The Life of Lyman Trumbull

Hon. Lyman Trumbull,

My dear Sir: Your letter of the 16th reached me only yesterday. We had already seen by telegraph a report of Douglas's onslaught upon everybody but himself. I have this morning seen the Washington Union, in which I think the Judge is rather worsted in regard to the onslaught.

In relation to the charge of an alliance between the Republicans and the Buchanan men in the state, if being rather pleased to see a division in the ranks of Democracy, and not doing anything to prevent it, be such an alliance, then there is such an alliance. At least, that is true of me. But if it be intended to charge that there is any alliance by which there is to be any concession of principle on either side, or furnishing of sinews, or partition of offices, or swapping of votes to any extent, or the doing of anything, great or small, on the one side for a consideration expressed or implied on the other, no such thing is true so far as I know or believe.

Before this reaches you, you will have seen the proceedings of our Republican State Convention. It was really a grand affair and was in all respects all that our friends could desire.

The resolution in effect nominating me for Senator was passed more for the object of closing down upon the everlasting croaking about Wentworth than anything else. The signs look reasonably well. Our state ticket, I think, will be elected without much difficulty. But with the advantages they have of us, we shall be hard run to carry the legislature. We shall greet your return home with great pleasure.

Yours very truly,

A. Lincoln.

The only counties in the state in which the Danites showed any vitality were Union County in the south and Bureau County in the north. They polled only 5079 votes in the whole state.

The influence of the Eastern Republicans, who were inclined to support Douglas at the beginning of the campaign, and especially that of the New York Tribune, is noted by Judd and Herndon.

N. B. Judd, Chicago, July 16:

We have lost some Republicans in this region.... You may attribute it to the course of the New York Tribune, which has tended to loosen party ties and induce old Whigs to look upon D.'s return to the Senate as rather desirable. You ought to come to Illinois as soon as you can by way of New York and straighten out the newspapers there. Even the Evening Post compares Douglas to Silas Wright. Bah!

W. H. Herndon, Springfield, July 22:

There were some Republicans here—more than we had any idea of—who had been silently influenced by Greeley, and who intended to go for Douglas or not take sides against him. His speech here aroused the old fires and now they are his enemies. Has received a letter from Greeley in which he says: "Now, Herndon, I am going to do all I reasonably can to elect Lincoln."

N. B. Judd, Chicago, December 26 (after the election), says:

Horace Greeley has been here lecturing and doing what mischief he could. He took Tom Dyer [Democrat, ex-mayor] into his confidence and told him all the party secrets that he knew, such as that we had been East and endeavored to get money for the canvass and that we failed, etc.;—a beautiful chap he is, to be entrusted with the interests of a party. Lecturing is a mere pretense. He is running around to our small towns with that pretense, but really to head off the defection from his paper. It is being stopped by hundreds.

A. Jonas, Quincy, same date:

H. Greeley delivered a lecture before our lyceum last evening—a large crowd to hear him. John Wood, Browning, myself, and others talked to him very freely about the course of the Tribune in the late campaign. He acknowledged we were right.

The Douglas men elected a majority of the legislature, but did not have a majority, or even a plurality, of the popular vote. So it appears from a letter to Trumbull, the existence of which the author himself had forgotten.

Horace White, Chicago, January 10, 1859, sends a table of votes cast for members of the legislature in the election of 1858, showing a plurality of 4191 for Republican candidates for the House of Representatives.

W. H. Herndon, Springfield, says that Lincoln was defeated in the counties of Sangamon, Morgan, Madison, Logan, and Mason—a group of counties within a radius of eighty miles from the capital. They were men from Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia mainly, old-line Whigs, timid, but generally good men, supporters of Fillmore in the election of 1856. "These men must be reached in the coming election of 1860. Otherwise Trumbull will be beaten also."

Springfield, January 29,1859.

