Shadow and Light. Gibbs Mifflin Wistar
hence its supporters looked with alarm upon an increasing determination to stay its progress.
California had been admitted as a free State, after a struggle the most severe. Its admission John C. Calhoun, the very able leader of the slave power, regarded as the death-knell of slavery, if the institution remained within the union and counseled secession. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, in despair at the growth of slavery; Calhoun at that of freedom. But how could this march of moral progress and national greatness be arrested? Congress had, in 1787, enacted that all the territory not then States should forever be reserved to freedom. The slave power saw the "handwriting on the wall" surround it with a cordon of free States; increase their representatives in Congress advocating freedom, and slavery is doomed. The line cherished by the founders, the Gibraltar against which slavery had dashed its angry billows, must be blotted out, and over every rod of virgin soil it was to be admitted without let or hindrance.
Then came the dark days of compromise, the era of Northern fear of secession, and, finally, opinion crystallizing into legislation non-committal, viz: That States applying for admission should be admitted as free or slave States, as a majority of their inhabitants might determine. Then came the struggle for Kansas. Emigration societies were fitted out in the New England and Northern States to send free State men to locate who would vote to bring in Kansas as a free State. Similar organizations existed in the slave States for the opposite purpose.
It is not pleasant to dwell nor fitly portray the terrible ordeal through which the friends of freedom passed. In 1859 they succeeded; right and justice were triumphant, the beneficial results of which will reach remotest time. It was in this conflict that the heroism of John Brown developed. It was there he saw his kindred and his friends murdered, and there registered his vow to avenge their blood in the disenthralment of the slave. The compeers of this "grand old man" or people of the nation could have scarcely supposed that this man, hitherto obscure, was to be the instrument of retributive justice, to inaugurate a rebellion which was to culminate in the freedom of 4,000,000 slaves. John Brown, at the head of a few devoted men, at Harper's Ferry, struck the blow that echoed and re-echoed in booming gun and flashing sabre until, dying away in whispered cadence, was hushed in the joyousness of a free nation. John Brown was great because he was good, and good because he was great, with the bravery of a warrior and the tenderness of a child, loving liberty as a mother her first born, he scorned to compromise with slavery. Virginia demanded his blood and he gave it, making the spot on which he fell sacred for all time, upon which posterity will see a monument in commemoration of an effort, grand in its magnanimity, to which the devotees of liberty from every clime can repair to breathe anew an inspiration from its shrine —
"For whether on the gallows high
Or in the battle's van,
The noblest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man."
The slave power, defeated in Kansas, fearful of the result of the vote in other territories to determine their future status, found aid and comfort from Judge Taney, a Supreme Judge of the United States. Bancroft, the historian, has said: "In a great Republic an attempt to overthrow a State owes its strength to and from some branch of the Government." 'Tis said that this Chief Justice, without necessity or occasion, volunteered to come to the rescue of slavery, and, being the highest court known to the law, the edict was final, and no appeal could lie, save to the bar of humanity and history. Against the memory of the nation, against decisions and enactments, he announced that, slaves being property, owners could claim constitutional protection in the territories; that the Constitution upheld slavery against any act of a State Legislature, and even against Congress. Slavery, previous to 1850, was regulated by municipal law; the slave was held by virtue of the laws of the State of his location or of kindred slave States. When he escaped that jurisdiction he was free. By the decision of Judge Taney, instead of slavery being local, it was national and freedom outlawed; the slave could not only be reclaimed in any State, but slavery could be established wherever it sought habitation.
Black laws had been passed in Northern States and United States Commissioners appointed in these States searched for fugitives, where they had, in fancied security, resided for years, built homes, and reared families, seizing and remanding them back into slavery, causing an era of terror, family dismemberment, and flight, only to be remembered with sadness and horror. For had not the heartless dictum come from a Chief Justice of the United States – the "Jeffry of American jurisprudence," that it had been ruled that black men had no rights a white man was bound to respect?
The slave power, fortified with this declaration, resolved that if at the approaching election they did not succeed they would secede. Lincoln was elected, and the South, true to its resolve, prepared for the secession of its States. Pennsylvania is credited with having then made the last and meanest gift to the Presidency in the person of James Buchanan. History tells of a Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. The valedictory of this public functionary breathing aid and comfort to secession, was immediately followed by South Carolina firing on Fort Sumter, and Southern Senators advised their constituents to seize the arsenals and ports of the nation. Rebellion was a fact.
CHAPTER VII
Abraham Lincoln, the President-elect, was the legitimate outgrowth of American institutions; in him was presented choice fruit, the product of republican government. Born in a log cabin, of poor, uneducated parents, his only aids untiring industry, determination, and lofty purpose. Hewing out his steps on the rugged rocks of poverty, climbing the mountains of difficulty, and attaining the highest honor within the gift of the nation – "truly a self-made man, the Declaration of Independence," says a writer, "being his daily compendium of wisdom, the life of Washington his daily study, with something of Jefferson, Madison, and Clay." For the rest, from day to day, he lived the life of the American people; "walked in its light; reasoned with its reason; thought with its powers of thought, and felt the beatings of its mighty heart." In 1858 he came prominently forward as the rival of Stephen A. Douglass, and, with wealth of argument, terseness of logic, and enunciation of just principles, took front rank among sturdy Republicans, battling against the extension of human slavery, declaring that "the nation could not endure half free and half slave."
On the 4th of March, 1861, he took the oath of office and commenced his Administration. With confidence and doubt alternating, our interest as a race became intensified. We knew the South had rebelled; we were familiar with the pagan proverb "Those whom the gods would destroy they first made mad." We had watched the steady growth of Republicanism, when a tinge on the political horizon "no bigger than a man's hand," increase in magnitude and power and place its standard-bearer in the White House. But former Presidents had professed to hate slavery. President Fillmore had, yet signed the fugitive slave law; Pierce and Buchanan had both wielded the administrative arm in favor of slavery. We had seen Daniel Webster, Massachusetts' ablest jurist, and the most learned constitutional expounder – the man of whom it was said that "when he speaks God's own thunder can be seen pent up in his brow and God's own lightning flash from his eye" – a man sent by the best cultured of New England to represent the most advanced civilization of the century – we had seen this brilliant star of anti-slavery Massachusetts "pale his ineffectual fires" before the steady glare, the intolerance, blandishment, and corrupting influences of the slave power – and tell the nation they must compromise with slavery.
When Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's statesman and philanthropist, was approached in Parliament by West India planters with promises of support for measures for the relief of Ireland if he would vote in the interest of slavery in British colonies, he said: "'Tis true, gentlemen, that I represent a poor constituency – God only knows how poor; but may calamity and affliction overtake me if ever I, to help Ireland, vote to enslave the Negro." A noble utterance! Unlike the Northern representatives sent to Congress, who "bent the pliant, servile knee that thrift might follow fawning." What wonder our race was keenly alive to the situation? The hour had arrived – was the man there?
For Abraham Lincoln impartial history will answer "Nor memory lose, nor time impair" his nobility of character for humanity and patriotism that will ever ennoble and inspire. Mr. Lincoln was slow to believe that the rebellion would assume the proportions that it did, but he placed himself squarely on the issue in his inaugural address: "That he should, to the extent of his ability,