserved
+confidence of his government.
+
+The new general-in-chief established his headquarters at Culpeper Court
+House near the end of March, 1864. His plan of operations was
+simple,--to advance against Lee, before proceeding to Richmond, and
+defeat his army if possible. Richmond, even if taken, would be
+comparatively valueless unless Lee were previously defeated. Grant's
+forces were about one hundred and fifty thousand men, and Lee's little
+more than half that number, but the latter were intrenched in strong
+positions on the interior line. It was Grant's plan to fight whenever an
+opportunity was presented,--since he could afford to lose two men to one
+of the enemy, and was thus sure to beat in the long run; as a
+chess-player, having a superiority of pieces, freely exchanges as he
+gets opportunity. There was nothing particularly brilliant in this
+policy adopted by Grant, except the great fact that he chose the course
+most likely to succeed, whatever might be his losses. Lee at first was
+also ready to fight, but after the dreadful slaughter on both sides in
+the battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, and Cold Harbor, he
+apparently changed his plans. One-third of his forces had melted away;
+he saw that he could not afford to take risks, and retreated behind his
+defences. Grant, too, had changed his operations, at first directed
+against Richmond on the northwest; and, since he found every hill and
+wood and morass strongly fortified, he concluded to march on Lee's flank
+to the James River, and attack Richmond from the south, after reducing
+Petersburg, and destroying the southern railroads by which the
+Confederates received most of their supplies.
+
+The Federal commander had all the men he wanted. A large force was under
+Butler near Petersburg, and Sheridan had driven out the enemy from the
+Valley of the Shenandoah with his magnificent cavalry. Lee was now
+cooped up between Fredericksburg and Richmond. He was too great a
+general to lead his army into either of these strongholds, where they
+might be taken as Pemberton's army was at Vicksburg. He wisely kept the
+field, although he would not fight except behind his intrenchments, when
+he was absolutely forced by the aggressive foe.
+
+Henceforth, from June, 1864, to the close of the war the operations of
+Grant resembled a siege rather than a series of battles. He had lost
+over fifty thousand men thus far in his march, and he, too, now became
+economical of his soldiers' blood. He complained not, but doggedly
+carried out his plans without consulting the government at Washington,
+or his own generals. His work was hard and discouraging. He had to fight
+his way, step by step, against strong intrenchments,--the only thing to
+do, but he had the will and patience to do it. He had ordered an attack
+on Petersburg, which must be reduced before he could advance to
+Richmond; but the attack had failed, and he now sat down to a regular
+siege of that strong and important position. The siege lasted ten
+months, when Lee was driven within his inner line of defences, and,
+seeing that all was lost, on April 2, 1865, evacuated his position, and
+began his retreat to the west, hoping to reach Lynchburg, and after that
+effect a junction with Johnston coming up from the south. But his
+retreat was cut off near Appomattox, and being entirely surrounded he
+had nothing to do but surrender to Grant with his entire army, April 9.
+With his surrender, Richmond, of course, fell, and the war was
+virtually closed.
+
+Out of the 2,200,000 men who had enlisted on the Union side, 110,000
+were killed or mortally wounded, and 250,000 died from other causes. The
+expense of the war was $3,250,000,000. The losses of the Confederates
+were about three-quarters as much. Of the millions who had enlisted on
+both sides, nearly a million of men perished, and over five thousand
+millions of dollars were expended, probably a quarter of the whole
+capital of the country at that time. So great were the sacrifices made
+to preserve the Union,--at the cost of more blood and treasure than have
+been spent in any other war in modern times.
+
+I am compelled to omit notices of military movements in other parts of
+the Union, especially in the West, where some of the most gallant
+actions of the war took place,--the brilliant strategy of Rosecrans, the
+signal achievements of Thomas, Sherman's march to the sea, Sheridan's
+raids, the naval exploits of Farragut, Porter, and Foote, and other acts
+of heroism, as not bearing directly on the life of Lincoln. Of course,
+he felt the intensest interest in all the military operations, and bore
+an unceasing burden of study and of anxiety, which of itself was a great
+strain on all his powers. If anything had gone wrong which he could
+remedy, his voice and his hand would have been heard and seen. But
+toward the last other things demanded his personal attention, and these
+were of great importance. There never had been a time since his
+inauguration when he was free from embarrassments, and when his burdens
+had not been oppressive.
+
+Among other things, the misunderstanding between him and Secretary
+Chase was anything but pleasant, Chase had proved himself the ablest
+finance minister that this country had produced after Alexander
+Hamilton. He was a man of remarkable dignity, integrity, and patriotism.
+He was not vain, but he was conscious both of his services and his
+abilities. And he was always inclined to underrate Lincoln, whom he
+misunderstood. He also had presidential aspirations. After three years'
+successful service he did not like to have his suggestions disregarded,
+and was impatient under any interference with his appointments. To say
+the least, his relations with the President were strained. Annoyed and
+vexed with some appointments of importance, he sent in his resignation,
+accompanied with a petulant letter. Lincoln, on its receipt, drove to
+the Secretary's house, handed back to him his letter, and persuaded him
+to reconsider his resignation. But it is difficult to mend a broken jar.
+The same trouble soon again occurred in reference to the appointment in
+New York of an assistant-treasurer by Mr. Chase, which the President,
+having no confidence in the appointee, could not accept; on which the
+Secretary again resigned, and Lincoln at once accepted his resignation,
+with these words: "Of all I have said in commendation of your ability
+and fidelity, I have nothing to unsay; and yet you and I have reached a
+point of mutual embarrassment in our official relations, which it seems
+cannot be overcome or longer sustained consistently with the
+public service."
+
+Mr. Chase, however, did not long remain unemployed. On the death of
+Chief Justice Taney, in October, 1864, Mr. Lincoln appointed him to the
+head of the Supreme Court,--showing how little he cherished resentment,
+and how desirous he was to select the best men for all responsible
+positions, whether he personally liked them or not. Even when an able
+man had failed in one place, Lincoln generally found use for his
+services in another,--witness the gallant exploits of Burnside, Hooker,
+and Meade, after they had retired from the head of the Army of the
+Potomac. As a successor to Mr. Chase in the Treasury, the President, to
+the amazement of the country, selected Governor Tod of Ohio, who wisely
+declined the office. The next choice fell on Senator Wm. Pitt Fessenden,
+who reluctantly assumed an office which entailed such heavy
+responsibilities and hard work, but who made in it a fine record for
+efficiency. It was no slight thing to be obliged to raise one hundred
+millions of dollars every month for the expense of the war.
+
+While General Grant lay apparently idle in his trenches before
+Petersburg, the presidential election of 1864 took place, and in spite
+of the unpopular draft of five hundred thousand men in July, and a
+summer and Autumn of severe fighting both East and West, Mr. Lincoln
+was elected. There had been active and even acrimonious opposition, but
+who could compete with him? At this time his extraordinary fitness for
+the highest office in the gift of the nation was generally acknowledged,
+and the early prejudices against him had mostly passed away. He neither
+sought nor declined the re-election.
