USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > Discovery and conquests of the Northwest, with the history of Chicago, Vol. II > Part 11
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tion in the ending of slavery. Emancipation came through the madness of the slaveholders and the use of the war power, in judgment without repentance.
But there were anti-slavery people among all these sects, excepting the non-resistants, who believed in the saving power of the Declaration of Independence. They believed in the necessity of continuing to admin- ister the national government on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and that failing to do so, all political parties had gone into a state of apostasy. The reform in Illinois, particularly, was propagated on this basis. Anti-slavery men here were trained to be so, on the truths of the Declaration of Independence. They were never divided or troubled with the divisions that characterized the east, under the stringent lead of Garrison, Gerrit Smith or Greeley. They fellow- shiped all these, but followed the lead of none of them. They were working for a genuine liberty party to administer the government on the constitution as it is under the Declaration of Independence. It is neces- sary that this explanation and distinction be under- stood, as we proceed further in this hitherto unwritten history.
Benjamin Lundy, the pioneer, as we have said, when he came to Illinois, set up the banner of the Declaration of Independence on the ground of the ordinance of '87 .* He had always held up that banner. It was always the motto of his paper. Lovejoy's Alton Observer was in no sense a political paper ; it was a Presbyterian religious journal, claiming the right to discuss slavery as a moral question. The liberty party of 1840 was not formed when Lundy came to this state; he died the year before its organization. Lundy favored such a party in politics, based upon the motto of his paper. His Genius, through many difficulties, was only irregularly published. He lived only to set up that banner, to become the nucleus of a new party,
*For history of his ordinance see pp. 256 to 261, Vol. I of this work.
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and one which at last should triumph in the nation. His leading idea was armed with ten-fold more force than Garrison's immediatism or Gerrit Smith's uncon- stitutionality of slavery. It was for going back to fun- damental truths, and putting all things right from the beginning. He died leaving his banner flying, and his mantle to be worn by others.
His newspaper was continued with a partial change of name, by Hooper Warren and Z. Eastman, the writer of this sketch. But the motto and the prin- ciples and objects continued. Mr. Warren was then an old man, and had been the editor of the only anti-slavery paper in Illinois, the Edwardsville Spectator, at the time of the convention question. Mr. Eastman was a young man, and had never acted with any then formed political party, but whose youthful aspirations and hopes had been, while residing in New England, for the formation of a political organization delivered from the national apostasy, which should administer the govern- ment on the doctrine of the fathers-the natural equal- ity of all. He had advocated such a party while asso- ciated with Mr. Lundy in his Genius.
In 1840 a Birney presidential ticket was formed in Illinois, in the rural region of Farmington, Fulton county, by those who had stood by Lovejoy at his death. It received at that election only 144 votes, only one of which was counted in Cook county, and the honor of that one count lies between two votes cast in Chicago, one by the late Dr. C. V. Dyer, and the other, Calvin De Wolf. The successor of Lundy's journal, the Genius of Liberty, did not appear till after the election of 1840, but it advocated the continuation of the Liberty party in opposition to a large portion of friends who had co-op- erated with the anti-slavery society. The Illinois anti- slavery society had been formed at Alton, just before Lovejoy's death, and was one of the steps that led to the hostility that was manifested against the abolitionists, and the organization was cemented by his blood. Annual
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meetings of this society continued to be held and officers elected, but many persons who had supported it were opposed to the formation of an anti-slavery party in pol- itics, and they turned back and walked no more with the followers of Lovejoy.
Warren and Eastman's Genius was printed on Lundy's press, in La Salle county, till 1842, and it had succeeded in establishing landmarks in all sections of the northwest. The only other journal of the kind then printed in the west was the Philanthropist, at Cin- cinnati. An informal committee of the anti-slavery peo- ple of Chicago, who had made up their minds that they should no longer vote with the old political parties, a majority of whom were of the First Presbyterian church, under the pastorate of Rev. F. Bascom, invited Mr. Eastman to remove with his newspaper to Chicago. Dr. Dyer was the party commissioned to extend this invitation. As the result of it the Western Citizen was started as the organ of the new Liberty party for the northwest in 1842. That journal made the platform of this party in the introduction which appeared in its first number, as follows:
In political affairs our object is simply to carry out the principles of the Declaration of Independence. We stand on the same ground where Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and other honored patriots stood before us. We wish to save this nation from the evils an the curse of slavery, and from the political degeneracy which has fallen upon us through the influence of a departure from the first principles of liberty. If the objects which were sought to be obtained by the political reformation in the time of the revolution were then worthy of pursuit, they are equally so now; and we shall not cease to urge the importance of them upon the people.
We are firm in the belief that it is impossible to sustain a free gov- ernment by the administration even of good laws without the preva- lence of correct public opinion, grounded upon morality and proper allegiance to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.
