) 0«' «► *.. ^^" V-. * » . c <• content to stop here and, accepting Lincoln's definition, stand upon his broad assertion of the character of our Government and look with suspicion upon those who in the name of the people seek to tear down that Constitution which has given us what he declared to be in the fullest sense a government of the people. Even if we could conceive that he was mistaken, I for one should still feel that it would be — Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye. THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 9 But it is neither necessary nor desirable to stop with the Gettys- burg speech, for it is important to learn, if we can, in more detail what. Lincoln thought of the limitations established by the Constitu- tion with especial reference to the principle of representation and the power of the courts. Very early in his career, when he was not vet 27 years of age, he said in an address before the Young Men's Lyceum at Springfield, 111., on January 27, 1837: We find ourselves under the governmenl of a system of political ins! itutions conduc- ing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty than any of which the history of former times tells us. * * * Theirs was the task (and nobly they per- formed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves us, of this goodly land, and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys a political edifice of liberty ami equal rights; 'tisours only to transmit these — the former unprofaned by the fool of an invader, the latter undecayed by the lapse of time and untorn by usurpation in the latest genera- tion that fate shall permit the world to know. * * * At what point, then, is the approach to danger to be expected? 1 answer: If it ever reach us, it must spring up among us; it can not come from abroad. If destruc- tion be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time, or die by suicide. In these sentences we see at once that the great style of the Gettys- burg address and of the second inaugural is still undeveloped, that the power of expression so remarkable in later years has not yet been found; but the conviction as to the character of our Government, which attained its final form at Gettysburg, is here and the closing words warning us that destruction of our Government can come only from ourselves demand our attention now as insistently as when they were uttered by an obscure young man in Illinois looking far into the future and thereupon passed over unheeded b} r a careless world. Such, then, was Lincoln's belief in the character of our Govern- ment at the outset of life, and such it continued to the end, as I shall show later. Upon the two particular points which we have now under consideration he had, owing to the circumstances of his time, a good deal to say about the courts and very little in express form about representative government, because nobody in his day ques- tioned the representative system. But representative government rests upon certain broad principles in regard to which Lincoln spoke clearly and decisively. The basic theory of representative govern- ment is that the representative body represents all the people, and that a majority of that body represents a majority of all the people. To the majority in Congress the power of action is committed and it is so guarded as to exclude so far as human ingenuity can do it any opportunity for the control of the Government by an organized minor- ity either among the voters or their representatives. It is these very provisions for securing majority rule which have led to the develop- ment of such devices as the compulsory initiative and referendum in order that organized minorities of voters may gain a power of con- trol which they could not obtain under a purely representative government. Having thus established majority rule through the representative system, the framers of the Constitution, with their deep-rooted dis- trust of uncontrolled power anywhere, then proceeded to put limita- tions upon the power of the majority. They were well aware that a majority of the voters at any given moment did not necessarily rep- resent the enduring will of the people. They knew equally well that in the end the real will of the people must be absolute, but they 10 THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. desired that tkere should be room for deliberation and for second thought and that the rights of minorities and of individuals should be so far as possible protected and secured. Hence the famous lim- itations of the Constitution. I need not rehearse them all; the most vital arc 1 those embodied in the first 10 amendments which constitute a bill of rights, the rights of men, or human rights, and any violation of those rights is forbidden to Congress and to the majority. As restraints upon the majority they gave the Executive a veto, which raised the necessary majority for action to two-thirds, while upon the courts they conferred by implication authority to make any law void and of no effect if it was in violation of the general principles laid down by the Constitution. Upon this point of limitation upon the majority, whether of voters or representatives, which is the essence of our con- stitutional system of representation, Lincoln spoke in a manner which can not be misunderstood. He said in the first inaugural: If by the mere lone of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, in a moral point of view justify revolution — certainly would if such a right were a vital one. But such is not the case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirma- tions and negations, guarantees and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise concerning them. * * * A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Nothing could be clearer than these sentences. In Lincoln's opin- ion the violation of a vital constitutional right was moral justification for revolution, and the last sentence gives a definition of free and real popular