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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.

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

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you. Kansas will be shot into the confederacy, over the heads of the Free States, a kind of free-slave State- - a mongrel 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!"

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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.

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Once more Kansas came to the fore, and again the nation was torn by angry emotions, while an honest, but timid and pliable old man sat in the White House. Emboldened by the Dred Scott decision, the leaders of the South resolved afresh to foist slavery upon that unhappy Territory, and thus add another Slave State to the Union. This had to be done, if done at all, against the will of the people; for by this time the Free-State men so vastly outnumbered the slavery contingent, that even the pro-Slavery party had to admit it. So, in 1857, the Slavery party made its last desperate attempt to capture the Territory by fraud, and the folly of the Free-State men opened the way. It was a terrible blunder, with consequences that were far-reaching for Kansas and for the nation.

Two years before Lincoln had predicted, in his letter to Joshua Speed, that such would be the phase of the Kansas question when it became a practical one, and his prophecy had come true. At an election of delegates to a constitutional convention the Free-State men, very unwisely, refused to vote, on the ground that the number of delegates was based on a defective census and registration. This gave the convention, which met at Lecompton, wholly into the hands of the pro-Slavery party, and they drew the constitution as they wanted it. When the instrument was offered to the people, they were not allowed to vote simply yea or nay, but only "For the constitution with slavery," or "For the constitution with no slavery." Either way the constitution would be adopted, and should the constitution with no slavery be ratified, a clause of the schedule still guaranteed "the right of property in slaves now in this Territory." So that the choice offered to an opponent of slavery was between a document throwing down all barriers against slavery, and a document which sanctioned and protected the full possession of slaves in the Territory, with no assurance as to the status of the natural increase of those slaves. Again the Free-State men refrained from voting, and a few more than six thousand votes were declared to have been cast For the constitution

with slavery." Over one-third of the votes cast were proved to be fraudulent, but as the residue still exceeded the requisite majority the scheme had the disguise of legal technicality.

Finding themselves tricked by a gambler's device, the FreeState men had in the meantime abandoned their policy of nonresistance, so far at least as to take part in the election of a new Territorial Legislature. They had also decided to make an irregular opportunity to vote for or against the constitution; but this time the pro-Slavery men, considering the matter already legally settled, refused to vote. The result was a majority of ten thousand against the constitution, and an equally decided majority in both chambers of the Legislature. The President had solemnly pledged himself to accept the result of the popular vote; but now he was confronted by two popular votes, one having the better technical showing, while the other undeniably expressed the will of a large majority of the lawful voters. Such was the posture of affairs when Congress convened.

Douglas had made himself sponsor for justice to Kansas, not only by his advocacy of "popular sovereignty" in the abstract, but by the fact that he had become personally responsible for the conduct of John C. Calhoun, the leader of the Lecompton party- having secured for him, through Governor Walker,' the office of Surveyor General of the Territory. He had swallowed the Dred Scott decision without wincing, denouncing all who questioned its righteousness as revolutionists, while at the same time showing how it might be thwarted by unfriendly local legislation; but the Lecompton outrage nauseated him, and he let it be known to his friends that he would oppose the admission of Kansas, either as Free or Slave State, on a constitution adopted by such methods. Rumors were afloat that the Lecompton scheme was approved by the admin

1 Robert J. Walker, former Secretary of the Treasury, a Southern man appointed by Mr. Buchanan and endorsed by Douglas. When Governor Walker was on his way to Kansas he passed through Chicago, and Senator Douglas consulted him about submitting the constitution of Kansas to a fair vote; and it was so agreed. — Covode Report, pp. 105-6. Speech of Douglas at Milwaukee, Wis., Oct. 14, 1860.

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