Of course, slavery was not the only issue that divided the sections. The South opposed protective tariffs designed to foster Northern manufacturing and fought against using the national resources for internal improvements in Northern transportation. But issues like these, however hard fought, were subject to political accommodation. Slavery was not. "We must concern ourselves with what is, and slavery exists," said John Randolph of Virginia early in the century. Slavery "is to us a question of life and death." By the 1850s, Randolph"s observation had come to fruition. The "peculiar inst.i.tution" now permeated every aspect of Southern society-economically, politically, and socially. For a minority in the North, on the other hand, slavery represented a profoundly disturbing moral issue. For many more Northerners, the expansion of slavery into the territories threatened the triumph of the free labor movement. Events of the 1850s would put these "antagonistical elements" on a collision course.
"It is a great mistake," warned John Calhoun in 1850, "to suppose that disunion can be effected by a single blow. The cords which bind these States together in one common Union are far too numerous and powerful for that. Disunion must be the work of time. It is only through a long process...that the cords can be snapped until the whole fabric falls asunder. Already the agitation of the slavery question has snapped some of the most important." If these common cords continue to rupture, he predicted, "nothing will be left to hold the States together except force."
The spiritual cords of union-the great religious denominations-had already been fractured along sectional lines. The national political parties, the political cords of union, would be next, splintered in the struggle between those who wished to extend slavery and those who resisted its expansion. Early in the decade the national Whig Party, hopelessly divided on slavery, would begin to diminish and then disappear as a national force. The national Democratic Party, beset by defections from Free Soil Democrats, would steadily lose ground, fragmenting beyond repair by the end of the decade.
The ties that bound the Union were not simply inst.i.tutions but a less tangible sense of nationhood-shared pride in the achievements of the reolutionary generation, a sense of mutual interests and common aspirations for the future. The chronicle of the 1850s is, at bottom, a narrative of the increasing strain placed upon these cords, their gradual fraying, and their final rupture. Abraham Lincoln would correctly prophesy that a house divided against itself could not stand. By the end of the decade, as Calhoun had warned, only force would be left to sustain the Union.
Was this outcome inevitable? It is not a question that can be answered in the abstract. We must begin with the historical realities and ask if the same actors with the same convictions, emotions, and pa.s.sions could have behaved differently. Possibly, but all we can know for certain is that they felt what they felt, believed as they believed, and did as they would do. And so they moved the country inexorably toward Civil War.
AS THE 31ST CONGRESS OPENED, the rancorous discord boiled to the surface. All eyes turned to the seventy-three-year-old Henry Clay, who, Lincoln later said, was "regarded by all, as the man for a crisis." Henry Clay had saved the Union once before. Now, thirty years after the Missouri Compromise, the Congress and nation looked to him once again. Already Clay suffered from the tuberculosis that would take his life two years later. He could not even manage the stairs leading up to the Senate chamber. Nonetheless, when he took the floor to introduce the cl.u.s.ter of resolutions that would become known as the Compromise of 1850, he mustered, the New York Tribune marveled, "the spirit and the fire of youth."
He began by admitting he had never been "so anxious" facing his colleagues, for he believed the country stood "at the edge of the precipice." He beseeched his colleagues to halt "before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken in the yawning abyss below, which will inevitably lead to certain and irretrievable destruction." He prophesied that dissolution would bring a war "so furious, so b.l.o.o.d.y, so implacable and so exterminating" that it would be marked forever in the pages of history. To avoid catastrophe, a compromise must be reached.
His first resolution called for admitting the state of California immediately, leaving the decision regarding the status of slavery within its borders to California"s new state legislature. As it was widely known that a majority of Californians wished to prohibit slavery entirely, this resolution favored the North. He then proposed dividing the remainder of the Mexican accession into two territories, New Mexico and Utah, with no restrictions on slavery-a provision that favored the South. He called for an end to the slave trade within the boundaries of the national capital, but called on Congress to strengthen the old Fugitive Slave Law of 1793 to facilitate the recapture of runaway slaves. Fugitives would be denied a jury trial, commissioners would adjudicate claims, and federal marshals would be empowered to draft citizens to hunt down escapees.
Clay recognized that the compromise resolutions demanded far greater concessions from the North than he had asked from the slave states, but he appealed to the North to sustain the Union. Northern objections to slavery were based on ideology and sentiment, rather than on the Southern concerns with property, social intercourse, habit, safety, and life itself. The North had nothing tangible to lose. Finally, he implored G.o.d that "if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle." This prayer was answered. He died two years later, nearly a decade before the Civil War began.
