双语·林肯传 13

13

In 1854, a tremendous thing happened to Lincoln. It came about as a result of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise, in brief, was this:

In 1819, Missouri had wanted to come into the Union as a slave State. The North had opposed its doing so and the situation became serious. Finally, the ablest public men of that day arranged what is now known as the Missouri Compromise. The South got what it wanted: the admission of Missouri as a slave State. The North got what it wanted: thereafter slavery was never to be permitted in the West anywhere north of the southern boundary of Missouri.

People thought that would stop the quarreling about slavery, and it did—for a while. But now, a third of a century later, Stephen A. Douglas secured the repeal of the Compromise, and made it possible for a new area lying west of the Mississippi and equal in size to the original thirteen States, to be blighted with the curse of slavery. He fought long and hard in Congress for the repeal. The struggle lasted for months. Once during the bitter debates in the House of Representatives, members leaped on top of their desks, knives flashed, and guns were drawn. But finally, after an impassioned plea by Douglas, lasting from midnight until almost dawn, the Senate passed his bill on March 4, 1854. It was a tremendous event. Messengers ran through the streets of the slumbering city of Washington, shouting the news. Cannon in the Navy Yard boomed to salute the dawn of a new era—a new era that was to be drenched in blood.

Why did Douglas do it? No one seems to know. Historians in skullcaps are still arguing about it. Of this much, however, we are certain: Douglas hoped to be elected President in 1856. He knew this repeal would help him in the South.

But what of the North?

“By God, I know it will raise a hell of a storm there,” he declared.

He was right. It did. It raised a regular tornado that blew both the great parties into bits, and eventually whirled the nation into civil war.

Meetings of protest and indignation flared up spontaneously in hundreds of cities and villages and hamlets. Stephen Arnold Douglas was denounced as the “traitor Arnold.” People said that he had been named after Benedict Arnold. He was branded as a modern Judas, and presented with thirty pieces of silver. He was given a rope and told to hang himself.

The churches leaped into the fight with a holy frenzy. Three thousand and fifty clergymen in New England wrote a protest “in the name of Almighty God and in His presence,” and laid it before the Senate. Fiery and indignant editorials fed the flames of public indignation. In Chicago even the Democratic papers turned upon Douglas with vindictive fierceness.

Congress adjourned in August, and Douglas started home. Amazed at the sights that met his eyes, he declared afterward that he could have traveled all the way from Boston to Illinois by the light of burning effigies of himself hanging by the neck.

Daring and defiant, he announced that he was going to speak in Chicago. The hatred against him there, in his own home town, amounted to nothing less than fanaticism. The press assailed him, and wrathful ministers demanded that he never again be permitted to “pollute the pure air of Illinois with his perfidious breath.” Men rushed to the hardware stores, and, by sundown, there wasn't another revolver left for sale in all the city. His enemies swore that he should never live to defend his infamous deeds.

The moment Douglas entered the city, boats in the harbor lowered their flags to half-mast; and bells in a score of churches tolled, mourning the death of Liberty.

The night that he spoke was one of the hottest Chicago had ever known. Perspiration rolled down the faces of men as they sat idling in their chairs. Women fainted as they struggled to get out to the shore of the lake where they could sleep on the cool sands. Horses fell in their harness and lay dying in the streets.

But notwithstanding the heat, thousands of excited men, guns in their pockets, flocked to hear Douglas. No hall in Chicago could hold the throng. They packed a public square, and hundreds stood on balconies and sat astride the roofs of near-by houses.

The very first sentence that Douglas uttered was greeted with groans and hisses. He continued to talk—or, at least, he continued to try—and the audience yelled and booed and sang insulting songs and called him names that are unprintable.

His excited partizans wanted to start a fight. Douglas begged them to be quiet. He would tame the mob. He kept on trying, but he kept on failing. When he denounced the “Chicago Tribune,” the great gathering cheered the paper. When he threatened to stand there all night unless they let him speak, eight thousand voices sang: “We won't go home until morning. We won't go home until morning.”

