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7 Disenchanting the Nation of Slavery, 1860 “Here and now I break the spell, and disenchant the Republic . . . of this stupid wrong.” —Owen Lovejoy In his politically diverse Illinois, Abraham Lincoln had learned to harness various political forces and pull them together. Could he transfer this knowledge to a wider political arena? His verbal slings during his debates with the popular Stephen A. Douglas fit a good David and Goliath story line. His friends had spread the story of the emergence of a strong, rail-splitting young man from a meager background. But Lincoln knew he needed more national exposure if he was to win the presidency as a compromise candidate from a necessary state. In Illinois, Owen Lovejoy had been instrumental in convincing the populace that slavery ran contrary to the Gospel and the Declaration of Independence. After three years in Congress, with name recognition stemming from his martyred brother, his oratorical abilities, and his mastery of the issues, he had become a leader among his peers. Like Lincoln, however, Lovejoy sought wider national recognition. Lincoln at Cooper Union in New York City Lincoln’s opportunity came from an unexpected source. He was invited to speak as part of the Plymouth Church Lecture Series in Brooklyn, New York, on February 27, 1860.1 The church’s pastor was Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher, one of the most popular preachers in America. Beecher’s congregation raised money to buy freedom for young female slaves, and he was the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose wildly popular 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, had exposed the inhumanity of slavery. He was also known for sending aid, including Bibles and rifles, to Kansas settlers in the mid-1850s.2 Moreover, his brother, Edward Beecher, had been with Owen and Elijah Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois, just hours before Elijah’s murder. MooreandMoore_text.indd 90 6/26/14 11:20 AM Disenchanting the Nation of Slavery 91 Plymouth Church’s congregation included many businessmen, among them Henry Bowen, a member of the church’s board of directors, who was married to the daughter of antislavery entrepreneur Lewis Tappan. Bowen was also the publisher of the antislavery New York Independent, which Rev. Beecher had helped popularize. A “tired and woebegone Lincoln” visited Bowen in his office on the Saturday before the lecture. Bowen reminded Lincoln that the Republicans needed a presidential candidate who “could draw the Border States that had gone to the Democrats in 1856.” William H. Seward had been labeled a radical abolitionist and faced strong opposition, so Bowen and others were looking for an alternative. Bowen informed Lincoln that the venue had been changed from the church in Brooklyn to the Cooper Union in New York City in hopes of attracting a larger attendance.3 Consequently, an invitation from an institution built by eastern religious, political, and antislavery forces provided the foundation for Lincoln’s national acclaim. The speech was considered “vehement in tone and moderate in policy.”4 Lincoln appealed to the rich heritage of patriotism among people of the Northeast. He carefully undercut Douglas’s assertion that the “Constitution forbids federal governance to control slavery in the federal territories,” using detailed legal and historical arguments of the Founding Fathers of the nation. In sum, he said, “As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity.” Lincoln continued in a conciliatory manner, “Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For this, Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.”5 Next, Lincoln had some harsh words for the defenders of slavery: “I consider that in general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles or, at the best as no better than outlaws. . . . You say we are sectional. We deny it. . . . [T]he fact that we get no votes in your section, is a fact of your making, and not of ours.” Lincoln went on to argue that in the Constitution “the right of property in a slave is not ‘distinctly and expressly affirmed.’”6 He then turned to the Republicans: “Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through...

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