government upon which it would be difficult indeed to improve. I have just said that one of the checks placed upon the power of the majority was the authority which of necessity devolved upon the courts to declare any law. which in their opinion violated the Constitution, unconstitutional and therefore void. It is this judicial power which has led to the present movement to destroy the independence of the courts by subjecting the judges to the recall and their decisions to review at the ballot box. On this point Lincoln spoke often and with great elaboration. He did so because the famous Died Scott case was a very burning issue in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. If an opinion was ever delivered by a court which justified resistance to or an attack upon the judicial authority it was this one known by the name of a poor negro — Dred Scott. The opinion against which the conscience of men revolted did not decide the case. It was an obiter dictum. It was delivered solely for the purpose of settling a great political question by pronouncement from the Supreme Court. There was no disguise as to what was intended. Mr. Buchanan, informed as to what was coming after his arrival in Washington, announced in his inaugural that the question of slavery in the Territories would soon be disposed of by the Supreme Court. The wise practice of the Supreme Court is to decline jurisdiction of political questions, holding that such questions belong solely to Congress and the Executive. In this case the court deliberately traveled outside the record in order to speak upon a, purely political question which then divided the whole country. For such action there is no defense. THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 11 Born of the passions of the slavery contest, the Dred Scott case stands in our history as a flagrant attempt by the Supreme Court to usurp power. There has been nothing like it before or since. The lesson of that gigantic blunder was learned thoroughly and will never be forgotten by the court at least. The attack upon the dictum of the court began with the masterly dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Curtis, which wrecked Taney's argument, both in the law and the facts. From the courtroom the attack spread over the country and the utterances of the Chief Just ice were assailed with all the bitterness characteristic of that period and defended with equal fervor by those who supported slaver) - and who declared that a refusal to accept the decision was tantamount to treason. Lincoln, as one of the leaders of the new Republican Party, was obliged to deal with it. He did so fully and thoroughly. All thai he said deserves careful study, for there is no more admirable analy- sis of the powers of the courts and of the attitude which should be taken in regard to them. I shall make no excuse for quoting what he said, at length, and I may add that his utterances on this great question required neither explanation nor commentary from me or anyone else. I will begin, however, with a protest against a bill for the reorganization of the judiciary, signed by Lincoln as a member of the Illinois Legislature. These resolutions, which Lincoln drafted 1 show what his general views were as to the courts many years before the Dred Scott decision. The important por- tion of them runs as follows: For reasons thus presented, and for others no less apparent, the undersigned can qo1 assent to the passage of the bill, or permit it to become a law, without this evidence of their disapprobation; and they now protest against the reorganization of the judiciary, because: (1) It violates the great principles of free government by subjecting the judiciary to the legislature; (2) it is a fatal blow at the independence of the judges and the constitutional term of their office; (3) it is a measure not asked for or wished for by the people; (4) it will greatly increase the expense of our courts, or else greatly diminish their utility; (5) it will give our courts a political and partisan character, thereby impairing public confidence in their decisions; (6) it will impair our standing with other States and the world. * * * (Signed by 35 members, among whom was Abraham Lincoln.) It will be observed that the first two objections state in the strongest terms the principle of the independence of the judiciary and declare that this great principle is violated by subjecting the judiciary to the legislature, the representatives of the people. In this case it hap- pened to be the legislature, but the principle is that the courts should not be subjected to any outside control or influence, whether that control comes from the executive, the legislature, or the voters. Holding these principles, Lincoln 16 years later was brought face to face with the Dred Scott opinion, and this is how he dealt with it, a little more than three months after it was delivered, in a speech at Springfield, 111., on June 26, 1857: He (Senator Douglas) denounces all who question the correctness of that decision, as offering violent "resistance to it. Hut who resists it? Who has. in spite of the decision, declared Dred Scott free and resisted the authority of his master over him? Judicial decisions have two uses— first . to absolutely determine the case decided, and secondly, to indicate to the public how other similar cases will be decided when they arise. 'For the latter use. they are called "precedents" and "authorities." We believe as much as Judge Douglas ( perhaps more) in obedience to, and reaped for, the judicial department of the Government. We think its derisions on constitutional 1 Life of Lincoln: Hay and Nieolay, vol. 1, p. 104. 