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A large number of German-born citizens, who were heartily in accord with the main purposes of the Republican party, found it hard to unite with the "Americans," who had in a day crushed the old Whig party of Massachusetts, and brought to the front such men as Henry Wilson, N. P. Banks, and Anson Burlingame. Later, a coalition of the new party with Free-Soil Democrats had made George S. Boutwell Governor, and Charles Sumner Senator. Early in 1859 the Legislature had taken action in favor of so amending the Massachusetts Constitution as to require of foreigners a residence of two years after being naturalized to entitle them to vote. This procedure was a source of exasperation to German Republicans in Illinois. One of the most prominent of these living at Springfield,- Dr. Theodore Canisius, afterward United States Consul at Vienna, in order to allay the excitement on this subject, obtained from Lincoln the following letter (dated May 17, 1859):

Your note, asking in behalf of yourself and other German citizens whether I am for or against the constitutional provision in regard to naturalized citizens lately adopted by Massachusetts, and whether I am for or against a fusion of the Republicans and other opposition elements for the canvass of 1860, is received.

Massachusetts is a sovereign and independent State, and it is no privilege of mine to scold her for what she does. Still, if from what she has done an inference is sought to be drawn as to what I would do, I may without impropriety speak out. I say, then, that as I understand the Massachusetts provision I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it. Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them. I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed

condition of the negro, and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands and speaking different languages from myself.

As to the matter of fusion, I am for it, if it can be had on Republican ground; and I am not for it on any other terms. A fusion on any other terms would be as foolish as unprincipled. It would lose the whole North, while the common enemy would still carry the whole South. The question of men is a different one. There are good patriotic men and able statesmen in the South whom I would cheerfully support if they would now place themselves on Republican ground. But I am against letting down the Republican standard a hair's breadth.

I have written this hastily, but I believe it answers your questions substantially.

There was in this response nothing of the shyness of a conscious and cautious candidate, yet we may doubt the strict accuracy of the Doctor's opinion, that it was written at a time when Lincoln "had not the most distant idea of being nominated for the Presidency."

In a private letter to Hon. Schuyler Colfax* (whom he had then never met), he urged careful efforts "to hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and particularly for the contest of 1860." In this communication, making no allusion to Presidential candidates, or to the temporary inclination of Mr. Colfax early in the previous year to favor the re-election of Douglas to the Senate, Lincoln wrote:

The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to "platform" for something which will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere, and especially in a national convention. As instances, the

*July 6, 1859. The letter is given entire in "Complete Works," (N. & H.), I., 535.

movement against foreigners in Massachusetts; in New Hampshire, to make obedience to the fugitive slave law punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to repeal the fugitive slave law; and squatter sovereignty in Kansas. In these things there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions, if it gets into them, and what gets very rife outside of conventions is very likely to find its way into them.

Among the letters he received during the summer, expressing a desire that he should be a candidate for the Presidential nomination, was one from a conservative Republican of Ohio,- Hon. Samuel Galloway, previously a Whig member of Congress,— who was averse to the candidacy of Governor Chase. This letter was written soon after the meeting of the Ohio Republican State Convention, which had refused to renominate Judge Joseph Swan, of the Supreme Court, a man of high standing as a jurist, and personally much esteemed, whose defeat in convention was attributed to a recent decision of the court, of which he prepared the opinion, in one of the noted cases arising under the fugitive slave law of 1850.

An alleged fugitive slave, captured not far from Oberlin, in a community strongly anti-slavery, had been promptly rescued from the arresting officer. A number of prominent citizens were prosecuted for taking part in the rescue and put in jail; whereupon they applied to the Supreme Court of the State for relief under a writ of habeas corpus. There was great excitement in Northern Ohio, and at an indignation mass meeting in Cleveland, Governor Chase himself was one of the speakers. Some of the most respected citizens of the State, he said, had done what they believed to be right, and what

not one man in a thousand could look up into the blue sky with his right hand on his heart and say was not right. "If a process for the release of any prisoner should issue from the courts of the State," (so he was reported,) “he was free to say that, so long as Ohio was a sovereign State,* that process should be executed." Not long after this meeting the court gave its decision, refusing to interfere and remanding the prisoners. The circumstances thus briefly given will explain the first part of Lincoln's reply to his before-named correspondent, dated July 28, 1859: †

Two things done by the Ohio Republican Convention, namely, the repudiation of Judge Swan and the "plank for the repeal of the fugitive slave law, I very much regretted. These two things are of a piece, and they are viewed by many good men, sincerely opposed to slavery, as a struggle against and in disregard of the Constitution itself; and it is the very thing that will greatly endanger our cause if it be not kept out of our National Convention.

There is another thing our friends are doing which gives me some uneasiness. It is their leaning toward "popular sovereignty." There are three substantial objections to this: First, no party can command respect which sustains this year what it opposed last. Secondly, Douglas (who is the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious one) would have but little support in the North, and, by consequence, no capital to trade on in the South, if it were not for our friends thus magnifying him and his humbug. But lastly, and chiefly, Douglas's popular sovereignty, accepted by the public mind as a great principle, nationalizes slavery and revives the African slave trade inevitably. Taking

*Note how readily the phrase "sovereign State" drops from the pen of Chase, and of Lincoln also (in the Canisius letter just given)-later more current at the South than at the North.

+First given to the press after Governor Chase became Chief Justice.

slaves into new Territories and buying slaves in Africa are identical things-identical rights or identical wrongs and the argument which establishes one will establish the other. Try a thousand years for a sound reason why Congress shall not hinder the people of Kansas from having slaves, and when you have found it, it will be an equally good one why Congress should not hinder the people of Georgia from importing slaves from Africa.

As for Governor Chase, I have a kind side for him. He was one of the few distinguished men of the nation who gave us their sympathy last year. I never saw him suppose him to be able and right-minded, but still he may not be the most suitable as a candidate for the Presidency.

I must say, I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. As you propose a correspondence with me, I shall look for your letters anxiously.

There was a lively canvass this year in Ohio, where Mr. Chase, near the close of his second term as Governor, was the general choice of the Republicans to succeed Senator George E. Pugh, of whom he had been the immediate predecessor. The Governor had been re-elected two years before by a plurality of little more than one thousand. Ohio was clearly debatable ground, and there was an anxious state of mind on both sides. Among the orators called in from abroad were the two Illinois champions, whose contest had become of national interest the previous year. Douglas spoke at Columbus and Cincinnati, and was followed in each place, after a brief interval, by Lincoln. The main subject of the latter's Columbus speech (on the 16th of September) was a magazine article by Douglas, expounding his "popular sovereignty" doctrine- supposed to be "the most maturely considered of his long series of explanations."

On the 17th Lincoln addressed a very large audience

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