"He Is Blowing Out the Moral Lights Around Us"

Excerpt from Abraham Lincoln's Fifth Joint Debate with Stephen Douglas, Galesburg, Illinois, October 7, 1858

In these general maxims about liberty--in his assertions that he "don't care whether slavery is voted up or down;" that "whoever wants slavery has a right to it;" that "upon principles of equality it should be allowed to go everywhere;" that "there is no inconsistency between free and slave institutions." In this he is also preparing (whether purposely or not) the way for making the institution of slavery national! I repeat again, for I wish no misunderstanding, that I do not charge that he means it so; but I call upon your minds to inquire, if you were going to get the best instrument you could, and then set it to work in the most ingenious way, to prepare the public mind for this movement, operating in the free states, where there now is an abhorrence of the institution of slavery, could you find an instrument so capable of doing it as Judge Douglas? Or one employed in so apt a way to it?

I have said once before, and I will repeat now, that Mr. Clay, when he was once answering an objection to the Colonization Society, that it had a tendency to the ultimate emancipation of the slaves, said that "those who would repress all tendencies to liberty and ultimate emancipation must do more than put down the benevolent efforts of the Colonization Society--they must go back to the era of our liberty and independence, and muzzle the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return--they must blot out the moral lights around us--they must penetrate the human soul, and eradicate the light of reason and the love of liberty!" And I do think--I repeat, though I said it on a former occasion--that Judge Douglas, and whoever like him teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and, so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in very possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.

To elevate the condition of men

President Abraham Lincoln's Message to Congress in Special Session, July 4, 1861 (excerpt)

It may be affirmed, without extravagance, that the free institutions we enjoy have developed the powers and improved the condition of our whole people, beyond any example in the world. Of this we now have a striking and an impressive illustration. So large an army as the government has now a foot was never before known without a soldier in it but who had taken his place there of his own free choice. But more than this: there are many single regiments whose members , one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one from which there could not be selected a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a court, abundantly competent to administer the Government itself! Nor do I say this is not true also in the army of late friends, now adversaries, in this contest; but if it is, so much better the reason why the Government which has conferred such benefits on both them and us should not now be broken up. Whoever, in any section, proposes to abandon such a Government, would do well to consider, in deference to what principle it is that he does it; what better he is likely to get in its stead; whether the substitute will give, or be intended to give, so much of good to the people? There are some foreshadowings on this subject. Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence, in which, unlike the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old, signed by Washington, they omit "We, the People," and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the Government for whose existence we contend.

"That immortal emblem of humanity"

The Beardstown Speech (Excerpt)

Abraham Lincoln, Beardstown, Illinois, August 12, 1858

These by their representatives in old Independence Hall said to the whole race of men: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the universe. This was their lofty, and wise, and noble understanding of the justice of the Creator to his creatures--yes, gentlemen, to all his creatures, to the whole great family of men. In their enlightened belief, nothing stamped with the divine image and likeness was sent into the world to be trodden on and degraded and imbruted by its fellows. They grasped not only the whole race of men then living, but reached forward and seized upon the farthest posterity. They erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children's children, and the countless myriads who should inhabit the earth in other ages. Wise statesmen as they were, they knew the tendency of prosperity to breed tyrants, and so they established these great self-evident truths, that when in the distant future some man, some faction, some interest, should set up the doctrine that none but rich men, none but white men, or none but Anglo-Saxon white men were entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew the battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land; so that no man would hereafter dare to limit and circumscribe the great principles on which the temple of liberty was being built.

Now, countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence; if you have listened to suggestions which would take away from its grandeur and mutilate the fair symmetry of its proportions; if you have been inclined to believe that all men are not created equal in those inalienable rights enumerated by our chart of liberty: let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountain whose waters spring close by the blood of the Revolution. Think nothing of me; take no thought for the political fate of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything with me you choose, if you but will heed these sacred principles. You may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by something higher than an anxiety for office. It is nothing; I am nothing; Judge [Stephen] Douglas is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity--the Declaration of American Independence.

Reconstruction: Civil and Political Equality

January, 1864

Letter to James Wadsworth

You desire to know, in the event of our complete success in the field, the same being followed by a loyal and cheerful submission on the part of the South, if universal amnesty should not be accompanied with universal suffrage.

Now, since you know my private inclinations as to what terms should be granted to the South in the contingency mentioned, I will here add, that if our success should thus be realized, followed by such desired results, I cannot see, if universal amnesty is granted, how, under the circumstances, I can avoid exacting in return universal suffrage, or, at least, on the basis of intelligence and military service.