Frances Seward was in the overcrowded gallery on February 5, 1850, when Henry Clay rose from his desk to speak. She had come to Washington to help her husband get settled in a s.p.a.cious three-story brick house on the north side of F Street. "He is a charming orator," Frances confessed to her sister. "I have never heard but one more impressive speaker-and that is our Henry (don"t say this to anybody)." But Clay was mistaken, she claimed, if he believed the wound between North and South could be sutured by his persuasive charm. Though he might make "doughfaces out of half the Congress," his arguments had not convinced her. Most upsetting was Clay"s claim that "Northern men were only activated by policy and party spirits. Now if Henry Clay has lived to be 70 years old and still thinks slavery is opposed only from such motives I can only say he knows much less of human nature than I supposed."
Four weeks later, the galleries were once again filled to hear South Carolina"s John Calhoun speak. Although unsteady in his walk and enveloped in flannels to ward off the chill of pneumonia that had plagued him all winter, the sixty-seven-year-old arch defender of states" rights appeared in the Senate with the text of the speech he intended to deliver. He rose with great difficulty from his chair and then, recognizing that he was too weak to speak, handed his remarks to his friend Senator James Mason of Virginia to read.
The speech was an uncompromising diatribe against the North. Calhoun warned that secession was the sole option unless the North conceded the Southern right to bring slavery into every section of the new territories, stopped agitating the slave question, and consented to a const.i.tutional provision restoring the balance of power between the two regions. Making much the same argument he had utilized in the early debates surrounding the Wilmot Proviso, he warned that additional free states would tilt the power in the Senate, as well as in the House of Representatives, and destroy "the equilibrium between the two sections in the Government, as it stood when the const.i.tution was ratified." This final address to the Senate concluded, Calhoun retired to his boardinghouse, where he would die before the month was out.
Daniel Webster of Ma.s.sachusetts, the third of the "great triumvirate"(as Clay, Calhoun, and Webster were called), was scheduled to speak on the 7th of March. The Senate chamber was "crammed" with more men and women, a Washington newspaper reported, than on any previous occasion. Antic.i.p.ation soared with the rumor that Webster had decided, against the fervent hopes of his overwhelmingly antislavery const.i.tuents, to support Clay"s Southern-leaning compromise. Frances Seward was watching when the senator rose.
"I wish to speak to-day, not as a Ma.s.sachusetts man, nor as a northern man, but as an American," Webster began. "I speak to-day for the preservation of the Union. "Hear me for my cause."" He proceeded to stun many in the North by castigating abolitionists, vowing never to support the Wilmot Proviso, and coming out in favor of every one of Clay"s resolutions-including the provision to strengthen the hateful Fugitive Slave Law. Many in New England found Webster"s new stand particularly abhorrent. "Mr Webster has deliberately taken out his name from all the files of honour," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote. "He has undone all that he spent his years in doing."
Frances found the speech greatly disappointing. The word "compromise," she told her sister, "is becoming hateful to me." Acknowledging that Webster was "a forcible speaker," particularly when he extolled the Union, she found him "much less eloquent than Henry Clay because his heart is decidedly colder-people must have feeling themselves to touch others." Despite such criticisms, the speech won nationwide approval from moderates who desperately wanted a peaceful settlement of the situation. A few antislavery Whigs expressed a fear that Seward might hesitate when the time came to deliver his own speech, scheduled three days later. "How little they know his nature," Frances wrote. "Every concession of Mr. Webster to Southern principles only makes Henry advocate more strongly the cause which he thinks just."
Frances was right. Antislavery advocates had no need to worry about her husband. For weeks, Seward had been working hard on his maiden address to the Senate, delivered on March 11, 1850. He had talked at length with Weed and rehea.r.s.ed various drafts before Frances. The Capitol of the 1850s offered no private office s.p.a.ce, so Seward wrote at home, rising early in the morning and working long past the midnight hour.
As he began his Senate oration, Seward spoke somewhat hesitantly. Reading from his ma.n.u.script without dramatic gestures, he quoted Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and the ancient philosophers in a voice so low that it seemed he was talking to himself rather than addressing the chamber and the galleries. His words were so powerful, however, that Webster was riveted; while John Calhoun, attending one of his final sessions in the chamber, was "restless at first" but "soon sat still."