12 THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. questions, when fully settled, should control not only the particular cases decided, but the ml policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often i >\ erruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this. We offer no resistance to it. .Judicial decisions are of greater or less authority as precedents according to circum- stances. That this should be so accords both with common sense and the customary understanding of the legal profession. If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history and had been in no part based on assumed historical facts, which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed or reaffirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, not to acquiesce in it as a precedent . But when, as is true, we find it wanting in all these claims to the public confidence, it is not resistance, it is not factious, it is not even disrespectful, to treat it as not having yet quite established a settled doctrine for the country. Contrast these calm words, uttered under the greatest provocation, with, the violent attacks now made on the courts for two or three decisions which are in no respect political and which are as nothing compared to the momentous issue involved in the Dred Scott case where the freedom of human beings and the right of the^ people to decide upon slavery in the Territories were at stake. There is not a proposition which is not stated with all Lincoln's unrivaled lucidity and there is not the faintest suggestion of breaking down the power of the courts or of taking from them their independence. A year later, just before the great debate with Douglas, but when that debate had in reality begun, Lincoln, at Chicago on July 10, 1858, again took up the Dred Scott case and spoke as follows: I have expressed heretofore, and I now repeat, my opposition to the Dred Scott decision; but I should be allowed to state the nature of that opposition, and I ask your indulgence while I do so. What is fairly implied by the term Judge Douglas has used: "Resistance to the decision"? I do not resist it. If I wanted to take Dred Scott from his master, I would be interfering with property, and that terrible difficulty tint Judge Douglas speaks of, of interfering with property, would arise. But I am doing no such thing as that ; all that I am doing is refusing to obey it as a political rule. If I were in Congress, and a vote should come up on a question of whether slavery should be prohibited in a new territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision I would vote that it should. That is what I would do. Judge Douglas said last night that before the decision he might advance his opinion, and it might be contrary to the decision when it was made; but after it was made he would abide by it until it was reversed. Just so. We' let this property abide by the decision, but we will try to reverse that decision. We will try to put it where Judge Douglas would not object, for he says he will obey it until it is reversed. Somebody has to reverse thai decision, since it is made; and we mean to reverse it, and we mean to do it peaceably. What are the uses of decisions of courts? They have two uses. As rules of property they have two uses. First, they, decide upon the question before the court. They decide in this case that Dred Scott is a slave. Nobody resists that. Not only that, but they say to everybody else that persons standing just as Dred Scott stands are as lie is. That is, they say that when a question comes up upon another person, it will be so decided again, unless the court decides in another way, unless the court over- rules its decision. Well, we mean to do what we can to have the court decide the other way. That is one thing we mean to try to do. Again, in a speech at Springfield, 111., on July 17, 1858, he said: Now as to the Dred Scott decision, for upon that he makes his last point at me. lie boldly takes ground in favor of thai decision. This is one-half the onslaught and one-third of the entire plan of the campaign. I am opposed to that decision in a certain sense, hut not in (he sense which lie puts on it. I say that in so far as it decided in favor of Dred Scott's masterand against Dred Scott and his family I do not propose n> disturb or resist the decision. THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 13 I never have proposed to do any such thing. I think thai in reaped for judicial authority my humble history would not suffer in comparison with that of Judge Douglas. He would have the citizens conform his vote to that decision; the Membei of Congress, his; the President, his use of the veto power. Be would make it a rule of political action for the people and all the departments of the Government. F would not. By resist ingil as a political rule I disturb no right of property, create no disorder, excite no mobs. In some notes for speeches, which the editors date October 1, 1858 ( ?), we find this fragment, which is of great interest because it shows how strongly Lincoln felt that the Dred Scott case could be dealt with and set aside under the Constitution without amending that instru- ment or seeking to break down the independence of the courts. The note runs as follows: That burlesque upon judicial decisions and slander and profanation upon the honored names and sacred history of republican America must be overruled and expunged from the books of authority. To give the victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only are necessary. Thanks to our good old Constitution and the organization under it, these alone are necessary. It only needs that every right-thinking man shall go to the polls and without fear or prejudice vote as he thinks. Again, in the joint debate at Quincy, 111., on October 13, 1858, he said: We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court we, as a mob, w T ill decide him to be free. We do not propose that, when any other one or one thousand shall be decided by that court to be slaves, we will in any violent way disturb the rights of property thus settled; but we nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political rule which shall be binding on the voter to vote for nobody wdio thinks it wrong, which shall be binding on the Members