We shall endeavor to establish these truths by presenting them clearly, forcibly and fearlessly, and in a spirit of meekness and kind- ness. On their accomplishment we see no reason why our government should be overturned, our constitution trampled under foot, or the Union dissolved ; or why the church organizations should be destroyed, or the ministry be annihilated. We wish it distinctly to be understood that our course is reformatory and not destructive.
When Mr. Lincoln had been elected to the presi- dency, eighteen years after this declaration of princi-
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ples was written, a copy was transmitted to him, calling his attention to them as the fundamental principles of the republican party, which had triumphed in his elec- tion, and he responded in recognizing their application, and inviting a special interview with the writer in re- gard to them.
In May, 1842, at the time when arrangements had been made for establishing the Western Citizen, the last anniversary meeting of the Illinois anti-slavery society was held in Chicago, and the first liberty state conven- tion was held, which, as a political organization suc- ceeded the other as a mere moral society. This state convention laid down a platform of principles, and is- sued an address to the people. One resolution gives the gist of its doctrines :
That freedom or slavery is the great question of this age and country-one which must be met, discussed and settled on fair, just and consistent principles, before prosperity can be expected again to smile on our land.
We can understand now the application of these truths and warnings, and how much better it would have been for the nation had they been heeded.
The convention put in nomination Major C. W. Hunter, of Alton, for governor, and Frederick Collins, of Adams county, for lieutenant-governor. These were the first candidates of that initiatory party.
The Western Citizen was put into the hands of Mr. Eastman as its editor and publisher. By his invita- tion, Ichabod Codding, whom he had known at the east, left Connecticut and came to Illinois to become the leading orator for the liberty party. Chief Justice Chase has described Mr. Codding as being the most eloquent speaker he ever heard from the platform. The labors of Codding, as a speaker, were very effective in building up the cause. Owen Lovejoy became a co- worker with this party at this convention, giving up with some reluctance the society formed at his brother's martyrdom. James H. Collins, a prominent lawyer of Chicago, who had some time before been
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The Anti-Slavery Agitation in Illinois.
converted to religion and abolitionism, at that time gave in his adhesion to the liberty party, then formed, as the party of his future political life. L. C. P. Freer and Calvin DeWolf, Philo Carpenter, and most of the men since prominent in that reform, identified them- selves with this new party. Dr. C. V. Dyer was prob- ably the most active of the Chicago reinforcements. He procured the place of meeting, which was in Chap- man's hall, a building occupying the ground of the new bank building on the southwest corner of Ran- dolph and La Salle streets, west of the log jail, on the public square. This convention was the beginning of the organization of abolitionism in Chicago, that be- came nationally known for its earnestness and thor- oughness, and locally recognized for its association with the underground railroad, and had a marked effect on the politics of the state, and ultimately the fate of the nation. Its projectors builded wiser than they knew. After this convention the liberty party always put candidates in nomination for every state election ; and candidates for congress were brought out as fast as the principles of the party gained ground in congressional districts. As the conflict for its idea went on, the contest was intensified by the political issues that were coming up in the nation, growing out, in part, of the moral agitation that was going on in the land.
Then came the annexation of Texas, for the pur- pose of extending the area of slavery, followed by the Mexican war, as the result of that national robbery; then the acquisition of a vast extent of territory, and the contest that came of it, as to its fate in regard to the extension of slavery into it; the Wilmot proviso, the Nebraska and the Kansas bills, squatter sov- ereignty and the contest for freedom in Kansas, which brought old John Brown to the front; these, all sup- plemented by the passage of the fugitive slave law, and the repeal of the Missouri compromise, bringing
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down these events of this exciting agitation till 1854, on which period hangs a new dispensation. During this time the liberty party was looming up in power and in importance. It was the only party that was capable of grappling with the events that were preg- nant with the fate of the nation.
It was a time of political and moral commotion, unparalleled in the history of the nation. It was the period of intense agitation of the slavery question in every respect. The democratic party had said in its platform that it would resist this agitation, and then went on and furnished fuel for the agitation. The whig party in its platform said it would discoun- tenance this agitation, and then gave countenance to the agitation that was aimed against the principles of this little liberty party. And in Illinois this little party became the most thoroughly organized and con- centrated political combination ever before known in this state, and probably not since equaled in intensity and efficiency. In 1852 it numbered 10,000 votes, and held the balance of power in a majority of the congres- sional districts. The voters were all readers of their organ, the Western Citizen, which through all the changes and modifications of free soilism, conscience- whiggery and independent democracy, and American- ism, remained true to its one idea: the liberty party to preserve the government, as the successor of the party of 1766, that had formed the nation.