Seward began by maintaining flatly that he was opposed to compromise, "in any and all the forms in which it has been proposed." He refused to strengthen the Fugitive Slave Law. "We are not slaveholders. We cannot...be either true Christians or real freemen," he continued, "if we impose on another a chain that we defy all human power to fasten on ourselves." He declared that a ban on the slave trade in the District was insufficient: slavery itself must be abolished in the capital. Finally, staunchly affirming the Wilmot Proviso, he refused to accept the introduction of slavery anywhere in the new territories.
As he moved into the second hour of his speech, his conviction gave him ease and confidence. Step by step, he laid the foundation for the "higher law" doctrine that would be forever a.s.sociated with his name. Not only did the Const.i.tution bind the American people to goals incompatible with slavery, he a.s.serted, "but there is a higher law than the Const.i.tution, which regulates our authority over the domain, and devotes it to the same n.o.ble purposes. The territory is a part...of the common heritage of mankind, bestowed upon them by the Creator of the universe. We are his stewards."
With this single speech, his first national address, Seward became the princ.i.p.al antislavery voice in the Senate. Tens of thousands of copies of the speech were printed and distributed throughout the North. The New York Tribune predicted that it would awaken the nation, that his words would "live longer, be read with a more hearty admiration, and exert a more potential and pervading influence on the National mind and character than any other speech of the Session."
ARRIVING ON THE NATIONAL SCENE at this same dramatic moment, Chase expected to take a leading role in the fight. He, too, labored over his speech for weeks, poring through old statute books and exchanging ideas with fellow crusader Charles Sumner. The bond between Chase and Sumner would continue to grow through the years, providing both men with emotional support in the face of the condemnation they suffered due to their strong antislavery views. "I find no man so congenial to me as yourself," Chase confided in Sumner. For his part, Sumner considered Chase "a tower of strength" whose election to the Senate would "confirm the irresolute, quicken the indolent and confound the trimmers."
"I cannot disguise the deep interest with which I watch your movements," Sumner wrote Chase shortly before he was to give his speech. "I count confidently upon an exposition of our cause which will toll throughout the country." When Chase took the floor on March 26, for the first part of his five-hour address, however, Seward had already delivered the celebrated address that outlined most of the positions Chase intended to take and had instantly made the fiery New Yorker the foremost national voice among the antislavery forces.
Nor did Chase possess Seward"s compelling speaking style. If, over the years, constant practice had improved his range and delivery, he was unable to eradicate the slight lisp that remained from his boyhood days. Although his arguments were thoughtful and well reasoned, the chamber emptied long before he finished speaking. Writing home, he admitted great disappointment with the result, which was "infinitely below my own standards...and fell below those of my friends who expected much."
"You know I am not a rousing speaker at best," he conceded in a letter to a friend. He wanted it understood, however, that the speech was delivered "under very great disadvantages": the first chapter of the celebrated Benton-Foote confrontation, "which so engaged the attention of everybody," occurred on the very same day, so that "I had hardly any chance of attention, and in fact, received not much."
Chase was referring to a dramatic argument that broke out on the Senate floor between Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri and Senator Henry Foote of Mississippi. Benton had called Foote a coward, leading Foote to recall an earlier histrionic incident when Benton himself had behaved in cowardly fashion. In response to this personal attack, Benton rose from his chair and rushed forward menacingly. Foote retreated behind a desk and then drew and c.o.c.ked a pistol. "I disdain to carry arms!" Benton shouted. "Let him fire!...Stand out of the way, and let the a.s.sa.s.sin fire!" The melodrama was finally brought to a peaceful close when Foote was persuaded to hand over his pistol to a fellow senator and Benton returned to his chair.
Chase"s disappointment over his failure was compounded by Sumner"s praise for Seward"s compelling maiden effort, which, Sumner told Chase, had filled him with grat.i.tude. "Seward is with us," Sumner exulted. "You mistake when you say "Seward is with us,"" Chase replied, with a heat not unmixed with resentment. While Seward "holds many of our Anti Slavery opinions," he continued, his loyalty to the Whig Party made him untrustworthy. "I have never been able to establish much sympathy between us," he explained in a follow-up letter. "He is too much of a politician for me."
Over the course of the previous decade, Seward and Chase had maintained a dialogue on the most effective methods to promote the antislavery cause. Despite their divergent views on whether or not to join a third party, Chase had always held Seward in the highest esteem and looked forward to working with him on antislavery issues in the Senate.
