The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [73]
As early as the mid-1840s, Lincoln had invoked God’s words to Adam—” in the sweat of thy face thy shall earn bread”—to vindicate the right of the worker to “the whole product of his labor.” Then, however, he was discussing the tariff; free trade, he claimed, allowed those who lived “without labor” (merchants, bankers, etc.) to siphon off “a large proportion of the fruits.”40 In the 1850s, Lincoln returned to this theme, but as a powerful argument against slavery. He now described the slave as a worker illegitimately denied the fruits of his or her labor. Slavery, in other words, was a form of theft. Adding the contrast between free and slave labor to his preexisting critique of the moral and political foundations of slavery enabled Lincoln to crystallize his particular version of northern nationalism. The protection of the rights of free labor emerged as a fundamental reason why slavery must be confined to its existing locale and placed on the road to ultimate extinction.
Lincoln was fascinated and disturbed by the works of proslavery ideologues. In a speech in Michigan during the 1856 presidential campaign, Lincoln cited the Richmond Enquirer to argue that southerners erroneously believed that “their slaves are far better off than Northern freemen.”41 He expanded greatly on this theme in 1859.
When Lincoln accepted an invitation to travel to Ohio to aid Republicans there in the fall 1859 campaign, one motivation, as so often seemed to be the case, was to counter Stephen A. Douglas. In September, Douglas contributed a long article to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine. The choice of venue, an important literary periodical published in New York City rather than a political journal, suggested the significance Douglas attached to the piece. Douglas insisted that the doctrine of popular sovereignty arose directly from the policies of the founders and their commitment to “local self-government.” In his speeches in Ohio and elsewhere in the Northwest, Lincoln took issue with the argument of what he sarcastically called Douglas’s “copy-right essay.” He hammered away at arguments by now familiar in his speeches: slavery was a wrong “to the nation,” requiring a national policy “that deals with the institution as being wrong.” He challenged Douglas’s account of the founders’ intentions. “Choose ye between Jefferson and Douglas,” he implored his audience at Columbus.42
In 1858, Charles H. Ray had urged Lincoln to refer to his humble origins to enhance his reputation: “If you have been the architect of your own fortunes, you may claim the most merit.” Now, in repudiating the southern critique of free labor, Lincoln invoked his own rise from hired laborer to economic independence to offer a portrait of a society of unbounded opportunity:
The assumption that the slave is in a better condition than the hired laborer, includes the further assumption that he who is once a hired laborer always remains a hired laborer; that there is a certain class of men who remain through life in a dependent condition…. In point of fact that is a false assumption. There is no such thing as a man who is a hired laborer, of a necessity, always remaining in his early condition. The general rule is otherwise. I know it is so, and I will tell you why. When at an early age, I was myself a hired laborer, at twelve dollars per month…. A young man…works industriously, he behaves soberly, and the result of a year or two’s labor is a surplus account. Now he buys land on his own hook…. There is no such thing as