of the National problem. In fact, there were thousands of voters in both parties who did not decide until November whether they would vote for Lincoln or Douglas. There was a little remnant who tried to content themselves by crying" Peace! Peace !" when there was no peace, but the vote for Bell and Everett, their candidates, showed them to be a negligible quantity.

This division in the Republican party was nowhere more marked than in Indiana. Henry S. Lane, who had come from the Whig party, represented the conservative element; Oliver P. Morton, who had been a Democrat, represented the progressive element. Happily for the party and for the State, a fusion of the two elements was effected-Mr. Lane was nominated for Governor and Mr. Morton for Lieutenant-Governor. Subsequent events justified the rumor that this nomination was the result of a "gentleman's agreement "between the two can

didates. After the election of both Governor and Lieutenant-Governor by about ten thousand majority, Mr. Lane resigned and was elected United States Senator by a Republican Legislature, and Mr. Morton became Governor.

He proved to be one of the great war Governors of the period. He was under forty years of age, a man of rare executive ability, of indomitable courage, of strong and clear convictions, and with the kind of eloquence which comes from the possession of such convictions and the ability to give them forceful expression. On the 10th of March, nearly three weeks before my arrival, he had spoken in Terre Haute at a ratification meeting, advocating squarely the Lincoln as opposed to the Douglas method, and had met the charge of being an abolitionist with characteristic frankness: "I am opposed to the diffusion of slavery. I am in favor of preserving the Territories to freedom, of encouraging, elevating, and protecting free labor; at the same time conscientiously believing that with slavery in the several States we have nothing to do and no right to interfere. If this makes me an abolitionist, then I am one, and my political enemies may make the most of it." It would have been well for the Republican party and for the country if all Republicans had possessed Governor Morton's courage and shared his convictions.

Usually in America the excitement of a campaign comes to an end on election night. The political foes of yesterday are friends to

morrow and the defeated share with the victors in rejoicing that the campaign is at an end and that business and social life can resume its normal course. It was not so in 1860. The election of Mr. Lincoln was the signal for increasing political excitement. The majority of the people in the North were dumfounded to find steps instantly taken to put in effect the pre-election threats of secession. The announcement of Mr. Lincoln's election on the evening of election day was greeted in Charleston, South Carolina, with cheers for the Southern Confederacy. The United States Judge and the United States District Attorney resigned. Their resignations were followed by the resignation of one of the United States Senators. The Legislature at once called a Convention to consider the state of the country. That the object of this Convention was to prepare for secession was well understood, though not formally avowed. There were unmistakable indications that other States were preparing to follow the lead of South Carolina.

Three

For secession and its inevitable consequences the North was ill prepared. men who were ready to meet the threatened war if it came yet confessed their dread of it. "The heavens are indeed black," wrote Senator Dawes, of Massachusetts," and an awful storm is gathering. ... I am well-nigh appalled at its awful and inevitable consequences." In every community were found Republicans who lamented that they had voted for Mr. Lincoln and frankly confessed that they would never have done so could they have foreseen the consequences. Some proposed to escape those consequences by surrender. days after the election of Mr. Lincoln Mr. Greeley wrote in the New York "Tribune :" "If the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace." Others sought to avoid the threatened war by some new form of compromise. It was variously proposed to amend the Constitution so as to give all territory south of a certain line to slavery and all north of it to freedom; to provide that slavery should never be interfered with in the Territories; to recognize State rights and deny to the Federal Government the right of coercion; to bring about the resignation of Mr. Lincoln and a new election; to abolish the office of President altogether and substitute an executive council of three; to repeal the Personal Liberty Laws of the North, which had been enacted to prevent

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But the great majority both South and North were doubtful, perplexed, anxious: not knowing what to think or which way to look for escape from impending calamity.

Prior to the election in November I do not recall that I spoke in the pulpit at all on the political issues. There were two reasons for this silence: one was my father's counsel, first to get my influence, then to use it; the other was that I did not wish to use it in favor of the election of the Republican candidate. I have never believed that the minister should be the advocate of a political party or a political candidate. He may urge temperance, but not the claims of the Prohibition party; social reform, but not the claims of the Progressive party; liberty, but not the claims of the Republican party. I do not know that I have ever departed from this principle in my pulpit utterances. I did not do so in Terre Haute. Nor was it likely that in the first few months of my ministry, a stranger among strangers, I could exert much influence on the moral issues involved. I had not that eloquence which gives the orator a power quite independently of his known character. I must secure the confidence of the community before I could even get a hearing. And this was the more important because there was little in common in our point of view. There was very little anti-slavery sentiment in Terre Haute; so little that when, two years later, a Republican orator-an officer in the Union army-was speaking at a mass-meeting in favor of enlisting the Negro in the Union cause, the sentiment which evoked the most uproarious applause was, "I hate a Nigger worse than

I hate the devil."

