hand to Phillips. Good God! are not the Democrats crazy? I herewith send you a forgery on Lincoln and Trumbull: it appeared in the State Register July 2, 1857; that of the Times on July 1st. The Register article, in double column, is a base, wilful forgery-never was in either of the speeches. Do not fail to keep what I send you till you or Mr. Phillips let off a gun.

66

Yours truly,

W. H. HERNDON.

The forgery" referred to was an attempt of the State Register to array Lincoln against Trumbull, using the “deadly parallel" to show from their own words that one advised submission to the Dred Scott decision, and the other resistance to it. Such apparent conflict of opinion between "these two great black Republican pop guns" filled the Register with glee, and it was unable to tell which was the true black Republican, and which the bogus." Such tactics only amused Lincoln, while they angered Herndon almost beyond measure; but a more distressing matter now engaged the latter:

Mr. Parker.

Springfield, Ill., July 29, 1857.

Dear Sir: I send you to-day three speeches; one by Senator Douglas; one by Senator Trumbull; and one by Mr. Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln has gone to New York or he would have sent them to you himself. However, I will do as well for this small duty. We are cutting the iron-chain Democracy to the quick: they feel it; they show they feel it-show it in looks, acts, maneuvers. Douglas has confessed his blunder to his private friends, who have by design or by accident let it leak out. One thing is assuredly certain: our country people say, irrespective of party, that Douglas was whipped for once. I have heard this many and many a time.'

66

When I wrote you last I did not think I should write you so soon again; yet such unheard-of proceedings have taken place here, that I cannot refrain. A slave was arrested in Logan County and brought here for trial. He was poor as a matter of course, and I freely volunteered for the poor fellow; but in doing so I came near having my own rights stricken down in court by my own brother. It was contended that I had no right to appear in court for the negro. I repelled this in strong language, if I may could say so. The poor negro was tried and sent South

not prevent it. You cannot do anything when the ironchain logic is around the man and fetters are on his limbs. I send this to let you see that I am not afraid to do openly what I write privately. Look at it from this point and this point alone. Yours truly, W. H. HERNDON.

P. S. The reason why I wrote to you and said private not long since was on Mr. Lincoln's account, not my own. Base politicians would charge him with sending you matter. That was the reason and that alone that made me say "private."

No doubt Lincoln, knowing that Douglas was eager to link him with the Abolitionists, and thus fasten the odium of that name upon him, had warned Herndon about urging Mr. Parker to attack Douglas for his local tricks. At last Mr. Parker found time for a brief reply, commending Herndon for his efforts in behalf of the fugitive slave and expressing his own disgust at the Dred Scott decision:

Newton Center, Mass., Aug. 9, 1857.

Dear Mr. Herndon:

I thank you for sending me the slips from the newspaper, and still more for the noble defence you made of the rights of the poor, unfortunate man. Of course it was unavailing! "On the side of the oppressor there was power. The Democratic party is in office and it has the same relation to progress in America that the Roman Catholic Church has in Europe. We can do nothing until that party is broken to fragments and ground to powder. You see all the Democratic conventions in all the States, pass resolutions in favor of the Dred Scott decision, with its falsification of testimony and its prostitution of law. The Supreme Court will decide that it is unconstitutional to prohibit the importation of slaves, and the Democrats will endorse the decision. Yours truly, THEO. PARKER.

In more than one brief note Parker had sent his best wishes to Lincoln, though the name of Lincoln does not appear in the long list of his political correspondents. This would be stranger if Parker had not had in Herndon a mediator through whom he could express his approval of Lincoln's course from time to time; at other times his doubts. parently they never met, but a few months later we find Parker standing out emphatically against the attempt of

Ap

Greeley to induce the Republicans of Illinois to desert Lincoln. Replying to the above letter, Mr. Herndon wrote in a mood of mingled hope and gloom-hope for the future of his party in Illinois, with dark forebodings as to the future of the nation:

Mr. Parker.

Springfield, Ill., Sept. 8, 1857.