How to better the condition of the colored race has long been a study which has attracted my serious and careful attention; hence I think I am clear and decided as to what course I shall pursue in the premises, regarding it a religious duty, as the nation's guardian of these people, who have so heroically vindicated their manhood on the battle-field, where, in assisting to save the Republic, they have demonstrated in blood their right to the ballot, which is but the humane protection of the flag they have so fearlessly defended.

The restoration of the Rebel States to the Union must rest upon the principle of civil and political equality. (Collected Works, Vol. VII, page 101)

The extract above appeared in the Southern Advocate of September 18, 1865: "It shows that Mr. Lincoln, who desired the bestowal of the elective franchise upon the blacks, was also, at an early day, in favor of granting universal amnesty, which, for some strange and unaccountable reason, is still being withheld from the South, notwithstanding it is known that it was his intention to grant, without any exception, a general pardon."

Letter to Albert C. Hodges

To Albert G. Hodges
Washington, April 4, 1864

A.G. Hodges, Esq Executive Mansion
Frankfort, Ky.

My dear Sir: You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was as follows:
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take the oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral issue of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government--that nation--of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and yet preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the constitution, if, to save slavery, or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When early in the war, Gen. Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When a little later, Gen. Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, Gen. Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, and May, and July 1862 I made earnest, and successive appeals to the border states to favor emancipation, I believed necessity for military emancipation, and arming the blacks, would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it, the Constitution, or laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this I was not entirely confidant. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, --no loss by it any how any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have the men; and we could not have had them without the measure.
["] And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.["]
I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. Yours truly
A. Lincoln

Volume VII, pages 281-83

Chicago and the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850

(By Paul Finkelman in the Encyclopedia of Chicago)

Physically distant from the South, and populated mostly by northerners, many with antislavery sentiments, Chicago was a relatively safe haven for fugitive slaves. After the adoption of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law by the United States Congress, the city's African American community formed a “Liberty Association” with regular patrols to subvert the legislation by preventing the seizure of blacks in the city by slaveholders and their agents. In October 1850 a slave catcher from Missouri arrived in the city and was informed by leading citizens that his safety was at risk if he stayed. Meanwhile, a slave he had brought with him to help capture the runaway also escaped. On October 21, 1850, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution condemning the new law as “cruel and unjust” and directing the city's police “not to render any assistance for the arrest of fugitive slaves.” On October 23 Senator Stephen A. Douglas, in a major speech, condemned the city council resolution. An attempt to rescind the resolution failed and on November 29, 1850, the city council reaffirmed its opposition to the law and its refusal to allow city officials to enforce it. In 1860 John Hossack was convicted in federal district court in Chicago of aiding a fugitive slave who had escaped to Ottawa, Illinois. The jury recommended mercy and Judge Thomas Drummond imposed a fine of only $100 and a sentence of 10 days in jail.

Compassion in wartime

(Letter to Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, March 18, 1864)

I am so pressed in regard to prisoners of war in our custody, whose homes are within our lines, and who wish to take the oath and be discharged, that I hope you will pardon me for again calling up the subject. My impression is that we will not ever force the exchange of any of this class; that taking the oath, and being discharged, none of them will again go to the rebellion, but the rebellion again coming to them, a considerable percentage of them, probably not a majority, would rejoin it; that by a cautious discrimination the number so discharged would not be large enough to do any considerable mischief in any event; would relieve distress in, at least some meritorious cases; and would give me some relief from an intolerable pressure. I shall be glad therefore to have your cheerful assent to the discharge of those whose names I may send, which I will only do with circumspection.
Yours truly
A Lincoln

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment's sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society...

'The Constitution is an anti-slavery instrument'

(From The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass)

... I was then a faithful disciple of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the Constitution of the United States, also the non-voting principle of which he was the known and distinguished advocate. With him, I held it to be the first duty of the non-slaveholding states to dissolve the union with the slaveholding states, and hence my cry, like his, was "No union with slaveholders." With these views I went into western New York, and during the first four years of my labors there I advocated them with pen and tongue to the best of my ability. After a time, a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no necessity for dissolving the union between northern and southern states, that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as an abolitionist, that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery, and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an antislavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land.

This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in my action. To those with whom I had been in agreement and sympathy, I came to be in opposition. What they held to be a great and important truth I now looked upon as a dangerous error. A very natural, but to me a very painful thing, now happened. Those who could not see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I had done, could not easily see any such reasons for my change, and the common punishment of apostates was mine.