But when, after the election, these impractical schemes of surrender, evasion, and compromise were everywhere discussed, I thought the time had come for me to speak. I was known; I believed I was respected; I was sure I should be listened to. And I was not mistaken. On the 9th of December, the Sunday following Mr. Buchanan's Message, I preached a sermon on the condition of the country. I had at least one equipment for the task. I did not share either the common surprise or the common perplexity. The reader may remember that in 1856 I had written to my cousin, now my wife, that I did not see how war could be avoided, and I hoped that, if it came, I might have some part in the battle for freedom. The threat of disunion, therefore, did

not surprise me. Nor did it make me hesitate. For I preferred a divided country, onehalf of it free, to a united country, all of it slave. I had made up my mind that the only possible settlement of the issue was to be found in the motto: "Liberty national, slavery sectional." And I was prepared to set that principle by the side of the current proposals of compromise for the popular judgment.

Before preaching the sermon I counseled with Mr. Ryce, who was my best friend and my wisest adviser. He was a lover of peace and hated strife. He advised me against speaking upon the subject at all. There were some weighty reasons for this counsel. Such a sermon would be an innovation, even a startling innovation. Whatever might be the custom in New England, the people of Indiana were not accustomed to political sermons. Mine would be the first one ever preached in a Terre Haute church. In fact, so far as I know, I was the only minister in the town who dealt with slavery at all in the pulpit throughout the Civil War. The people of Terre Haute were loyal; but many of them were Southern in their origin and in their sympathies, and would resent any antislavery utterances. The division in the church was not ended; it might break out again at any time as indeed it did a little later. The epithet Unitarian had been applied to me but had not hurt me, because the people cared nothing for theological distinctions. But the epithet abolitionist would not be regarded so lightly. Such an utterance as I proposed would be perilous to the church and might be perilous to me. Party feeling ran very high. Lovejoy had been murdered in Illinois for his anti-slavery utterances. Anti-slavery meetings had been broken up by mobs and even practically forbidden in the East by the authorities. At the same time Mr. Ryce was careful to make it clear that neither he nor any one else in the church would attempt to interfere with my personal liberty. I had asked his advice, and he gave it to me.

It has been throughout my life my principle, not as clearly defined then as it has been since, to ask courage to tell me what to do and caution to tell me how to do it. I had left the law for the ministry partly that I might be free to minister directly to the spiritual life of the individual, partly that I might be able to take an active part in the solution of the great and, as I thought, funda

mental moral question before the community. The opportunity was given me. I could not refuse it. But my friend's counsel enabled me to speak in such fashion as secured a patient and even a somewhat sympathetic hearing. The church was crowded; the Republican paper published the sermon in full. Even the Southern Democratic paper granted to its spirit a qualified commendation. The editor had evidently anticipated something a great deal worse. A critical editorial

on the sermon he introduced as follows:

While we by no means justify ministers of the Gospel, either North or South, in occupying the pulpit on the Sabbath for the purpose of molding political opinion, we nevertheless accord to Mr. Abbott sincerity of motive, and fully believe that he deemed it his imperative duty to speak out upon the awful crisis that hangs over our beloved country. We confess that we were agreeably surprised at some of the positions he assumed. Barring two or three extreme points, the address was much more conservative than we anticipated. We will not now allude to the exceptional points, but will do so hereafter, if we deem it necessary. We will say that if the clergymen in the North, for the last six years, had discussed the slavery question with the same moderation and brotherly love that Mr. Abbott did last night, there would not be half the excitement in the country in regard to it that there is.

The state of feeling in the city on the general subject is perhaps slightly indicated by the fact that when I reached home a little after midnight, having been kept at the newspaper office correcting the proof of the sermon, I found my wife very anxious lest I had been assaulted on the street, and just preparing to sally out in a search for me. she was not easily alarmed.

And

Of this sermon I have no report. The printed report which I once had has disappeared, and any account which I might give from recollection would be untrustworthy and without value. I can only say that, on the one hand, I emphatically expressed my disbelief in the doctrines of the Garrisonian abolitionists, which I thought then and still think to have been not only impracticable but a cowardly evasion of responsibility; and, on the other hand, I declared, as I had done in the letter to my cousin printed in Chapter IV of these reminiscences, that the issue joined between North and South, union and secession, liberty and slavery, was one that could not be settled by any compromise, however sagaciously framed, but was a phase of the