+
+His second inaugural address has become historical for its lofty
+sentiments and political wisdom. It was universally admired, and his
+memorable words sunk into every true American heart. Said he:--
+
+"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of
+war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the
+wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
+toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash
+shall be paid with another drawn by the sword,--as was said three
+thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord
+are true and righteous altogether.'" And, as showing his earnest
+conscientiousness, these familiar words: "With malice toward none, with
+charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the
+right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the
+nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and
+for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a
+just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." The
+eloquence of this is surpassed only by his own short speech at the
+dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863,
+which threw into the shade the rhetoric of the greatest orator of his
+time, and stands--unstudied as it was--probably the most complete and
+effective utterance known in this century.
+
+That immortal inaugural address, in March, 1865;--so simple and yet so
+eloquent, expresses two things in Mr. Lincoln's character to be
+especially noted: first, the tenderness and compassion, blended with
+stern energy and iron firmness of will, which shrank from bloodshed and
+violence, yet counted any sacrifice of blood and treasure as of little
+account in comparison with the transcendent blessing of national union
+and liberty; and, secondly, the change which it would appear gradually
+took place in his mind in reference to Divine supervision in the affairs
+of men and nations.
+
+I need not dwell on the first, since nothing is more unquestionable than
+his abhorrence of all unnecessary bloodshed, or of anything like
+vengeance, or punishment of enemies, whether personal or political. His
+leniency and forgiveness were so great as to be denounced by some of his
+best friends, and by all political fanatics. And this leniency and
+forgiveness were the more remarkable, since he was not demonstrative in
+his affections and friendships. From his judicial temper, and the
+ascendency of his intellectual faculties over passion and interest, he
+was apparently cold in his nature, and impassive in view of all passing
+events, to such a degree that his humanity seemed to be based on a
+philosophy very much akin to that of Marcus Aurelius. His sympathies
+were keen, however, and many a distressed woman had cause for gratitude
+to him for interference with the stern processes of army discipline in
+time of war, much to the indignation of the civil or military martinets.
+
+In regard to the change in his religious views, this fact is more
+questionable, but attested by all who knew him, and by most of his
+biographers. As a lawyer in Springfield his religious views, according
+to his partner and biographer Herndon, were extremely liberal, verging
+upon those advanced theories which Volney and Thomas Paine advocated,
+even upon atheism itself. As he grew older he became more discreet as to
+the expression of his religious opinions. Judge Davis, who knew him
+well, affirms that he had no faith, in the Christian sense, but only in
+laws, principles, cause and effect,--that is, he had no belief in a
+personal God. No religion seemed to find favor with him except that of a
+practical and rationalistic order. He never joined a church, and was
+sceptical of the divine origin of the Bible, still more of what is
+called providential agency in this world. But when the tremendous
+responsibilities of his office began to press upon his mind, and the
+terrible calamities he deplored, but could not avert, stirred up his
+soul in anguish and sadness, then the recognition of the need of
+assistance higher than that of man, for the guidance of this great
+nation in its unparalleled trials, became apparent in all his
+utterances. When he said, "as God gives us to see the right," he meant,
+if he meant anything, that wisdom to act in trying circumstances is a
+gift, distinct from what is ordinarily learned from experience or study.
+This gift, we believe, he earnestly sought.
+
+It must have been a profound satisfaction to Mr. Lincoln that he lived
+to see the total collapse of the rebellion,--the fall of Richmond, the
+surrender of Lee, and the flight of Jefferson Davis,--the complete
+triumph of the cause which it was intrusted to him to guard. How happy
+he must have been to see that the choice he made of a general-in-chief
+in the person of Ulysses Grant had brought the war to a successful
+close, whatever the sacrifices which this great general found it
+necessary to make to win ultimate success! What a wonder it is that Mr.
+Lincoln, surrounded with so many dangers and so many enemies, should
+have lived to see the completion of the work for which he was raised up!
+No life of ease or luxury or exultation did he lead after he was
+inaugurated,--having not even time to visit the places where his earlier
+life was passed; for him there were no triumphal visits to New York and
+Boston,--no great ovations anywhere; his great office brought him only
+hard and unceasing toil, which taxed all his energies.
+
+It was while seeking a momentary relaxation from his cares and duties,
+but a few weeks after his second inauguration, that he met his fate at
+the hands of the assassin, from peril of whose murderous designs no
+great actor on the scene of mortal strife and labor can be said to be
+free. All that a grateful and sorrowing nation could do was done in
+honor of his services and character. His remains were carried across the
+land to their last resting-place in Illinois, through our largest
+cities, with a funeral pageantry unexampled in the history of nations;
+and ever since, orators have exhausted language in their encomiums of
+his greatness and glory.
+
+Some think that Lincoln died fortunately for his fame,--that had he
+lived he might have made mistakes, especially in the work of
+reconstruction, which would have seriously affected his claim as a great
+national benefactor.
+
+On the other hand, had he lived, he might have put the work of
+reconstruction on a basis which would have added to his great services
+to the country. The South had no better friend than he, and he was
+incapable of animosity or revenge. Certain it is that this work of
+reconstruction requires even yet the greatest patriotism and a
+marvellous political wisdom. The terrible fact that five millions of
+free negroes are yet doomed to ignorance, while even the more
+intelligent and industrious have failed to realize the ideals of
+citizenship, makes the negro question still one of paramount importance
+in the South. The great question whether they shall enjoy the right of
+suffrage seems to be disposed of for the present; but the greater
+problem of their education must be solved. The subject is receiving most
+serious consideration, and encouraging progress is already making in the
+direction of their general and industrial training: but they are fast
+increasing; their labor is a necessity; and they must be educated to
+citizenship, both in mind and in morals, or the fairest portion of our
+country will find their presence a continuous menace to peace and
+prosperity.
+
+These questions it was not given to Mr. Lincoln to consider. He died
+prematurely as a martyr. Nothing consecrates a human memory like
+martyrdom. Nothing so effectually ends all jealousies, animosities, and
+prejudices as the assassin's dagger. If Caesar had not been assassinated
+it is doubtful if even he, the greatest man of all antiquity, could have
+bequeathed universal empire to his heirs. Lincoln's death unnerved the
+strongest mind, and touched the heart of the nation with undissembled
+sadness and pity. From that time no one has dared to write anything
+derogatory to his greatness. That he was a very great man no one now
+questions.
+
+It is impossible, however, for any one yet to set him in the historical
+place, which, as an immortal benefactor, he is destined to occupy. All
+speculation as to his comparative rank is worse than useless. Time
+effects wonderful changes in human opinions. There are some people in
+these days who affect to regard Washington as commonplace, as the
+lawyers of Edinburgh at one time regarded Sir Walter Scott, because he
+made no effort to be brilliant in after-dinner speeches. There are
+others who, in the warmth of their innocent enthusiasm, think that
+Lincoln's fame will go on increasing until, in the whole Eastern world,
+among the mountains of Thibet, on the shores of China and Japan, among
+the jungles of India, in the wilds of darkest Africa, in the furthermost
+islands of the sea, his praises will be sung as second to no political
+benefactor that the world has seen. As all exaggerations provoke
+antagonism, it is wisest not to compare him with any national idols, but
+leave him to the undisputed verdict of the best judges, that lie was one
+of the few immortals who will live in a nation's heart and the world's
+esteem from age to age. Is this not fame enough for a modest man, who
+felt his inferiority, in many respects, to those to whom he himself
+intrusted power?