This national agitation brought two important men of Illinois to the front as national men, namely, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln. They were leading men, representing opposite principles and antagonistic elements on the issue. Into the area of the consecrated freedom of the northwestern ordinance came the con- flict of the ideas which should rule the fate of the nation, and these men in the order of events seemed to be the representatives of the struggle of these ideas for the ascendency. But the liberty party was the
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The Anti-Slavery Agitation in Illinois.
only organization that was prepared to meet the emer- gency.
Previous to 1852, the state of Illinois was regarded as one of the most solidly democratic states in the Union. The people were only allowed to send to con- gress one opposition member, called whig, at each con- gressional election. And this opposition influence came from the conservative Henry Clay school of poli- tics, that had overflowed from Kentucky into the in- terior of Illinois, overlapping the area of Egypt, which was always democratic. This conservative whig influ- ence sent a Lincoln, a Baker and a Yates to congress at different elections, as the single opposition repre- sentative. And Stephen A. Douglas, a native of Ver- mont, seemed to have made himself the demi-god of the state, as fully as John C. Calhoun was of South Caro- lina. The state was, of course, earnestly in support of all the measures of the democratic party, and these measures were being artfully manipulated to bring Douglas prominently before the public as a national man, with an impetus in the direction of the presidency.
Mr. Lincoln, as an attorney and an honest man, and of genuine, progressive conservatism in politics, had grown into great esteem with the people of all parties. He had won in congress some reputation to his damage as a politician, by his opposition to the Mexican war. Douglas was the leader of the debate through the senate, of the principles on the platform in the state, and was mainly responsible for the squatter sovereignty theory of governing the territories, as well as for the repeal of the Missouri compromise, and was one who was known as an advocate of the fugitive slave law. These measures put the whole country in a state of ferment. Mr. Douglas took the stump in their favor, while Mr. Lincoln was known to be op- posed to them.
In 1852 the fugitive slave law abomination had been passed; the repeal of the Missouri compromise
3
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was a measure pending. The liberty party maintained an unbroken front in its organization. The democratic party was feeling the disrupting influences of its iniqui- ties from free-soilism, yet apparently growing stronger in its sin by the concentration of all the rowdy forces of the nation in its favor, and the prospective coming of the solid south on the slavery question. The whig party was sensibly weakening, from the protest of the conscientious whigs and the higher moral plane on which the party stood. There were signs of disruption and the formation of a new party on the distinct issues which the democrats had made for their party lines.
Thinking men of the liberty party realized that they were in possession of a balance of power, as be- tween these two weakening forces, which might be used effectually for the advancement of their principles and objects. The state was despotically democratic under the lead of Douglas, who had even then an eye on the presidency. The party had every member of congress, excepting Richard Yates, who had been elected by a small majority. The liberty party now knew by the numbering of their votes that they had it in their power to turn the scale in favor of the weak- ening whig party, or let the power remain with the democrats. In the election of 1852, they stood by their colors on the presidential vote, and gave to John P. Hale nearly 10,000 votes. But enough of them, under the advice of their leaders, and the indirect influence of the Western Citizen, so diverted their votes to con- gressmen, who they knew were pledged to their prin- ciples and against Douglas' pet doctrines, that they secured the election of several whigs to congress, and independent democrats, so that the state was at once taken out of the hands of the democrats, and their arrogant power in Illinois was broken. It was at this election and by this policy that Hon. E. B. Washburne was first elected to congress. Who now can measure the consequences that grew out of that choice?
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Mr. Lincoln was made the candidate of the whig party in the winter of 1854, against the re-election of Gen. Shields to the senate. The liberty party vote had contributed to the election of a so called whig delegation lin congress. A large number of free soilers and independent democrats had contributed to the same result. In the state legislature the free soil- ers and liberty party held the balance of power. It was thought that it was asking a little too much that they should be required also to magnify the old whig party, by giving their power to the senate also, as they would have done had Mr. Lincoln been elected by their votes, and it would have been accounted a whig party triumph instead of a triumph of the people, and the liberty party would have been held responsible for selling out to the whigs. They had to study the art of using their power and keeping it. For this reason Mr. Lincoln did not receive the support of this class of representatives, as Mr. Washburne and Mr. Norton had received that class of votes ; but the independent and liberty vote was given to Lyman Trumbull, and he was elected senator, and Mr. Lincoln reserved for a higher position. It was a most fortunate thing, indi- cating wise political management, that Mr. Lincoln was not elected senator at that election. The repub- lican party was informally organized in 1854, consum- mated in the nomination of Fremont in 1856. The lib- erty party, holding to its principles, was only merged into the republican after this date.
