Free The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln by Abraham Lincoln

world history, philosophy and general literature. But Lincoln would read only what he wanted to read; he could be influenced, perhaps, but he could not be led. Herndon’s efforts to make an abolitionist out of him failed also. Lincoln simply did not have the makings of an abolitionist in him. His mind did not work that way.
    He listened politely to his partner’s abolitionist arguments but he would have none of them. He was willing enough to agree with Billy Herndon that slavery was an evil that must somehow, some day, be shaken off. But he could not tolerate the violence of expression and action that was associated with extreme abolitionism. He was essentially conservative, and the methods used by the abolitionists shocked and alienated him. Men like William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Theodore Parker (who was a good friend of Herndon’s and corresponded with him regularly) stood for principles of action that were repugnant to his cautious mind that had been devoted to legislation and that was trained in the horse-swapping policies of legal practice. He wanted to see slavery done away with just as much as they did, but he wanted to see it legislated out of existence, quietly, and over a long period of time, with some kind of compensation given to the slaveholders in exchange for their property. He knew that if slavery was extirpated suddenly, the whole economy of the country would be thrown out of joint; a billion dollars of American capital had been invested in slaves—the immediate destruction of such a huge investment would cause panic anddisrupt the financial structure of the nation. The Abraham Lincoln of the fifties was no abolitionist, no advocate of violent measures of any kind. That he was to be the agent for emancipating the slaves and the leader in a war fought primarily over the issue of slavery is one of the great ironies of history.
    The whole matter of slavery was becoming more important every day. A change was taking place in the organization of the country that was forcing the issue to a climax. Hitherto the South had held a dominant position, politically and economically, in the structure of the nation. During the first half of the nineteenth century, cotton had become tremendously important. The invention of the cotton gin and the improvement of spinning machinery had made cotton a crop necessary to the economy of the world. Cotton acreage had increased, and with it the need for more slaves. The founding fathers of the nation had believed that slavery would die out of its own accord; they did not foresee the growing demand for cotton that was to keep it alive and make it a more active force than ever.
    Coincident with the spread of slavery in the South, opposition to it had increased in the North. The polite anti-slavery societies of early years were supplanted by militant organizations determined to eradicate slavery at any cost. Heart-and-soul abolitionists were willing to spill blood, dismember the Union and tear up the Constitution to see the sin of human slavery erased from the land. They spoke of a “higher law,” of the God-given rights of freedom which were not to be compromised by any mundane devices of expediency. And, as abolitionists became more bitter in their denunciations of slavery, Southerners became more ardent in their defense of an institution of which they had once been rather ashamed.
    The South had made money from slavery—but not much money. Slave labor was profitable only on the big plantations, and the wealth of the South was highly concentrated in veryfew hands. By 1850, the North had already surpassed the South in economic power; in order to keep on growing, the North had to gain political power as well, for the South, which held the reins of government by her control over the Presidency and the Senate, was naturally unwilling to pass legislation that would favor her rival section. The South was agricultural, the North industrial; at this time the South