Lincoln on Democracy

Introduction

Introduction BY WILLIAM E. GIENAPP "I have always hated slavery," Abraham Lincoln affirmed on one occasion , "I think as much as any Abolitionist." Be that as it may, slavery was not initially a major concern for him, and while he publicly condemned the institution as early as 1837, he firmly opposed the abolitionist movement and its crusade against slavery. As a member of Congress (1847-1849), he steadfastly supported the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited slavery from all the territory acquired from Mexico, but he refused to join the Free Soil Party in 1848 and instead backed Zachary Taylor, a slaveholder, for president. As he later recalled, he remained quiet under the comforting assumption that the institution would eventually disappear. Following his retirement from Congress in 1849, Lincoln turned his attention to his legal profession and became a successful attorney. With his political ambitions blocked by the hopelessness of the Whig cause in Illinois, he seemed to have largely lost interest in politics, when passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act suddenly gave renewed life to the issue of the expansion ofslavery. Passed at the behest of the South, this statute repealed the time-honored Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had barred slavery from the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, in favor of the principle ofpopular sovereignty, by which the residents of the territories, at some unspecified time, were to decide whether they wanted slavery or not. A storm of protest swept across the North as Whigs, Democrats, and Free Soilersjoined in condemning this reckless destruction of what many considered a sacred sectional compact. Led by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the law's 56 LINCOLN ON DEMOCRACY Northern supporters claimed that under popular sovereignty Kansas and Nebraska would become free states, but critics including Lincoln contended that the real purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to promote the expansion of slavery, especially into Kansas. "Thunderstruck and stunned," as he put it, by this unexpected reopening of the slavery controversy, Lincoln took the stump and campaigned across Illinois in 1854, delivering a series ofspeeches denouncing the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and opposing the expansion ofslavery. His most famous address that year, given in Peoria, skillfully dissected Douglas's arguments in favor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Now convinced that, far from being on the verge of dying out, slavery had instead become an aggressive force in the nation, Lincoln, who testified that "the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused him as he had never been before," evidenced a new depth of passion and sense of urgency in his public remarks. For the first time slavery assumed a central place in his thought, and he quickly became a major leader of the anti-Nebraska movement in the state. The practice of law would never again have the same importance in his life. The four years between the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill in 1854 and his nomination for senator in 1858 were critical for Lincoln 's political career, now revitalized by the renewal of the agitation over slavery. The strength of the anti-Nebraska movement in Illinois whetted Lincoln's ambition, and he made a strong bid in 1855 to be elected to the u.s. Senate (a lifelong dream of his), but in the end was defeated. Still, he was reluctant to abandon his long-standing allegiance to the dying Whig Party. "I think I am a whig," he told his old friend Joshua F. Speed in 1855, "but others say there are no whigs." Unlike many ofhis party colleagues, however, Lincoln refused to join the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party, which was for a brief time a political power in the nation. Because of the Know Nothings' strength in Illinois, Lincoln expressed his criticism privately, but he made his views clear in a letter to Speed. "I am not a KnowNothing . That is certain. How could I be? How can anyone who abhors the oppression of negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people?" Lamenting the country's retreat from the standard unfurled in 1776, Lincoln observed that "as a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes. ' When the Know-Nothings get control, Lincoln and Slavery, 1854-1857 57 it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics. ' " At...