Алистер Смит - The Spoils of War - Greed, Power, and the Conflicts That Made Our Greatest Presidents

Indeed, Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon, in a lecture delivered on January 24, 1866, reflected back on the writing of the “House Divided” speech and his discussions with Lincoln about its incendiary tenor. Here is an excerpt of the critical portions of Herndon’s much lengthier lecture:

On the evening of the 16th of June Mr. Lincoln came into his office—locked the door—put the key in his own pocket-pulled out of his person the manuscript of the house divided against speech [sic]. He took a seat at his table, and commenced reading the speech to me. When he had finished the first paragraph he stopt—turned to me, and said—How do you like that—What do you think of it? I told him—“I think it is true, but is it entirely politic to read or speak it as written,” referring to the House divided sentence. “That makes no difference: that expression is a truth of all human experience . . . and I will deliver it as written. . . . I would rather be defeated with this expression in the speech and it held up and discussed before the People than to be victorious without it.” Noble words most nobly said. . . . On the evening of the 17th June the speech was read, or spoken rather, just as it was written, the house divided against itself sentence included. The Hall of the House of Representatives was full to overflowing, and the speech was then and there delivered; and so the sentence spoken of went out into the world to struggle for existence. . . . That speech did awaken and did arouse the People to the think [ sic ], and though Mr. Lincoln was defeated in that Contest, still it made him President. I thought at the time the speech was read to me, that it was made as it was to take the winds out of Sewards Sales [ sic ]. . . . These simple facts are evidences of much meaning—First, that Mr. Lincoln was seized by an idea—Secondly, that he fully calculated and weighed its effects—Thirdly—, That he had a policy—Fourthly, That he had a will—a strong self determination to utter it Fifthly—: That he was willing to suffer political death in the Senatorial Canvass for an idea—Sixthly, that he was secretive—cautious, complex minded and morally courageous. . . . I am fully aware the world holds, that Mr. Lincoln was a simple minded man—that he had no will—no policy, and was all heart. But the great world will distinguish between what it thinks, and what in solid reality is. It is often said of Mr. Lincoln that he was God’s prophet, and that the house divided against itself speech is an unanswerable evidence of it.29

Anyone who doubts that Lincoln intended the “House Divided” speech as an intense brief in favor of the defeat of the South’s ambition to spread slavery across the land would do well to remember Mr. Herndon’s statement that “Mr. Lincoln was seized by an idea” and that “he fully calculated and weighed its effects.” And then one should also note that deep in the body of the “House Divided” text, where his lawyer’s brief is strongest, Lincoln also declared, “Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. . . . We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.” Here Lincoln projects the course, as he sees it, that is inevitable and that only dreamers can fail to see. Dred Scott, for him, was the peak of the slippery slope into universal slavery. In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled on the lack of authority that Congress had to decide for the territories of the United States whether they were to be free or slave. And then he speculates that a future court decision will expand on Dred Scott, concluding that the Constitution does not give any state the right to dictate that it prohibits slavery.

Of course, Herndon’s account was based on his recollection many years after the “House Divided” speech was delivered and might, therefore, be seen as politically motivated. But then we can see similar sentiments expressed, albeit a bit more cautiously, as early as August 15, 1855, in a letter written by Lincoln to George Robertson, a lawyer who had represented Lincoln’s family. Lincoln, commenting on Robertson’s role in a precursor to the Missouri Compromise, observed,

[Y]ou are not a friend of slavery in the abstract. In that [earlier] speech you spoke of “ the peaceful extinction of slavery ” and used other expressions indicating your belief that the thing was, at some time, to have an end[.] Since then we have had thirty six years of experience; and this experience has demonstrated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of slavery in prospect for us[.] . . . That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of slavery, has itself become extinct, with the occasion , and the men of the Revolution. Under the impulse of that occasion, nearly half the states adopted systems of emancipation at once; and it is a significant fact, that not a single state has done the like since. So far as peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the condition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less terrible to the contemplation of a free mind, is now as fixed, and hopeless of change for the better, as that of the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat of all the Russias will resign his crown, and proclaim his subjects free republicans sooner than will our American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. Our political problem now is “Can we, as a nation, continue together permanently—forever —half slave, and half free?” The problem is too mighty for me. May God, in his mercy, superintend the solution.30

By 1858 it appears the problem was no longer too mighty for him! And, as he said, “the peaceful extinction of slavery, has itself become extinct.”

How were the proslavery portions of the nation to interpret his words in the “House Divided” speech (and how are we to understand them, given his letter to Robertson and similar documents in his own hand?) other than as an extreme commitment to limit the power of the Supreme Court in such a way that it could not foster the spread of slavery? There was only one constitutional means to achieve that end, especially given the 1857 ruling that Congress had violated the Constitution by passing the Missouri Compromise. The only means available within the Constitution was to amend it. How would he have amended it? Well, he didn’t say it directly, but he did state that the country cannot endure half free and half slave and so must be all one or all the other. All one or the other was the course the Supreme Court had put the country on, and that course was “all slave.” To alter that course—the idea Lincoln had and the carefully calculated way to achieve his idea—could only mean an amendment to make the nation “all free.” And to get such an amendment passed, he needed a nation without the slave states.

While Senate candidate Lincoln certainly did not explicitly call for amending the Constitution to ban slavery everywhere, and surely would not have uttered such words so plainly, still that was likely to be the way his words and his party’s position was understood by the electors in Illinois in 1858. Consider what the Republican Party was believed to stand for at the time. Famous journalist Horace Greeley coined the name “Republican Party.” He wrote in 1854, “We should not care much whether those thus united ( against slavery ) were designated ‘Whig,’ ‘Free Democrat’ or something else; though we think some simple name like ‘Republican’ would more fitly designate those who had united to restore the Union to its true mission of champion and promulgator of Liberty rather than propagandist of slavery.”31 Obviously the then newly formed Republican Party was understood to be antislavery above all else.