PART I. Chapter IX.

DURING the five years Immediately following the close of his Congressional life, Mr. Lincoln attentively pursued his profession of the law. He took no active part in politics through the period of Gen. Taylor's administration, or in any of the exciting scenes of 1850. His great political leader, Henry Clay, had resumed his place in the Senate, and was earnestly striving —one of the last great labors of his life— to avert the dangers to the country, which he believed to be threatened by the fierce contests over the question of Slavery, It was, with the slave States, a desperate struggle to retain the balance of power in the Senate, by rejecting the application of another free State for admission, the granting of which would destroy the exact equilibrium then existing. The policy of admitting a O 1 fc? "Q slave State along with every new free one, had substantially prevailed for years; but, at this time, despite the extensive additions of Mexican territory, there was no counterbalancing slave State ready for ad mission. The exclusion of slavery

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from California tad, in fact, been rather a surprise, and this application was evidently still more an irritating circumstance for that reason. And yet this movement was in strict accord¬ance with the policy of a Southern President. As a final result, the admission of California was only carried by means of great counterbalancing concessions on the part of the free States. For months after, there was much discontent in both sections, in regard to the compromise measures of 1850, which were defeated in Congress, when first acted upon as a whole, but were ultimately carried in detail. It was not until 1852, when both the great parties of the country agreed to accept those measures as a "final settlement" of the slavery contro¬versy, that public sentiment, North and South, appeared to have become fully reconciled to this adjustment. The Admin¬istration, brought into power by the election of that year, was most thoroughly and sacredly committed to the maintenance of this settlement, and against the revival of the Slavery agitation in any form. To introduce that subject, under any pretense, into the halls of Congress, was an act of wanton incendiarism, in utter disregard of most solemn pledges, by the aid of which the Democratic party had secured whatever real hold it had upon popular confidence. Such was the state of affairs in 1852, and at the time of Mr. Pierce's inauguration in 1853.

Mr. Lincoln, as a private citizen, engrossed with his professional duties, had borne no part in the original controversy, and had taken no share in its settlement. Whether preferring the non-intervention policy of President Taylor, or the com¬promise course of Clay and Fillmore, he had undoubtedly regarded the peace established, by means of the latter, as one that ought by all means to be preserved, and the pledges of both sections of the country, through the action of both the national parties, as religiously binding upon every public man who had openly or tacitly assented thereto. That he approved all the details of this compromise is not probable. But that if faithfully adhered to, the practical results would have been satisfactory, he was undoubtedly convinced.

The introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, in 1854. in the midst of this profound peace on the slavery question, was

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"the alarm of the fire-bell at night" which startled Mr. Lincoln In the repose of his private life, and showed that the incendiary had but too successfully been at his work. The solemn pledge of peace had been violated by the very men who were most forward in making it, and most noisy in their professions of a desire that the slavery conflict should cease, This new agitating movement, not only unsettling all the more recent stipulations made for the sake of peace, but even going back to destroy the only condition yet assailable, of the Cora-promise of 1820, and that the very portion which war, agreed on as a consideration to the free States, was led by the ambitious politician of Illinois, Stephen A, Douglas. Not only had this unscrupulous agitator committed himself as fully as man could do to the maintenance of peace on this question, after the compromise of 1850, but he had, a year previous, called down vengeance upon the hand that would dare disturb the time-honored Missouri compact —that settlement which secured freedom "forever" to the soil embraced within the limits of Kansas and Nebraska, Yet the first hand raised for the commission of this incalculable wrong was his own ! Douglas himself reported the act which violated that com-pact, and which opened the new territories to slavery {professedly, not really, at the option of the people), contrary to the spirit of all the early legislation, and to the hitherto uni¬form course of the Government. Even he himself had recently voted for the Wilmot Proviso us applied to the territory acquired from Mexico, and Mr. Polk had approved the Oregon bill, containing the same restriction. Never was there universal indignation among the people of the North, many of the more sagacious statesmen of* the South clearly foresaw the mischiefs that were to follow from this sacrilege. Yet strange to say, this measure sundered and broke up the Whig party forever, through the action of a large portion of the Southern Whig Congressmen, in joining the Democracy in this act of bad faith, for the sake of supposed sectional advant¬age. The most intense excitement prevailed tliroagliotit the country, and the destruction of the old party lines was effectually accomplished.

