Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday Part 28

"'Weeping Water!'" said he.

"Then with a twinkle in his eye, he continued.

"'I suppose the Indians out there call it Minneboohoo, don't they?

They ought to, if Laughing Water is Minnehaha in their language.'"

LINCOLN'S CONFAB WITH A COMMITTEE ON GRANT'S WHISKY

Just previous to the fall of Vicksburg, a self-const.i.tuted committee, solicitous for the morale of our armies, took it upon themselves to visit the President and urge the removal of General Grant.

In some surprise Mr. Lincoln inquired, "For what reason?"

"Why," replied the spokesman, "he drinks too much whisky."

"Ah!" rejoined Mr. Lincoln, dropping his lower lip. "By the way, gentlemen, can either of you tell me where General Grant procures his whisky? because, if I can find out, I will send every general in the field a barrel of it!"

MILD REBUKE TO A DOCTOR

Dr. Jerome Walker, of Brooklyn, told how Mr. Lincoln once administered to him a mild rebuke. The doctor was showing Mr. Lincoln through the hospital at City Point.

"Finally, after visiting the wards occupied by our invalid and convalescing soldiers," said Dr. Walker, "we came to three wards occupied by sick and wounded Southern prisoners. With a feeling of patriotic duty, I said: 'Mr. President, you won't want to go in there; they are only rebels.'

"I will never forget how he stopped and gently laid his large hand upon my shoulder and quietly answered, 'You mean Confederates!' And I have meant Confederates ever since.

"There was nothing left for me to do after the President's remark but to go with him through these three wards; and I could not see but that he was just as kind, his hand-shakings just as hearty, his interest just as real for the welfare of the men, as when he was among our own soldiers."

X

FROM LINCOLN'S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

LINCOLN'S LIFE AS WRITTEN BY HIMSELF

The compiler of the "Dictionary of Congress" states that while preparing that work for publication in 1858, he sent to Mr. Lincoln the usual request for a sketch of his life, and received the following reply:

"Born February 12, 1809, in Hardin Co., Kentucky.

Education Defective. Profession a Lawyer. Have been a Captain of Volunteers in Black Hawk War. Postmaster at a very small office. Four times a member of the Illinois Legislature, and was a member of the Lower House of Congress.

Yours, etc.

A. Lincoln."

THE INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY

(_Speech at Peoria, Ill., October 16, 1854_)

This declared indifference, but, as I must think, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself; I hate it because it deprives our republic of an example of its just influence in the world; enables the enemies of free inst.i.tutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites; causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity; and, especially, because it forces so many really good men among ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty, criticising the Declaration of Independence and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.

The doctrine of self-government is right,--absolutely and eternally right,--but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or, perhaps, I should rather say, that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a negro is not, or is, a man. If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just what he pleases with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he, too, shall not govern himself?

When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man, that is more than self-government--that is despotism.

What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government; that, and that only, is self-government.

Slavery is founded in the selfishness of man's nature--opposition to it, in his love of justice. These principles are an eternal antagonism; and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throes and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise--repeal all compromise--and repeal the Declaration of Independence--repeal all past history--still you cannot repeal human nature.

I particularly object to the new position which the avowed principles of the Nebraska law gives to slavery in the body politic. I object to it, because it a.s.sumes that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people,--a sad evidence that feeling prosperity, we forget right,--that liberty as a principle we have ceased to revere.

Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, we have been giving up the old for the new faith. Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration that for some men to enslave others is a 'sacred right of self-government.' These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as G.o.d and Mammon.

Our republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us purify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not in the blood, of the Revolution.

Let us turn slavery from its claims of 'moral right' back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of 'necessity.' Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.

Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South--let all Americans--let all lovers of liberty everywhere, join in the great and good work.

If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but shall have so saved it, as to make and to keep it forever worthy of saving. We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free, happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generations.

SPEECH AT COOPER INSt.i.tUTE, FEBRUARY 27, 1860

I defy anyone to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Const.i.tution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the Federal Territories.

To those who now so declare, I give, not only 'our fathers who framed the government under which we live,' but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them.

I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all the lights of current experience, to reject all progress, all improvement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we.

Let all who believe that 'our fathers, who framed the government under which we live,' understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now, speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it.

It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing through pa.s.sion and ill-temper.

Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation. But can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national Territories, and to overrun us here in these free States?

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored--contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such as a policy of 'don't care'

on a question about which all true men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invocations to Was.h.i.+ngton imploring men to unsay what Was.h.i.+ngton said, and undo what Was.h.i.+ngton did.