Lincoln, following Clay’s lead, focused on Polk’s inconsistent, disingenuous statements about the objectives of the war and particularly for indemnifying the conflict. “How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream, is the whole war part of his late message!” Lincoln exclaimed rhetorically.59 While Clay’s Mexican War speech lacked his usual caustic asides or analogies, Lincoln inserted his relentlessly: “The President is resolved under all circumstances to have full territorial indemnity for the expenses of the war; but he forgets to tell us how we are to get the excess after those expenses shall have surpassed the value of the whole of the Mexican territory.”60 Lincoln continued, “So, again, he insists that the separate national existence of Mexico, shall be maintained; but he does not tell us how this can be done after we shall have taken all her territory. Lest the questions I here suggest be considered speculative merely, let me be indulged a moment in trying to show they are not.”61
But here Lincoln had gone too far, undoubtedly emboldened with the verbal thrashings he had been using in campaigns over the preceding decade. The harsh attack on character was a tendency Lincoln indulged but had to break or his prospects for future office might suffer. In trying to outdo Clay in the chamber where he served for eleven years, almost all of which were as speaker, Lincoln managed to do the opposite—lose crucial support back home. He was already thinking, early in his term, of retaining the office “if nobody wishes to be elected,” but he squandered his chance by insulting his Democratic friends who backed Polk and by denouncing a war many of his own constituents supported.62 Nevertheless, to his credit, any loss in popularity back home did not deter him from speaking out.
Lincoln also stuck with the oratory and humor that got him to the House. Just as Clay often did, Lincoln routinely incorporated stories into his speech to illustrate his points, stories that he must have tested on his friends in the boarding house and the House post office. (Mrs. Spriggs’s home offered him a similar opportunity in Washington as he had back in Springfield where he roomed with friends and allies.) Lincoln remembered to work the stories into his speech:
I know a man, not very unlike myself, who exercises jurisdiction over a piece of land between the Wabash and the Mississippi; and yet so far is this from being all there is between those rivers, that it is just one hundred and fifty-two feet wide, and no part of it much within a hundred miles of either. He has a neighbor between him and the Mississippi—that is, just across the street, in that direction—whom, I am sure—he could neither persuade nor force to give up his habitation; but which, nevertheless, he could certainly annex, if it were to be done, by merely standing on his own side of the street and claiming it, or even sitting down and writing a deed for it.63
He inserted another analogy to underscore the president’s duplicity: “I have sometimes seen a good lawyer, struggling for the client’s neck, in a desperate case, employing every artifice to work round, befog, and cover up, with many words, some point arising in the case, which he dared not admit, and yet could not deny.”64 Lincoln concluded by asserting that “after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us that, as to the end, he himself has even an imaginary conception. As I have said before, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man.” In these partisan broadsides, Lincoln was delivering in plain, simple, direct language the essence of the problem before the nation, a president who lied, and was vindictive and out of his depth.
In some ways, Lincoln was repeating the mistakes of his Lyceum Address, trying too hard to impress his audience through volume and parlance, and thus having trouble finding the right tone. In a paragraph that later came to haunt him, Lincoln told the House:
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by the old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.65
As Michael Burlingame explains, “Lincoln may have been trying to curry favor with Southern Whigs resentful of Northern congressmen, like John Quincy Adams, who had denied the legitimacy of the Texas revolution of 1836.”66 Among those closely listening was his friend Alexander Stephens, who was already helping Zachary Taylor, a fellow Southerner and the hero of the Mexican War, win the Whig Party’s nomination for president.
Despite Lincoln’s oratorical growing pains, Stephens, thinking back to that speech and others Lincoln delivered in the House, said, “Lincoln always attracted and riveted attention of the House when he spoke,” because “his manner of speech as well as thought was original.”67 It might have been Lincoln’s effort to make his speech plainer, less adorned with the high-sounding rhetorical flourishes of Henry Clay, that captured listeners’ attention. In Stephens’s judgment, Lincoln “had no model.”68 In fact, Lincoln had his models; he just did not follow them robotically or thoughtlessly.
Certainly on the policy front, Lincoln followed Clay in supporting “compensated emancipation,” the American Colonization Society’s goal of purchasing the freedom of African American slaves and transporting them back to the countries of their origins.69 This plan was intended to compensate the Southern slave owners but did not include any provision to compensate the people enslaved for their labor or suffering. Nor did it provide an option for the enslaved in America to become citizens or to obtain any of the property they worked to build. Yet Lincoln did follow Clay, as well as Giddings and Wilmot, in opposing the extension of slavery. Historian Kenneth Winkle notes that, in “his first year in Congress, Lincoln’s voting record on slavery adhered closely to the statement of principles that he had enunciated a decade earlier,” as a member of the Illinois house and on the hustings helping Stuart, other Whigs, and of course his own elections. “He supported every antislavery measure that came before the House, most of which called for the abolition of slavery or the slave trade in the District of Columbia.”70 Though Giddings thought Lincoln somewhat “timid” in opposing slavery in his early days in the House, Lincoln joined in voting to remove from the agenda and table all the pro-slavery measures.71 He was a consistent supporter of Whigs’ efforts to stop slavery from spreading westward.