+
+Lincoln's character is difficult to read, from its many-sided aspects.
+He rarely revealed to the same person more than a single side. His
+individuality was marvellous. "Let us take him," in the words of his
+latest good biographer, "as simply Abraham Lincoln, singular and
+solitary as we all see that he was. Let us be thankful if we can make a
+niche big enough for him among the world's heroes without worrying
+ourselves about the proportion it may bear to other niches; and there
+let him remain forever, lonely, as in his strong lifetime, impressive,
+mysterious, unmeasured, and unsolved."
+
+One thing may be confidently affirmed of this man,--that he stands as a
+notable exemplar, in the highest grade, of the American of this
+century,--the natural development of the self-reliant English stock upon
+our continent. Lowell, in his "Commemoration Ode," has set forth
+Lincoln's greatness and this fine representative quality of his, in
+words that may well conclude our study of the man and of the first full
+epoch of American life:--
+
+       "Here was a type of the true elder race,
+     And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
+       I praise him not; it were too late;
+     And some innative weakness there must be
+     In him who condescends to victory
+     Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
+       Safe in himself as in a fate.
+         So always firmly he:
+         He knew to bide his time,
+         And can his fame abide,
+     Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
+         Till the wise years decide.
+       Great captains, with their guns and drums,
+         Disturb our judgment for the hour,
+           But at last silence comes;
+       These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
+       Our children shall behold his fame,
+         The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man,
+     Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
+       New birth of our new soil, the first American."
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+The most voluminous of the Lives of Abraham Lincoln is that of Nicolay
+and Hay, which seems to be fair and candid without great exaggerations;
+but it is more a political and military history of the United States
+than a Life of Lincoln himself. Herndon's Life is probably the most
+satisfactory of the period before Lincoln's inauguration. Holland,
+Lamar, Stoddard, Arnold, and Morse have all written interesting
+biographies. See also Ford's History of Illinois, Greeley's American
+Conflict, Lincoln and Douglas Debates, Lincoln's Speeches, published by
+the Century Co., Secretary Chase's Diary, Swinton's Army of the Potomac,
+Lives of Seward, McClellan, Garrison, and Grant, Grant's Autobiography,
+McClure's Lincoln and Men of War Times, Wilson's History of the Rise and
+Fall of the Slave Power.
+
+
+
+ROBERT EDWARD LEE.
+
+
+1807-1870.
+
+THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
+
+
+BY E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS, LL.D.
+
+Robert Edward Lee had perhaps a more illustrious traceable lineage than
+any American not of his family. His ancestor, Lionel Lee, crossed the
+English Channel with William the Conqueror. Another scion of the clan
+fought beside Richard the Lion-hearted at Acre in the Third Crusade. To
+Richard Lee, the great landowner on Northern Neck, the Virginia Colony
+was much indebted for royal recognition. His grandson, Henry Lee, was
+the grandfather of "Light-horse Harry" Lee, of Revolutionary fame, who
+was the father of Robert Edward Lee.
+
+Robert E. Lee was born on Jan. 19,1807, in Westmoreland County, Va., the
+same county that gave to the world George Washington and James Monroe.
+Though he was fatherless at eleven, the father's blood in him inclined
+him to the profession of arms, and when eighteen,--in 1825,--on an
+appointment obtained for him by General Andrew Jackson, he entered the
+Military Academy at West Point. He graduated in 1829, being second in
+rank in a class of forty-six. Among his classmates were two men whom one
+delights to name with him,--Ormsby M. Mitchell, later a general in the
+Federal army, and Joseph E. Johnston, the famous Confederate. Lee was at
+once made Lieutenant of Engineers, but, till the Mexican War, attained
+only a captaincy. This was conferred on him in 1838.
+
+In 1831, Lee had been married to Miss Mary Randolph Custis, the
+grand-daughter of Mrs. George Washington. By this marriage he became
+possessor of the beautiful estate at Arlington, opposite Washington, his
+home till the Civil War. The union, blessed by seven children, was in
+all respects most happy.
+
+In his prime, Lee was spoken of as the handsomest man in the army. He
+was about six feet tall, perfectly built, healthy, fond of outdoor life,
+enthusiastic in his profession, gentle, dignified, studious,
+broad-minded, and positively, though unobtrusively, religious. If he had
+faults, which those nearest him doubted, they were excess of modesty and
+excess of tenderness.
+
+During the Mexican War, Captain Lee directed all the most important
+engineering operations of the American army,--a work vital to its
+wonderful success. Already, at the siege of Vera Cruz, General Scott
+mentioned him as having "greatly distinguished himself." He was
+prominent in all the operations thence to Cerro Gordo, where, in April,
+1847, he was brevetted Major. Both at Contreras and at Churubusco he was
+credited with gallant and meritorious services. At the charge up
+Chapultepec, in which Joseph E. Johnston, George B. McClellan, George E.
+Pickett, and Thomas J. Jackson participated, Lee bore Scott's orders to
+all points until from loss of blood by a wound, and from the loss of two
+nights' sleep at the batteries, he actually fainted away in the
+discharge of his duty. Such ability and devotion brought him home from
+Mexico bearing the brevet rank of Colonel. General Scott had learned to
+think of him as "the greatest military genius in America."
+
+In 1852 Lee was made Superintendent of the West Point Military Academy.
+In 1855 he was commissioned Lieutenant-Colonel of Col. Albert Sidney
+Johnston's new cavalry regiment, just raised to serve in Texas. March,
+1861, saw him Colonel of the First United States Cavalry. With the
+possible exception of the two Johnstons, he was now the most promising
+candidate for General Scott's position whenever that venerable hero
+vacated it, as he was sure to do soon.
+
+On the initiative of Mississippi, a provisional Congress had met at
+Montgomery on Feb. 4, 1861, and created a provisional constitution for
+the Confederate States of America. By March 11 a permanent constitution
+was drafted, reproducing that of the United States, with certain
+modifications. Slavery and State-sovereignty received elaborate
+guarantees. Bounties and protective tariffs were absolutely forbidden.
+Cabinet members had seats in Congress. Parts of appropriation bills
+could be vetoed. The presidential term was six years, and a president
+could not be re-elected. This constitution, having been ratified by five
+or more legislatures, was set in play by the provisional Congress.
+Virginia on seceding was taken into the Confederacy, and the Confederate
+capital changed from Montgomery to Richmond.
+
+Lee was a Virginian, and Virginia, about to secede and at length
+seceding, in most earnest tones besought her distinguished son to join
+her. It seemed to him the call of duty, and that call, as he understood
+it, was one which it was not in him to disobey. President Lincoln knew
+the value of the man, and sent Frank Blair to him to say that if he
+would abide by the Union he should soon command the whole active army.
+That would probably have meant his election, in due time, to the
+presidency of his country. "For God's sake, don't resign, Lee!" General
+Scott--himself a Virginian--is said to have pleaded. He replied: "I am
+compelled to; I cannot consult my own feelings in the matter."
+Accordingly, on April 20, 1861, three days after Virginia passed its
+ordinance of secession, Lee sent to Simon Cameron, Secretary of War,
+his resignation as an officer in the United States army.
