Abraham Lincoln: a History — Volume 01 eBook

But as yet the new party was merely inchoate, its elements distrustful, jealous, and discordant; the feuds and battles of a quarter of a century were not easily forgotten or buried.  The Democratic members, boldly nominating Mr. Richardson, the House leader on the Nebraska bill, as their candidate for Speaker, made a long and determined push for success.  But his highest range of votes was about 74 to 76; while through 121 ballotings, continuing from December 3 to January 23, the opposition remained divided, Mr. Banks, the anti-Nebraska favorite, running at one time up to 106—­within seven votes of an election.  At this point, Richardson, finding it a hopeless struggle, withdrew his name as a candidate, and the Democratic strength was transferred to another, but with no better prospects.  Finally, seeing no chance of otherwise terminating the contest, the House yielded to the inevitable domination of the slavery question, and resolved, on February 2, by a vote of 113 to 104, to elect under the plurality rule after the next three ballotings.  Under this rule, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts to rescind it, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, was chosen Speaker by 103 votes, against 100 votes for William Aiken, of South Carolina, with thirty scattering.  The “ruthless” repeal of the Missouri Compromise had effectually broken the legislative power of the Democratic party.

CHAPTER XXI

LINCOLN AND TRUMBULL

[Sidenote:  1854.]

To follow closely the chain of events, growing out of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise at Douglas’s instigation, we must now examine its effect upon the political fortunes of that powerful leader in his own State.

The extreme length of Illinois from north to south is 385 miles; in geographical situation it extends from the latitude of Massachusetts and New York to that of Virginia and Kentucky.  The great westward stream of emigration in the United States had generally followed the parallels of latitude.  The pioneers planted their new homes as nearly as might be in a climate like the one they had left.  In process of time, therefore, northern Illinois became peopled with settlers from Northern or free States, bringing their antislavery traditions and feelings; southern Illinois, with those from Southern or slave States, who were as naturally pro-slavery.  The Virginians and Kentuckians readily became converts to the thrift and order of free society; but as a class they never gave up or conquered their intense hatred of antislavery convictions based on merely moral grounds, which they indiscriminately stigmatized as “abolitionism.”  Impelled by this hatred the lawless element of the community was often guilty of persecution and violence in minor forms, and in 1837, as already related, it prompted the murder of Lovejoy in the city of Alton by a mob, for persisting in his right to publish his antislavery opinions.  This was its gravest crime.  But a narrow spirit of intolerance extending even down to the rebellion kept on the statute books a series of acts prohibiting the settlement of free blacks in the State.