Lincoln's “Lost Speech,” May 29, 1856

“I WAS LOSING INTEREST IN POLITICS, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again,” Abraham Lincoln observed in his roughly 600-word “Autobiography,” written in 1859 at the behest of Jesse Fell of Normal. And sure enough, for Lincoln, passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the threat of slavery's expansion into free territories was a “fire bell in the night” (to borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson).As we contemplate 250 years of history since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is as good a time as any to examine the nation's often tortuous path expanding liberty and equality to “We the People.” In its field guide to the semiquincentennial, the American Association for State and Local History identified “Unfinished Revolutions” as a central theme in which to engage the past. In doing so, one can learn about individuals, organizations, and movements that challenged the nation to live up to its highest ideals, as well as how those working toward finishing unfinished revolutions often drew legal support and inspiration from the founding documents.Wait a minute, you might be thinking, that sounds a lot like Abraham Lincoln in the 1850s, as he became the moral voice and political leader of the Anti-Nebraska movement in Illinois. Indeed, from the act's 1854 passage through the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln and US Senator Stephen A. Douglas contested for the soul of the nation. At issue was the greatest question of the age: Shall slavery expand into free territories?On May 29, 1856, Lincoln delivered the keynote address at the convention to organize the antislavery Republican Party. The Bloomington address is often known as the “Lost Speech,” as no transcription survives. Yet we know enough about what was said that spring evening in central Illinois to be struck by its power and, dare we say, radicalism. Lincoln understood the grotesque incompatibility of slavery and the promise of America. His “ancient faith,” he said, was rooted in the Declaration of Independence and its principle that all men are created equal. He argued that the Founding Fathers (what he called “those old-time men”) had—by moral and constitutional circumscription—laid the groundwork for slavery's extinction. Yet for Lincoln, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was but the most grievous sign the “old faith” of equality had given way to the “new faith” of slave power.With Lincoln's party collapsing under the weight of slavery, disaffected Whigs, joined by antislavery Democrats, abolitionists, and goodly numbers of German immigrants and former Know-Nothings, coalesced around a new party dedicated to halting the spread of slavery. In the spring of 1856, such “fusion” efforts were occurring throughout the North. The gathering in Bloomington was known as the “State Convention of the Anti-Nebraska Party of Illinois” (the new party would soon adopt the less-cumbersome name “Republican”), and its purpose was to erect a platform and nominate a slate of candidates for statewide offices. Those in attendance included Orville Browning, Norman Judd, John Palmer, John Wentworth, and Richard Yates. The convention was held at Major's Hall, a three-story brick building at the south end of Bloomington's downtown.Leaders of the new movement embraced restraint and kept abolitionists and whispers of Black rights and equality at arm's length, all in an effort to prevent conservatives of whatever stripe from bolting. “Moderation,” Lincoln scholar Michael Burlingame noted, “was the watchword that spring.” All the same, as delegates adopted a series of resolutions that shaped the contours of their new party, they were unequivocal in their opposition to slavery's expansion. “Under the Constitution, Congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in the territories,” read one representative resolution, “and that whilst we will maintain all constitutional rights of the South, we also hold that justice, humanity, the principles of freedom as expressed in our Declaration of Independence and our national Constitution, and the purity and perpetuity of our government require that power should be exerted to prevent the extension of slavery into territories heretofore free.”After the convention's formal business, delegates, observers, and onlookers returned to Major's Hall for an evening of speechifying. Lincoln's address started around 5:30 p.m. and lasted some ninety minutes. The most complete account of Lincoln's speech comes from the June 5, 1856, Weekly Courier of Alton. “Lincoln was here ready to fuse with anyone who would unite with him to oppose slave power,” the newspaper reported. Lincoln declared “that the Union must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts.” And quoting Daniel Webster's response to Robert Hayne in 1830, Lincoln added, “It must be ‘Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.’” Union in and of itself, in other words, was not enough.During the speech, according to an account in the Belleville Weekly Advocate (edited by Nathaniel Niles, who was a delegate to the convention), Lincoln criticized “National Whigs” who, in the name of national unity, refused to fuse with the “sectional” Anti-Nebraska movement. Lincoln said these conservative Whigs, fearful of angering the South, clung to the principle of union at the cost of furthering slavery's expansion. National Whigs “are all the time stepping about to the music of the Union!” he said. “Lincoln had no doubt but that the music of an overseer's lash upon a mulatto girl's back would make some of them dance a Virginia hornpipe,” related the Advocate. “Let them step,” said Lincoln, “let them dance to the music of Union, while we, my old Whig friends, stand fast by Principle and Freedom and the Union, together.”Holy Land of Lincoln! Here is a glimpse of the power and passion of Lincoln. Our home state hero and sixteenth president cherished the nation's highest ideals, but he did so by confronting—not ignoring—its evils.