+
+Few at the North were able to understand the Secession movement, most
+denying that a man at once thoughtful and honorable could join in it. So
+centralized had the North by 1861 become in all social and economic
+particulars, that centrality in government was taken as a matter of
+course. Representing this, the Nation was deemed paramount to any State.
+Governmental sovereignty, like travel and trade, had come to ignore
+State lines. The whole idea and feeling of State-sovereignty, once as
+potent North as South, had vanished and been forgotten.
+
+Far otherwise at the South, where, owing to the great size of States and
+to the paucity of railways and telegraphs, interstate association was
+not yet a force. Each State, being in square miles ample enough for an
+empire, retained to a great extent the consciousness of an independent
+nation. The State was near and palpable; the central government seemed a
+vague and distant thing. Loyalty was conceived as binding one primarily
+to one's own State.
+
+It is a misconception to explain this feeling--for in most cases it was
+feeling rather than reasoned conviction--by Calhoun's teaching. It
+resulted from geography and history, and, these factors working as they
+did, would have been what it was had Calhoun never lived.
+
+With reflecting Southerners Calhoun's message no doubt had some
+confirmatory effect, because, historically and also in a certain legal
+aspect, Calhoun's view was very impressive. That the overwhelming
+majority of the early Americans who voted to ratify the national
+Constitution supposed it to be simply a compact between the States
+cannot be questioned, nor could ratification ever have been effected had
+any considerable number believed otherwise. The view that a State
+wishing to withdraw from the Union might for good cause do so was the
+prevalent one till long after the War of 1812, yielding, thereafter, at
+the North, less to Webster's logic than to the social and economic
+development just mentioned.
+
+At the South it did not thus give way. There the propriety of secession
+was never aught but a question of sufficient grievance, to be settled by
+each State for itself, speaking through a majority of its voters. When
+the Secession ordinances actually passed, many individual voters in each
+State opposed on the ground that the occasion was insufficient; but such
+opponents, of whom Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia was one, nearly to a
+man felt bound, as good citizens, to acquiesce in the decision of their
+States and even to uphold this in arms.
+
+Whether voting secession or accepting it on State mandate, Southern men
+naturally resented being called traitors or rebels. By the Websterian
+conception of the nature of our government they were so, but by
+Calhoun's they were simply acting out the Constitution in the best of
+faith. No recognized arbiter or criterion existed to determine between
+the two views. Massachusetts denounced seceding South Carolina as a
+traitor: South Carolina berated Massachusetts, seeking to impose the
+Union on the South against its will, as a criminal aggressor. An
+intelligent referee with no bias for either must have pronounced the
+judgments equally just.
+
+These considerations explain how Colonel Lee, certainly one of the most
+conscientious men who ever lived, felt bound in duty and honor to side
+with seceding Virginia, though he doubted the wisdom of her course.
+
+Lee was from the first Virginia's military hero and hope, but he did not
+at once become such to the Confederacy at large. He did not immediately
+take the field. Till after Bull Run he remained in Richmond, President
+Jefferson Davis's adviser and right hand man in organizing the forces
+incessantly arriving and pushing to the front.
+
+In his brief West Virginia campaign, where he first came in contact with
+McClellan, being looked upon as an invader rather than a friend, Lee had
+scant success. Some therefore called him a "mere historic name,"
+"Letcher's pet," a "West Pointer," no fighting general. He went to South
+Carolina to supervise the repair and building of coast fortifications
+there, and it was no doubt in large part owing to his engineering skill
+then applied that Charleston, whose sea-door the Federals incessantly
+pounded from the beginning, probably wasting there more powder and iron
+than at all other points together, was captured only at the end of the
+war and then from the land side. In March, 1862, General Lee again
+became President Davis's military adviser.
+
+But though thus in relative obscurity, Lee was not forgotten. President
+Davis knew his man and knew that his hour would come. When, in May,
+1862, the vast Federal army stood almost at Richmond's gates, Albert
+Sidney Johnston being dead and Joseph E. Johnston lying wounded, the
+Confederacy lifted up its voice and called Robert E. Lee to assume
+command upon the Chickahominy front. This he did on June 1, 1862.
+
+The Confederates' ill-success on the second day of the Fair Oaks battle
+was to them a blessing in disguise. It put McClellan at his ease, giving
+Lee time to accomplish three extremely important ends. He could rest and
+recruit his army, fortify the south of Richmond with stout works, a
+detail which had not been attended to before, and send Stonewall Jackson
+down the valley of Virginia, so frightening the authorities in
+Washington that they dared not re-enforce McClellan.
+
+Brilliant victory resulted. Leaving only 25,000 men between his capital
+and his foe, Lee, on June 26, threw the rest across the upper
+Chickahominy and attacked the Federal right. Fighting terribly at
+Mechanicsville and Gaines's Mill, A.P. Hill and Jackson, the latter
+having made forced marches from the Shenandoah to join in the movement,
+pushed back Fitz-John Porter's corps across the Chickahominy, sundering
+McClellan entirely from his York River base. The Union army was now
+nearer Richmond than the bulk of Lee's, which was beyond the
+Chickahominy, at that time none too easily crossed. Had McClellan been
+Lee or Grant or Sherman he would have made a dash for Richmond. But he
+was McClellan, and Lee knew perfectly well that he would attempt nothing
+so bold. Retreat was the Northerner's thought, and he did retreat--in
+good order, and hitting back venomously from White Oak Swamp and Malvern
+Hill--till he had reached Harrison's Landing upon the James, where
+gunboats sheltered and supply-ships fed his men.
+
+Lee felt disappointed with the seven days' fighting in that he had not
+crushed McClellan. He had, however, forced him to raise the siege of
+Richmond and to retreat thirty or forty miles. The Confederacy breathed
+freely again, and its gallant chieftain began to be famous.
+
+The new leader had thus far given only hints of his fertile strategy.
+McClellan's army was still but two days' march from Richmond. Its front
+was perfectly fortified,--McClellan was an engineer; gunboats protected
+its flanks. Lee--an engineer, too--knew that to attack McClellan there
+would be too costly; yet McClellan must be removed, and this before he
+could be re-enforced for an advance. His removal was accomplished.
+
+General Pope was threatening Richmond from the North. The government
+expected great things of him. In a pompous manifesto he had given out
+that retreating days were over, that his headquarters were to be in the
+saddle, and, that, as he swept on to Richmond, where he evidently
+expected to arrive in the course of a few days, his difficulty was going
+to be not to whip his enemy but to get at him in order to do so.
+
+When Pope wrote that manifesto he knew many men, but there was one man
+whom he did not yet know. It was Stonewall Jackson, the most unique and
+interesting character rolled into notice by those tempestuous years,
+unless Nathan Bedford Forrest is the exception. Like the great
+Moslem warrior,
+
+     "Terrible he rode, alone,
+      With his Yemen sword for aid;
+      Ornament it carried none
+      Save the notches on its blade."
+
+Jackson was an intensely religious man. Unlike many good soldiers he
+wore his piety into camp and on to the battlefield, and would not have
+hesitated to offer prayer to the God of battles where every one of his
+thirty thousand men could see and hear. And all those soldiers believed
+in the efficacy of their commander's prayers. Jackson was also a stern
+disciplinarian. If men in any way sought to evade duty, provost-marshals
+were ordered to bring them into line, if necessary at the pistol's
+point. In consequence, when the day of battle came, there was not a man
+in the corps who did not feel sure that if he shirked duty Stonewall
+Jackson would shoot him and God Almighty would damn him. This helped to
+render Jackson's thirty thousand perhaps the most efficient
+fighting-machine which had appeared upon the battlefield since the
+Ironsides of Oliver Cromwell.