The alteration in his att.i.tude was likely spurred by jealousy, an emotion the introspective Chase begrudged in others yet could never subdue in himself. "I made this resolution today," he had confided in his diary when he was twenty-three years old. "I will try to excel in all things yet if I am excelled, without fault of mine, I will not be mortified. I will not withhold from any one the praise which I think his due; nor will I allow myself to envy another"s praise or to feel jealousy when I hear him praised. May G.o.d help me to keep it." His best intentions, however, could not a.s.suage the invidious envy that possessed him at the realization that, given an identical opportunity, Seward had emerged the acclaimed leader of the antislavery forces. A rift developed between the two men that would last long into the Lincoln administration, with far-reaching consequences for the country.
Even as Seward basked in the applause of the antislavery community, however, he found himself excoriated in both Southern editorials and conservative papers throughout the North. "Senator Seward is against all compromise," the New York Herald observed, "so are the negroes of New York.... [His] views are those of the extreme fanatics of the North, looking forward to the utter destruction of the inst.i.tutions of the South." Seward was initially untroubled by such criticism from expected sources and remained convinced he had "spoken words that will tell when I am dead." Frances had never been prouder of her husband. When she looked at him, she told her sister, she felt almost overwhelmed by her love and respect for him.
Such elation was soon tempered by a disquieting letter from Weed, who feared that Seward had overreached when enunciating a "higher law" than the Const.i.tution. Though Weed had seen earlier versions, he had not read the final draft. "Your speech...sent me to bed with a heavy heart," Weed confessed to Seward. "A restless night and an anxious day have not relieved my apprehensions." Weed"s criticism distressed Seward, who recognized that his mentor"s political instincts were usually better than his own. Indeed, the implications of Weed"s critical letter left Seward sunk in "despondency...covered with sorrow and shame," apprehensive that he had jeopardized not only his own career but that of his mentor as well.
Seward"s status was further shaken when President Zachary Taylor, who had admitted both Weed and Seward to his inner circle, developed a fatal gastronomical illness after attending Fourth of July festivities on the grounds of the unfinished Washington Monument. Taylor"s sudden death brought Seward"s conservative rival, Millard Fillmore, into the presidency. With Fillmore in the White House, the antislavery contingent had no prospect of stopping the Compromise. Under the skillful leadership of Illinois senator Stephen Douglas, Clay"s omnibus bill was broken up into a series of separate pieces of legislation, which pa.s.sed in both the House and Senate in September.
The Compromise of 1850 seemed to end the crisis. Stephen Douglas regarded the bill as a "final settlement," urging his colleagues on both sides to "stop the debate, and drop the subject." Upon its pa.s.sage, the leading hotels in the capital were illuminated and a salute of one hundred guns was sounded. Serenaders, accompanied by a large crowd of spectators, honored Clay, Webster, and Douglas, singing "Hail Columbia" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" under the windows of their residences. "The joy of everyone seemed unbounded," the New York Tribune noted. The Southern-leaning Lewis Ca.s.s exulted: "The crisis is pa.s.sed-the cloud is gone." While the nation hailed the Compromise, however, a Georgia editor warned prophetically: "The elements of that contest are yet all alive and they are destined yet to outlive the Government. There is a fued between the North and the South which may be smothered, but never overcome."
IN SPRINGFIELD, tracing the unfolding drama in the newspapers, Abraham Lincoln appeared to be satisfied that a peaceful solution had been reached. While he was unhappy about the provision bolstering the Fugitive Slave Law, he understood, he later said, that "devotion to the Union rightfully inclined men to yield somewhat, in points where nothing could have so inclined them." Rejecting Seward"s concept of a "higher law," he preferred to rest his own opposition to slavery in the Const.i.tution and the Declaration of Independence.
During the relative calm that followed the pa.s.sage of the Compromise, Lincoln rode the legal circuit, a pursuit that proved congenial to his personality as well as his finances. He relished the convivial life he shared with the lawyers who battled one another fiercely during the day, only to gather as friends in the taverns at night. The arrival of the judge and lawyers generally created a stir in each town on their circuit. Villagers traveled from miles around, antic.i.p.ating the courtroom drama as hundreds of small cases were tried, ranging from disputed wills, divorce, and b.a.s.t.a.r.dy proceedings to slander and libel suits, from patent challenges and collection of debts to murder and robbery.
