hide Matching Documents

The documents where this entity occurs most often are shown below. Click on a document to open it.

Document Max. Freq Min. Freq
Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History (ed. Benson Lossing) 262 262 Browse Search
George P. Rowell and Company's American Newspaper Directory, containing accurate lists of all the newspapers and periodicals published in the United States and territories, and the dominion of Canada, and British Colonies of North America., together with a description of the towns and cities in which they are published. (ed. George P. Rowell and company) 188 188 Browse Search
Knight's Mechanical Encyclopedia (ed. Knight) 79 79 Browse Search
Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas, Debates of Lincoln and Douglas: Carefully Prepared by the Reporters of Each Party at the times of their Delivery. 65 65 Browse Search
Lucius R. Paige, History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630-1877, with a genealogical register 51 51 Browse Search
Brigadier-General Ellison Capers, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 5, South Carolina (ed. Clement Anselm Evans) 35 35 Browse Search
Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3 (ed. Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950.) 28 28 Browse Search
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Harvard Memorial Biographies 21 21 Browse Search
HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF MEDFORD, Middlesex County, Massachusetts, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT, IN 1630, TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1855. (ed. Charles Brooks) 18 18 Browse Search
Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and letters of Charles Sumner: volume 3 17 17 Browse Search
View all matching documents...

Browsing named entities in John G. Nicolay, A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln, condensed from Nicolay and Hayes' Abraham Lincoln: A History. You can also browse the collection for 1854 AD or search for 1854 AD in all documents.

Your search returned 7 results in 5 document sections:

gnty, and antislavery sentiment naturally demanded that it should cease. Pro-slavery statesmen, on the other hand, as persistently opposed its removal, partly as a matter of pride and political consistency, partly because it was a convenience to Southern senators and members of Congress, when they came to Washington, to bring their family servants where the local laws afforded them the same security over their black chattels which existed at their homes. Mr. Lincoln, in his Peoria speech in 1854, emphasized the sectional dispute with this vivid touch of local color: The South clamored for a more efficient fugitive-slave law. The North clamored for the abolition of a peculiar species of slave trade in the District of Columbia, in connection with which, in view from the windows of the Capitol, a sort of negro livery-stable, where droves of negroes were collected, temporarily kept, and finally taken to Southern markets, precisely like droves of horses, had been openly maintained
opulation, and the widening of his acquaintanceship, no less than his own growth in experience and legal acumen, rendered ever more important and absorbing. In 1854, he writes, his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him as he had never been bffects. Here we may again quote Mr. Lincoln's exact written statement of the manner in which he resumed his political activity: In the autumn of that year [1854] he took the stump, with no broader practical aim or object than to secure, if possible, the reelection of Hon. Richard Yates to Congress. His speeches at once atbegan the greatest war of modern times to perpetuate and spread the institution of slavery. The excitement produced by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, by the election forays of the Missouri Border Ruffians into Kansas in 1855, and by the succeeding civil strife in 1856 in that Territory, wrought an effective tra
lity of the Buchanan administration to Douglas for his part in defeating the Lecompton Constitution, and the multiplying chances against him, served only to stimulate his followers in Illinois to greater efforts to secure his reelection. Precisely the same elements inspired the hope and increased the enthusiasm. of the Republicans of the State to accomplish his defeat. For a candidate to oppose the Little giant, there could be no rival in the Republican ranks to Abraham Lincoln. He had in 1854 yielded his priority of claim to Trumbull; he alone had successfully encountered Douglas in debate. The political events themselves seemed to have selected and pitted these two champions against each other. Therefore, when the Illinois State convention on June 16, 1858, passed by acclamation a separate resolution, That Abraham Lincoln is the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas, it only recorded the well-kn
dly taking shape. Great curiosity existed whether the radical differences between its Northern and Southern wings could by any possibility be removed or adjusted, whether the adherents of Douglas and those of Buchanan could be brought to join in a common platform and in the support of a single candidate. The Democratic leaders in the Southern States had become more and more outspoken in their pro-slavery demands. They had advanced step by step from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, the attempt to capture Kansas by Missouri invasions in 1855 and 1856, the support of the Dred Scott decision and the Lecompton fraud in 1857, the repudiation of Douglas's Freeport heresy in 1858, to the demand for a congressional slave code for the Territories and the recognition of the doctrine of property in slaves. These last two points they had distinctly formulated in the first session of the Thirty-sixth Congress. On January 18, 1860, Senator Brown of Mississippi introduced into the
h no fault of his own, came out a private. He rode to the hostile frontier on horseback, and trudged home on foot. His store winked out. His surveyor's compass and chain, with which he was earning a scanty living, were sold for debt. He was defeated in his first campaign for the legislature; defeated in his first attempt to be nominated for Congress; defeated in his application to be appointed commissioner of the General Land Office; defeated for the Senate in the Illinois legislature of 1854, when he had forty-five votes to begin with, by Trumbull, who had only five votes to begin with; defeated in the legislature of 1858, by an antiquated apportionment, when his joint debates with Douglas had won him a popular plurality of nearly four thousand in a Democratic State; defeated in the nomination for Vice-President on the Fremont ticket in 1856, when a favorable nod from half a dozen wire-workers would have brought him success. Failures? Not so. Every seeming defeat was a slow s