+
+Pope was destined to make Jackson's acquaintance speedily--and rather
+unceremoniously, for Jackson was ill-mannered enough, instead of passing
+in his card at Pope's front door, as etiquette required, to present it
+at the kitchen-gate. Before Pope was aware, his enterprising opponent,
+whose war motto was that one man behind your enemy is worth ten in his
+front, had gone around through Thoroughfare Gap to Manassas Junction and
+planted himself (August 26, 1862) square across the only railroad that
+ran between Pope's army and Washington. Pope should have volted and
+struck Jackson like lightning before the rest of Lee's army could come
+up; but two considerations made him slow. One was that Longstreet's wing
+of Lee's army was now rather close in his front, and the other,
+mortification at turning back after having started southward with such a
+blare of trumpets.
+
+Brave Confederate soldiers who were at Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run,
+and Chantilly, bear witness that the blood Pope's men shed in those
+battles ran red. But dazed, tired, lacking confidence, and at last on
+short rations, and faced or flanked by Lee's whole army, while but part
+of McClellan's was at hand, they fought either to fall or to
+retreat again.
+
+No one witnessing it can ever forget the consternation which prevailed
+in the fortifications about Washington the night after the battle of
+Chantilly. The writer's own troop, manning Fort Ward, a few miles out
+from Alexandria, stood to its heavy guns every moment of that dismal
+night, gazing frontwards for a foe. The name "Stonewall Jackson" was on
+each lip. At the break of dawn, when to weary soldiers trees and fences
+easily look "pokerish," brave artillerists swore that they could see the
+dreaded warrior charging down yonder hill heading a division, and in
+almost agonizing tones begged leave to "load for action."
+
+Lee probably made a mistake in entering Maryland after the battle of
+Chantilly, and his report implies that he would not at this time have
+done so for merely military reasons. But, having crossed the Potomac, he
+did well to fight at Sharpsburg (Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862) before
+recrossing. This was well, because it was bold. Moreover, by bruising
+the Federals there he delayed them, getting ample time for ensconcing
+his army on the Rappahannock front for the winter.
+
+Also for the battle of Fredericksburg (Dec. 13, 1862) Lee deserves no
+special praise. Doubtless his unerring engineer eye picked the
+fighting-line, and his already great prestige inspired his brave army.
+But that was all. The pluck of his officers and men and Burnside's
+incapacity did the rest.
+
+Never did a general carry to battle a better plan of battle than
+Fighting Joe Hooker's at Chancellorsville (May 2-3, 1863), and rarely
+has one marched from a battle that had proved for his own side a more
+lamentable fiasco. Taking the offensive with vast advantage in numbers,
+he proposed to hold Lee in place with one of his wings while he thrust
+the other behind Lee's left, between the Confederate army and Richmond.
+But he had started a game at which two could play and had challenged a
+more deft and daring gamester than himself. Early divining his purpose,
+Lee, leaving a small part of his force to engage Hooker's left, with the
+rest vigorously assumed the counter-offensive, sending Jackson, as
+usual, around Hooker's extreme right. Both movements completely
+succeeded.
+
+Now appeared the folly of promoting a general to the headship of a great
+army simply because of his fighting-quality and his success with a
+division or a corps. Attacked in front and routed on his flank, Hooker
+did exactly what all who knew him would have taken oath that he would
+never do. Instead of going straight ahead with vengeance and bidding his
+far left do the same, he ordered and executed a retreat to his old
+position north of the Rappahannock.
+
+There were those who laid this disaster to Hooker's intemperance.
+President Lincoln probably had such a suspicion, when, sending General
+Hooker west to join General Sherman, he admonished him in passing
+through Kentucky "to steer clear of Bourbon County." Though Hooker was
+not a total-abstainer, Chancellorsville is not to be explained by that
+fact any more than Jubal A. Early's defeat by Sheridan in the Shenandoah
+Valley is referrible to his use of apple-brandy.
+
+Hooker did not create his own defeat, as Burnside may, with little
+exaggeration, be said to have done at Fredericksburg. Lee defeated him,
+and deserved the immense fame which the victory brought. No wonder he
+began to plan for the offensive again. Soon the ever-memorable
+Gettysburg campaign was begun.
+
+The details of this campaign, even those of the battle itself (July
+1-3, 1863), we cannot give here. Nor need we. The world knows them:--the
+first day, with Hill's and Ewell's success, costing the Union the life
+of its gallant General Reynolds, commanding the First Corps; the second
+day, when, back and forth by the Devil's Den, Hood on one side and Dan
+Sickles on the other, fought their men as soldiers had never fought on
+the American continent before; and the third day, when for an hour a
+hundred cannon on Seminary Ridge belched hell-fire at a hundred cannon
+on Cemetery Ridge, prelude, in the natural key, to Pickett's
+death-defying charge.
+
+     "A thousand fell where Kemper led,
+      A thousand died where Garnett bled.
+      In blinding flame and strangling smoke
+      The remnant through the batteries broke
+      And crossed the works with Armistead."
+
+The Union army was for the first time fighting a great battle on Union
+soil. The homes of many who were engaged stood within sound of the
+Gettysburg cannon. As the Confederates did in many other engagements,
+the Federals here felt that they were repelling an invader, and they
+fought accordingly, with a grim iron resisting power which they had
+never displayed before.
+
+Great praise was due to General Hancock, and perhaps still more to
+General Howard, for early perceiving the strength of Cemetery Hill as a
+defensible position. On the first day, after General Reynolds had
+fallen at his post of duty with the First Corps, General Doubleday, next
+in command, was on the point of ordering a retreat, the attack seeming
+too fearful to be withstood. But Howard, coming up with the Eleventh
+Corps and assuming command of the field, overruled Doubleday, and, by
+enforcing a most stubborn resistance against Hill's and Ewell's
+desperate onsets, probably saved Cemetery Hill from capture
+that evening.
+
+So far as has ever yet been made apparent, every plan which Lee formed
+for the battle of Gettysburg, every order which he gave, was wise and
+right. We do not except even his management on the third day. It is easy
+to find fault with dispositions when they have failed of happy results.
+Men have said that instead of attacking in front on that day Lee should
+have drawn Ewell from the left and thrown him to Longstreet's right,
+manoeuvring Meade out of his position. But in this matter, too, Lee's
+judgment was probably good. Changing his plan of attack would have been
+a partial confession of defeat, to some extent disheartening his men.
+The Union Sixth Corps, fresh and free, General John Sedgwick at its
+head, was sure to have pounced on any troops seeking to trouble Meade's
+left, and, had Meade been successfully flanked and forced back, he would
+have retired to Pipe Creek and been stronger than ever.
+
+Of course, Pickett should never have been sent forward alone. You could
+wade the Atlantic as easily as he, unsupported, could go beyond that
+stone wall. But, from all one can learn, Lee was in fact not responsible
+for Pickett's lack of support, although in almost guilty nobleness of
+spirit he assumed the responsibility, and silently rested under the
+imputation of it till his death.
