arks a point from which it
became for thirty-four years the express ambition of the principal
American statesmen and the tacit object, of every party manager to keep
the slavery question from ever becoming again a burning issue in
politics. The collapse of it in 1854 was to prove the decisive event in
the career of Abraham Lincoln, aged 11 when it was passed.

5. _Leaders, Parties, and Tendencies in Lincoln's Youth_.

Just about the year 1830, when Lincoln started life in Illinois, several
distinct movements in national life began or culminated. They link
themselves with several famous names.

The two leaders to whom, as a young politician, Lincoln owed some sort of
allegiance were Webster and Clay, and they continued throughout his long
political apprenticeship to be recognised in most of America as the great
men of their time. Daniel Webster must have been nearly a great man. He
was always passed over for the Presidency. That was not so much because
of the private failings which marked his robust and generous character,
as because in days of artificial party issues, when vital questions are
dealt with by mere compromise, high office seems to belong of right to
men of less originality. If he was never quite so great as all America
took him to be, it was not for want of brains or of honesty, but because
his consuming passion for the Union at all costs led him into the path of
least apparent risk to it. Twice as Secretary of State (that is,
chiefly, Foreign Minister) he showed himself a statesman, but above all
he was an orator and one of those rare orators who accomplish a definite
task by their oratory. In his style he carried on the tradition of
English Parliamentary speaking, and developed its vices yet further; but
the massive force of argument behind gave him his real power. That power
he devoted to the education of the people in a feeling for the nation and
for its greatness. As an advocate he had appeared in great cases in the
Supreme Court. John Marshall, the Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835,
brought a great legal mind of the higher type to the settlement of
doubtful points in the Constitution, and his statesmanlike judgments did
much both to strengthen the United States Government and to gain public
confidence for it. It was a memorable work, for the power of the Union
Government, under its new Constitution, lay in the grip of the Courts.
The pleading of the young Webster contributed much to this.