However, in the second year of his term, Lincoln broke with his friends Giddings and Wilmot, who were plotting to “blow the Taylor party sky-high.”72 The two men brooked no compromise on slavery, whereas Lincoln, by temperament, training, and emulation of Clay, favored compromise on this most difficult, divisive issue. In the judgment of Giddings and Wilmot, slavery was immoral and therefore had to be stopped. Lincoln knew it was wrong, but as a pragmatist, like Clay, he had not concluded that law and morality must be one and the same in this case. He saw the law more as a policy to be incrementally walked back. It might be less than perfect but could be (re)shaped, step-by-step, into something better with the support and consensus of the voting public.
Giddings was disappointed that Lincoln had voted with a majority of the House to table a motion to abolish the slave trade altogether in the District of Columbia. Lincoln went against Giddings again shortly thereafter, but this time he had Wilmot on his side, in opposing an initiative introduced by Giddings to require a vote to decide the fate of slavery in the District of Columbia. Again, Lincoln was on the winning side. His preference when torn between following Clay and extremists, like his housemates, was to follow Clay, who regarded the “extension” of slavery as the most immediate problem facing the country. Indeed, after returning to Congress in 1848, “Lincoln never again voted to support discussion of abolition in the District.” He did support the Wilmot Proviso, though not as much or as oft
en as he claimed.73
Another inspiration for Lincoln was not far from his seat in the back of the House—John Quincy Adams, the former president and longtime ally of Clay who was now in his seventeenth year in Congress. Adams had made a mess of his presidency by not caring to rotate out of his administration disloyal Democrats who backed Jackson or his initiatives. (He did not take the time and did not have the temperament or interest to do so.) Adams was a staunch critic of slavery and repeatedly condemned the Mexican War as being waged by slaveholders so they could extend slavery into the territories. Adams agreed with Lincoln’s vigorous attacks on Polk and the war.
On February 21, 1848, in the midst of a debate on honoring army officers who had served in the Mexican War, Adams collapsed at his seat from a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Because Lincoln sat in the farthest row in the back, he was near where Adams fell, and he likely was among the first House members who rushed to the former president’s aid. Adams died two days later. Speaker Winthrop acknowledged the political alliance between Lincoln and Adams by naming Lincoln as a member of the House committee responsible for making the arrangements for the funeral.
Three days later, on February 24, 1848, Congress held a joint meeting of the House and the Senate to honor Adams. Lincoln, Stephens, and Howell Cobb, who would soon become the speaker, were among the House members present, while Jefferson Davis, Hannibal Hamlin, and Andrew Johnson were among the senators attending. Stephen Douglas was there, too, having entered the Senate as Illinois’s newest senator less than three months after Lincoln had been sworn into the House. Lincoln, John Calhoun, Thomas Hart Benton, and Chief Justice Roger Taney were among the pallbearers. Clay was unusually silent, though he and Adams had long been political allies and Clay had served with distinction as his secretary of state, not to mention being the man whose support gave the presidency to Adams in 1824. Adams was one of the few people Lincoln met who had known the Founders personally. Adams had believed that the principles of the Declaration of Independence were the foundation of the Constitution and that slavery violated those principles, and, among those carrying him to the Congressional Cemetery to be laid to rest, only Lincoln was in the position to pick up the mantle Adams would no longer carry.
VI
* * *
From the moment Lincoln entered the House of Representatives, he was immersed in the 1848 presidential election, as was nearly every other member of Congress. Joshua Giddings described it as “a President-making Congress,” because the upcoming contest overshadowed everything else being done in the House.74 Lincoln had not backed a winner in a presidential election since William Henry Harrison in 1840; he was desperate to do so now, and it was clear to him who could win this time around (Zachary Taylor)—and who could not (Clay). Even the formerly staunch Jacksonian Duff Green backed Taylor. Green told Lincoln that Taylor would have the support of not only the Whigs but also Democrats who, like himself, had preferred Calhoun over Jackson because of Calhoun’s much stronger support for the rights of states over the federal government on questions relating to slavery. Lincoln was also approached by John J. Crittenden, one of Kentucky’s two Whig senators and a longtime friend of Clay’s. Crittenden had frayed their relationship when he backed Taylor early for the 1848 presidential election. Crittenden had served as a member of both the House and the Senate and as attorney general for presidents Harrison and Tyler. He was governor-elect of Kentucky in 1848 but was promoting Taylor this time, to Clay’s never-ending condemnation. Even though Clay came to Washington in 1848 to solicit support for yet another run, Lincoln, too, had already cast his lot with Taylor.
In fact, Lincoln was a Taylor man before he arrived in Washington. On August 30, 1847, Whig leaders, who were attending a state constitutional convention, gathered at the home of Ninian W. Edwards (married to Stuart’s younger partner) to discuss the upcoming presidential campaign. Lincoln explained to the group that the purpose of the meeting was to choose “some other man than Henry Clay as the standard bearer of the Whig party.” Lincoln suggested Taylor was the man and urged “the necessity of immediate action,” because, “if the Whigs did not take Taylor for their candidate” for president, then “the Democrats would,” because Taylor had appeal as a war hero. If this sounded as if victory was the main thing that mattered to Lincoln, it was, because that is what he had learned by watching Clay repeatedly fail in his bids for the White House. Lincoln reportedly told the group that “the Whig party had fought long enough for principle, and should change its motto to success.”75
After the Mexican War, Taylor was often compared to Washington and Jackson, which boded well for his chances, but he also differed from them in important ways. He bore little physical resemblance to either of them; both were tall, while Taylor was only five eight, with a thick, powerfully built frame, long arms, short bowed legs, and an angular face. He was not known for his eloquence, but his men adored him for his candor and courage under fire. From the time he had become a captain and commander of Fort Knox in Kentucky, he developed a knack for outmaneuvering the enemy. In the War of 1812, Taylor led the defense of Fort Johnson and the first land victory of the war and thereby earned Jackson’s respect and gratitude. More than thirty years later, he continued to lead his troops successfully against the odds. Washington had not only been the commanding general of the army but the presiding officer at the U.S. Constitutional Convention. Jackson had at least been a member of both the House and Senate, a judge, a member of his state’s constitutional convention, and an experienced politician, not to mention a three-time nominee for president. Taylor had had no career other than the military (except as an occasional land speculator and owner of a large plantation).
Taylor was among the first to acknowledge that he had never been involved in politics, indeed had never bothered with it before. The absence of any record, particularly any that indicated affinity for the Whig Party, turned off party leaders early in the campaign. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana said that he expected Taylor would have no success among Northern Whigs; Senator Willie Mangum of North Carolina agreed.76
One of the bonds between Lincoln and Stephens was their shared confidence that Taylor would win the presidency in 1848. Stephens liked the fact that Taylor was a slaveholder and was therefore expected to be sympathetic to the interests of slaveholders, while Lincoln found Taylor’s apolitical history appealing: he could not be attacked, as Clay had been, for shifting positions to suit the current needs, but he could instead be sold as being above politics. Together, Stephens and Lincoln formed the first Congressional Taylor Club, which was dominated by Southerners. They called themselves the Young Indians, corresponded with Whigs around the country, and gave speeches on behalf of Taylor, both on the floor of the House and wherever else they were needed and could go.77 The Young Indians agreed that the fact that Taylor had not been a lifelong politician distinguished him from Clay as well as Polk or whomever else might become the nominee of the Democratic Party. Lincoln and Stephens worried that Polk might reconsider serving for only a single term, but they believed that Taylor’s record made him a more compelling figure than either Clay or Polk.
The Young Indians shared plenty of advice with Taylor, perhaps too much—Taylor hated being lectured to and treated as though he knew nothing of the world. Lincoln suggested that Taylor should announce his intention to endorse a national bank if Congress were to pass a bill establishing one, recommend a higher protective tariff to fund internal improvements, pledge not to use his veto power, and seek to acquire no territory from Mexico “so far South, as to enlarge and aggravate the distracting question of slavery.”78 In April 1848, Taylor made the decision to publicly identify himself as a Whig, then went further to denounce wars of conquest (even agreeing that the Mexican War had been unconstitutional) and proclaim his willingness to sign Whig economic measures into law if they were enacted by Congress.
At the Whig national convention held in Philadelphia on June 7, 1848, Lincoln attended as a delegate for Taylor. It was the quickes
t nominating convention in history. Conventions usually lasted a few days, but this one met for only a single day, choosing Taylor as its candidate for president on the fourth ballot. Clay finished a distant second. The Whigs endorsed no platform after the delegates recognized that Taylor could be hurt only if he allowed himself to be pinned down on the issues. The delegates chose a longtime faithful Whig, New York congressman Millard Fillmore, as their vice presidential candidate.
All of this was in dramatic contrast to the Democratic convention a month before. Polk’s strategy not to include presidential hopefuls in his administration worked relatively well for maintaining unity and support within that circle, but it did not help the Democrats. Polk’s determination to serve only a single term left the incumbent out of the 1848 presidential election and no obvious successor. In the end, the Democratic Party settled on Lewis Cass, who had served as a brigadier general in the War of 1812, governor of the Michigan Territory, Jackson’s secretary of war, and Polk’s floor leader for three years in the Senate. The nomination split the party. Cass was a strong proponent of popular sovereignty—the notion that each state’s voters should decide for themselves whether their states would be slave or free, but Democrats who opposed slavery opted to back Martin Van Buren, who had emerged as the presidential candidate for the new Free Soil Party, formed as an alternative to the Whigs and the Democrats after the latter refused to endorse the Wilmot Proviso at their convention. Recoiling from their party’s endorsement of popular sovereignty, the radical faction known as Barnburners (who opposed extending slavery) joined with antislavery Whigs and members of the Liberty Party, which had supported abolition, to form the new party. Its major principle was steadfast opposition to the extension of slavery into the Western territories.
Lincoln's Mentors Page 15