The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Young People, Told in Words of One Syllable — John Shaqi
The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Young People, Told in Words of One SyllablePutnam, Harriet
History
The Life of Abraham Lincoln for Young People, Told in Words of One Syllable
Putnam, Harriet
Lincoln, Abraham, 1809-1865 -- Juvenile literature
Be-fore this, in Ju-ly 1854, moves be-gan in man-y parts of the
North to form a new par-ty which should be a-gainst the spread of
sla-ver-y. So in June, 1856, most of the States sent del-e-gates to
Phil-a-del-phi-a and then and there the Re-pub-li-can par-ty was
formed. They chose John C. Fre-mont as their can-di-date for the
Pres-i-den-cy. Fre-mont was known as a brave ex-plor-er in the plains
of the West, and one who took part in the con-quest of Cal-i-for-ni-a.
There was, al-so, a par-ty called “The A-mer-i-can,” or “Know-noth-ing”
and they named as their choice, ex-Pres-i-dent Mil-lard Fill-more. This
par-ty grew fast two or three years and then came to an end. Its aim
was to keep men from o’er the sea out of of-fice and make them wait
more time ere they could vote. The theme of sla-ver-y then came to have
a new form and there was no room for oth-er de-bate.
The Dem-o-crat-ic par-ty met in Cin-cin-na-ti and named James
Bu-chan-an of Penn-syl-va-ni-a as their choice. Bu-chan-an was
e-lec-ted.
Ste-phen A. Doug-las thought he was sure of a nom-i-na-tion for that
same place. He had done much work for the men who held slaves but they
did not mean to re-ward him for what he had done.
[Illustration: STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS]
“Shall Kan-sas come in free or not?” was the ques-tion that, then, was
up-on the minds of thou-sands up-on thou-sands of the peo-ple of the
U-ni-ted States.
A-bra-ham Lin-coln, then, think-ing of the mil-lions of his fel-low-men
in sla-ver-y and of that slave-mar-ket in New Or-leans, which had
nev-er gone out of his mind, spoke, both in pub-lic and pri-vate, with
the force that e-ven he had ne’er used be-fore. He felt God’s time was
near at hand when those who had been bought and sold like beasts of the
field, should be set free. He did not then see just how it would be
done, but he said to a friend;
“Some-times when I am speak-ing I feel that the time is soon com-ing
when the sun shall shine and the rain fall on no man who shall go
forth to un-re-quit-ed toil. How it will come, I can-not tell; but that
time will sure-ly come!”
It was in March 1857, when Bu-chan-an had his in-au-gu-ral ad-dress all
writ-ten out with care, and he was read-y to take his seat as Chief in
the land, that he was told that a great step was a-bout to be tak-en by
the “Su-preme Court,” the high-est court of law in the land. It seems
that the jud-ges were then to de-cide in a case which dealt with the
rights of men who held slaves un-der the Con-sti-tu-tion.
Mr. Bu-chan-an thought it would be well to put a few words more in-to
his ad-dress, and these up-on the theme then brought up to him. So he
wrote that he hoped the steps that were to be tak-en would “for-ev-er
set-tle that vex-a-tious slave ques-tion.”
In a few days Rog-er B. Ta-ney of Ma-ry-land, Chief Jus-tice, gave the
peo-ple of the U-ni-ted States a great sur-prise in what he had to say
a-bout two slaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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