of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually concur with the principles of that decision. We do not propose to be bound by it as a political rule in that way. because we think it lays the foundation not merely of enlarging and spreading out what we consider an evil. but it lays the foundation for spreading that evil into the States themselves. We propose so resisting it as to have it revised if we can and a new judicial rule established upon this subject. I will add this: That if there be any man who does not believe that slavery is wrong in the three aspects which 1 have mentioned, or in any one of them, that man is misplaced and ought to leave us. While, on the other hand, if there be any man in the Republican Party who is impatient over the necessity springing from its actual presence, and is impatient of the constitutional guaranties thrown around it, and would act hi disregard of these, he too is misplaced, standing with us. He will find his place somewhere else; for we have a due regard, so far as we are capable of under- standing them, for all these things. This, gentlemen, as well as I can give it, is a plain statement of our principles in all their enormity. He discussed the great question many times, but I will make only one more quotation, the passage in the first inaugural, where on the eve of secession and civil war he gave expression, every word weighed and meditated, to his opinions and intentions. On that solemn occasion he spoke thus of the courts: I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decisions may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between the parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned then Gov- 14 THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. eminent into the hands of the eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the courts or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes. From these extracts we may see that Lincoln held that the courts had no right to lav down a rule of political action and that if they did so no one was hound by it. This is, indeed, the present position of the court itself. He said that no one should resist the decision in the Died Scott case, but that it was the duty of all who believed that doctrine contrary to freedom and to American principles to seek to have it overruled — not reviewed by the voters at trie ballot box, or changed by the recall of its authors, but simply overruled by the court itself. Again no one will dissent. But beyond this he did not go. On the contrary, he upheld the judicial authority within its proper domain, and there is no suggestion to be found, even under that bitter provocation, of any attempt to make the courts sub- servient to any outside power by any such device as a recall. Still less is there any thought of reversing the decision by a popular vote. On the contrary, at Qiiincy, speaking to a popular audience, he said, as you remember: We do not propose that when Dred Scott has been decided to be a slave by the court, we, as a mob, will decide him to be free. . There is no need to comment further upon the passages which have just been quoted. It is enough for me to say that Lincoln's discussion of the Dred Scott case seems to me to contain the strongest arguments for an independent judiciary that can be found anywhere. We may also be sure, I think, that Lincoln did not forget in his righteous indignation at the Dred Scott opinion that every slave who set foot on English soil became a free man by Lorel Mans- fielel's elecision in Somersett's case (1772) or that slavery had been ended in Massachusetts by a elecision of the Supreme Court of the State in 1783 under the sentence, that "all men are born free anel equal," inserted in the constitution of that State for that precise purpose by John Lowell. Passing now from the particular to the general, let me by a few brief ([uotations show you what Lincoln thought of our Government under the Constitution as a whole. In a speech at Columbus, Chio, on September 16, 1859, he said: I believe there is a genuine popular sovereignty. I think a definition of genuine popular sovereignty, in the abstract, would be about this: That each man shall do precisely as he pleases with himself, and with all those things which exclusively con- cern him. Applied to government, this principle woidd be, that a general government shall do all those things which pertain to it, and all the local governments shall do pre- cisely as they please in respect to those matters which exclusively concern tnem. I understand that this Government of the United States under which wa live is based upon this principle; and I am misunderstood if it is supposed that I have any war to make upon that principle. In his address at Cooper Institute, in New York, on February 27, 1860, he said: Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be lo discard all the lights of cuirent experience — to reject all progress, all improvement. WIki t 1 do say is that if we would supplant tli3 opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, can not stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare they understood the question better than we. THE DEMOCRACY OF A.BBAHAM LINCOLN. 15 In his reply to the mayor of Philadelphia, on February 21, 1861, he spoke as follows: Your worthy mayoi has expressed the wish, in which I join with him, thai ii wen- convenient for me to remain in your city long enough to consult your merchants and manufacturers; or, as it were, to listen to those breathings rising within the consecrated walls wherein the Constitution of the United States, and, 1 will add, the Declaration of Independence, were originally framed and adopted. I assure you and your mayor thai I had hoped on this occasion, and upon all occasions during my life, thai I -hall do nothing inconsistent with the teachings of th >se holy and most sacred walls. All my political welfare has been in favor of the teachings thai came forth from these sacred walls. May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if ever I prove false to those teachings. So he spoke at the threshold of the great conflict. Listen to him now as he spoke three years later, with the war nearing ils close and when the hand of fate could almost be heard knocking at his door. On August 18, 1864, in an address to the One hundred and sixty-fourth Ohio Regiment, he said: We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where everyman has a right to be equal with every other man. In this grea t s1 niggle, this form of government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by everyone. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed. I say this in order to impress upon you, if you are not already so impressed, that no small matter should divert us from our great purpose. There may be some inequalities in the practical application of our system. It is fair that each man shall pay taxes in exact proportion to the value of his property. But if we should wait before collecting a tax to adjust the taxes upon each man in exact proportion with every other man, we should never collect any tax at all. There may be mistakes made sometimes; things may be done wrong, while the officers of the Government do all they can to prevent mistakes. But I beg of you, as citizens of this great Republic, not to let your minds be carried off from the great work we have before us. He said, on August 22, 1864, in his address to the One hundred and sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment : It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to come, that we should perpetuate for our children's children that great and free Government which we have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen, temporarily, to occupy this White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father's child has. It is in order that each one of you may have, through this free Government which we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for your industry, enterprise, and intelligence; that you may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose our birthright— not only for one, but for two or three years. The Nation is worth fighting for. to secure such an inestimable jewel. And on August 31, 1864, in an address to the One hundred and forty-eighth Ohio Regiment, he said: But this Government must be preserved in spite of the acts of any man or set of men. It is worthy of your every effort. Nowhere in the world is presented a Gov- ernment of so much liberty and equality. To the humblest and pooresl amongst us are held out the highest privileges and positions. The presenl moment finds me at the White House, yet there is as good a chance for your children there as there was for my father's. With these noble words, uttered as the dark shadows of the past were fleeing away and the light of the coming victory was beginning to shine upon him, let us leave him. As at Gettysburg, over the graves of the dead soldiers, he declared that the great ha tile had been fought in order that "Government of the people, by the people, for the people" should not perish from the earth, so now to the living 16 THE DEMOCRACY OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN. soldiers he said that nowhere in the world was presented a "Gover ment of so much liberty and equality." Thus, at the close, just at the beginning when he was a young man entirely unknown beyoi the confines of his village, did he speak of the Government of t United States under the Constitution. Thus he described his co ception of democracy, and that conception he found fulfilled in t Constitution of the United States and in the great principles ordered freedom and guarded rights which are there embodied. There is one other point alluded to by Lincoln when he defin "genuine popular government" which does not directly conce the subject 1 have been discussing, but which is of quite equ importance and upon which 1 wish to say a few words in closmi The framers of the Constitution made one great contribution the science of government in the application of the principle federation upon a scale and in a manner never before attempte A large part of the Constitution is devoted to the arrangement ai adjustment of the relations between the States and the Gener Government. Upon the construction of those relations, as we i know, parties divided and our history largely turned for more ths seventy years . '1 he contest was bet ween the rights of the States on tl one hand and the powers of the Central Government on the othe The conflict culminated in the Civil War and in the effort of certa States to break up the Union. '1 he result of the war was the pre< ervation of the Union and the defeat of secession. But secessio: or the separation of the States, is not the only way in which tl Union can be destroyed. The other, and no less effective, methc of destroying the Union is by the abolition of the States, whi« could be attained by reducing them to merely nominal divisioi and taking from them those powers and duties reserved to them I the Constitution and which alone make them living organisms. Tl first danger ended forever at Appomattox. The second is threa ening us, and in no obscure fashion, to-day. The growth of tl power of the Central Government, together with its constant assumj tion of new duties is in a degree inevitable and in a less degre no doubt, desirable. But this inevitable movement is always quit rapid enough and should be retarded rather than accelerated. It not, however, to this tendency of development that I now refer, bi> to something much graver and which is in its nature absolute] destructive. There is a widespread agitation in favor of having Presidem nominated as party candidates, not by the people of the State each State being allotted the number of votes to which it is entitle by the number of party votes cast at a previous election, but by a the members of the party throughout the country without referenc to State lines. It is further proposed, and a constitutional