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These events called forth Mr. Lincoln once more to do battle for the right. He entered into the canvass of 1854, as one of the most active leaders of the "Anti-Nebraska " movement. He addressed the people repeatedly from the stump, with all his characteristic earnestness and energy. He met and cowed the author of the "Nebraska iniquity," in the presence of the masses, and powerfully aided in effecting the remarkable polit¬ical changes of that year in Illinois.

The incendiary act had come to the final vote, in the Senate, on the 26th day of May. About the first of August, Congress adjourned. Douglas lingered by the way on his return to his constituents, and reached Chicago near the close of that month. Here he met a storm of indignation from the people, whom for manifesting their disapprobation of his conduct, he complacently termed a " mob." He had proposed to speak in self-vindication, on the evening of the first day of September. He was received with the most decisive demonstrations of popular indignation, which he attempted to face down with an insufferable insolence of manner, that only tended to increase the excitement against him. After long perseverance in an attempt to compel a hearing, he was forced to succumb. All over the State he early discovered the same state of feeling existed among a large portion of his constituents, although there was no refusal to hear him, except in this first unlucky effort to defy and silence a crowd by bullying deportment, The popular rage gradually subsided, but the deliberate sentiment of the people of Illinois on this subject has only been confirmed and strengthened against him with time. From commanding a large majority of the popular vote, as he had done previously, his strength dwindled away, until, for years past, he and the party that sustained him, have been in a positive minority in the State. The reader can judge how much this, to him, painful truth, had to do with the change of policy adopted by him, in opposing the Lecompton Constitution, the legitimate fruit of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and substantially approved by him in advance, in a speech made in Springfield, in 1857.

Mr. Douglas visited several parts of the State, vainly attempt-

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ing, by ingenious but sophistical addresses to the people to avert the impending revolution. Mr. Lincoln met him in debate at Springfield, during the time of the State Fair, early in October, 1854, and the encounter was a memorable one in the great campaign then in progress. They met a few days later at Peoria, where Mr. Douglas had no better fortune. Subse¬quently to that encounter, he showed a decided preference for speaking at other times and places than Mr. Lincoln.

The Anti-Nebraska organization, formed at Springfield in October of that year, and embracing men of all parties opposed to the reckless measures which had introduced the most violent agitation in regard to slavery ever known in the coun¬try, was the beginning from which the Republican party in Illinois was to be matured. Among the resolutions at that time adopted, after setting forth in a preamble that a majority of Congress had deliberately and wantonly re-opened the con¬troversy respecting the extension of slavery under our national jurisdiction, which a majority of the people had understood to be closed forever by the successive compromises of 1820 and 1850, were the following :

Resolved, That the doctrine affirmed by the Nebraska Bill, and gilded over by its advocates with the specious phrases of non-intervention and popular sovereignty, is really and clearly a complete surrender of all the ground hitherto asserted and maintained by the Federal Government, with respect to the limitation of slavery, is a plain confession of the right of the slaveholder to transfer his human chattels to any part of the public domain, and there hold them as slaves as long as inclin¬ation or interest may dictate; and that this is an attempt totally to reverse the doctrine hitherto uniformly held by statesmen and jurists, that slavery is the creature of local and State law, and to make it a national institution.

Resolved, That as freedom is national and slavery sectional and local, the absence of all law upon the subject of slavery presumes the existence of a state of freedom alone, while slavery exists only by virtue of positive law.

Resolved, That we heartily approve the course of the freemen of Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York, Michigan and Maine, postponing or disregarding their minor difference of opinion or preferences, and acting together cordially and trustingly in the same cause of freedom,

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of free labor, and free soil, and we commend their spirit to the freemen of this and other States, exhorting each to renounce his party whenever and wherever that party proves unfaithful to human freedom.

In behalf of these principles, Mr. Lincoln had already taken the stump, and for them he did valiant service in various parts of the State.