"The local belles came in to see and be seen," fellow circuit rider Henry Whitney recalled, "and the court house, from "early morn till dewy eve," and the tavern from dewy eve to early morn, were replete with bustle, business, energy, hilarity, novelty, irony, sarcasm, excitement and eloquence." In some villages, the boardinghouses were clean and comfortable and the food was excellent; in others, there were "plenty of bedbugs" and the dirt was "half an inch thick." The lawyers generally slept two to a bed, with three or four beds in a room. While most of the traveling bar regularly bemoaned the living conditions, Lincoln savored the rollicking life on the circuit.
He was singularly good at his work, earning the respect and admiration of his fellow lawyers. Several of these a.s.sociates became great friends and supporters, among them Circuit Judge David Davis. In letters to his wife, Sarah, Davis spoke not only of Lincoln"s exceptional skill in addressing juries but of his "warm-hearted" nature and his "exceeding honesty & fairness." Davis had come to Illinois from Maryland when he was twenty-one, after graduating from Kenyon College and New Haven Law School. In his late twenties he was elected to the state legislature and considered a career in politics, but his wife, whom he loved "too well to thwart her views," was vehemently opposed. Instead, he ran for circuit judge, a position that offered the camaraderie of the circuit six months a year, yet enabled him to devote sufficient energy to business ventures that he eventually acc.u.mulated a substantial fortune.
The evolution of a warm and intimate friendship with Lincoln is evident in the judge"s letters home. The two men took lazy strolls along the river, shared accommodations in various villages, read books in common, and enjoyed long conversations on the rides from one county to the next. No lawyer on the circuit was better loved than Lincoln, a fellow lawyer recalled. "He arrogated to himself no superiority over anyone-not even the most obscure member of the bar.... He was remarkably gentle with young lawyers.... No young lawyer ever practised in the courts with Mr. Lincoln who did not in all his after life have a regard for him akin to personal affection."
At mealtimes, all those with an interest in the various cases at hand would eat together at the same long table. Judge Davis would preside, surrounded by the lawyers, the members of the jury, the witnesses, the bailiffs, and the prisoners out on bail. Once the meal was done, everyone would gather before the blazing fire or in Judge Davis"s quarters to talk, drink, smoke, and share stories. Though Lincoln did not drink, smoke tobacco, use profane language, or engage in games of chance, he never condescended to those who did. On the contrary, when he had addressed the Springfield Temperance Society at the height of the temperance crusade, he had insisted that "such of us as have never fallen victims, have been spared more from the absence of appet.i.te, than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have."
No sooner had everyone settled in than the call would come for Lincoln to take center stage. Standing with his back to the fire, he juggled one tale after another, Herndon recalled, keeping his audience "in full laugh till near daylight." His "eyes would sparkle with fun," one old-timer remembered, "and when he had reached the point in his narrative which invariably evoked the laughter of the crowd, n.o.body"s enjoyment was greater than his."
One of Lincoln"s favorite anecdotes sprang from the early days just after the Revolution. Shortly after the peace was signed, the story began, the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen "had occasion to visit England," where he was subjected to considerable teasing banter. The British would make "fun of the Americans and General Washington in particular and one day they got a picture of General Washington" and displayed it prominently in the outhouse so Mr. Allen could not miss it. When he made no mention of it, they finally asked him if he had seen the Washington picture. Mr. Allen said, "he thought that it was a very appropriate [place] for an Englishman to Keep it. Why they asked, for said Mr. Allen there is Nothing that Will Make an Englishman s.h.i.t So quick as the Sight of Genl Washington."
Another story, relayed years later by John Usher, centered on a man "who had a great veneration for Revolutionary relics." Learning that an old woman still possessed a dress that "she had worn in the Revolutionary War," he traveled to her house and asked to see it. She took the dress from a bureau and handed it to him. He was so excited that he brought the dress to his lips and kissed it. "The practical old lady rather resented such foolishness over an old piece of wearing apparel and she said: "Stranger if you want to kiss something old you had better kiss my a.s.s. It is sixteen years older than that dress.""
But Lincoln"s stories provided more than mere amus.e.m.e.nt. Drawn from his own experiences and the curiosities reported by others, they frequently provided maxims or proverbs that usefully connected to the lives of his listeners. Lincoln possessed an extraordinary ability to convey practical wisdom in the form of humorous tales his listeners could remember and repeat. This process of repet.i.tion is central to the oral tradition; indeed, Walter Benjamin in his essay on the storyteller"s art suggests that repet.i.tion "is the nature of the web in which the gift of storytelling is cradled."