Hon. Lyman Trumbull,

Dear Sir: I have just received your late speech in pamphlet form, sent me by yourself. I had seen and read it before in a newspaper and I really think it a capital one. When you can find leisure, write me your present impression of Douglas's movements.

Our friends here from different parts of the state, in and out of the legislature, are united, resolute, and determined, and I think it almost certain that we shall be far better organized in 1860 than ever before.

We shall get no just apportionment (of legislative districts) and the best we can do—if we can do that—is to prevent one being made worse than the present.

Yours as ever,

A. Lincoln.

A letter from Lincoln following the campaign of 1858, is appended as showing the cordial relations existing between himself and Trumbull. The latter had written to him from Washington under date January 29, 1859, saying that John Wentworth had written an article, intended for publication in the Chicago Journal (but which the editor of that paper had refused to print), imputing bad faith toward Lincoln on the part of N. B. Judd, B. C. Cook, and others, including Trumbull, in the last senatorial campaign. Trumbull had received a copy of this article, and as its object was to create enmity between friends, and as it would probably be published somewhere, he wished to assure Lincoln that the statements and insinuations contained in it were wholly false. To this Lincoln replied as follows:

Springfield, February 3, 1859.

Hon. L. Trumbull,

My dear Sir: Yours of the 29th is received. The article mentioned by you, prepared for the Chicago Journal, I have not seen; nor do I wish to see it, though I heard of it a month or more ago. Any effort to put enmity between you and me is as idle as the wind. I do not for a moment doubt that you, Judd, Cook, Palmer, and the Republicans generally coming from the old Democratic ranks, were as sincerely anxious for my success in the late contest as myself, and I beg to assure you beyond all possible cavil that you can scarcely be more anxious to be sustained two years hence than I am that you shall be sustained. I cannot conceive it possible for me to be a rival of yours or to take sides against you in favor of any rival. Nor do I think there is much danger of the old Democratic and Whig elements of our party breaking into opposing factions. They certainly shall not if I can prevent it.

Yours as ever,

A. Lincoln.

Twenty days after this letter was penned, there was a debate in the Senate which was an echo of the Illinois campaign, which must have been extremely interesting to both Lincoln and Trumbull. In a debate with Douglas in 1856, as already noted, Trumbull had asked him whether, under his doctrine of popular sovereignty, the people could prohibit slavery in a territory before they came to form a state constitution. He replied that that was a judicial question to be settled by the courts, and that all good Democrats would bow to the decision of the Supreme Court whenever it should be made. At Freeport, in the campaign of 1858, Lincoln put the same question to him in a slightly different form.

On the 23d of February, 1859, there was a Senate debate on this question, in which Douglas contended that the Democratic party, by supporting General Cass in 1848, had endorsed the same opinion that he (Douglas) had maintained at Freeport, since Cass, in his so-called "Nicholson Letter," had affirmed the doctrine of squatter sovereignty as to slavery in the territories. Douglas now contended that every Southern state that gave its electoral vote to Cass, including Mississippi, was committed to the doctrine that the people of a territory could lawfully exclude slavery while still in a territorial condition. Jefferson Davis replied:

The State of Mississippi voted [in 1848] under the belief that that letter meant no more than that when the territory became a state, it had authority to decide that question.... If it had been known that the venerable candidate then of the Democratic party, and now Secretary of State, held the opinion which he so frankly avowed at a subsequent period on the floor of the Senate, I tell you, sir [addressing Douglas], he would have had no more chance to get the vote of Mississippi than you with your opinions would have to-day.[35 - When Lincoln, at the Freeport debate, asked Douglas whether the people of a territory could in any lawful way exclude slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a state constitution, Douglas replied that Lincoln had heard him answer that question "a hundred times from every stump in Illinois." He certainly had answered it more than once, and his answer had been published without attracting attention or comment either North or South. On the 16th of July, 1858, six weeks before the Freeport joint debate, he spoke at Bloomington, and there announced and affirmed the doctrine of "unfriendly legislation" as a means of excluding slavery from the territories. Lincoln was one of the persons present when this speech was delivered. On the next day, Douglas spoke at Springfield and repeated what he had said at Bloomington. Both of these speeches were published in the Illinois State Register of July 19, yet the fact was not perceived, either by Lincoln himself, or by any of the lynx-eyed editors and astute political friends who labored to prevent him from asking Douglas the momentous question. Nor did the Southern leaders seem to be aware of Douglas's views on this question until they learned it from the Freeport debate.]

