influence of old associations, which he could never entirely resist, that led him, in 1862, to appoint Judge David Davis Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. To the end of his life, amidst the whirl of politics and the storm of war, those circuit-riding days were invested for him with a grave and joyous memory.

III

Those were great days in the National Senate, where the giants of a former era were wrestling with the problem which was to rend the nation. Voices of union and disunion clashed and echoed afar: Calhoun calling for war in the name of the South; Webster, for the sake of the Union, turning his back on the cause of Abolition; Seward announcing a law higher than that even of the Constitution; Douglas maneuvering for advantage; and central among them all, the fiery, pathetic, fascinating figure of Clay, using all the resources of his genius, and all the influence of his extraordinary personality, in behalf of National Unity. It was the end of an epoch, the last effort of the old masters, in conflict with new leaders, to solve a riddle which had vexed the Republic from the earliest years.

Out of the stormy debate, which strained the nation to its utmost tension, emerged the Compromise of 1850, the valedictory triumph of Henry Clay. By the terms of that compact, California became a free State; Utah and New Mexico were organized as Territories, without attaching to them the proviso excluding slavery; North Texas was to be reorganized,

1 Henry Clay died feeling that the principle of Compromise was triumphant, and his closing eyes saw little sign of the storm clouds in the sky. The main purpose of his life, he declared, was not that one often accredited to him-to be elected President-but that expressed in the words: "If any man desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life the preservation of the Union will furnish him the key." -Henry Clay, by T. H. Clay (1910). "In later years it was recalled as a matter of dramatic significance that Henry Clay, 'Compromise incarnate,' tottered from the Senate chamber for the last time the day that Charles Sumner, 'Conscience incarnate,' entered its doors.” — Charles Sumner, by G. H. Haynes (1910).

and slavery extended over it; and Texas was to be paid ten million dollars for her relinquishment of New Mexico. Also, the domestic slave trade was prohibited in the District of Columbia, and a new Fugitive Slave Law, cruel and stringent in its provisions, was to be enacted. This measure was held to be a master stroke of domestic diplomacy, and the leaders drew up and signed a paper to the effect that there should be no more agitation, and pledging each other to oppose any men who should mar the peace of the land. So once more, it was fondly believed, that tormenting shade had been put to its final rest.

We who are wise after the fact wonder why more men of that day did not discern, what is now so obvious, that the dualism of the nation could not endure. Into the heart of the Compact of 1850 had crept the fatal principle of non-interference by Congress with slavery in the Territories, which was destined, under the seductive title of "popular sovereignty," with Douglas as its champion, to undo the healing work of years. Added to this was the growing tendency in the South, complained of by Webster, to regard slavery, not as it was regarded in the early days of the Republic, as an evil to be gradually extinguished, but as an institution to be cherished, and preserved, and extended. Other causes contributed to the alarm in the minds of far-sighted men, chief among them being the passionate, palpitating feeling which found voice in Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe - whom Lincoln once introduced as "the little woman who caused the war"- which began as a serial in the National Era in 1851. That flaming story revealed, in the light of a flash, what a crucifying edict the Fugitive Slave Law was to many people in the North. Many felt that because it was the law of the land they must not resist it, but

1 See Virginia's Attitude Toward Slavery and Secession, by B. B. Munford (1909), a book of real original research based upon a careful study of historical sources-manuscripts, public records, and newspapersin which the reactionary attitude of Southern men is shown to have been largely due to the agitation of radical Abolitionists in the North. The book is valuable for its point of view and its armory of facts.

obey it they could not. Such was the mood of the nation, aggravated by a temperance crusade and the beginnings of the Know-Nothing fanaticism, when it entered the campaign of

1852.

Seldom have political parties appealed to the country with a less vital issue than that over which the followers of Franklin Pierce and General Scott were divided. Both parties, securely muzzled by the Slave Power, vied with each other in courting the Southern vote, by insisting, in their platforms, that the Compact of 1850 was final, and that the Fugitive Slave Law must be enforced. Despite the flow of rhetoric about union and prosperity, all who had eyes to see knew that it was a campaign of futile evasion. Newspaper wits are often prophets. One sceptic expressed in verse his doubts about the various attempts to kill the slavery question, which were indeed not unlike the policy of the ancients who conceived of the earth as flat and resting upon the back of a tortoise, which in turn reposed upon a coiled serpent. When asked about the serpent, they declared an end of inquiry and said it was all right any way. Hence the misgivings of the wit:

