LINCOLN, DOUGLAS, AND BROWN
Abraham Lincoln had long re- garded slavery as an evil . As ear- ly as 1854 in a widely publicized speech, he declared that all national legislation should be framed on the principle that slavery was to be re- stricted and eventually abolished . He contended also that the princi- ple of popular sovereignty was false, for slavery in the western territo- ries was the concern not only of the local inhabitants but of the United States as a whole .
In 1858 Lincoln opposed Ste- phen A . Douglas for election to the U .S . Senate from Illinois . In the first paragraph of his opening campaign speech, on June 17, Lincoln struck the keynote of American history for the seven years to follow:
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half- free. I do not expect the Union to
CHAPTER 6: SECTIONAL CONFLICT
OUTLINE OF U.S. HISTORY
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be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. Lincoln and Douglas engaged
in a series of seven debates in the ensuing months of 1858 . Senator Douglas, known as the “Little Gi- ant,” had an enviable reputation as an orator, but he met his match in Lincoln, who eloquently challenged Douglas’s concept of popular sov- ereignty . In the end, Douglas won the election by a small margin, but Lincoln had achieved stature as a national figure .
By then events were spinning out of control . On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown, an antislavery fanatic who had captured and killed five proslavery settlers in Kansas three years before, led a band of fol- lowers in an attack on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry (in what is now West Virginia) . Brown’s goal was to use the weapons seized to lead a slave uprising . After two days of fighting, Brown and his surviving men were taken prisoner by a force of U .S . Marines commanded by Colonel Robert E . Lee .
Brown’s attempt confirmed the worst fears of many Southerners . Antislavery activists, on the other hand, generally hailed Brown as a martyr to a great cause . Virginia put Brown on trial for conspiracy, treason, and murder . On December 2, 1859, he was hanged . Although most Northerners had initially con- demned him, increasing numbers
were coming to accept his view that he had been an instrument in the hand of God .