amenc ment with that object in view was pending in the Senate at the las session, to have the President elected by the votes of all the peopl instead of by the votes of the people of the States, each State havin two votes as a State and additional votes based on population. A* amendment to that effect, proposed as an addition to another cor stitutional amendment, was defeated in the Senate a few weeks ag. by a narrow majority. A President so nominated and elected would not be the Presiden of the United States, but of the American Republic, or President c THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 17 the Americans, as Louis Napoleon was styled Emperor of the French, having been chosen by a universal plebiscite. Party principles, party organization, party responsibility, would all disappear. Per- haps in this connection it is not amiss to remember that, in a eulogy jpon Henry Clay, delivered in the State House at Springfield, 111., m July 16, 1852, Lincoln said: A free people in times of peace and quiet when pressed by no common danger — laturally divide into parlies. At such times the man who is of neither party is not, :'an not be, of any consequence. Mr. < lay. therefore, was of a party. ! As usual, in discussing any subject, he laid his unerring finger upon a vital point. The destruction of parties and party organizations Would reduce the unorganized voters, acting simply as individuals, to a condition of helplessness. We should no longer have great organizations, with declared principles and established traditions, which could be held to strict responsibility, but simply followers of pertain chiefs. Those chiefs would be self-made, presidential candi- dates with personal manifestoes after the familiar fashion of South American dictators. But these objections, serious as they are, sink into insignificance when compared with the far graver results which lie behind these propositions. To nominate and elect Presidents by a vote of the whole people, without reference to State lines, would be a step, and a long step, toward the extinction of the States. That would paean the enormous exaltation of the Executive power, to which all these movements for the destruction of the Constitution alike tend. The abolition or degradation of the States would mean a real imperialism and not the imaginary imperialism about which many excellent people were quite needlessly distressed when we took possession of certain islands after the Spanish War. We might continue to call our territorial divisions States, and their chief sxecutive officers governors, but names are nothing and with the States stripped of all power they would be in reality provinces and their rulers prefects appointed in Washington. The abolition of the States would mean the loss or the ruin of the great principle of local self-government, which lies at the very root of free popular government and of true democracy. The States, within their [imitations and in the exercise of their proper powers, are the sheet anchor which keeps the ship of State from drifting helplessly upon the rocks of empire and of personal autocratic rule, where so many great nations have met untimely wreck. ! These are no fanciful dangers, no alarms conjured up to arrest improvement and advance. Actual measures leading to the results I have described are being pressed and advocated. It is a less obvious, a slower, a more insidious way of destroying the Union of States than by open war, but if successful it is equally certain in its results. We should pause long and think well before we enter upon such changes as these, all the more perilous because they are plemanded in the name of the people and look harmless, perhaps, to those who do not stop to consider them. We are confronted to-day with the gravest questions which the American people have been called upon to decide since 1860. I do pot mean questions of social or economic policy, nor issues of war S. Doc. 18, 63-1 2 18 THE DEMOCRACY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. or peace or foreign relations. I mean questions now pressing upon us which involve the very fabric of our Constitution, under which freedom, order, and prosperity have gone with us hand in hand. It is a time for careful thought, a time to tear aside the veils of speech and come straight to the substance of things, to facts and principles. Let us not at a time like this and in the presence of such questions be the slaves of words and phrases. In the Book of Judges it is written: Then said they unto him, "Say now 'Shibboleth.'" And he said "Sibboleth"; for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him and slew him at the passages of the Jordan. There has been too much of this of late, too much dependence on how loudly a man could shout certain words and how he pro- nounced the "Shibboleth" which was proposed to him. Let us get away from words and phrases and come down to facts and deeds. Before we begin to revolutionize our Constitution and its principles, let us know well what that Constitution is, what it means, what it has accomplished, and whither the changes so noisily urged will lead us. In his message to Congress on July 4, 1861, speaking of the officers of the Regular Army from the seceding States who had remained true to the Government of the Union, Lincoln said: This is the patriotic instinct of the plain people. They understand, without an argument, that the destroying of the Government which was made by Washington means no good to them. I have faith that the people to-day feel as they did then. I am sure that when they shall understand whither they are being led they will know that to impair or to destroy the Government which Washington made and Lincoln saved " means no good to them." o 160 Cj. ♦W#bb"» ry G • -"« •A <*'».»* ,G V *v4 CT 6 • " • ♦ **b a^ . l " * "^ CT « • " • ♦ *^> ^ » • v ' * ?/ 4.* V \ V* j¥J» f '% '-J* W 5> •^^'* ^ v % »*•»* R' » ^ -1 " * n.J eU * ***** ; 5 » <- i ^ I BOOKBINDING I V\tKI BOOKBINDING C'd-iv lip Pa Ma-cr 4:< 198?