It was regarded at the time as unworthy of its writer. Dr. Holland says, "The eulogy was pronounced in the State House, and was listened to by a large audience. The discourse, as it was printed in the city newspapers of the day, was by no means a remarkable one. It is remembered as a very dull one at its delivery, and was so regarded by Mr. Lincoln himself, who complained that he lacked the imagination necessary for a performance of that character." Mr. Lamon says, "Such addresses are usually called orations; but this one scarcely deserved the name. He made no effort to be eloquent, and in no part of it was he more than ordinarily animated. It is true that he bestowed great praise upon Mr. Clay; but it was bestowed in cold phrases and a tame style, wholly unlike the bulk of his previous compositions. . . . If the address upon Clay is of any historical value at all, it is because it discloses Mr. Lincoln's unreserved agreement with Mr. Clay in his opinions concerning slavery and the proper method of extinguishing it. They both favoured gradual emancipation by the voluntary action of the people of the slave States and the transportation of the whole negro population to Africa," etc. Lapse of time and the distinguished career of its author have only served to confirm the justice of the contemporary criticisms of this paper. As it appears in the "Collected Writings" of its author, it is the most conspicuous of the two or three papers which do not illustrate the thought ful preparation which Mr. Lincoln usually gave to his addresses, to which our literature is indebted for so many gems of thought which will permanently enrich and adorn its pages. After a dry enumeration of the public offices filled by Mr. Clay, the eulogy includes a long obituary notice from one of the public journals, the name of which is not given. It mentions the public questions, including the Compromise of 1820, in which Mr. Clay took a leading part, and its remaining pages are occupied by an account of Mr. Clay's labours, in connection with the American Colonisation Society, in attempting to popularise the impossible scheme of abolishing slavery by the deportation of the negro race to Africa. One point in the eulogy is of some interest in view of the use afterwards made of it by Mr. Lincoln. It is his contention that the "Fathers" intended to include the negro in the statement in the Declaration of Independence, that "all men are created equal," and that Mr. Calhoun was the first American of any note to assail or ridicule the claim of the black man to a place in the "white man's charter of freedom." His comment upon Mr. Calhoun's new exposition has in it a spark of the Lincoln humour, and has a singular appropriateness in 1895. "We, however, look for and are not much shocked by political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina." There is not value enough in its few bright thoughts to relieve the dulness of this document. No selections from it which would increase his fame or serve any useful purpose, are possible. It is omitted, then, with the consolatory reflection aliquando dormitat bonus Homerus." FROM HIS REPLY TO SENATOR DOUGLAS, DELIV- 66 ORIGIN OF THE October 16, 1854. Our war with Mexico broke out in 1846. When Congress was about adjourning that session, President Polk asked them to place two millions of dollars under his control, to be used by him in the recess, if found practicable and expedient, in negotiating a treaty of peace with Mexico, and acquiring some part of her territory. A bill was duly gotten up for the purpose, and was progressing swimmingly in the House of Representatives, when a Democratic member from Pennsylvania by the name of David Wilmot moved as an amendment, Provided, that in any terri 1 This speech was written out by Mr. Lincoln, and published under his direction. It was his first speech which attracted public attention. It is important, because it shows the gradual growth of the argument presented in the "divided House" speech of June, 1858. tory thus acquired there shall never be slavery.' This is the origin of the far-famed Wilmot Proviso. It created a great flutter; but it stuck like wax, was voted into the bill, and the bill passed with it through the House. The Senate, however, adjourned without final action on it, and so both the appropriation and the proviso were lost for the time. "... This declared indifference, but, as I must think, real, 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 republican example of its just influence in the world, enables the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to taunt us as hypocrites, causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many good men amongst 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. 66 ". . . Equal justice to the South, it is said, requires us to consent to the extension of slavery to new countries. That is to say, that inasmuch as you do not object to my taking my hog to Nebraska, therefore I must not object to your taking your slave. Now, I admit that this is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and slaves. But while you thus require me to deny the humanity of the negro, I wish to ask whether you of the South, yourselves, have ever been willing to do as much? It is kindly provided that of all those who come into the world, only a small percentage are natural tyrants. That percentage is no larger in the slave States than in the free. The great majority, South as well as North, have human sympathies, of which they can no more divest themselves than they can of their sensibility to physical pain. These sympathies in the bosoms of the Southern people manifest in many ways their sense of the wrong of slavery, and their consciousness that, after all, there is humanity in the negro. In 1820 you joined the North almost unanimously in declaring the African slave-trade piracy, and in annexing to it the punishment of death. Why did you do this? If you did not feel that it was wrong, why did you join in providing that men should be hung for it? The practice was no more than bringing wild negroes from Africa to But you never thought such as would buy them. of hanging men for catching and selling wild horses, wild buffaloes, or wild bears. |