+
+Had Lee's great subordinates, Ewell at nightfall on the first day, and
+Longstreet on the other two days, seconded him with the alacrity and
+devotion usually displayed by them, or had Stonewall Jackson been still
+alive and in the place of either of these generals, the issue of the
+battle would almost to a certainty have been very different from what it
+was. A soldier who had often followed to victory the enterprising Graham
+of Claverhouse, but, under a weaker leader, saw a battle wavering, cried
+out, "O for one hour of Dundee!" So must Lee often have sighed for
+Stonewall, the loss of whom at Chancellorsville made that, for the
+Confederacy, a sort of Pyrrhic victory.
+
+Lee's skill at Gettysburg has been questioned in that he fought his army
+upon the longer line, the big fishhook described by his position lying
+outside the little one formed by the Federal army. But Lee fought on the
+outer line also at Second Bull Run, winning one of the neatest victories
+in modern warfare.
+
+John Codman Ropes, the well-known military critic, says of this battle:
+"It would be hard to find a better instance of that masterly
+comprehension of the actual condition of things which marks a great
+general than was exhibited in General Lee's allowing our formidable
+attack, in which more than half the Federal army was taking part, to be
+fully developed and to burst upon the exhausted troops of Stonewall
+Jackson, while Lee, relying upon the ability of that able soldier to
+maintain his position, was maturing and arranging for the great attack
+on our left flank by the powerful corps of Longstreet."
+
+In Prussia's war with Austria in 1866, Von Moltke's plan at the battle
+of Sadowa, where he splendidly triumphed, was in the same respect a
+close imitation of Lee's at Gettysburg. The Prussians occupied the outer
+fish-hook line, the Austrians the inner. When the pickets closed in the
+morning Von Moltke saluted King William and said: "Your Majesty will
+to-day win not only the battle but the campaign." At noon this did not
+appear possible. Prince Frederick Charles's corps were withering under
+the hottest artillery fire of the century, save that at Gettysburg, just
+three years earlier to the hour. It seemed as if in fifteen minutes they
+must give way. But, hark! What means that cheering on the left? New
+cannons boom and the Austrian fire slackens! Von Moltke knows perfectly
+well what it means. The Crown-Prince has arrived with his fresh corps.
+He has stormed the Heights of Chlum--the Culp's Hill of that
+battlefield. He enfilades the whole Austrian line. Benedek is beaten; on
+to Vienna; the war is ended!
+
+It was with a heavy heart that General Lee ordered his brave men
+southward again--a heart made heavier by many a stinging criticism
+against him in the Southern press. The resolution that bore him up at
+this crisis was morally sublime. He could not hope to strengthen his
+army more. For a time he had to weaken it by sending Longstreet west to
+assist Bragg in fighting the battle of Chickamauga. Clothing, rations,
+animals, and forage, as well as men, were increasingly scarce. The South
+was exhausted much sooner than any expected, having greatly
+overestimated its wealth by taking exports and imports for gauge.
+Doubtful if ever before was so large and populous a region so far from
+self-sustaining. The force against Lee, on the other hand, was daily
+becoming stronger.
+
+Till Gettysburg, Lee had toyed with the Army of the Potomac--not because
+the rank and file of that army was at fault, and not mainly because of
+its generals' inability, but mostly because of political interference
+with its operations. The great and revered President Lincoln, with all
+his powers, was not a military man. No more was Secretary Stanton. They
+secured the best military aid they could. From an early period General
+Halleck--"Old Brains," men called him because of his immense military
+information--was their constant adviser; and though he was a scholar
+rather than a genius, he could doubtless have saved them many an error
+had they heeded his counsel instead of civilian clamor.
+
+How impressively did not the Civil War teach that fine military
+scholarship alone, while it may greatly add to a general's efficiency,
+cannot make a true military leader! Compare Halleck with Grant or
+Sherman! The Creoles of Louisiana considered their Beauregard the _ne
+plus ultra_ military genius of the South. One of them was once asked his
+opinion of General Lee. He replied in his broken English: "O, Gen Lee a
+ve'y good gen'l, ve'y good gen'l indeed; Gen Beaugar speak ve'y fav'ble
+of Gen Lee." So, at last, did Halleck speak "ve'y fav'ble" of Grant.
+
+But Gettysburg convinced Lee that he could toy with the Potomac army no
+longer, and this was more than ever impossible after Grant took command.
+Then Greek met Greek, and the death grapple began. At the Wilderness, at
+Spottsylvania, and most mercilessly of all at Cold Harbor, Grant drove
+his colossal battering-ram against Lee's gray wall, only to find it
+solid as Gibraltar.
+
+This struggle tested both commanders' mettle to the utmost. At the end
+of the hammering campaign, after losing men enough to form an army as
+large as Lee's, Grant's van was full twice as far from Richmond as
+McClellan's had been two years before. Not once was Lee flanked, duped,
+or surprised. As always hitherto, so now, his darling mode of defence
+was offence,--to fight,--Grant's every blow being met with another
+before it hit. Only once were Lee's lines forced straight back to stay.
+Even then, at the Spottsylvania "bloody angle," the ground he lost
+hardly sufficed to graveyard the Union men killed in getting it. In
+swinging round to Petersburg, and again at the springing of the
+Petersburg Mine, Grant thought himself sure to make enormous gains; but
+Lee's insight into his purposes, and lightning celerity in checkmating
+these, foiled both movements, giving the mine operation, moreover, the
+effect of a deadly boomerang.
+
+Spite of all this, the end of the Confederacy was in sight from the
+moment of Grant's arrival at Petersburg. During the three years that Lee
+and his indomitable aides and soldiers had been holding at bay brave and
+perfectly appointed armies vastly outnumbering them, and twice boldly
+assuming the offensive, with disaster indeed, yet with glory, two other
+grand campaigns had been going on wherein the Confederacy had fared much
+worse. The capture of New Orleans, of Island No. Ten, and of Vicksburg,
+had let the Father of Waters again run "unvexed to the sea." A second
+line of operations _via_ Murfreesborough, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and
+Savannah, had divided the Confederacy afresh. Sherman's army, which had
+achieved this, began on Feb. 1, 1865, to march northward from Savannah.
+
+Bravery in camp and field and deathless endurance at home could not take
+the place of bread. The blockade was, to be sure, for some time
+extensively evaded, admitting English wares of all sorts in great
+quantities. But in no long time the blockade tightened. Moreover,
+comparatively little cotton was raised which could in any event have
+been exported. Credit failing, imports, if any, had to be paid for in
+money. This, of course, was soon spent, and then importation ceased.
+Privateers destroyed but could bring nothing home.
+
+As the war progressed, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, Louisiana, and
+with the fall of Vicksburg the whole immense Trans-Mississippi tract,
+were lost to the Confederacy. Sherman's march isolated also Mississippi,
+Alabama, and Georgia.
