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CHAPTER XXXVII

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE RIGHT TO VOTE

1789-1900

The evolution of American politics has been from a basis of things to a basis of persons. We began our government on the basis of property, but time has disclosed that man is the chief corner-stone. Evidences of the transition are presented sometimes unexpectedly, as in 1895, in the objection to an income tax, that "if this be a government of men, taxes must be levied on men, and not on property. When all men are taxed according to fixed and equitable rules, whatever may be the amount of the burden imposed on each individual, the government rests on men, not on things."

In our system of government the fundamental ideas are the right to vote, which is the chief political right of individuals as citizens, and the right to representation, which is the right of individuals in communal relations, and chiefly those existing in a civil corporation—the town, the county, the commonwealth, or the nation. The American system rests fundamentally on the franchise.* All our constitutions and laws are devices to enfranchise the man. He is the center of the civil system. His freedom and responsibility are the measure of our politics.

It is not unnatural that the chief struggle in America has been and continues to be the struggle for the franchise. In a democracy every human interest is eventually valued as a political force. Democracy gives character to the individual. It rests the whole case of civilization upon his integrity. Thus it follows that crafty men may substitute a political device for integrity, and witless men may confuse

* For an account of the franchise in this country at the close of the eighteenth century, see my Constitutional History of the American People, Vol. I, Chapter VII.

integrity with the device. A democracy is at the mercy of ideas. If the conduit for their currency is easy and open, there is not likely to be an upheaval of the state. The offices in commonwealth, in city, in county, and in national government are safety-valves in our democracy. A talking Congress is less destructive than a muzzled populace. Even French revolutions collapse when all Paris talks freely. The secret of government is to enfranchise ideas. Men never talk and fight at the same time.

In theory there will always be two political parties in a democracy. One party will construct its machinery from the landless and those without property. It will prescribe wealth for those who can take it from those who now hold it. A new order is easier than the old. Indeed, is it not easier at any time of difficulty to begin anew than sedulously to carry through the original plan? This is the party of the future; the party by amendment; the party for change. It finds the world weary of the old reformers, who left the rich and the poor, to find the poor and the rich, as ever. It finds thought outrunning performance, and its philosophy is the philosophy of discontent. It knows that the promise of pleasure, of wealth, of power, is a more virtuous incentive than is present pain, or present poverty, or present weakness. It will be destructive of existing institutions, rather than constructive of the institutions of to-morrow. It lives in the future, but is forced to collect taxes to-day. Could it free its disciples from these present burdens, there would be but one party in the world. It is founded on persons.

The other party has a long memory. It prefers the ease of conserving to the labor of destroying. Men pass away; things remain longer; ideas only are immortal. It therefore builds on ideas, and attempts to anchor things to them. The present is the true time. What has been, will be, therefore the passing populace may pass on. Think for them, furnish them labor, protect them, but anchor them to real things. Identify these interests with the interests of the state. Repair, but destroy not. Enfranchise men as thinking creatures; as ideas in the flesh. Only little ideas can ruin the commonwealth. Therefore

1789-1900] HAMILTON; JEFFERSON; FRANKLIN

529

the great teacher, the great school, the great builder, the great industry, the great state. To enfranchise little minds is to turn into the streets men who squeak and gibber. Secure the means for practical intelligence before placing power in the hands of the multitude. Then is the state

secure.

In this country these two parties have made our political history. At the close of the eighteenth century the conservative party was in power; at the close of the nineteenth the radical party is in power. The revolution has been from government founded on property to government founded on persons.

In nature the processes of evolution are marked by the production of types. It is so in the evolution of government, for government is a natural process. In the closing years of the eighteenth century, when the American governments were evolved, the two types of political evolution were Hamilton and Jefferson. Hamilton's ideas of government rest on two propositions that government is a device of checks and balances, created by a few thoughtful men, and under their control, is supported by many less thoughtful men, who are protected by the device, and prospered in their affairs as a compensation for their support. Property is the basis of government. The New England formulation of the Hamilton idea is that government shall be one of laws, and not one of men.

