Lincoln's Mentors

by Michael J. Gerhardt

  As they argued back and forth, Lincoln continued to work the conventions throughout the district. As the voting in each convention began to be tallied, it was clear that Lincoln had the requisite support sewn up, and Hardin grudgingly withdrew his name in February 1846. In the Whig convention on May 1, each of the district delegations pledged its vote to the nominee whom a majority of its delegates had supported. With Hardin presiding, the delegates from every district cast their votes for Lincoln. The convention then adopted a platform for supporting a strong tariff to fund internal improvements. It did not mention either the Oregon territory negotiation with Britain or the mounting tensions over Texas.

  As Lincoln was wrapping up his party’s nomination for the House, Democrats were still scrambling for a candidate. Eventually, they settled on Peter Cartwright, a Methodist preacher who was an ardent supporter of Jackson and his policies.

  Thirteen days after the Whig convention nominated Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for the House, Congress declared war on Mexico. While questions about the cost and purpose of the war were debated throughout much of the country, they were of less concern in Illinois. A number of Lincoln’s friends and associates enlisted, including both Hardin and Baker as colonels. Rather than focusing on Lincoln’s opposition to the war, Cartwright and his fellow Democrats leveled against Lincoln the same kinds of charges that Polk and the Democrats had successfully directed against Clay in the 1844 presidential election: They charged him with immorality and even infidelity, a man of no religion and no principle. Lincoln countered by traveling throughout the district, meeting voters, telling stories whenever possible, and pushing the need for a tariff to fund domestic improvements. He barely mentioned the war.

  Shortly before the election, Lincoln responded to Cartwright’s constant charges of immorality by adopting a strategy he had employed before. In Whig newspapers, he published a handbill in which he denied that he had ever been critical of religion and declared that he had great respect for it.22 In fact, Lincoln’s friends knew he had questioned religion generally and Christianity in particular, but during the election they supported the stance he was taking.

  Lincoln and Cartwright crisscrossed the district, and at one revival meeting that he was leading, Cartwright spotted Lincoln in the crowd. (Lincoln enjoyed attending opponents’ rallies, both to rattle them and to study them.) From the lectern, Cartwright pointed his finger and shouted at Lincoln, “If you are not going to repent and go to heaven, Mr. Lincoln, where are you going?” Without missing a beat, Lincoln responded, “I am going to Congress, Brother Cartwright.”23 As was true for Clay, Lincoln’s quick wit was invariably his best asset.

  In response to Cartwright’s persistent charge that he was a man of no religion and no principles, Lincoln published a handbill in league with abolitionists—who were, in Cartwright’s opinion, responsible for the unrest and turmoil throughout the nation. Instead of publicly engaging with the charge, Lincoln agreed to be interviewed by two abolitionists. They were pleased with his answers and his record defending people harboring fugitive slaves. They spread the word that he was sympathetic to their cause.

  On August 3, 1846, Lincoln won the congressional race by the largest margin that a Whig had ever captured in the district, 6,340 votes to Cartwright’s 4,829, with a smaller number going to a third-party candidate. Lincoln was finally headed to Washington.

  III

  * * *

  Only thirty-nine when he won election to the House, Lincoln was already well known as Old Abe among his friends and neighbors. For the past ten years, as he walked the path, nearly daily, from his home to his law office or the capitol, he appeared to them as a dotty old man. With his victory in hand, Old Abe was spotted yet again in the streets, mulling over the issues likely to come before him. He had to make the most of his short term, since he expected to be rotated out in two years.

  While Stuart had been especially helpful to Lincoln in securing election in the past, he was planning to run for a seat in the Illinois Senate, and—opening a breach with Lincoln that would intermittently separate them from each other for the next several years—Stuart had no time to help Lincoln ready himself for Congress. Nor did he have to. Through his eight years in the Illinois House, Lincoln had already learned what he needed to know to succeed in the U.S. House, already understood from firsthand experience and Stuart’s tutelage the importance of logrolling and working within the party system for advancement. From his law practice with Logan and his successes in campaigning for the state and national legislatures, Lincoln had developed increasing confidence in being able to tutor himself on the issues that he knew had to be mastered. He also had plenty of time to prepare himself, as there was a long hiatus between the date of his election to the House on August 3, 1846, and his swearing in more than a year later on December 6, 1847.

  The Mexican War was fought and won before Lincoln stepped into the House, but the peace had yet to be brokered, and many of the dead had yet to be buried. The losses were felt keenly in Lincoln’s world. Among the local heroes brought back to be buried in Illinois was John Hardin, who had died leading a counterattack at the Battle of Buena Vista. Many of Lincoln’s fellow Whigs in Illinois had thought Hardin, not Lincoln, had the greater promise to become a leader on the national stage. Instead, it was Lincoln who would serve from 1847 to 1849 as Illinois’s only elected Whig in the nation’s capital. Of Illinois’s representatives in the House, all seven were Democrats except for Lincoln, and the two senators, Stephen Douglas and Sidney Breese, were Democrats.

  As the sole Illinois Whig in the Thirtieth Congress, Lincoln was alone, but he had the self-assurance he needed to do the job. In July 1847, he made his first trip to Chicago as congressman-elect to speak at the River and Harbor Convention, where about 2,500 delegates, mostly Whigs, had gathered to protest Polk’s 1846 veto of an appropriations bill for rivers and harbors, most in the Great Lakes region. This would be the largest crowd Lincoln had ever addressed. They assembled under a large pavilion, about a hundred feet square, near the center of downtown Chicago. Many of the Whig Party’s most prominent leaders gathered there, including Edward Bates, a St. Louis lawyer, who was chosen as the convention president. Others in attendance were Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, a staunch critic of Jackson and an ally of Henry Clay, and two other notable New Yorkers—the political boss Thurlow Weed and his protégé, William Seward, New York’s governor from 1839 to 1842. Lincoln was undaunted, though newspapers and even some fellow Whigs made fun of his appearance. His brief speech made a small but positive impression on Greeley, who reported that “in the afternoon, Hon. Abraham Lincoln, a tall specimen of an Illinoisan, just elected to Congress from the only Whig district in the State, was called out, and spoke briefly and happily in reply to” David Dudley Field, a prominent Democrat who had braved the convention to speak against internal improvements.24

  While Lincoln’s brief speech confirmed his credentials as a Clay Whig, his mentor was not there. He was secluded at his estate in Ashland, Kentucky. The old, defeated warrior, just a few months before, had received the shattering news of the death of his son, Henry Clay Jr., in the Mexican War.

  IV

  * * *

  One question that has intrigued students of Lincoln is whether he and Henry Clay ever met in person. Historians generally think the answer is no or, if so, only briefly and in passing. There is reason to believe they might have met once, though there is better reason to think the claim that they did is suspect. In the spring prior to his move to Washington, Lincoln received a copy of a book, The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay, with an inscription written in Clay’s hand, reading “To Abraham Lincoln: With constant regard to friendship H. Clay Ashland 11 May, 1847.”25 There is no correspondence, nor any other record, indicating whether the two men had met before Clay sent him the volume; every indication is that they had not.

  Lincoln was, however, in Clay’s presence at least once. In November 1847, before Lincoln and his family
traveled to Washington, they stopped in Lexington, Kentucky, to visit Mary Todd’s family. While there, Lincoln attended a speech given by Henry Clay. Lincoln’s father-in-law, Robert Smith Todd, a former student and longtime friend of Clay’s, brought both Lincoln and Mary Todd to Clay’s speech. With Lincoln in the crowd, Clay sat on the stage next to Todd. As vice chairman of the event, Todd introduced Clay, who then gave a long-awaited speech heralding his return to the national stage. The subject was Polk’s war.

  The speech was delivered nearly nine months after Clay’s son had died during the Battle of Buena Vista. Young Clay’s death must have been on the old man’s mind as he set forth his case against the Mexican War, in what became known as the Market Street Speech, because of its location. (Clay’s bitterness over the death of his son was surely compounded by Polk’s insensitivity in not sending any condolence to the grief-stricken family.)

  Clay’s speech was remarkably long, even for him, taking more than two and a half hours to deliver.* At the outset of the speech, Clay characteristically played down the occasion by saying that it was nothing more than his civic duty as a private citizen to voice his concerns about the war. Everyone, including Lincoln, would have thought that Clay was considering, if not already committed to, another White House run. Indeed, shortly after receiving the news of his son’s death, Clay had written to a friend, “Up to the Battle of Buena Vista, I had reason to believe that there existed a fixed determination with the mass of the Whig party, throughout the U.S., to bring me forward again. I believe that the greater portion of that mass still cling to that wish, and that the movements we have seen, in behalf of [General] Taylor, are to a considerable extent superficial and limited.”26 Clay was further stung by the betrayal of his former political ally and fellow Kentucky senator John Crittenden, who was already backing Zachary Taylor in the upcoming presidential election. Lincoln did not need to know Clay’s private thoughts to know the direction of the old man’s ambitions.

  Lincoln must have listened closely to Clay’s speech. Having studied Clay’s oratory all his life, he would have quickly recognized that its structure was classic Clay, beginning with a comment on the occasion itself, a “dark and gloomy” day, for it was overcast and raining when he spoke. Clay likened the day to “the condition of our country, in regard to the unnatural war with Mexico.”27 This war, he said, was not like other wars the country had fought, even the Revolutionary War: “This is no war of defence, but one of unnecessary and offensive aggression. It is Mexico that is defending her fire-sides.”28 Clay made no direct reference to the death of his son, but rather raised a startling rhetorical question, asking, “Who have more occasions to mourn the loss of sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, than Whig parents, Whig wives and Whig brothers, in this deadly and unprofitable strife?”29 He reminded his audience that the crucial defect of the war was that it did not derive proper authorization from Congress, as it should have in the Whig conception of separation of powers, but rather from the president. “Who,” he asked, “in the free government is to decide upon the objects of a War, at its commencement, or at any time during its existence? Does the power belong to the Nation, to the collective wisdom of the Nation in Congress assembled, or is it solely vested in a single functionary of the government?”30