+
+The dearth of necessaries, save corn and bacon, became desperate. Salt
+and wheat bread were rare luxuries. In 1864 a suit of jean cost $600, a
+spool of cotton $30, a pound of bacon $15. It should, of course, be
+borne in mind that these high prices in part represented the
+depreciation of Confederate paper money. Drastic drafting and the arming
+of negroes could avail little for lack of accoutrements and food. Thus
+Lee's capitulation at Appomattox (April 9, 1865) represents less a
+defeat of his army than the breakdown of the Confederacy at large. So
+true and impressive is this that reflection upon it makes the last year
+of Lee's commandership seem peculiarly glorious. Only by rarest genius,
+surely, were those dazzling tactics, that lynx-eyed, sleepless
+watchfulness, that superhuman patience and superhuman valor, protracted,
+incessant for a whole year, keeping intact, victorious, and full of
+inspiration that gray line, ever longer, ever thinner, of men
+outnumbered two, then three, and at last five to one, whose food and
+clothing grew scantier with the days, while the bounties of a continent
+replenished their opponents,--keeping that tenuous line unbroken till
+very starvation unfitted soldiers to handle muskets which must be used
+empty if at all, because ammunition was spent! And when we recall that
+all this was accomplished not because the Union army was cowardly,
+ill-led, or asleep, but in spite of Grant's relentless push and an ably
+led army as brave, wary, and determined as ever marched: let us ask
+critics versed in the history of war, if books tell of generalship more
+complete than this!
+
+Lee's military conduct revealed, it must be admitted, one weakness, that
+of undue leniency toward slack, dilatory, and opinionated subordinates.
+This was, however, only in part Lee's personal fault. Mainly it was the
+military counterpart of the rope-of-sand infirmity inherent in a
+Confederacy which in every possible way deified the individual State and
+snubbed the central power. Without jeopardizing the Confederacy, Lee
+could not at Gettysburg deal with Longstreet as Grant did with Warren at
+Five Forks, or as Sherman did with Palmer in North Carolina. It seems
+that Lee's orders to his main subordinates were habitually of the nature
+of requests. Yet what obedience was not accorded him in spite of this!
+
+Most striking among the characteristics of General Lee which made him so
+successful was his exalted and unmatched excellence as a man, his
+unselfishness, sweetness, gentleness, patience, love of justice, and
+general elevation of soul. Lee much loved to quote Sir William
+Hamilton's words: "On earth nothing great but man: in man nothing great
+but mind." He always added, however: "In mind nothing great save
+devotion to truth and duty." Though a soldier, and at last very eminent
+as a soldier, he retained from the beginning to the end of his career
+the entire temper and character of an ideal civilian. He did not sink
+the man in the military man. He had all a soldier's virtues, the
+"chevalier without fear and without reproach," but he was glorified by a
+whole galaxy of excellences which soldiers too often lack. He was pure
+of speech and of habit, never intemperate, never obscene, never profane,
+never irreverent. In domestic life he was an absolute model. Lofty
+command did not make him vain.
+
+The Southern army had one prominent officer with a high ecclesiastical
+title, the Rt. Rev. Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk, D.D., LL.D.,
+Bishop of Louisiana, commanding a corps in Bragg's army. He was killed
+in battle at Pine Mountain, Ga., during Sherman's advance on Atlanta.
+Stonewall Jackson was so famed for his rather obtrusive though awfully
+real piety that men named him the Havelock of the army. But none who
+knew the three will call Lee less a Christian than either of the others.
+He prayed daily for his enemies in arms, and no word of hate toward the
+North ever escaped his tongue or his pen. He had the faith and devotion
+of a true crusader. His letters breathe the spirit of a better earth
+than this. Collected into a volume, they would make an invaluable book
+of devotional literature. No wonder officers and men passionately loved
+such a commander, glad, at his bidding, to crowd where the fight was
+thickest and death the surest.
+
+Sir Thomas Malory's words are not inaptly applied to Lee: "Ah, Sir
+Lancelot, thou wert head of all Christian knights; thou wert never
+matched of earthly knight's hand; and thou wert the courtliest knight
+that ever bare shield; and thou wert the kindest man that ever strake
+with sword; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among
+press of knights; and thou wert the meekest man and the gentliest that
+ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy
+mortal foe that ever put spear in rest."
+
+Exquisitely appropriate is also Professor Trent's comparison of Lee
+"with Belisarius and Turenne and Marlborough and Moltke, on the one
+hand, and on the other with Callicratidas, and Saint Louis, with the
+Chevalier Bayard and Sir Philip Sidney."
+
+A remarkable trait of General Lee's military character was his tireless
+and irresistible energy. While one whom he deemed a foe of his State
+remained on her soil, he could not rest. From the moment he took command
+of the Army of Northern Virginia, all was action in that army. During
+the nine weeks after A.P. Hill struck Mechanicsville that earthquake
+shock, how did not the war-map change! Richmond was set free; Washington
+was threatened. Lee whipped McClellan before Pope could help, then Pope
+before McClellan could help. The first evening at Gettysburg, Longstreet
+having impressively pointed out the strength of Meade's position on
+Cemetery Hill, Lee instantly replied, "If he is there in the morning, I
+shall attack him." The second morning of the Wilderness battle, Grant,
+obviously expecting to anticipate all movement upon the other side,
+ordered charge at five o'clock. Lee charged at half-past four. Grant was
+determined to reach Spottsylvania first, but there, too, Lee awaited
+him, having had some hours to rest. Prostrate and half-delirious in his
+tent one day during Grant's effort to flank him, he kept murmuring: "We
+must strike them; we must not let them pass without striking them."
+Longstreet was too slow for him, and so was even the ever-ready A.P.
+Hill. Years later, Lee's dying words were: "Tell Hill he _must_
+come up."
+
+To appreciate his cat-like agility, one must remember that Lee was the
+oldest general made famous by the war. It is thought that years
+accounted for Napoleon's refusal to fight the Old Guard at Borodino, as
+his ablest generals urged. Napoleon was then forty-three, eleven years
+younger than Lee was when our war began. It is to young Napoleon we must
+turn to find parallels for Lee's celerity. Second Bull Run and
+Chancellorsville may fitly be compared to Arcola and Rivoli. It has been
+observed that, like Napoleon, Lee avoided passive defence, seeming the
+assailant even when on the defensive. Like him, he was swift and
+terrible in availing himself of an enemy's mistakes. It can hardly be
+doubted that Lee's campaigns furnished more or less inspiration and
+direction for Von Moltke's immortal movements in 1866 and in 1870-71.
+
+That Lee was brave need not be said. He was not as rash as Hood and
+Cleburne sometimes were. He knew the value of his life to the great
+cause, and, usually at least, did not expose himself needlessly.
+Prudence he had, but no fear. His resolution to lead the charge at the
+Bloody Angle--rashness for once--shows fearlessness. Tender-hearted as
+he was, Lee felt battle frenzy as hardly another great commander ever
+did. From him it spread like magnetism to his officers and men,
+thrilling all as if the chief himself were close by in the fray,
+shouting, "Now fight, my good fellows, fight!" Yet such was Lee's
+self-command that this dreadful ardor never carried him too far. Once,
+namely, at Fredericksburg, recovery from the fighting mood perhaps
+occurred too promptly. Some have thought this, suggesting that had the
+leash not been applied to the dogs of war so early, Burnside's retreat
+might have been made a rout.
+
+But Lee possessed another order of courage infinitely higher and rarer
+than this,--the sort so often lacking even in generals who have served
+with utmost distinction in high subordinate places, when they are called
+to the sole and decisive direction of armies: he had that royal mettle,
+that preternatural decision of character, ever tempered with caution and
+wisdom, which leads a great commander, when true occasion arises,
+resolutely to give general battle, or to swing out away from his base
+upon a precarious but promising campaign. Here you have moral heroism;
+ordinary valor is more impulsive. A weaker man, albeit total stranger to
+fear, ready to lead his division or his corps into the very mouth of
+hell, if commanded, being set himself to direct an army, will be either
+rash or else too timid, or fidget from one extreme to the other,
+losing all.
+
+Hooker began bravely at Chancellorsville, but soon grew faint and
+afraid. Hood says that Hardee's timidity lost him a great victory at
+Decatur, Ga., the day the Union General McPherson fell; and that
+Cheatham's, at Spring Hill, during his northward pursuit of Thomas, lost
+him another. Yet Hooker, Hardee, and Cheatham were men to whom personal
+fear was a meaningless phrase. Stonewall Jackson was personally no
+braver than they; it was his bravery of the higher sort that set him as
+a general so incomparably above them. The same high quality belonged to
+Grant and Sherman, and to Washington and Greene in the Revolutionary War.
+
+It was in this supreme kind of boldness that Robert Lee pre-eminently
+excelled. Cautious always, he still took risks and responsibilities
+which common generals would not have dared to take; and when he had
+assumed these, his mighty will forbade him to sink under the load. The
+braying of bitter critics, the obloquy of men who should have supported
+him, the shots from behind, dismayed him no more than did Burnside's
+cannon at Fredericksburg. On he pressed, stout as a Titan, relentless as
+fate. What time bravest hearts failed at victory's delay, this
+Dreadnaught rose to his best, and furnished courage for the whole
+Confederacy.
+
+Lee's campaigns and battles "exhibit the triumph of profound
+intelligence, of calculation, and of well-employed force over numbers
+and disunited counsels."
+
+Lee always manoeuvred; he never merely "pitched in." As he right-flanked
+McClellan, so both at Manassas and at Chantilly he right-flanked
+Pope,--all three times using for the work Jackson, the tireless and the
+terrible. At Second Bull Run, to show that he was no slave to one form
+of strategy, he muffled up Pope's left instead of his right, here using
+Longstreet. His tactics were as masterful as his strategy. At Second
+Bull Run, fearfully hammered by the noble Fifth Corps, that had fought
+like so many tigers at Gaines's Mill and Malvern Hill, even Stonewall
+Jackson cried to Lee for aid. Aid came, but not in men. Longstreet's
+cannon, cunningly planted to enfilade the Fifth Corps' front, shattered
+the Federals' attacking column and placed Stonewall at his ease.
+
+Considering everything, his paucity of men and means, the necessity
+always upon him of reckoning with political as well as with military
+situations, and his success in holding even Grant at bay so long, Lee's
+masterful campaigns of 1862, 1863, 1864, and 1865 not only constitute
+him the foremost military virtuoso of his own land, but write his name
+high on the scroll of the greatest captains of history, beside those of
+Gustavus Adolphus, William of Orange, Tilly, Frederic the Great, Prince
+Eugene, Napoleon, Wellington, and Von Moltke.
+
+In a sense, of course, the cause for which Lee fought was "lost;" yet a
+very great part of what he and his _confreres_ sought, the war actually
+secured and assured. His cause was not "lost" as Hannibal's was, whose
+country, with its institutions, spite of his genius and devotion,
+utterly perished from the earth. Yet Hannibal is remembered more widely
+than Scipio. Were Lee in the same case with Hannibal, men would magnify
+his name as long as history is read. "Of illustrious men," says
+Thucydides, "the whole earth is the sepulchre. They are immortalized not
+alone by columns and inscriptions in their own lands; memorials to them
+rise in foreign countries as well,--not of stone, it may be, but
+unwritten, in the thoughts of posterity."
+
+Lee's case resembles Cromwell's much more than Hannibal's. The _regime_
+against which Cromwell warred returned in spite of him; but it returned
+modified, involving all the reforms for which the chieftain had bled. So
+the best of what Lee drew sword for is here in our actual America, and,
+please God, shall remain here forever.
+
+Decisions of the United States Supreme Court since Secession give a
+sweep and a certainty to the rights of States and limit the central
+power in this Republic as had never been done before. The wild doctrines
+of Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens on these points are not our law. If the
+Union is perpetual, equally so is each State. The Republic is "an
+indestructible Union of indestructible States." If this part of our law
+had in 1861 received its present definition and emphasis, and if the
+Southern States had then been sure, come what might, of the freedom they
+actually now enjoy each to govern itself in its own way, even South
+Carolina might never have voted secession. And inasmuch as the war,
+better than aught else could have done, forced this phase of the
+Constitution out into clear expression, General Lee did not fight in
+vain. The essential good he wished has come, while the Republic, with
+its priceless benedictions to us all, remains intact. All Americans thus
+have part in Robert Lee, not only as a peerless man and soldier, but as
+the sturdy miner, sledge-hammering the rock of our liberties till it
+gave forth its gold. None are prouder of his record than those who
+fought against him, who, while recognizing the purity of his motive,
+thought him in error in going from under the Stars and Stripes. It is
+likely that more American hearts day by day think lovingly of Lee than
+of any other Civil War celebrity, save Lincoln alone. And his praise
+will increase.
+
+It was thoroughly characteristic of Lee that he would not after the war
+leave the country, as a few eminent Confederates did, and also that he
+refused all mere titular positions with high salaries, several of which
+were urged on him out of consideration for his character and fame. He
+was, however, persuaded to accept in 1865 the presidency of Washington
+College, at Lexington, Va., an institution founded on gifts made by
+Washington, and at present known as Washington and Lee University. In
+this position the great man spent his remaining years, joining
+refinement and dignity to usefulness, and revered by all who came within
+the charmed circle of his influence. Since 1863 he had suffered more or
+less with rheumatism of the heart, and from the middle of 1869 was never
+quite strong. Spite of this, with the exception of brief holidays, he
+performed all his duties till Sept. 28, 1870, when, at his family
+tea-table as he stood to say grace;--it was his wont to say grace before
+meat and to stand in doing so,--he was stricken, had to sit, then be
+helped to his bed. He never rose, though languishing a number of days.
+He died at nine in the morning, Oct. 12, 1870. _Ave, pia anima!_
+
+AUTHORITIES.
+
+E. Lee Child, "Life and Campaigns of Robert Edward Lee." London, 1875.
+
+Edward A. Pollard, "Life and Times of Robert Edward Lee." New York,
+1871.
+
+John William Jones, "Personal Reminiscences of Robert E. Lee."
+New York, 1874.
+
+Walter II. Taylor, "Four Years with General Lee." New York, 1878.
+
+A.L. Long, "Memoirs of Robert E. Lee." New York, 1887.
+
+Charles Marshall, "Life of Lee."
+
+W.P. Trent, "Robert E. Lee." Boston, 1899.
+
+William Allan, "The Army of Northern Virginia in 1862." Boston, 1892.
+
+"Battles and Leaders of the Civil War." New York, 1887.
+
+
+
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