"Would we do nothing but listen to Lincoln"s stories?" Whitney was asked. "Oh! yes, we frequently talked philosophy, politics, political economy, metaphysics and men; in short, our subjects of conversation ranged through the universe of thought and experience." Years later, Whitney recalled a lengthy discussion about George Washington. The question for debate was whether the first president was perfect, or whether, being human, he was fallible. According to Whitney, Lincoln thought there was merit in retaining the notion of a Washington without blemish that they had all been taught as children. "It makes human nature better to believe that one human being was perfect," Lincoln argued, "that human perfection is possible."
When the court closed on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, most of the lawyers traveled home to rejoin their families, returning on Sunday night or Monday morning. Davis later recalled that Lincoln was the exception to the rule, often remaining on the circuit throughout the weekend. At first they all "wondered at it," Davis said; but they "soon learned to account for his strange disinclination to go home"-while "most of us had pleasant, inviting homes" to return to, Lincoln did not. With the traveling bar, Lincoln was "as happy as he could be...and happy no other place." Herndon agreed, arguing that Lincoln stayed on the circuit as long as he could because "his home was h.e.l.l....Absence from home was his Heaven."
Such withering commentary on Lincoln"s marriage and home life was made years afterward, when both Davis and Herndon had developed a deep hostility to Mary. The letters Davis wrote to Sarah at the time reveal quite a different story. "Lincoln speaks very affectionately of his wife & children," Davis told Sarah in 1851. On other occasions, Davis described a letter Lincoln had received from Mary reporting nursing troubles with Willie, and a conversation in which Lincoln had confided that both he and Mary were hoping for a girl before Tad was born. Nothing in these letters hint that Davis detected marital discord in the Lincoln home.
The specter of some domestic h.e.l.l is not necessary to justify Lincoln"s devotion to his law career. Life on the circuit provided Lincoln the time and s.p.a.ce he needed to remedy the "want of education" he regretted all his life. During his nights and weekends on the circuit, in the absence of domestic interruptions, he taught himself geometry, carefully working out propositions and theorems until he could proudly claim that he had "nearly mastered the Six-books of Euclid." His first law partner, John Stuart, recalled that "he read hard works-was philosophical-logical-mathematical-never read generally."
Herndon describes finding him one day "so deeply absorbed in study he scarcely looked up when I entered." Surrounded by "a quant.i.ty of blank paper, large heavy sheets, a compa.s.s, a rule, numerous pencils, several bottles of ink of various colors, and a profusion of stationery," Lincoln was apparently "struggling with a calculation of some magnitude, for scattered about were sheet after sheet of paper covered with an unusual array of figures." When Herndon inquired what he was doing, he announced "that he was trying to solve the difficult problem of squaring the circle." To this insoluble task posed by the ancients over four thousand years earlier, he devoted "the better part of the succeeding two days...almost to the point of exhaustion."
In addition to geometry, Lincoln"s solitary researches allowed him to study the astronomy, political economy, and philosophy that his fellow lawyers had learned in college. "Life was to him a school," fellow circuit rider Leonard Swett observed, "and he was always studying and mastering every subject which came before him."
Lincoln"s time on the circuit was certainly difficult for Mary; his long absences from home were "one of the greatest hardships" of their marriage. For Lincoln, circuit life was invaluable. Beyond the congeniality of boardinghouse life and the opportunity to continue his lifelong education, these travels provided the chance to walk the streets in dozens of small towns, eat at local taverns in remote corners of the state, and gain a firsthand knowledge of the desires, fears, and hopes of thousands of ordinary people in Illinois-the people who would become his loyal base of support in the years ahead when the time came to return to his first love: politics."
WHILE LINCOLN was productively engaged on the circuit, Seward was dispirited by what he perceived as a reactionary turn in the country"s mood. "If I muzzle not my mouth on the subject of slavery," he wrote Frances, "I shall be set down as a disturber, seeking to disturb the Whig Administration and derange the Whig party." Responding to the public mood, he muted his strident voice on slavery and turned his attention to the less controversial issues of education, internal improvements, and foreign policy. Progress on emanc.i.p.ation, he endeavored to convince himself, could come only with the gradual enlightenment of the American public. When both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster died in 1852, he delivered such glowing eulogies on the Senate floor that his more radical friends took offense. "They cannot see," Seward complained to Frances, "how much of the misery of human life is derived from the indulgence of wrath!"