It was a Saturday night. Finally, after four hours of futility and insult, Douglas took out his watch and shouted at the howling, bellowing, milling mob: “It is now Sunday morning, I'll go to church. And you can go to hell.”

Exhausted, he gave up and left the speaker's stand. The Little Giant had met humiliation and defeat for the first time in his life.

The next morning the papers told all about it; and down in Springfield, a proud, plump brunette, trembling on the brink of middle age, read it with peculiar satisfaction. Fifteen years before, she had dreamed of being Mrs. Douglas. For years she had watched him mount on wings until he had become the most popular and powerful leader in the nation, while her husband had gone down in humiliating defeat; and, deep in her heart, she resented it.

But now, thank God, the haughty Douglas was doomed. He had split his own party in his own State. And just before the election. This was Lincoln's chance. And Mary Lincoln knew it—his chance to win back the public favor that he had lost in 1848, his chance to reinstate himself politically, his chance to be elected to the United States Senate. True, Douglas still had four more years to serve. But his colleague was coming up for reelection in a few months.

And who was his colleague? A swaggering, pugnacious Irishman named Shields. Mary Lincoln had an old score to settle with Shields, too. Back in 1842, largely because of insulting letters that she herself had written, Shields had challenged Lincoln to a duel; and the two of them, armed with cavalry swords and accompanied by their seconds, had met on a sand-bar in the Mississippi River, prepared to kill each other. But, at the last moment, friends interceded and prevented bloodshed. Since that time, Shields had gone up in politics, but Lincoln had gone down.

But now Lincoln had struck bottom, and had started to rebound. The repeal of the Missouri Compromise had, as he said, “aroused” him. He could no longer remain quiet. He was determined to strike with all the vigor and conviction of his soul.

So he began preparing his speech, working for weeks in the State library, consulting histories, mastering facts, classifying, clarifying, studying all the hot debates that had been thundered back and forth across the Senate chamber during the stormy passage of this bill.

On October 3 the State Fair opened at Springfield. Thousands of farmers poured into town; men bringing their prize hogs and horses, their cattle and corn; women fetching their jellies and jam, their pies and preserves. But these displays were all but forgotten in the excitement of another attraction. For weeks it had been advertised that Douglas was to speak the opening day of the fair, and political leaders from all parts of the State had thronged there to hear him.

That afternoon he spoke for more than three hours, going over his record, explaining, defending, attacking. He hotly denied that he was trying either “to legislate slavery into a territory or to exclude it therefrom.” Let the people in a territory do whatever they pleased about slavery.

“Surely,” he shouted, “if the people of Kansas and Nebraska are able to govern themselves, surely they are able to govern a few miserable Negroes.”

Lincoln sat near the front, listening to every word, weighing every argument. When Douglas finished, Lincoln declared: “I'll hang his hide on the fence to-morrow.”

The next morning handbills were scattered all over town and the fair-grounds, announcing that Lincoln would reply to Douglas. The public interest was intense, and before two o'clock every seat was occupied in the hall where the speaking was to take place. Presently Douglas appeared and sat on the platform. As usual, he was immaculately attired and faultlessly groomed.

Mary Lincoln was already in the audience. Before leaving the house that morning she had vigorously brushed Lincoln's coat, had laid out a fresh collar and carefully ironed his best tie. She was anxious to have him appear to advantage. But the day was hot, and Lincoln knew the air in the hall would be oppressive. So he strode onto the platform without a coat, without a vest, without a collar, without a tie. His long, brown, skinny neck rose out of the shirt that hung loosely on his gaunt frame. His hair was disordered, his boots rusty and unkempt. One single knitted “gallis” held up his short, ill-fitting trousers.

At the first sight of him, Mary Lincoln flushed with anger and embarrassment. She could have wept in her disappointment and despair.

No one dreamed of it at the time, but we know now that this homely man, whose wife was ashamed of him, was starting out that hot October afternoon on a career that was to give him a place among the immortals.

