How We Elected Lincoln. Abram J. Dittenhoefer

‘A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it to cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.’ ’’

      Judge Douglas then proceeded to use as his keynote of his speech Lincoln’s sentence: ‘‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’’ arguing eloquently and apparently quite unaware of its Biblical origin.

      Referring to Judge Douglas’s criticism of his expression, ‘‘A house divided against itself cannot stand,’’ Lincoln asked: ‘‘Does the judge say it can stand? If he does, then it is a question of veracity not between him and me, but between the judge and an authority of somewhat higher character.’’

      Lincoln’s fondness for scriptural stories and incidents is further illustrated when, having appointed a man to a judgeship who had been suspected of having been connected with a certain secret organization which was opposed to Lincoln’s renomination, he was remonstrated with and his magnanimity criticized. He replied: ‘‘I suppose Judge ———, having been disappointed, did behave badly, but I have scriptural reasons for appointing him. When Moses was on Mount Sinai, getting a commission for Aaron, that same Aaron was at the foot of the mountain making a false god for the people to worship. Yet Aaron got the commission.’’

      As an answer to Douglas’s docrine of popular sovereignty Lincoln said that he could not understand why, in the Territories, any man should be ‘‘obliged to have a slave if he did not want one. And if any man wants slaves,’’ argued Lincoln, ‘‘all other citizens in the Territory have no way of keeping that one man from holding them.’’

      He denounced fiercely the scheme of the Southern slaveholders to annex Cuba as a plan to increase the slave territory. It may be recalled that the conference at Ostend during Buchanan’s administration was held for that purpose.

      Horace White has published an admirable description of his tour with these debaters. In a parade at Charleston thirty-two young ladies, representing States of the Union, carried banners. This ‘‘float’’ was followed by a handsome young woman on horseback, holding aloft a burgee inscribed: ‘‘Kansas, I will be free!’’ Upon the side of the float was the legend:

      Westward the star of empire takes its way;

      We girls link on to Lincoln, as our mothers did to Clay.

      Senator Douglas charged that these debates had been instituted for the purpose of carrying Lincoln into the United States Senate. Although Lincoln denied this, the Democats believed there was some foundation for the assumption.

      The meeting at Dayton was a particularly boisterous one. Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a brother of the distinguished Owen Lovejoy, who was very prominent in the abolitionist agitation, had been assassinated there nineteen years before for his antislavery opinions, but neither of the speakers referred to the fact.

      To show the pro-slavery sentiment that dominated the entire Government at that time, the famous dictum of Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott decision that ‘‘a negro had no rights that a white man was bound to respect,’’ may appropriately be recalled.

       II

      Lincoln’s Introduction to the East

      Abraham Lincoln made his first public appearance in New York at Cooper Union on the night of the 27th of February, 1860. My anti-slavery attitude was strengthened by that wonderful speech.

      My acquaintance with Abraham Lincoln began on the afternoon of that memorable day. I was presented to him at his hotel, and I venture to hope that I made some impression on him. This may have been due to the fact that at an early age I had taken an active part in the Republican campaigns, and had followed with close attention the Lincoln and Douglas debates as they were reported in the New York journals. Consequently I could talk intelligently of national politics.

      I was on hand early at the Institute that night, and, having a seat upon the platform, I was able to observe the manner of the orator as well as to hear every word he uttered. The way in which he carried himself before the large audience that filled every nook and corner of that underground hall is engraven on my mind. He was a very homely man. Indeed, he often referred to his homeliness himself. His tall, gaunt body was like a huge clothed skeleton. So large were his feet and so clumsy were his hands that they looked out of proportion to the rest of his figure. No artistic skill could soften his features nor render his appearance less ungainly, but after he began to talk he was awkwardness deified.

      In repose, as I saw him on many subsequent occasions, his face seemed dull, but when animated it became radiant with vitalized energy.

      No textual report of his Cooper Institute address can possibly give any idea of its great oratorical merits. Mr. Lincoln never ranted, but gave emphatic emphasis to what he wished especially to ‘‘put across’’ by a slowness and marked clearness of enunciation. His voice was unpleasant, almost rasping and shrill at first. Perhaps this was due to the fact that he found it necessary to force it. A little later, he seemed to control his voice better, and his earnestness invited and easily held the attention of his auditors.

      To summarize the seven thousand words spoken by Mr. Lincoln on that great occasion would be a difficult task and could not be successfully attempted in these reminiscences. I will only state that his theme was ‘‘slavery as the fathers viewed it.’’ Its delivery occupied more than an hour, its entire purpose being to show that the fathers of the Republic merely tolerated slavery where it existed, since interference with it would be resisted by the South; moreover, recognition of the legality of slavery in those States had been the inducement offered to them to enter the Union.

      Mr. Lincoln, however, indicated that he was unalterably and inflexibly opposed to the extension of slavery in territory in which it did not exist.

      Mr. Lincoln began with a quotation from one of Senator Douglas’s speeches, in which the ‘‘Little Giant’’ asserted that the framers of the Constitution understood the slavery question as well as, or better than, their descendants. He brilliantly traced the origin and growth of democracy under the various forms that preceded the final adoption of the Constitution.