New-York tribune., 1910-12-08

L
| his first earnings as q lawyer and fin
/ ished the process. years afterward. out
Of his Congressional salary. Meantime
/ he worked away by himself over his
law books. took any odd job that offered
! for his board. proffted by the prominence
/ his canvass for the Legislature had
given him TO get appointed postmaster
and studied land surveying in borrowed
books in order to be made assistant sur
veyor Next year ha tried again for the
/ Legislature. and was triumphantiy
elected.
! When he thus entered upon public
career he was twenty-five years of age.
/ Eight successive elections TO the Legis-
/ lature. one term in Congress, an unsuc-
cessful effort to get appointed Land
/ Commissioner. an increasing law prac-
/ tice that placed him among the foremost
lawyers of the state several canvasses
as tho nominee Of his party for Presi
Dental elector then the unsuccessful
contest with stephen A Douglas for the
/ United States Senate-that gives. in
! brief, the several steps in this public
career up to his election by the new
anti-slavery party as President Of the
United States.
! While private citizen. an outstand-
j ing feature of his character was the IN
! genuous recklessness with which he ran
! into debt. coupled with the scrupulous.
/ in fact. relentless, honesty with which he
/ paid his debts The first conspicuous
/ feature in his public service. i'm the
| Legislature was an equal readiness to
! plunge the state into eXtravagant eS
penditures for internal improvements,
and the same rigid view afterward as TO
/ the duty of payment, coupled with
/ becoming modesty ever afterWard about
! his own skill in finance. The next and
| far the most important feature in his
eight years work i'm the Illinois State
Capitol was his iuvincible determine
| tion in spite Of all the adverse personal
/ and political influences by which ne was
surrounded, TO place himself on record
| against resolutions, overwhelmingly
! passed by the Legislature. which disap-
proved of abolition societies and de-
! held in the slave holding states 10 be
sacred. Lincolns protest as entered
! upon the legislative minutes for March
-: 1887, readily admitted that the pro-
mitigation of abolition doctrines tends
rather TO increase than abate the evils
| of slavery: but II insisted on declaring
! slavery itself. though just pronounced
sacred by the Legislature TO be founded
on both injustice and bad policy. For
an ordinary politician this, in the Hi
nois of that day. might have been sui
| eide For him il was merely notice to
! ali concerned of the line on which he
was fully determined TO argue the ques-
/ ton out Meantime he went placidly
about his business, was forgiven his &c
/ centric declaration of principle, and re-
/ tanned in the confidence of the Wings
/ till he lost any chances he might have
! had for reelection to Congress by equal
| obstinacv in his opinions concerning the
unjust origin of the Mexican War.
/ During ell this period he was encoun-
/ tering the brilliant and popular leader
of the Illinois Democracy, Stephen A.
Douglas Sometimes they were rivals
| in popular elections, constantly in the
! courts or on the stump. At last the
! growing pretentionS of the slave power
pitted them against each other on q
stage which attracted the eyes Of the
WHOLE nation The South claimed the
right TO take slaves with them into the
newly organized territories OF Kansas
and Nebraska. Mr.. Douglas undertook
/ to conciIiate Northern dislike of this de-
mand by proposing 10 leave 1t to vote
| of the people in each territory whether
they should have slavery or not. Mr..
Lincoln refused TO be a party 20 this
device for connivirg at the possible ex-
/ tension to soil hitherto free of a system
/ which twenty-one years before he had
( declared, in his defiant protest, TO be
founded on both injustice and bad poll
/ icy
( Mr.. Douglas was now member of the
United States Senate and d candidate
/ for reelection. and already the many
mouths of runor were proclaiming him
! the next Democratic candidate for the
/ Presideney Mr.. Lincoln's party friends
/ selected him as the strongest man in
/ the state 10 oppose Mr.. Douglas for the
! Senate. and challenged d joint discus
I sion Of the political issues by the rivals
/ before popular audiences in all parts of
the state. From the day that discussion
began practically all that was LETT of
/ Ny Lincoln's life lay in this anti slavery
/ struggle, in peace and in war
The institution that was thus about
TO take him I'D and push him forward
TO power and deathless fame, and was
about also TO engross all the energies Of
| the whole country, was not introduced
to America by its independent people,
or even by the British colonists It had
existed on American soil among the
Spanish and Portuguese a hundred years
before the foot Of slave touched any
part of what is now the United States
It had existed fifty years in the British
West Indies. before Dutch vessels
brought the first cargoes of slaves to
the British colony of tobacco planters in
Virginia Washington. Jefferson and all
the fathers Of the Republic were op-
posed 70 il; long after independence
only Georgia and South Carolina insisted
on its qualified recognition in the Con
stitution. Not till the invention of the
cotton gin lin 1880 gradually made the