On the 2d of February, 1860, Davis introduced a series of resolutions in the Senate of a political character evidently intended to head off Douglas at the coming Charleston Convention; or, failing that, to pave the way for the withdrawal of the delegates of the cotton-growing states. The fourth resolution was directed against the Douglas doctrine of unfriendly legislation, thus:

Resolved, That neither Congress nor a territorial legislature, whether by direct legislation or legislation of indirect and unfriendly nature, possesses the power to annul or impair the constitutional right of any citizen of the United States to take his slave property into the common territories; but it is the duty of the Federal Government there to afford for that, as for other species of property, the needful protection; and if experience should at any time prove that the judiciary does not possess power to insure adequate protection, it will then become the duty of Congress to supply such deficiency.

The Senate debate between Douglas and his Southern antagonists was resumed in May, after the explosion of the Charleston Convention. Douglas made a two days' speech (May 15 and 16) occupying four hours each day, but did not mention the subject of unfriendly legislation, or show how a territorial legislature could nullify or circumvent the Dred Scott decision. He was answered by Benjamin, of Louisiana, in a speech which made a sensation throughout the country, and in which the doctrine of unfriendly legislation was mauled to tatters. Benjamin was the first Southern statesman to make his bow to the rising fame of Lincoln. After examining the Freeport debate, he said:

We accuse him [Douglas] for this, to-wit: that, having bargained with us upon a point upon which we were at issue, that it should be considered a judicial question; that he would abide the decision; that he would act under the decision and consider it a doctrine of the party; that, having said that to us here in the Senate, he went home, and under the stress of a local election his knees gave way; his whole person trembled. His adversary stood upon principle and was beaten, and lo, he is the candidate of a mighty party for Presidency of the United States. The Senator from Illinois faltered; he got the prize for which he faltered, but lo, the prize of his ambition slips from his grasp, because of the faltering which he paid as the price of the ignoble prize—ignoble under the circumstances under which he obtained it.[36 - Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., p. 2241.]

There are scores of letters in Trumbull's correspondence calling for copies of Benjamin's speech, yet it had no effect in Illinois, the Danite vote being smaller in 1860 than it had been in 1858. Probably it had influence in the National Democratic Convention at Charleston, from which the delegates from ten Southern States seceded in whole or part when the Douglas platform was adopted. This split was followed by an adjournment to Baltimore, where a second split took place, Douglas being nominated by one faction and Breckinridge, of Kentucky, by the other.

Fifty years have passed since John Brown, with twenty-one men, seized the Government armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry (October 16, 1859), in an attempt to abolish slavery in the United States. As sinews of war, he had about four thousand dollars, or dollars' worth of material of one kind and another. With such resources he expected to do something which the Government itself, with more than a million trained soldiers, five hundred warships, and three billions of dollars, accomplished with difficulty at the end of a four years' war, during which no negro insurrection, large or small, took place. One might think that the scheme itself was evidence of insanity. But to prove Brown insane on this ground alone, we must convict also the persons who plotted and coöperated with him and who furnished him money and arms, knowing what he intended to do with them. Some of these were men of high intelligence who are still living without strait-jackets, and it is not conceivable that they aided and abetted him without first estimating, as well as they were able, the chances of success. Yet Brown refused to allow his counsel to put in a plea of insanity on his trial, saying that he was no more insane then than he had been all his life, which was probably true. If he was not insane at the time of the Pottawatomie massacre, he was a murderer who forfeited his own life five times in one night by taking that number of lives of his fellow men in cold blood.