That afternoon, he made the first great speech of his life. If all the addresses that he had made previously were collected and placed in one book, and those that he made from that afternoon on were placed in another volume, you could hardly believe that the same man was the author of them all. It was a new Lincoln speaking that day—a Lincoln stirred to the depths by a mighty wrong, a Lincoln pleading for an oppressed race, a Lincoln touched and moved and lifted up by moral grandeur.

He reviewed the history of slavery, and gave five fiery reasons for hating it.

But with lofty tolerance, he declared: “I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist among them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not instantly give it up. When Southern people tell us they are no more responsible for the origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said that the institution exists, and that it is very difficult to get rid of it in any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself. If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do with the existing institution.”

For more than three hours, with the perspiration rolling down his face, he continued to answer Douglas, revealing the senator's sophistry, showing the utter falseness of his position.

It was a profound speech, and it made a profound impression. Douglas winced and writhed under it. Time after time he rose to his feet and interrupted Lincoln.

The election wasn't far off. Progressive young Democrats were already bolting the ticket and attacking Douglas, and when the voters of Illinois cast their ballots, the Douglas Democrats were overwhelmed.

Senators were chosen in those days by the State legislatures; and the Illinois Legislature met in Springfield on February 8, 1855, for that purpose. Mrs. Lincoln had bought a new dress and hat for the occasion and her brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards, had with sanguine anticipation arranged for a reception to be given that night in Senator Lincoln's honor.

On the first ballot, Lincoln led all the other candidates, and came within six votes of victory. But he steadily lost after that; and on the tenth ballot he was definitely defeated, and Lyman W. Trumbull was elected.

Lyman Trumbull had married Julia Jayne, a young woman who had been bridesmaid at Mary Lincoln's wedding and probably had been the most intimate friend that Mrs. Lincoln ever had. Mary and Julia sat side by side in the balcony of the Hall of Representatives that afternoon, watching the senatorial election; and when the victory of Julia's husband was announced, Mrs. Lincoln turned in a temper and walked out of the building. Her anger was so fierce, and her jealousy was so galling, that from that day on, to the end of her life, she never again spoke to Julia Trumbull.

Saddened and depressed, Lincoln returned to his dingy law office with the ink-stain on the wall and the garden seeds sprouting in the dust on top of the bookcase.

A week later he hitched up Old Buck and once more started driving over the unsettled prairies, from one country courthouse to another. But his heart was no longer in the law. He talked now of little else but politics and slavery. He said that the thought of millions of people held in bondage continually made him miserable. His periods of melancholy returned now more frequently than ever; and they were more prolonged and more profound.

One night he was sharing a bed with another lawyer in a country tavern. His companion awoke at dawn and found Lincoln sitting in his nightshirt on the edge of the bed, brooding, dejected, mumbling to himself, lost in unseeing abstraction. When at last he spoke, the first words were:

“I tell you this nation cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

Shortly after this a colored woman in Springfield came to Lincoln with a pitiful story. Her son had gone to St. Louis and taken a job on a Mississippi steamboat. When he arrived in New Orleans he was thrown into jail. He had been born free, but he had no papers to prove it. So he was kept in prison until his boat left. Now he was going to be sold as a slave to pay the prison expenses.

Lincoln took the case to the Governor of Illinois. The governor replied that he had no right or power to interfere. In response to a letter, the Governor of Louisiana replied that he couldn't do anything, either. So Lincoln went back to see the Governor of Illinois a second time, urging him to act, but the governor shook his head.

Lincoln rose from his chair, exclaiming with unusual emphasis: “By God, Governor, you may not have the legal power to secure the release of this poor boy, but I intend to make the ground in this country too hot for the foot of a slave-owner.”

The next year Lincoln was forty-six, and he confided to his friend Whitney that he “kinder needed” glasses; so he stopped at a jewelry store and bought his first pair—for thirty-seven and a half cents.