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tempting to increase the attendance on the prayer-meeting by increasing the spiritual life of the church. If I were going into the pastorate again, I would not urge people to come to the prayer-meeting. I would endeavor to have one devotional meeting in the week to which persons of devotional temperament who were socially inclined would wish to come. I would seek quality, not quantity, and would prefer a dozen devout souls to a hundred who were not devout. Another lesson I learned that summer of 1860. The weekly prayer-meeting was held on Saturday evening. It seemed to me unfortunate to have all the devotional life of the church crowded into two days. As I made my pastoral calls and urged the women to come to the prayer-meeting, I discovered that they were all eager to come, but could not because Saturday night was set apart to get the children washed and the clothes laid out for Sunday. I quietly agitated for a change; there was no serious opposition; the change was made to Wednesday evening-and the attendance was no better. I then learned the difference between real reasons and good reasons-the reasons which have induced us to act and the reasons we give to others for our action. We give to others the reasons which we think will satisfy them. The mothers rightly thought I would put the welfare of the children above the welfare of the prayer-meeting. Hence the reasons they gave to me. Two years later I induced the church to run a partition across the Sunday-school room, making in one end of it two rooms connected by folding doors, one for my study, the other for a church parlor. The attendance jumped at once from fifteen or twenty to forty or fifty, sometimes a hundred. It was possible to hold a social prayer-meeting in a parlor; not possible to hold one in a lecture hall.

But

When Dr. Jewett returned to Terre Haute from the East I do not now remember. not long after his return he began a series of Sunday morning services in the Court-House where twenty-six years before he began his pastorate. Something like a score of the congregation took their hymn-books from the church and joined him in these services. I do not know whether it was by deliberate design that this movement took place almost to a day the year after my arrival to supply his former pulpit. At the same time the reports were repeated that the young man now occupying the pulpit was not orthodox; that he

had leaning's towards Unitarianism; that there was danger that he would unsettle the faith of the church; that his friends had conspired to drive off the old pastor. Where did those reports come from? Where does gossip ever come from?

Where do the weeds that spring

up in the garden bed, to the great vexation of the gardener, come from? I do not know. But the fact that they came, and that no authoritative denial was given to them, widened the breach in the church.

All men love to watch a fight, and what fights are so well worth watching as a church fight? One of the local papers rather anticipated, but mildly deprecated, a split in the church. "This," said the "Weekly Atlas," "is the third division that has taken place in this church in the past twenty years, and yet there has been no serious backset or inconvenience experienced by the remaining congregation." The "Daily Evening Journal," a Democratic, not to say Copperhead, organ, and bitterly hostile to the young Yankee preacher, whose anti-slavery utterance had earned for the church on the street the sobriquet of "damned Abolition Church," cried, St'boy !" "We attended," it said, " at the Court-House yesterday, and had the pleasure of hearing the Rev. M. A. Jewett preach a most excellent sermon. . . In his allusions to the deplorable condition of our country his remarks were characterized by the true spirit of a Christian and patriot. There was none of that blood and thunder about it which we hear occasionally from pulpit ranters and miniature Beechers. It was truly refreshing to hear him.”

So.

If this Democratic organ could have incited a church division, it would have gladly done It lacked not the will, but the power. But all intention of starting a new church was disavowed by the attendants on the CourtHouse services. The object of the movement was declared to be to provide a service for people who went to no church at all, and who could not be persuaded to go into a church, but might attend a religious meeting in the Court-House. Thus interpreted, the movement was a sort of forerunner to those Sunday evening meetings in theaters and halls which have been organized in the last ten or fifteen years in many of our towns and cities. It is almost always wise to attribute a deed which is inherently good to a good motive, and if for any deed either one of two motives is possible, to assume that the action has sprung from the better motive.

To preach in the Court-House to people who never go to church is in itself a very good deed. I assumed, and the church assumed with me, that this was the motive which inspired the Court-House services. I had learned from my father and my grandfather that it takes two to make a quarrel, and I resolved not to make one of the two. In this resolve I was thoroughly supported by my wife, who paid no attention to the prevailing gossip. When, which was not often, it got a chance to get in at one ear, it went straightway out of the other. The church took the same attitude and was inspired by the same spirit of peace and good will. I called on the members of my church who were taking an active part in the Court-House services and expressed my interest in their enterprise and my hope. for its success. I treated it as an attempt by members of the church of which I was the pastor to preach the Gospel to a class in the community which no church was reaching. Nor was there any false pretense in this. If Dr. Jewett had come to me in the outset of the enterprise, I would have given to it every encouragement and support in my power. Even if the motives of those promoting the enterprise were somewhat mixed, what mattered that? Paul had given to us, pastor and church, the counsel for this crisis, and we acted on it: "Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife; and some also of good will: ... What then? Notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretense, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice." It might not have been so easy to act on this principle, or perhaps I should rather say to maintain this spirit, if I had not been able to write at the time, "More strength and numbers have been added to our congregation, and, I think I can say, to our church, since I have come here than Dr. Jewett can possibly take away." The result was that when, at the end of three months, the Court-House services were discontinued, the members of our church and congregation came back with no sense of humiliating defeat; there were no asperities to be apologized for, no broken friendships to be reknitted, no wounded feelings to be healed. And I may add that if the experiment had proved a success, if out of it there had grown either a permanent mission or a new church, the results of this spirit would have been equally beneficial. In the one case the mission would have had the sympathy and support of the mother church; in