I saw and talked with Brown perhaps half a dozen times at Chicago during his journeys to and from Kansas. He impressed me then as a religious zealot of the Old Testament type, believing in the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures and in himself as a competent interpreter thereof. But the text "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay," never engaged his attention. He was oppressed with no doubts about anything, least of all about his own mission in the world. His mission was to bring slavery to an end, but that was a subject that he did not talk about. He was a man of few words, and was extremely reticent about his plans, even those of ordinary movements in daily life. He had a square jaw, clean-shaven, and an air of calmness and self-confidence, which attracted weaker intellects and gave him mastery over them. He had steel-gray eyes, and steel-gray hair, close-cropped, that stood stiff on his head like wool cards, giving him an aspect of invincibleness. When he applied to the National Kansas Committee for the arms in their possession after the Kansas war was ended, he was asked by Mr. H. B. Hurd, the secretary, what use he intended to make of them. He refused to answer, and his request was accordingly denied. The arms were voted back to the Massachusetts men who had contributed them originally. Brown obtained an order for them from the owners.

The Thirty-sixth Congress met on the 5th of December, 1859. The first business introduced in the Senate was a resolution from Mason, of Virginia, calling for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the facts attending John Brown's invasion and seizure of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Trumbull offered an amendment proposing that a similar inquiry be made in regard to the seizure in December, 1855, of the United States Arsenal at Liberty, Missouri, and the pillage thereof by a band of Missourians, who were marching to capture and control the ballot-boxes in Kansas. On the following day Trumbull made a brief speech in support of his amendment, in the course of which he commented on the Harper's Ferry affair in words which have never faded from the memory of the present writer. Nobody during the intervening half-century has summed up the moral and legal aspects of the John Brown raid more truly or more forcibly. He said:

I hope this investigation will be thorough and complete. I believe it will do good by disabusing the public mind, in that portion of the Union which feels most sensitive upon this subject, of the idea that the outbreak at Harper's Ferry received any countenance or support from any considerable number of persons in any portion of this Union. No man who is not prepared to subvert the Constitution, destroy the Government, and resolve society into its original elements, can justify such an act. No matter what evils, either real or imaginary, may exist in the body politic, if each individual, or every set of twenty individuals, out of more than twenty millions of people, is to be permitted, in his own way and in defiance of the laws of the land, to undertake to correct those evils, there is not a government on the face of the earth that could last a day. And it seems to me, sir, that those persons who reason only from abstract principles and believe themselves justifiable on all occasions, and in every form, in combating evil wherever it exists, forget that the right which they claim for themselves exists equally in every other person. All governments, the best which have been devised, encroach necessarily more or less on the individual rights of man and to that extent may be regarded as evils. Shall we, therefore, destroy Government, dissolve society, destroy regulated and constitutional liberty, and inaugurate in its stead anarchy—a condition of things in which every man shall be permitted to follow the instincts of his own passions, or prejudices, or feelings, and where there will be no protection to the physically weak against the encroachments of the strong? Till we are prepared to inaugurate such a state as this, no man can justify the deeds done at Harper's Ferry. In regard to the misguided man who led the insurgents on that occasion, I have no remarks to make. He has already expiated upon the gallows the crime which he committed against the laws of his country; and to answer for his errors, or his virtues, whatever they may have been, he has gone fearlessly and willingly before that Judge who cannot err; there let him rest.

The debate continued several days and took a pretty wide range, the leading Senators on both sides taking part in it. Trumbull bore the brunt of it on the Republican side, and was cross-examined in courteous but searching terms by Yulee, of Florida, Chesnut, of South Carolina, and Clay, of Alabama, who conceived that the teachings of the Republican party tended to produce such characters as John Brown. Trumbull answered all their queries promptly, fully, and satisfactorily to his political friends, if not to his questioners. Nothing in his senatorial career brought him more cordial letters of approval than this debate. One such came from Lincoln: