The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XVI
And now began a new life, so unlike anything that Mr. Lincoln had hitherto experienced that he found himself altogether afloat as to the proprieties of his position. His nomination had not elevated or elated him; and he did not see why it should change his manners or his bearing toward anybody. He had been diminished in his own estimation--in some respects humbled and oppressed--by the great responsibilities placed upon him, rather than made important and great. He was the people's instrument, the people's servant, the people's creation. He could put on none of the airs of eminence; he could place no bars between himself and those who had honored him. None of his old heartiness and simplicity left him. Men who entered his house impressed with a sense of his new dignities, found him the same honest, affectionate, true-hearted and simple-minded Abraham Lincoln that he had always been. He answered his own bell, accompanied his visitors to the door when they retired, and felt all that interfered with his old homely and hearty habits of hospitality as a burden--almost an impertinence.
From this moment to the moment of his death he knew nothing of leisure. He was astonished to find how many friends he had. They thronged his house from every quarter of the country. Probably no candidate for presidential honors was ever so beset by place-seekers and lion-hunters as was Mr. Lincoln; for it is rare indeed that any man is nominated for the presidency with the same moral certainty of an election which attached to his prospects. It was almost universally believed, both at the North and the South, that he would be elected; and he was treated like a man who already had the reins of power in his hands.
Some of his friends who had witnessed his laborious way of receiving and dismissing his guests and visitors interposed with "Thomas," a colored servant who became very useful to him; but it was very hard and very unnatural for him to yield to another, and he a servant, the ministry of the courtesies which it was so much his delight to render; and he not unfrequently broke over the rules which his considerate advisers undertook to impose upon him. One thing was remarkable in these receptions--his attention to the humble and the poor. No poor, humble, scared man ever came into his house toward whom his heart did not at once go out with a gush of noble sympathy. To these he was always particularly attentive, and they were placed at ease at once. He took pains to show them that no change of circumstance could make him forget his early condition, or alienate his heart from those with whom he had shared the hardships and humilities of obscurity and poverty.
The interruption of family privacy and comfort by the constant throng of visitors at last became intolerable, and it was determined that Mr. Lincoln should hold his receptions elsewhere. Accordingly the Executive Chamber, a large fine room in the State House, was set apart for him; and in this room he met the public until, after his election, he departed for Washington. Here he met the millionaire and the menial, the priest and the politician, men, women and children, old friends and new friends, those who called for love and those who sought for office. From morning until night this was his business; and he performed it with conscientious care and the most unwearying patience.
As illustrative of the nature of many of his calls, a brace of incidents may be recorded as they were related to the writer by an eye-witness. Mr. Lincoln being seated in conversation with a gentleman one day, two raw, plainly dressed young "Suckers" entered the room, and bashfully lingered near the door. As soon as he observed them, and apprehended their embarrassment, he rose and walked to them, saying, "How do you do, my good fellows? What can I do for you? Will you sit down?" The spokesman of the pair, the shorter of the two, declined to sit, and explained the object of the call thus: he had had a talk about the relative hight of Mr. Lincoln and his companion, and had asserted his belief that they were of exactly the same hight. He had come in to verify his judgment. Mr. Lincoln smiled, went and got his cane, and, placing the end of it upon the wall, said, "here, young man, come under here." The young man came under the cane, as Mr. Lincoln held it, and when it was perfectly adjusted to his hight, Mr. Lincoln said: "now come out and hold up the cane." This he did while Mr. Lincoln stepped under. Rubbing his head back and forth to see that it worked easily under the measurement, he stepped out, and declared to the sagacious fellow who was curiously looking on, that he had guessed with remarkable accuracy--that he and the young man were exactly of the same hight. Then he shook hands with them and sent them on their way. Mr. Lincoln would just as soon have thought of cutting off his right hand as he would have thought of turning those boys away with the impression that they had in any way insulted his dignity.