To kill twice dead a rattlesnake,
And off his scaly skin to take,

And through his head to drive a stake,
And every bone within him break,
And of his flesh mince-meat to make;

To burn, to sear, to boil and bake,
Then in a heap the whole to rake,
And over it the besom shake,
And sink it fathoms in the lake,

Whence after all quite wide awake

Comes back that very same old snake.1

Lincoln emerged from his obscurity long enough to make a few languid speeches for Scott and to pronounce a eulogy of Henry Clay, who died in June of that year. His speeches in behalf of Scott were marked more by jealousy of Douglas- then for the first time a national figure, pampered, flattered, and pluming himself for the Presidency than by any real interest in the party. When invited by the Whig Club 1 Quoted in Abraham Lincoln, by E. P. Oberholtzer, p. 82 (1904).

of Springfield to reply to a speech made by Douglas in the South, he was almost petulant of temper from first to last. He had no heart in the business; his humor, when not strained, was at times coarse; and even Herndon, always an admirer, admitted that the effort was flat and unworthy of its author. Of his eulogy of Clay, while it was in no sense a great speech, more may be said. It was much more than a perfunctory memorial. He was still loyal to his hero, still under the charm of that " long-enduring spell" which had bound the souls of men not only to Henry Clay but to the cause of the Union; and this gave glow and color to his tribute. He upheld the position of Clay as against that of the Abolitionists on the one hand, and of those-increasing in number on the other, who sought to perpetuate slavery, and were beginning to assail the "charter of freedom, the declaration that all men are created free and equal." No allusion was made to the Compromise of 1850, which he ap parently accepted regretfully as one accepts something less than the best. Clearly he had come to see that the slavery issue could no longer be compromised, but he still hoped that some plan of gradual emancipation and colonization might be devised. Yet what a fearful looking for, of judgment to come, was foreshadowed in his closing words!

Only a few men, said Edmund Burke, really see what is passing before their eyes, and Lincoln was one of them. By nature a watcher of the signs of the times, he did not read them amiss, but he was slow to admit, even to himself, the bitter truth as he saw it. The words of Calhoun in the Senate two years before still echoed in his ears; and what he feared more than all else was a clash between the radicals of the North and the hotspurs of the South, and a rush to arms. When John T. Stuart, his former partner, warned him that the time was coming when all men would have to be either Abolitionists or Democrats, he replied ruefully but emphatically: "When that time comes my mind is made up." But he hoped, almost against hope, that the time would not come, for he regarded the Abolition movement as an erratic crusade, led by moral idealists rather than by

practical men.

None the less he brooded over the abyss, often gloomily, nor did he see any way out of the depths into which the nation seemed to be rushing.

Herndon voted the Whig ticket in 1852, swearing eloquently and picturesquely that he would never do so any more. Yet no doubt he would have voted it again, had the party lived to put a ticket in the field; for with all his wild words, he had a certain dog-sagacity, as he confessed, which suspected his own enthusiasms, and made him rely upon the calm, slow, sure logic of his partner. At times he would try to prod Lincoln out of his tardy conservatism, descanting fervently on the needs of the hour, only to receive the reply: "Billy, you're too rampant and spontaneous." Their relations were free and easy without being familiar, and the attitude of Herndon was that of a younger brother toward one whom he loved, but whose greatness he felt and admired. At the same time Lincoln was becoming every day more serious, more solitary, more studious than ever before. Mr. Herndon writes:

I was in correspondence with Sumner, Greeley, Phillips, and Garrison, and was thoroughly imbued with all the rancor drawn from such sources. I adhered to Lincoln, relying on the final outcome of his sense of justice and right. Every time a good speech on the great issue was made I sent for it. Hence you could find on my table the latest utterances of Giddings, Phillips, Sumner, Seward, and one whom I considered grander than all of the others

Theodore Parker. Lincoln and I took such papers as the Chicago Tribune, New York Tribune, Anti-Slavery Standard, Emancipator, and National Era. On the other side of the question we took the Charleston Mercury, and the Richmond Enquirer. I also bought a book called "Sociology," written by one Fitzhugh, which defended and justified slavery in every conceivable way. In addition I purchased all the leading histories of the slavery movement, and other works which treated on that subject. Lincoln himself never bought many books, but he and I both read those I have named. After reading them we would discuss the questions they touched upon and the ideas they suggested, from our different points of view.'

1 Abraham Lincoln, by Herndon and Weik, Vol. II, p. 32.