Jefferson's ideas of government rest also on two main propositions that government is probably a necessary device of which the more you have the worse you are off; and that government is founded on persons.

Between Hamilton and Jefferson is Franklin, whose concept of government is that "a general government is necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered.”’

The eighteenth century was the century of modern political theories. Their influence is seen in the language of all the American and French constitutions of that time. Voltaire set the pace for France, Jefferson for America; and Jefferson is commonly called, in this country, the father of American democracy. Hamilton's and Jefferson's

one of

theories of government have been subjected for a century to the severe test which, in Franklin's opinion, discloses whether a government is a blessing or a curse to its people— the test of administration. The nineteenth century was spent in administering the political theories of the eighteenth. In that administration the process was evolution, and in that evolution the process was marked by the production of two administrative types-Daniel Webster and Abraham Lincoln. When Webster died, Lincoln was in his forty-fourth year, and these years of Lincoln's life had been the years of Webster's influence and fame. His greater orations had already become a part of the world's literature; his eloquence had long been the glory of the nation. Yet there are only slight traces of Webster's influence on Lincoln. The man, the voice, the argument, seem never to have become landmarks in Lincoln's world. Lincoln, like other public men of his generation, made a study of Webster. Perhaps no finer and indisputable instance comes down to us of the force of Webster's oratorical methods and his style in leading others up to the threshold of his own conceptions than is related by Herndon. Indeed, he relates two instances. The first is of Lincoln's preparation of his "house divided against itself" speech, delivered at Springfield, Illinois, at the close of the Republican state convention, which had nominated Lincoln as their candidate for United States Senator. It has been said that this speech made Mr. Lincoln President. If its opening paragraph be compared with Webster's, in the reply to Hayne, the similarity in thought and expression becomes apparent. "It may not be amiss to note," remarks Herndon, "that in this instance Webster's effort was carefully read by Lincoln and served as his model." Again, when late in January, following his election to the presidency, he began the preparation of his inaugural address, he made a list of the works which he wished to consult. He asked Herndon, who was his lawpartner and who tells us that his own library was a "respectable collection" of books, "to furnish him with Henry Clay's great speech, delivered in 1850; Andrew Jackson's proclamation against nullification, and a copy of the Con

1789-1900]

WEBSTER; LINCOLN

531

stitution. He afterward called for Webster's reply to Hayne, a speech which he read when he lived at New Salem, and which he always regarded as the grandest specimen of American oratory. With these few volumes and no further sources, he locked himself up in a room upstairs, over a store across the street from the state house, and there, cut off from all communication and intrusion, he prepared the address. Though composed amid the unromantic surroundings of a dingy, dusty, and neglected back room, the speech has become a memorable document.'* Given such sources and Abraham Lincoln, the world might be entitled to expect an utterance that would rank with the wisest and most impressive in American literature. The style of the first inaugural, though less simple than that of the second, was plainly affected by Webster's in the reply to Hayne, just as the Springfield speech of June had been three years before. Yet, had Webster and Lincoln known each other, they would have felt how irreconcilable were many of their fixed convictions. Each was a type of the times in which his greatest work was done. Webster stood for the property basis of the state; Lincoln, for the basis of persons. Webster was admired, but not loved or profoundly trusted by the people; Lincoln trusted the people, and therefore the people trusted him. Yet it was the singular fortune of these diverse natures to contribute, the one in the reply to Hayne, the other in the Gettysburg address, the longest and the shortest speeches of their kind in our history, and also the most famed. Lincoln's is lofty in sentiment and faultless in form; Webster's, less perfect in form, is equally lofty in sentiment; but the sentiment of each, "dear to every American heart, "is the liberty and union of the nation. Of all utterances in America during the nineteenth century we would least willingly let these two die. We cherish them because they embody the dominant cause of the age-"whether the new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, can long endure." This was the administrative question of American democracy in the nineteenth century a question that compelled answer just as the *Herndon's Lincoln (Ed. 1889), pp. 400, 478.

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