They had hardly disappeared when an old and modestly dressed woman made her appearance. She knew Mr. Lincoln, but Mr. Lincoln did not at first recognize her. Then she undertook to recall to his memory certain incidents connected with his rides upon the circuit--especially his dining at her house upon the road at different times. Then he remembered her and her home. Having fixed her own place in his recollection; she tried to recall to him a certain scanty dinner of bread and milk that he once ate at her house. He could not remember it--on the contrary, he only remembered that he had always fared well at her house. "Well," said she, "one day you came along after we had got through dinner, and we had eaten up everything, and I could give you nothing but a bowl of bread and milk; and you ate it; and when you got up you said it was good enough for the President of the United States." The good old woman, remembering the remark, had come in from the country, making a journey of eight or ten miles, to relate to Mr. Lincoln this incident, which, in her mind, had doubtless taken the form of prophesy. Mr. Lincoln placed the honest creature at her ease, chatted with her of old times, and dismissed her in the most happy and complacent frame of mind.
The interviews of this character were almost numberless, constantly intermingled with grave conversations with statesmen and politicians concerning the campaign in progress, and the condition and prospects of the country. The future was very dark. Threats of secession grew louder and deeper. Steps towards treason were bolder with every passing day. He knew the spirit of slavery. He had measured it in all the length and breadth of its malignity and treachery. He felt that he was entering upon a path full of danger, overshadowed all the way with doubt and fear. With this great care upon him--with the burden of a nation already taken upon his shoulders--he was often bowed down with the deepest despondency. He believed in his inmost soul that he was an instrument in the hands of God for the accomplishment of a great purpose. The power was above him, the workers were around him, the end was beyond him. In him, Providence, the people and the purpose of both met; and as a poor, weak, imperfect man, he felt humbled by the august presence, and crushed by the importance with which he had been endowed.
Of one thing Mr. Lincoln felt sure: that in the great struggle before him he ought to be supported by the Christian sentiment and the Christian influence of the nation. Nothing pained him more than the thought that a man professing the religion of Jesus Christ, and especially a man who taught the religion of Jesus Christ, should be opposed to him. He felt that every religious man--every man who believed in God, in the principles of everlasting justice, in truth and righteousness--should be opposed to slavery, and should support and assist him in the struggle against inhumanity and oppression which he felt to be imminent. It was to him a great mystery how those who preached the gospel to the poor, and who, by their Divine Master, were sent to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty those that were bruised, could be his opponents and enemies.
Mr. Newton Bateman, Superintendent of Public Instruction for the State of Illinois, occupied a room adjoining and opening into the Executive Chamber. Frequently this door was open during Mr. Lincoln's receptions; and throughout the seven months or more of his occupation Mr. Bateman saw him nearly every day. Often when Mr. Lincoln was tired he closed his door against all intrusion, and called Mr. Bateman into his room for a quiet talk. On one of these occasions Mr. Lincoln took up a book containing a careful canvass of the city of Springfield in which he lived, showing the candidate for whom each citizen had declared it his intention to vote in the approaching election. Mr. Lincoln's friends had, doubtless at his own request, placed the result of the canvass in his hands. This was toward the close of October, and only a few days before the election. Calling Mr. Bateman to a seat at his side, having previously locked all the doors, he said: "let us look over this book. I wish particularly to see how the ministers of Springfield are going to vote." The leaves were turned, one by one, and as the names were examined Mr. Lincoln frequently asked if this one and that were not a minister, or an elder, or the member of such or such a church, and sadly expressed his surprise on receiving an affirmative answer. In that manner they went through the book, and then he closed it and sat silently and for some minutes regarding a memorandum in pencil which lay before him. At length he turned to Mr. Bateman with a face full of sadness, and said: "Here are twenty-three ministers, of different denominations, and all of them are against me but three; and here are a great many prominent members of the churches, a very large majority of whom are against me. Mr. Bateman, I am not a Christian--God knows I would be one--but I have carefully read the Bible, and I do not so understand this book;" and he drew from his bosom a pocket New Testament. "These men well know," he continued, "that I am for freedom in the territories, freedom everywhere as far as the Constitution and laws will permit, and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all."
Here Mr. Lincoln paused--paused for long minutes, his features surcharged with emotion. Then he rose and walked up and down the room in the effort to retain or regain his self-possession. Stopping at last, he said, with a trembling voice and his cheeks wet with tears: "I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me--and I think He has--I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so. Douglas don't care whether slavery is voted up or voted down, but God cares, and humanity cares, and I care; and with God's help I shall not fail. I may not see the end; but it will come, and I shall be vindicated; and these men will find that they have not read their Bibles aright."
Much of this was uttered as if he were speaking to himself; and with a sad and earnest solemnity of manner impossible to be described. After a pause, he resumed: "Doesn't it appear strange that men can ignore the moral aspects of this contest? A revelation could not make it plainer to me that slavery or the government must be destroyed. The future would be something awful, as I look at it, but for this rock on which I stand" (alluding to the Testament which he still held in his hand,) "especially with the knowledge of how these ministers are going to vote. It seems as if God had borne with this thing (slavery) until the very teachers of religion have come to defend it from the Bible, and to claim for it a divine character and sanction; and now the cup of iniquity is full, and the vials of wrath will be poured out."
His last reference was to certain prominent clergymen in the South, Drs. Ross and Palmer among the number; and he went on to comment on the atrociousness and essential blasphemy of their attempts to defend American slavery from the Bible. After this the conversation was continued for a long time. Everything he said was of a peculiarly deep, tender and religious tone, and all was tinged with a touching melancholy. He repeatedly referred to his conviction that the day of wrath was at hand, and that he was to be an actor in the terrible struggle which would issue in the overthrow of slavery, though he might not live to see the end. He repeated many passages of the Bible, and seemed especially impressed with the solemn grandeur of portions of Revelation, describing the wrath of Almighty God. In the course of the conversation, he dwelt much upon the necessity of faith in the Christian's God, as an element of successful statesmanship, especially in times like those which were upon him, and said that it gave that calmness and tranquillity of mind, that assurance of ultimate success, which made a man firm and immovable amid the wildest excitements. After further reference to a belief in Divine Providence, and the fact of God in history, the conversation turned upon prayer. He freely stated his belief in the duty, privilege and efficacy of prayer, and intimated, in no unmistakable terms, that he had sought in that way the divine guidance and favor.
The effect of this conversation upon the mind of Mr. Bateman, a Christian gentleman whom Mr. Lincoln profoundly respected, was to convince him, that Mr. Lincoln had, in his quiet way, found a path to the Christian stand-point--that he had found God, and rested on the eternal truth of God. As the two men were about to separate, Mr. Bateman remarked: "I have not supposed that you were accustomed to think so much upon this class of subjects. Certainly your friends generally are ignorant of the sentiments you have expressed to me." He replied quickly: "I know they are. I am obliged to appear different to them; but I think more on these subjects than upon all others, and I have done so for years; and I am willing that you should know it."
This remarkable conversation furnished a golden link in the chain of Mr. Lincoln's history. It flashes a strong light upon the path he had already trod, and illuminates every page of his subsequent record. Men have wondered at his abounding charity, his love of men, his equanimity under the most distressing circumstances, his patience under insult and misrepresentation, his delicate consideration of the feelings of the humble, his apparent incapacity of resentment, his love of justice, his transparent simplicity, his truthfulness, his good will toward his enemies, his beautiful and unshaken faith in the triumph of the right. There was undoubtedly something in his natural constitution that favored the development of these qualities; but those best acquainted with human nature will hardly attribute the combination of excellencies which were exhibited in his character and life to the unaided forces of his constitution. The man who carried what he called "this rock" in his bosom, who prayed, who thought more of religious subjects than of all others, who had an undying faith in the providence of God, drew his life from the highest fountains.
It was one of the peculiarities of Mr. Lincoln to hide these religious experiences from the eyes of the world. In the same State House where this conversion occurred, there were men who imagined--really believed--who freely said--that Mr. Lincoln had probably revealed himself with less restraint to them than to others--men who thought they knew him as they knew their bosom companions--who had never in their whole lives heard from his lips one word of all these religious convictions and experiences. They did not regard him as a religious man. They had never seen anything but the active lawyer, the keen politician, the jovial, fun-loving companion, in Mr. Lincoln. All this department of his life he had kept carefully hidden from them. Why he should say that he was obliged to appear differently to others does not appear; but the fact is a matter of history that he never exposed his own religious life to those who had no sympathy with it. It is doubtful whether the clergymen of Springfield knew anything of these experiences. Very few of them were in political sympathy with him; and it is evident that he could open his heart to no one except under the most favorable circumstances. The fountain from which gushed up so grand and good a life was kept carefully covered from the eyes of the world. Its possessor looked into it often, but the careless or curious crowd were never favored with the vision. There was much in his conduct that was simply a cover to these thoughts--an attempt to conceal them. It is more than probable that, on separating with Mr. Bateman on this occasion, he met some old friend, and, departing by a single bound from his tearful melancholy and his sublime religious passion, he told him some story, or indulged in some jest, that filled his own heart with mirthfulness, and awoke convulsions of laughter in him who heard it.
These sudden and wide transitions of feeling were common with him. He lived for years a double life--a deep and a shallow one. Oppressed with great responsibilities, absorbed by the most profound problems relating to his own spirit and destiny, brought into sympathetic relation with the woes of the world, and living much in the very depths of a sadness whose natural fountain had been deepened by the experience of his life, he found no relief except by direct and entire translation to that other channel of his life which lay among his shallowest emotions. His sense of the ludicrous and the grotesque, of the witty and the funny, was really something wonderful; and when this sense was appealed to by a story, or an incident, or a jest, he seemed to leave all his dignity aside, and give himself up to mirth with no more of self-restraint than if he were a boy of twelve years. He resorted to this channel of life for relief. It was here that he won strength for trial by forgetting trial. It was here that he restored the balance which sadness had destroyed. Such a nature and character seem full of contradictions; and a man who is subject to such transitions will always be a mystery to those who do not know him wholly. Thus no two men among his intimate friends will agree concerning him.
The writer has conversed with multitudes of men who claimed to know Mr. Lincoln intimately; yet there are not two of the whole number who agree in their estimate of him. The fact was that he rarely showed more than one aspect of himself to one man. He opened himself to men in different directions. It was rare that he exhibited what was religious in him; and he never did this at all, except when he found just the nature and character that were sympathetic with that aspect and element of his character. A great deal of his best, deepest, largest life he kept almost constantly from view, because he would not expose it to the eyes and apprehension of the careless multitude.
To illustrate the effect of the peculiarity of Mr. Lincoln's intercourse with men, it may be said that men who knew him through all his professional and political life have offered opinions as diametrically opposite as these, viz: that he was a very ambitious man, and that he was without a particle of ambition; that he was one of the saddest men that ever lived, and that he was one of the jolliest men that ever lived; that he was very religious, but that he was not a Christian; that he was a Christian, but did not know it; that he was so far from being a religious man or a Christian that "the less said upon that subject the better;" that he was the most cunning man in America, and that he had not a particle of cunning in him; that he had the strongest personal attachment, and that he had no personal attachments at all--only a general good feeling toward everybody; that he was a man of indomitable will, and that he was a man almost without a will; that he was a tyrant, and that he was the softest-hearted, most brotherly man that ever lived; that he was remarkable for his pure-mindedness, and that he was the foulest in his jests and stories of any man in the country; that he was a witty man, and that he was only a retailer of the wit of others; that his apparent candor and fairness were only apparent, and that they were as real as his head and his hands; that he was a boor, and that he was in all essential respects a gentleman; that he was a leader of the people, and that he was always led by the people; that he was cool and impassive, and that he was susceptible of the strongest passions. It is only by tracing these separate streams of impression back to their fountain that we are able to arrive at anything like a competent comprehension of the man, or to learn why he came to be held in such various estimation. Men caught only separate aspects of his character--only the fragments that were called into exhibition by their own qualities.
Thus the months passed away until the election. His room was thronged by visitors from every portion of the Union, drawn to him by a great variety of motives; and to all he gave an open and cordial welcome. In the meantime his political opponents had virtually given up the contest. While they worked faithfully within their own organizations, they openly or secretly conceded his election. At the South no attempt was made to conceal the conviction that he would be the next President of the United States. Indeed, this was so entirely what they desired that they would have regarded the election of Mr. Douglas as a calamity, although it may well be doubted whether they would have been deterred from their disunion schemes by his election. They took pains to poison the public mind by every possible expedient. They identified the cause of the republicans with the John Brown raid into Virginia, with everything that was offensive to the pride of the South in Helper's "Impending Crisis," with "abolitionism" which was the most disgusting and dangerous sin in the pro-slavery catalogue of sins. It was all a lie. Not a republican was concerned in or approved or the John Brown invasion, for which Virginia had exacted the life of that stern old enthusiast. Helper's book was a home production of the South; and the creed of the party had no item looking to the abolition of slavery. Not content with misrepresenting Mr. Lincoln's cause and principles, they traduced him and his associates upon the ticket. Mr. Lincoln was called the "Illinois ape," and this, not by the rabble, but by the leaders of public opinion; while Mr. Hamlin was actually believed by many southern people to be a mulatto, through the representations of presses and politicians. Every falsehood that could sting the southern mind to malignity and resentment against the North, and make detestable the man whom the North was about to elect to the presidency, was shamelessly uttered. The object, of course, was to fill the southern mind with bitterness against the North, to alienate the Union from its affections, to foster its pride, and to prepare it for the premeditated and prepared separation.