  Again characteristically, Clay proceeded systematically to lay out the problems with the war and its supposed rationale. First, he complained that Congress had not set forth the objective of the war as it should have. Second, he rejected the conquest of Mexico as a legitimate basis for waging war. Third, he worried that there had not yet been a settlement of the war. Clay expected the United States to be paid money for its expenses, though it was not until early the next year that the United States would receive a lot of territory and money from Mexico in exchange for ending the war. Fourth, Clay denounced “any desire, on our part, to acquire any foreign territory whatever, for the purpose of introducing slavery into it.”31 Fifth, Clay reminded his audience of the “unmixed benevolence” of turning to the project of “gradual emancipation,” which he, as a charter member of the American Colonization Society, had long advocated as a solution to the problem of slavery.32 These resolutions included a commitment: “That we do, positively and emphatically, disclaim and disavow any wish or desire, on our part, to acquire any foreign territory whatever, for the purpose of propagating slavery, or of introducing slaves from the United States, into such foreign territory.”33 Under this plan, the federal government would assist with purchasing the freedom of African American slaves and arranging for them to relocate “back to their homelands” in Africa. Clay concluded with eight resolutions designed to emphasize the right and duty of Congress to investigate the origins of the Mexican War—“to determine upon the motives, causes, and objects of any war, when it commences, or at any time during the progress of its existence.”34 This commitment was a restatement of a proposal made on August 6, 1846, by Representative David Wilmot, a Pennsylvania Democratic member of the House, to ban slavery in any of the territory acquired from Mexico in the Mexican-American War. Wilmot introduced his proposal as a rider to a $2 million appropriations bill intended for the final negotiations to settle the war. The House passed the bill on August 6, 1847, but it failed in the Senate. The proposal became known as the Wilmot Proviso. The congressman repeatedly tried to attach it as a rider to each new appropriations bill for the settlement of the war, but each time it failed in the Senate.

  Lincoln never offered an opinion, public or private, on the Market Street Speech. There are, however, reports that after the speech, he spoke briefly with Clay, who, one person alleges, invited him to dinner at his Ashland estate near Lexington. Many years later, Usher Linder, a Democrat who had sometimes practiced law with Lincoln on the circuit, recalled details of the dinner. He said that Lincoln had told him that

  though Mr. Clay was most polished in his manners, and very hospitable, he betrayed a consciousness of superiority that none could mistake. [Lincoln] felt that Mr. Clay did not regard him, or any other person in his presence, as, in any sense, on an equality with him. In short, he thought that Mr. Clay was overbearing and domineering, and that, while he was apparently kind, it was in that magnificent and patronizing way which made a sensitive man uncomfortable.35

  Sidney Blumenthal notes that Alexander McClure, a prominent Republican supporter of Lincoln’s, suggested in his biography of Lincoln that at the dinner, “Clay was courteous, but cold . . . Lincoln was disenchanted; his ideal was shattered.”36

  Clay was well known for being arrogant and full of himself (his opponents always chastised him for being elitist), but he was also renowned for being a charming host, though he might not have been that evening, given the recent death of his son, his preoccupation with the upcoming presidential election, or both. Moreover, while Linder was a friend of Lincoln’s before he entered Congress, he later became a Democratic ally of Stephen Douglas, and his characterization of Clay aligns perfectly with the Democratic critique directed successfully against Clay in the 1844 presidential campaign. Also, Linder’s recollections portray Lincoln as a simpleton who was incapable of developing nuanced appraisals of the men he was dealing with. Lincoln knew that between him and Clay the one of them who had a political future in 1847 was likely the incoming congressman from Illinois and not the former speaker. (Linder’s son fought for the Confederacy, which suggests a further affinity on Linder’s part to construct a negative image of Lincoln or the man whom he idolized, Clay.)

  Lincoln revered Clay’s oratory and career, but he never thought of Clay as perfect. At that point, in 1847, he considered Clay a three-time loser in seeking the presidency and past his prime. Lincoln was clear-eyed in his appraisal of men, not someone to be put off by the charm or demeanor of a host or ally. Clay’s speech probably confirmed that Clay’s best days were behind him; it was not Clay’s finest by a long shot. The humility seemed disingenuous, as when he proclaimed near its beginning, “I have come here with no purpose to attempt a fine spe
ech, or any ambitious oratorical display. I have brought with me no rhetorical bouquets to throw into this assemblage.” It was too late in Clay’s career to lower the crowd’s expectations on the one thing everyone knew as Clay’s greatest strength, his oratory, and his long technical critique of how Polk, not the Mexicans, had started the war likely surprised no one in attendance. Lincoln, who had closely studied Clay’s rhetoric, would have recognized the flaws in Clay’s performance.