“Once they got there, they had to fight to keep it. My Grandfather Abraham was killed by an Indian in his yard. The Spanish and British sent their agents to Kentucky, promising the settlers that if they would abandon the United States and pledge loyalty to the Spanish Empire to the south or the British Empire to the north, that the attacks by their Indian allies would stop.
“But Kentucky’s leaders told the people: ‘Stand firm. Our countrymen on the other side of the mountains will come to help us as soon as they are able. Until then we must fight to hold our lands. We will not find a better country.’
“Those Kentuckians did hold out until the United States organized itself under the Constitution and grew strong enough to send its armies across the mountains to help them.
“In time those Kentuckians prospered and the land became dense with settlement. Then the plantation owners brought in their slaves from Virginia and Tennessee. They purchased title to the best land and drove the original settlers off it. My father moved the family across the Ohio River to the country that Thomas Jefferson had so wisely set aside for free men in that great Ordinance of 1787.
“This is now all the country we have left of that which was reserved for us by the Founders. We must fight to preserve it for ourselves and for our prosperity, just as they fought so hard to preserve it for us.”
Lincoln paused as if gathering his thoughts to make another point.
“Now, in everything I have said, I do not mean to condemn the slave owners. They are no worse people than we would be were we in their place. It is the institution of slavery that leads them to commit outrageous acts violence against free men and women that no person in a slave-free country could ever be induced to commit.
“I do not believe that slavery can endure in a world that is becoming ever more civilized. Advances in machinery and communications will doom it. When each machine can do the work of a hundred men on a plantation, the Negroes will become only so much surplus labor. When the progress of science enables people to communicate with each other from afar, then the policy of keeping the Negroes in ignorant isolation from the larger world will fail. Eventually the Negroes must be liberated and set to work for wages as free men in commerce and industry, the same as Whites. The advance of civilization allows for no other course.
“By maintaining our Free State independence we not only protect the freedom of men who are already free, but we advance the day when freedom will be delivered to men who are now held in bondage. The free Negroes who live among us show by example how they prosper in freedom as Whites do. They are demonstrating that their freedom to work as free men, to live as free men, and to vote as free men is no more to be feared than is the freedom of any White person to do the same.
“I have heard some men say that they are reluctant to commit to our cause because they do not want to destroy the Union. I believe the correct way of looking at it is to recognize that the Confederates have destroyed the Union by making slavery the cornerstone of it. It is up to us to restore the Union by placing slavery on the ultimate course of extinction that our Fathers placed it on.
“I believe that if we hold firm, the Border States of Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware will abolish slavery before the current century is finished. I can see Virginia returning to its roots in freedom and eliminating slavery as Thomas Jefferson and George Washington asked the Virginia Legislature of their day to do. And I think that eventually even the states of the Deep South will see that slavery’s time has passed.
“Our United States of Free America is really the re-founding of our original Union. We will wait for the other states to free themselves and then join with us. The words ‘Free America’ will become superfluous when all the states join us in freedom! We will become just the United States of America again. We are not fighting to divide the Union, but to restore it — to restore it in the freedom to which it was born!”
12
Northern Ohio, September 30, 1861
The President and his party relaxed in the passenger car taking them back to Cleveland. The train sped along the flat landscape of Northern Ohio where the work of the harvest was at its peak.
Several hours past sunset, the land was softly illuminated by the light of the orange moon sifting through the cool autumn fog. The President had been playing a game of counting the farmers he saw in the dim light. A few were still working, but most had dropped off to sleep in their fields, too exhausted from a day of hard labor in the hazy sunshine to trek back to their farm houses. They were sleeping peaceably outdoors on a delightful night.
Lincoln smiled. This is the how the Lord meant for men to labor — working free lands with free hands and enjoying the fruits that their labor produces. Thank Heaven our fathers had the presence of mind to keep this land free from slavery. Let me not shirk from my duty to keep it free for my generation and all those that follow.
Mr. Lincoln was accompanied by Eddie Bates and Emma Brown, Lewis Schneider, and Sheriff Parker. He wanted to introduce them to Congress when he addressed the Joint Session on Friday, and then have them speak at another Republican rally in Cleveland on Saturday. Cump Sherman travelled with the President’s party too, his brother John seeking an opportunity to introduce him to Lincoln as a military advisor.
The group sat together around the fold-down table mounted sideways in the middle of the dining car. John Hay had filled the coffee pot and the tea kettle at the station while Mr. Lincoln and his guests had been speaking at the rally. He had purchased some fresh roast beef with cooked green beans and corn and biscuits at the downtown market. Mr. Hay was gratified that the tired passengers enjoyed the food and drink he had scrounged up. None needed refreshment more than his boss.
Hay had worried that Mr. Lincoln was becoming physically and mentally exhausted. The deaths of the President’s in-laws during the Partisan War in Springfield, the loss of his protégé Elmer Ellsworth at Delphi, and the passing of Stephen Douglas had deepened his melancholy. The pending renewal of hostilities in the Confederate Union War had etched his face with lines of worry.
But tonight the President’s spirits seem to be much improved. The success of the rally cheered him. It had persuaded thousands of young men to head off to Camp Dennison to enlist in the Free State Army. The camaraderie with the Heroes of Delphi raised Mr. Lincoln’s spirits even higher. Hay watched Lincoln happily slapping the table in uproarious good humor in the way that Hay hadn’t seen since those glorious days of last year’s presidential campaign. He was telling stories in his animated ways of happier days, bringing laughter to his companions as Hay had seen him do on so many occasions before the war. Even the stern man introduced to Hay as “Cump” Sherman was smiling.
The President set down his coffee cup and began speculating in a more serious tone.
“It’s interesting, isn’t it, how history so often turns on the actions of one person. If Emma hadn’t bolted out of that house, the slave raiders might very well have made off with her and Eddie to Kentucky and that would have been the end of the story. Our Republicans would have seethed with rage, but there would have been nothing we could have done about it after the fact. Most in the South and some in the North would have blamed us for protesting the raid: ‘There the Negro-lovers go stirring up trouble again.’ And we would have shut up and gone on about our business in silent humiliation.”
Mr. Lincoln looked at Emma. “You changed the course of history by your courage in bolting out of that house.”
Emma set down her cup of coffee on the table too.