Dear Sir: I received your very encouraging letter some time since, for which I am obliged. I was in court when it came, or should have answered sooner. . . . In attending to the poor negro's case I felt I was doing my duty, and did not care for personal consequences to myself. I simply asked myself this question, "Is it right? Having determined that I went into the matter with all my energy and ability, though little and small. Some say it was bold for this section and not very prudent, as I was a kind of Republican school-master, or what not: others say it was outrageously wrong, as it will set a bad example to young lawyers who will follow. God grant they may ever do so. Others, the good and the true, cry "Well done," and so the world wags.

66

I have been philosophizing on our State lately, and have come to this conclusion: that Illinois is forever gone from the iron-chain Democracy, if the Anti-Slavery men act prudently in putting up brave and good men. The reason why I say Illinois is gone, hook and line," from the Democracy, is this: five out of every seven Fillmore men will go to the Republican cause: there is about 30,000 of them, and giving the Republicans 21,000 and the Democrats 9,000, and taking Buchanan's majority at 7,000, we have the tyrants on the hip, with a majority in our favor of about 7,000. When we see immigrants coming in, and knowing that four out of five of them are for us, we cannot doubt longer how Illinois is to stand politically in the future. I have talked with others and they wholly agree with me. Some go farther and are more enthusiastic in their calculations than I am. The north of our State is filling up with an unprecedented rapidity, and that section is wholly free, as you know. The South is filling up but slowly, and those who come are generally for freedom a majority are so.

The late negro murders - butcheries have done us good: it has waked up the idle and indifferent to see. What is to become of this land? I see, but will not talk even to

66

a

you. Kansas will be shot into the confederacy, over the heads of the Free States, a kind of free-slave Statemongrel thing, abnormal and un-godly in appearance. Buchanan is this day no better than poor Pierce.” His administration crouches at the tyrant feet of the slavedriver and whines to hear the word," Go bull." This is even so, and no man who reads, thinks, philosophizes on history and nature, can help seeing the "Red Sea" over which our people must pass. It is terrible to think about. Nature will have her equilibrium. In proportion as we become civilized North; in proportion to our love of freedom North, just in the same degree does the South barbarize and hate Liberty. We widen and deepen in our views; the line of separation becomes sharp and well-defined, and out of this come hate and bloody war. anything escape this? Nothing! God alone, even if he desired to do so, cannot turn away the catastrophe. Historians in the future will simply write, "Horror! Horror!

Can

Are you writing anything soon to be published? I hope you are; but first I hope you are entirely well, or fast getting so. Hope soon to hear you thunder. Phillips is climbing, is he not? Hurrah for Phillips!

Yours truly,

W. H. HERNDON.

And the historian of today does marvel that a people so homogeneous and so happy, so wedded in historic memories, found no better way of getting rid of African slavery than by going to war about it. He marvels that a people so prosperous as the people of the South, living the ideal life of patrician and planter, should have so mismeasured the forces of the time and the movements of the world. Men North and South saw the conflict coming, but none the less they flung wisdom to the winds, as at a later hour they drew their swords and threw the scabbards away.

CHAPTER V

The Revolt of Douglas

After all, history is only past politics, and we have now to deal with a crisis which historians of this period too often slur over in their haste to recite the story of the great debates. Those burning pictures in the letters to Parker were as much before the eyes of Lincoln as of Herndon, and they had drawn from him that radical Bloomington speech in which, for the first time in public, he had used his striking figure of the house divided against itself; though at the request of a less radical friend, Judge Dickey, he had promised not to repeat it during the contest of 1856. Time had more than justified his words, for the gulf of cleavage was becoming every day wider and more angry; but just when the hour had fully come for a decisive word, he was appalled by the fact of schism in the ranks of his own party.

More surprising still, as if planned by that mocking irony whereby politics makes strange yoke-fellows, the cause of this schism was none other than Douglas himself, whose fate it was to be "the Genius of Discord "incarnate. Unable to manage two horses going in opposite directions, that daring and ambitious rider was actually trying to harness a Republican steed to his chariot and drive to victory. That he did not succeed in his bold and desperate attempt, but fell at last bruised and defeated in the arena, was due to the courage, sagacity, and unwavering fidelity of the Republican party in Illinois, led by Lincoln and his friends. The tale of this adventure is more exciting than a romance, since it made Illinois the pivotal State in the North, as South Carolina may be said to have been the pivotal State in the South, in the contest that followed.