This new party was organized late in the season, and the canvass for Treasurer, the only State officer to be elected, was but imperfectly made. In some parts of the State, there was even no distribution of tickets containing the name of this candidate. The result, even under these unfavorable circumstances, and in spite of the overwhelming Democratic preponderance during the previous twenty-five years, was extremely close, and for a long time doubtful. The Democratic candidate barely escaped defeat. This was the last election in which the party sustaining Douglas has had even the appearance of a majority in Illinois. The revolution was now substantially accomplished. From that day to the present the Opposition, party has been steadily gaining in strength, and that of Mr. Douglas sinking more and more into a hopeless minority. Even the temporary reaction, under the Anti-Lecompton flag, was more apparent than real.

Of the nine Congressional Districts, the Opposition now, for the first time, carried a majority, electing five members, and the Democrats four. The Legislature would have been completely revolutionized, in both branches, with little doubt, but for the large number of Democrats " holding over," as members of the new Senate. In the House, the Anti-Nebraska representatives numbered forty, and the Democratic thirty-five. In the Senate, there were seventeen elected as Demo¬crats, and eight as Opposition men. Of the former, however, there were three, elected two years previously, who repudiated Douglas and his policy, and inclined to the Opposition. These were Norman B. Judd, J. M. Palmer, and B. C. Cook. Reckoning these with the Anti-Nebraska side, the Senate stood, Opposition eleven, Democrats fourteen—leaving a

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majority against the Douglas Democracy of two on joint ballot.

A United States Senator, to succeed Gen. Shields on the 4th of March, 1855, was to he chosen by this Legislature. For the first time in the history of Illinois, the election of an Opposition Senator was within the reach of possibility. Mr. Lincoln was the first choice of the great mass of the Opposition for this position. From his prominence, for a long time, in the old Whig party, it was but natural that a portion of the members having Democratic antecedents who had come into the new organization, should hesitate to give Mr. Lin¬coln their votes. This was especially true of the three Senators above named as holding over, they having been elected as regular Democrats. Under this state of things, it was manifest, after a few ballots, that, with the close vote in joint convention the election of a Democrat, not to be certainly relied on as an opponent of the Douglas policy, and at best uncommitted in regard to the new party organization, might be the result of adhering to Mr. Lincoln. He, accordingly, with the self-sacrificing disposition which had always characterized him, promptly appealed to his Whig friends to go over in a solid body to Mr. Trumbull, a man of Demo¬cratic antecedents, who could command the full vote of the Anti-Nebraska Democrats. By these earnest and disinterested efforts, the difficult task was accomplished, great as was the sacrifice of personal feeling which it cost the devoted friends of Mr. Lincoln. On the part of himself and them, it involved the exercise of a degree of self-denial and magnanimity, as rare as it was noble. It demonstrated their honest attachment to the great cause for which old party lines had been abandoned, and their sincere purpose of thoroughly ignoring all differences founded on mere partizan prejudice. It cemented the union of these Anti-Nebraska elements, and consolidated the new organization into a permanent party.

The joint convention for electing a United States Senator met on the 8th day of February, 1855. On the first ballot, James Shields, then Senator, who had been induced by

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Douglas, against his own better judgment, to vote for the Kansas-Nebraska bill, received 41 votes, and three other Democrats had one vote each. Abraham Lincoln had 45 votes, Lyman Trumbull 5, Mr. Koerner 2, and there were three other scattering votes. On the seventh ballot, the Democratic vote was concentrated upon Gov. Matteson, with two exceptions, and he received also the votes of two Anti-Nebraska Democrats, making 44 in all. On the tenth ballot, Mr. Trumbull was elected, in the way just explained, receiving 51 votes and Mr. Matteson 47. Every Whig vote but one was given to Mr. Trumbull.

Among the speeches delivered by Mr. Lincoln in this memorable campaign, which gave the Eepublicans an able Senator from Illinois, and which effectually accomplished the overthrow of the Democracy in that State, perhaps the ablest and most characteristic was the one delivered at Peoria, important portions of which were quoted by him In the canvass with Douglas, four years later.