My first opinions were naturally derived and honestly entertained. Brought directly, when I was escaped from slavery, into contact with abolitionists who regarded the Constitution as a slaveholding instrument, and finding their views supported by the united and entire history of every department of the government, it is not strange that I assumed the Constitution to be just what these friends made it seem to be. I was bound, not only by their superior knowledge, to take their opinions in respect to this subject, as the true ones, but also because I had no means of showing the unsoundness of these opinions. But for the responsibility of conducting a public journal, and the necessity imposed upon me of meeting opposite views from abolitionists from outside of New England, I should in all probability have remained firm in my disunion views. My new circumstances compelled me to re-think the whole subject, and to study with some care not only the just and proper rules of legal interpretation, but the origin, design, nature, rights, powers, and duties of civil governments, and also the relations which human beings sustain to it. By such a course of thought and reading I was conducted to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States--inaugurated to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty"-- could not well have been designed at the same time to maintain and perpetuate a system of rapine and murder like slavery, especially as not one word can be found in the Constitution to authorize such a belief. Then, again, if the declared purposes of an instrument are to govern the meaning of all its parts and details, as they clearly should, the Constitution of our country is our warrant for the abolition of slavery in every state of the Union.

Lincoln in Gethsemane

(Found in Herndon's Life of Lincoln)

"I attempted," says Judge Gillespie, "to draw him into conversation relating to the past, hoping to divert him from the thoughts which were evidently distracting him. 'Yes, yes I remember,' he would say to my references to old scenes and associations; but the old-time zest was not only lacking, but in its place was a gloom and despondency entirely foreign to Lincoln's character as I had learned to know. I attributed much of this to his changed surroundings. He sat with his head lying upon his arms, which were folded over the back of his chair, as I had often seen him sit on our travels after an exciting day in court. Suddenly he roused himself. ‘Gillespie,’ said he, ‘I would willingly take out of my life a period in years equal to the two months which intervene between now and my inauguration to take the oath of office now.' 'Why,' I asked. 'Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon to meet, and the present administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution. I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lesson its force when it comes to me.'”

"I said that the condition of which he spoke was such as had never arisen before, and that it might lead to the amendment of such an obvious defect in the Federal Constitution. 'It is not of myself I complain,' he said with more bitterness than I ever heard him speak, before or after. 'But every day adds to the difficulty of the situation, and makes the outlook more gloomy. Secession is being fostered rather than repressed, and if the doctrine meets with a general acceptance in the border States, it will be a great blow to the government.'”

"Our talk then turned upon the possibility of avoiding a war. 'It is only possible,' said Mr. Lincoln, 'upon the consent of this government to the erection of a foreign slave government out of the present slave States. I see the duty devolving upon me. I have read, upon my knees, the story of Gethsemane, where the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup of bitterness might pass from him. I am in the garden of Gethsemane now, and my cup of bitterness is overflowing.'”

"I then told him that as Christ's prayer was not answered and his crucifixion had redeemed the great part of the world from paganism to Christianity, so the sacrifice demanded of him might be a great beneficence. Little did I think how prophetic were my words to be, or what a great sacrifice he was called to make.”

"I trust and believe that that night, before I let him go, I shed some rays of sunlight into that troubled heart. Ere long he came to talk of scenes and incidents in which he had taken part, and to laugh over my reminders of some of our professional experiences. When I retired, it was the master of the house and chosen ruler of the country who saw me to my room. 'Joe,' he said, as he was about to leave me, 'I suppose you will never forget that trial down in Montgomery County, where the lawyer associated with you gave away the whole case in his opening speech. I saw you signaling to him, but you couldn't stop. Now, that's just the way with me and Buchanan. He is giving away the case, and I have nothing to say, and can't stop him. Good-night.'"

Told on the 'circuit'

One of Abraham Lincoln’s stories told on the ‘circuit’ in Illinois (From Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals):

Another story, relayed years later by John Usher, centered on a man “who had great veneration for Revolutionary relics.” Learning that an old woman still possessed a dress “she had worn in the Revolutionary War,” he traveled to her house and asked to see it. She took the dress from a bureau and handed it to him. He was so excited that he brought the dress to his lips and kissed it. “The practical old lady rather resented such foolishness over an old piece of wearing apparel and she said: ‘Stranger, if you want to kiss something old you had better kiss my ass. It is sixteen years older than that dress.’ ”

Our Founding

Excerpt of Excluded Provision Against Slavery and

the Slave Trade from the Declaration of Independence

The King of England "has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of distant peoples who never offended him; captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither...Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce... he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." (emphasis in original)