V LINCOLN AND SLAVERY-OPPOSED TO "W" SLAVERY HEN the story of our great antislavery conflict shall have been written, it will make one of the most ideal chapters in our matchless history."Hon. James M. Ashley. No work of fiction excels in thrilling interest the history of Abraham Lincoln's relation to slavery. In it are found such contradictions blending into perfect harmony; such advance achieved by stubborn resistance of progressive influences; such painful reluctance in pursuing the pathway leading up to highest service with honor and renown, and such hairbreadth avoidance of disastrous blunders, as equal in interest the most fascinating dreams of the imagination. And no portion of history is more charming or more instructive than that which tells of the events in which Lincoln was the chief and unwilling actor in accomplishing the salvation of his country and in becoming the world's most distinguished and beloved champion of human freedom. Seen from the viewpoint of the present time, those events are hard to understand. Slavery is gone and cannot now be seen as it appeared at that time. Conditions in all that region where slavery formerly existed have become so changed that it is impossible, by a retrospective view, to appreciate the violence of the struggle by which it was destroyed. All this, however, is better understood and realized by those who were active participants in the events of those memorable years, and others who were not may perhaps be able to imagination to stand in the midst of the earlier scenes of that period, and thereby be able to discern something of the significance of the events connected with Lincoln's relation to slavery as they then appeared. THE ESSENTIAL CHARACTER OF SLAVERY which must be considered if one would have a correct understanding of Lincoln's relation to that institution is nowhere. depicted with more impressive force than in the official correspondence between the United States and Mexico in the negotiations for the transfer to the United States by Mexico of Texas and other Mexican territory. At that time, as at present, Mexico was regarded as far beneath the United States in point of civilization, enlightenment and moral standing. And yet, when at the close of the war with Mexico, that nation was forced to surrender to the United States a large portion of her territory, the Mexican commissioner requested that in the treaty of cession there be a section providing that slavery should never be permitted in any portion of that territory. In making this request the commissioner of that semi-civilized nation said: "If it were proposed to the people of the United States to part with a portion of their territory in order that the Inquisition should be established there, it would excite no stronger feelings of abhorrence than those awakened in Mexico by the prospect of the introduction of human slavery in any territory parted with by her." By no great statesman or orator, or by any brilliant writer of history or fiction, has the heinous character of slavery been more faithfully portrayed than in this request and protest from Mexico. And the brand of barbarism thus stamped upon slavery was in accord with the mature judgment of all enlightened people who had no financial or other interest in that institution. Even the decision of the Supreme Court of Great Britain in the Somerset case in declaring that slavery was 1 Letter of Sept. 4th, 1847, to James Buchanan, Secretary of State, from Mr. Trist, U. S. Minister to Mexico. so inherently evil that it could not rightfully receive the protection of civil government, coming as it did from a highly civilized nation, was not as severe a characterization of slavery as was that piteous plea of semi-barbarous Mexico that the territory ceded by her to the United States should be forever safeguarded against that institution. But at the time this plea was made slavery, although thus branded as barbarous, was in such complete control of the United States, and ruled with such rigor, that in giving to Secretary Buchanan the foregoing information, U. S. Minister Trist said he answered the Mexican commissioner as follows: "The bare mention of such a treaty is impossible. No American President would dare present such a treaty to the Senate. I assured him that if it were in their power to offer me the whole territory described in our project, increased tenfold in value, and in addition covered a foot thick with pure gold, on the single condition that slavery should be excluded therefrom, I could not entertain the offer for a moment, nor even think of communicating it to Washington." To the present generation this reads like extravagant fiction. It is difficult to realize that there ever was a time when the United States clung with such tenacity as is shown by this correspondence to an institution so objectionable upon humanitarian grounds to a people like the Mexicans of that period. But the foregoing quotations from official records made little impression upon the public mind, and were soon forgotten. This humiliating record, however, must be charged to the degrading influence of slavery and not to any natural depravity of the people who were identified with that institution. No higher qualities of mind and heart were ever possessed by any people than those which by an honorable ancestry were transmitted to the inhabitants of the slaveholding portions of the United States. The crossing of ancestral lines, the merging of distinctive and divergent characteristics, the mingling of the blood of patrician and puritan, the cultivation of the spirit of chivalry and the development of Christian patriotism, combined to produce in that sunny Southland a people naturally high-minded and purposeful. But the head that rested in the lap of the Delilah of ease and luxury was shorn of the locks of its strength, and slavery conspired with the Philistines of avarice and pride to pluck out the eyes of this Samson of the new world. Blinded to the high ideals of their noble forebears those chosen custodians of freedom became the proponents of slavery, and the hand that should have wielded the sword of chivalry in defense of the weak, wielded the lash of the taskmaster and riveted more tightly upon the limbs of men made in the image of God the galling fetters of cruel bondage. The wealth that should have sent the gospel to the heathen was expended in equipping vessels to plow the seas to capture them for slaves. This traffic attained such proportions "that not less than half a million slaves were imported direct from Africa and sold in this country after the slave trade had been declared piracy by law and by treaty with all civilized nations." And to such an extent did the virus of avarice enter into cavalier blood that during all the years of that inhuman piracy "but one slave pirate was ever convicted and hanged in the United States." The record runs that on February 28th, 1862, nearly one year after Lincoln's first inauguration as President, Captain Nathaniel Gordon was executed in New York City, the first and only case of the conviction and punishment of one engaged in the African slave trade. In November, 1853, the Southern Standard remarked: "We can not only preserve domestic servitude, but can defy the power of the world. With firmness and judgment we can open up the African Slave immigration again, and people this noble region of the tropics." In 1857, only three years before Lincoln was elected President, DeBeau's Southern Review stated "that forty slavers were annually fitted out in the ports of New York and the east, and that the traffic yielded their owners an annual net profit of seventeen million dollars." This statement shows at once the motive for which slavery and the slave trade were clung to with such tenacity, and the depth of infamy to which a great wrong like slavery will inevitably sink even the best people if they become identified with it. "The New York Evening Post published a list of names of 85 vessels, fitted out in the port of New York between the first of February, 1859, and the 15th of July, 1860, for the African Slave trade. "The New York Leader, at that time a Tammany paper, asserted 'that an average of two vessels each week cleared out of our harbor bound for Africa and a human cargo.' "The New York World declared that 'from thirty to sixty thousand slaves a year, under the American flag, are taken from Africa, by vessels from the single port of New York.' "A yacht called the Wanderer ran into a harbor near Brunswick, Georgia, in broad daylight, in December, 1858, and landed a human cargo of some three hundred or more slaves direct from Africa. This fact was duly chronicled at the time in the Southern newspapers, and some of the blacks were dressed up in flaming toggery and driven in carriages through the public streets, as a menace and defiance to the National Government."" Such was the monster which confronted Lincoln at every step, and crouched for deadly combat when he crossed the threshold of the White House. According to his unequivocal declarations, Mr. Lincoln during all his life was STRONGLY OPPOSED TO SLAVERY On the 4th of April, 1864, during the fourth year of his Presidency and while his enemies were furiously opposing his renomination, in a letter to A. G. Hodges he stated that he was "naturally antislavery," and that he could not remember 2 Address of Hon. J. M. Ashley, Toledo, Ohio, June 2nd, 1890, pp. 18-19. |