The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [97]
Throughout the crisis, the Illinois State Journal published bellicose editorials widely thought to reflect Lincoln’s views and some possibly written by him. On December 20, the day South Carolina seceded, it warned that “treason must and will be put down at all hazards.” Another editorial predicted that civil war would result in “the total overthrow of slavery,” as slaves would escape to the North and might even rise against their masters. The paper denied that a Lincoln administration planned to interfere with slavery in the states or favored “the equality of the black and white race.” But it insisted that Lincoln “stands immovably upon the Chicago platform” and had no interest in any “compromise whatever.” The president-elect, the paper declared, using words that would find their way into Lincoln’s inaugural address, would have “an oath registered in Heaven” to uphold and enforce the laws. When William Kellogg, an Illinois Republican congressman, proposed a compromise including extension of the Missouri Compromise line, the paper denounced him: “He has sold himself to the slave power.”41
Two weeks before Lincoln’s inauguration, the New York Times complained that the Republican party lacked a “settled plan” for dealing with secession. In fact, throughout the crisis Lincoln displayed remarkable consistency. He proved willing to compromise on issues he had always considered inessential, but refused to countenance any concession that ran the risk of sundering the Republican party and surrendering the results of the election before his administration began. In December 1860 and January 1861, he intervened forcefully in congressional deliberations, something no previous president-elect had done, to delineate what kinds of conciliatory measures he would and would not support. On December 10, only one week after Congress assembled and talk of compromise began to circulate, Lincoln made his position clear to Lyman Trumbull in Washington: “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again…. Stand firm. The tug has to come, and better now, than any time hereafter.” Three days later he sent the same instructions to Elihu B. Washburne, who had written to alert Lincoln to the “imminent peril” that several states would soon secede, but also warning that on the question of compromise, Seward was “misrepresenting your position.” Lincoln reiterated his opposition to “compromise of any sort” on the expansion of slavery. “On that point,” he instructed Washburne, “hold firm, as with a chain of steel.”42
Lincoln did draw up resolutions to be introduced by Seward in the Senate committee considering the crisis, which he handed to Seward’s political alter ego Thurlow Weed, who visited Springfield in late December to plead for compromise. Apart from an affirmation that the Union “must be preserved,” they dealt entirely with the issue of fugitives from bondage. Lincoln called for effective measures for their return with “safeguards” against “free men…being surrendered as slaves,” as well as the repeal of northern personal liberty laws. Lincoln wrote to Trumbull that he thought the resolutions would “do much good.” “They do not touch the territorial question,” he pointed out. For this very reason, as Lincoln could have anticipated, they had no impact on congressional discussions.43
Another indication of Lincoln’s position on conciliation came in his responses to letters from John A. Gilmer of North Carolina and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia, both avid opponents of secession (although after Georgia left the Union, Stephens