Mr. Lincoln saw the gathering storm, and felt that upon him it would expend its wildest fury; yet he cherished no resentment against these men or their section for all the wrongs they heaped upon him, and the woes they were bringing upon the country. He was only an instrument in the hands of a higher power. It was only the natural exhibition of the spirit of a system of wrong which was making its last terrible struggle for life. The hatred aroused in him passed over the heads of his enemies and fastened itself upon the institution which could make such demons of men. If he was an instrument in the hands of a higher power, they were instruments in the hands of a lower power, malignant but mighty indeed. He had charity, because he felt these men to be the victims of a false education--of a great mistake. He remembered that had he been bred as they had been, the probabilities were that he should sympathize with them.
Mr. Lincoln was what was called a wise candidate. He held his tongue. No abuse provoked him to utter a word in self-vindication. He had accepted the platform of the party and his record was before the country. So he calmly awaited the result.
On the sixth of November the election took place throughout the whole country, and the result was Mr. Lincoln's triumph, not by a majority of the votes cast, but by a handsome plurality. The popular vote for him was 1,857,610; while Stephen A. Douglas received 1,365,976 votes, John C. Breckinridge 847,953, and John Bell 590,631. In the electoral college Mr. Lincoln had 180 votes, Mr. Douglas receiving 12, Mr. Breckinridge 72, and Mr. Bell 39; and when, on the following thirteenth of February, in a joint session of both Houses of Congress, these votes were declared, it was the office of John C. Breckinridge himself, then Vice-President, to pronounce Mr. Lincoln the constitutionally elected President of the United States for four years from the succeeding fourth of March. And this man who, by going into the election as a candidate for the presidency, and declaring the result of the contest, had bound himself by every principle of honor to abide by the result, was a foul traitor at heart, and only left the chair he disgraced to become a leader in the armies of treason.
The result of the election was great popular rejoicing at the North, great exasperation at the South, great fear and trembling among compromisers of both sections, and a general conviction that the crisis so long threatened was actually upon the nation. Among the republicans there was this feeling: that they had fairly, on an open declaration of principles and policy, and strictly according to the provisions of the Constitution, elected a president; and that if, for this, the South was determined to make war, the contest might as well come first as last. They knew they had made no proposition and entertained no intention to interfere with slavery in the states where the Constitution protected it, that they had made no aggressions upon the institution, and had only endeavored to limit its spread into free territory. If this was cause of war, then they were ready for the fight. Feeling thus, and thus declaring themselves, they still did not generally believe there would be a war. They thought the matter would yet rise upon the wings of some convenient wind and be blown away.
Of course the man of all others chiefly concerned in the results of the election was intensely interested. The effect upon his nervous system, not altogether ephemeral, is well illustrated by an incident which he subsequently related to several of his friends, and which has found no better record, perhaps, than in an article from the pen of Major John Hay, one of his private secretaries in Washington, published in Harper's Magazine for July, 1865. Major Hay reports the incident as nearly as possible in Mr. Lincoln's own words.
"It was just after my election in 1860," said Mr. Lincoln, "when the news had been coming in thick and fast all day, and there had been a great 'hurrah boys!' so that I was well tired out and went home to rest, throwing myself upon a lounge in my chamber. Opposite to where I lay was a bureau with a swinging glass upon it; and looking in that glass, I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other. I was a little bothered, perhaps startled, and got up and looked in the glass, but the illusion vanished. On lying down again, I saw it a second time, plainer, if possible, than before; and then I noticed that one of the faces was a little paler--say five shades--than the other. I got up and the thing melted away, and I went off; and, in the excitement of the hour forgot all about it,--nearly, but not quite, for the thing would once in a while come up, and give me a little pang as though something uncomfortable had happened. When I went home, I told my wife about it, and a few days after I tried the experiment again, when, sure enough, the thing came back again; but I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was worried about it somewhat. She thought it was 'a sign' that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term."