The repeal of the Missouri compromise soon fol- lowed this election, and Mr. Douglas seemed to vainly hope to recover his lost popularity at home, by the success of this measure, and the double-sided view that seemed, to some extent, to be taken of it at the north and south-at the south as a measure for the ex- tension of slavery beyond its original boundary line ; at the north as favoring the extension of liberty be- yond the line of its former restriction. Mr. Douglas'
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artful insinuation of the act was that if it was origi- nally wrong to pass that compromise, it was now a long deferred right to repeal it. But the moral sense of the nation interpreted it otherwise. It was looked upon, along with the Dred Scott decision, as treading down the last barrier against the supremacy of the slavery power. This repeal put the antagonistic forces more directly in battle array.
The senatorial question was the great question of Illinois in the year 1858. Mr. Douglas was already on the stump in defense of his measures, which he had pressed upon the nation through the senate. Mr. Lin- coln, who was regarded as his natural competitor and opponent, had been prompt to volunteer to reply to Douglas' introductory speeches. The unusual practice was resorted to by the new party of republicans, of holding a state convention for the nomination of a can- didate for senator, and Mr. Lincoln was cordially put in nomination. The question was not to be determined by their votes, but by the votes of the representatives in the state legislature. Therefore, in the canvass representatives were selected in view of settling the senatorial succession, whether it should be Douglas, a democrat, or Lincoln, a republican. It was well under- stood that in Mr. Douglas' case it would settle more than the senatorial question; with him it was also a nomination for the presidency. With Mr. Lincoln it was only a contest with this champion democrat for the senatorship, but more in the contest than on anything else, for the prospect of defeating Mr. Douglas on his own ground did not seem very brilliant. The debate which followed between Lincoln and Douglas was one of the most important political debates that ever oc- curred in this country. Mr. Douglas had already become a national man through the strength of his character and genius. Mr. Lincoln was not well known beyond his own state, but at home well known as a keen debater, and a match in logic and argument for his opponent.
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Mr. Lincoln was nominated as a candidate for the senate at the convention at Springfield June 17, 1858. At the close of the convention he struck the keynote of the debate on the issues of the day, in the opening paragraph of his speech. It has since been numbered with others of the remarkable historical and prophetic utterances of that wonderful man. It is the famous declaration that this Union could not permanently en- dure half slave and half free.
In this canvass Mr. Lincoln held seven joint de- bates with Mr. Douglas, and made innumerable speeches on other occasions. Mr. Douglas' character and posi- tion was well known throughout the nation, and he was regarded as the foremost champion of the measures which characterized the slave policy, and one of the ablest debaters of the country. The originality and freshness of Mr. Lincoln's speeches, his terse and homely style, the pertinence of his illustrations, and his inimitable humor, attracted to him public attention; and the debate had hardly closed before he became equally known throughout the nation, and the eyes of the public were upon these two men as the most promi- nent political personages of the country. Mr. Douglas used to say, rather sneeringly, during the debate, that Mr. Lincoln was after his place-meaning the senator- ship. Mr. Lincoln never shrank from the imputation that he was the republican candidate for that office. The result was that Mr. Douglas carried a majority of the representatives; there were in the senate fourteen democrats and eleven republicans, and in the house forty democrats and thirty-five republicans -- making a majority on joint ballot of eight for Mr. Douglas-the close vote of Madison county even turning the scale; but Mr. Lincoln had a plurality of more than 4,000 in the popular vote. Mr. Douglas kept his place, and got his coveted nomination to the presidency, but the nomination of a divided party.
Mr. Lincoln seemed to have been inspired for the
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mission to which he was called. He doubtless received his early impressions for political reform from the motto that was ever before him in the anti-slavery newspapers which he read, and the constant reiterated teachings of the little liberty party that was leading his destiny: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights," etc. This was the chord of harmony in his soul, to which every sentiment and every action of his being vibrated. Therefore in his debate with Douglas we find him con- stantly harping upon that chord.
In the platform of the convention at Chicago, which put Mr. Lincoln in nomination for the presidency May 16, 1860, is this declaration: "That the maintenance of the principle promulgated in the Declaration of In- dependence, and embodied in the federal constitution [now repeating the celebrated motto of liberty] is es- sential to the preservation of our republican institu- tions; and that the federal constitution, the rights of the states and the union of the states must and shall be preserved." For that end was Mr. Lincoln called to the head of the nation.
After his election, going from his humble home at Springfield, to which he never returned alive, on his way to enter into the presidency, he was beset on his way by plots for his assassination, but was turned aside by invitation to Philadelphia to a flag raising over In- dependence hall, where the Declaration was signed eighty-four years before; and on that occasion he gave utterance to these remarkable words:
I have often inquired of myself what great principle or idea it was that kept the confederacy so long together. It was something in the Declaration of Independence, giving liberty not only to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. * * * Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon this basis? If it can I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated upon this spot than surrender it.
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