The President had good sense enough to regard the vision as an optical illusion, growing out of the excited condition of his nervous system at the time--yet, with that tinge of superstition which clings to every sensitive and deeply thoughtful man, in a world full of mysteries, he was so far affected by it as to feel that "something uncomfortable had happened." In the light of subsequent events, Mrs. Lincoln's prophetic interpretation of the vision has almost a startling interest.
Mr. Lincoln had become the most important man on the continent. Parties were given in his honor, autograph hunters beset him everywhere, and office-seekers met him on the right hand and on the left. That he felt at home in this new life is not probable, but he had the good sense to put on no airs, and to undertake no change of his manners in meeting men and women. From the day of his election to the day of his death, he was the same unpretending man that he was when he first entered Springfield to practice law. He had known nothing of drawing-rooms in his youth, and he affected to know nothing of them when every drawing-room of loyal America would have swung wide its doors to welcome him. It was noticed by the critical that he found great difficulty in disposing of his hand and feet. It is quite possible that they were hard to be disposed of, and that he succeeded with them quite as well as he would if he had been a master of deportment. If the hands were large, they had taken no bribes; if his feet were heavy, they had outstripped the fleetest in the race of ambition. If he could not win admiration for his personal graces, he could win love for his personal goodness.
He visited Chicago after his election, and met with a magnificent welcome. One or two little incidents of this trip will illustrate especially his consideration for children. He was holding a reception at the Tremont House. A fond father took in a little boy by the hand who was anxious to see the new President. The moment the child entered the parlor door, he, of his own motion, and quite to the surprise of his father, took off his hat, and giving it a swing, cried, "Hurrah for Lincoln!" There was a crowd, but as soon as Mr. Lincoln could get hold of the little fellow, he lifted him in his hands, and tossing him toward the ceiling laughingly shouted: "Hurrah for you!" To Mr. Lincoln it was evidently a refreshing episode in the dreary work of hand-shaking. At a party in Chicago, during this visit, he saw a little girl timidly approaching him. He called her to him, and asked her what she wished for. She replied that she wanted his name. Mr. Lincoln looked back into the room and said: "But here are other little girls--they would feel badly if I should give my name only to you." The little girl replied that there were eight of them in all. "Then," said Mr. Lincoln "get me eight sheets of paper, and a pen and ink, and I will see what I can do for you." The paper was brought, and Mr. Lincoln sat down in the crowded drawing-room, and wrote a sentence upon each sheet, appending his name; and thus every little girl carried off her souvenir.
During all this period of waiting for office, Mr. Lincoln carried a calm exterior but events were transpiring in the nation that gave him the most intense anxiety, and filled every leisure hour with painful thought.
There were, of course, the usual efforts at cabinet making on the part of presses and politicians, and he was favored with copious advice. It has been publicly said that he really desired to put Mr. Stephens of Georgia, whom he had been somewhat intimate with in Congress, into his cabinet. The appointment was at least strongly urged upon him. The republicans were seeking for some policy by which the South could be silenced and held to its allegiance. Many republicans in Washington were inclined to compromise the slavery question on the popular sovereignty position. Others thought it would be well to put southerners into the cabinet, and the names of Stephens of Georgia and Scott of Virginia were mentioned. These facts a personal friend communicated to Mr. Lincoln, and under date of December eighteenth, he replied: "I am sorry any republican inclines to dally with popular sovereignty of any sort. It acknowledges that slavery has equal rights with liberty, and surrenders all we have contended for. Once fastened on us as a settled policy, fillibustering for all south of us and making slave states of it follow in spite of us, with an early supreme court decision holding our free state constitutions to be unconstitutional. Would Scott or Stephens go into the cabinet? And if yea, on what terms? Do they come to me? or I go to them? Or are we to lead off in open hostility to each other?"
In Mr. Lincoln, though the prospect was dark and the way dangerous, there was no disposition to compromise the principles of his life and his party, and no entertainment of the illusion that concord could come of discord in his cabinet. In the latter matter he kept his own counsel and awaited his own time.