On January 1, 1833, Douglas left school to study law full-time on his own. Six months later, twenty years old and confident in his own abilities, he decided to leave his family to seek his fame and fortune in the “great west.” After brief stops in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Louisville, he arrived in St. Louis and called on Edward G. Bates, a former Missouri congressman, but Bates had no opportunities in his law office. On the boat Douglas had heard many fellow immigrants speak glowingly of Illinois, so he set his sights on the prairie state on the other side of the Mississippi.
In November 1833, as Lincoln worked in New Salem as postmaster and surveyor, Douglas stepped off the stage in Jacksonville, Illinois, with five dollars in his pocket. To support himself, he opened a school in nearby Winchester while he continued his law studies. In March 1834, Douglas was examined by the Illinois Supreme Court and granted a certificate to practice law. He set up office in the Jacksonville courthouse.
Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln met in Vandalia during Lincolns second term in the Illinois state legislature. Small of stature, Douglas was a powerful Democratic politician who would cross paths with Lincoln again and again in the coming decades.
Politics became his passion. He had read the writings of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Alexander Hamilton and knew well the Federalist Papers. In his first year in Illinois, he established a reputation as an able political debater. At a courthouse meeting in the spring of 1834, after several of Jacksonville’s foremost lawyers railed against President Andrew Jackson, Douglas spoke for one hour in a vigorous defense of Old Hickory and his war on the Second Bank of the United States. The crowd cheered Douglas’s effort, lifted him to their shoulders, and hailed him the “Little Giant.”
Lincoln and Douglas were both in Vandalia for the beginning of the ninth legislative session in December 1834, Lincoln as a first-time legislator, Douglas as an applicant to become the state’s attorney for the First Judicial District. If Lincoln and Douglas met, neither recorded their meeting; they were destined to meet two years later.
IN DECEMBER 1836, an expansionist fever sweeping across Illinois generated an internal improvements convention in Vandalia prior to the opening of the legislature. Lincoln had campaigned on the issue in 1832, 1834, and 1836. He now led the push for a whole new system of canals, railroads, and roads that would foster growth and development.
Public meetings up and down the state attracted farmers and businessmen demanding the improvements to better their ability to bring products to market, and newspapers added their voices of support. “It is now time TO ACT,” editorialized the Sangamo Journal. Supporters pointed out that other states were moving rapidly ahead with internal improvements and that Illinois must do the same if they were not to lose potential new citizens as they moved west. Each legislator brought to Vandalia ideas for projects that should be built in or through their district. Land speculators, hoping to make huge profits from the many proposals, traveled to Vandalia to lobby the legislature.
A few voices tried to slow the process. No studies had been done, they said. No surveys taken. What would be the cost of this bold new plan? From the beginning of his political career, Lincoln was a fervent believer in internal improvements to boost economic nationalism. Attuned to the rapid developments of the transportation revolution in neighboring states, he had a hard time acknowledging the questions and objections of colleagues concerned about the particular problems and possibilities in Illinois. He argued in the legislature that the improvements would pay for themselves. The pre-assembly convention recommended that the legislature appropriate $10 million to be financed by state bonds.
Governor Joseph Duncan, in his annual message to the legislature, cautioned that the state should provide only one-third of the requested public monies, but the legislators, afraid of private monopolies, raced forward with their plans to fund the entire cost. Lincoln feared the state would be penalized economically if it did not move ahead rapidly. The success of projects in such developed states as New York and Pennsylvania provided a precedent. Some legislators tried to point out that Illinois, a state just emerging from the frontier, did not have the money, manpower, or raw materials of the older, long-settled states. But in a time of expansive plans and hyperbolic rhetoric, not many legislators could focus on the problems when the possibilities seemed so bright.
The House Internal Improvements Committee proposed a $10 million bill for internal improvements on January 9, 1837. The biggest allocation, $3.5 million, was for an Illinois Central Railroad track from Cairo in the south to Galena and the lead mines in the north. Lincoln supported the argument that sister states were “adopting and prosecuting gigantic schemes of improvement” and it was time for “the patriot and enlightened statesmen of Illinois” to act. Governor Duncan threatened to veto the bill. John J. Hardin, a first-term Whig representative from Jacksonville, voiced his concern that the appropriation was precariously large, to no avail.
With Lincoln helping to lead the effort, the House passed the bill on January 31; the Senate followed a few weeks later. The final passage set off wild celebrations. Bonfires were built in the streets of Vandalia. Lincoln and the bill’s supporters hailed its passage as the great step forward that would enable Illinois to take its rightful place as a leading state in the West. By the next morning, people eager to acquire property crowded land offices even as the prices doubled, fueled by the prospects of so many improvements across the state.
The enthusiasm would be short-lived. The national financial panic of 1837, caused in part by unbounded speculation—especially in land—brought economic destruction to Illinois. Confidence waned. Banks suspended transactions. The value of land plunged. Some towns disappeared. Governor Duncan suggested stopping the internal improvements already approved, but Lincoln was adamant that the legislature would not curtail the various construction plans. The legislative boom and the economic bust resulted in a $10 million millstone around the necks of Illinois residents for years to come. Four years after the internal improvements package passed, the state of Illinois had a debt of $15 million, and state bonds sold at fifteen cents on the dollar.
BY THE EARLY 1830S, it had become apparent that growth in Illinois was accelerating in the central and northern parts of the state. Vandalia, although situated north of the first capital, Kaskaskia, was still located in the south. On top of this, the legislators discovered that the newly built third capitol building was already too small. They decided to find a new location for the capital. A number of cities—Alton, Peoria, Jacksonville, Decatur—-jumped into the contest. Springfield also advanced its case.
As the Whig floor leader, Lincoln, along with the Long Nine, represented the largest delegation of any county in the state. They lobbied hard for Springfield as the most central location in Illinois. This effort required all of Lincoln’s legislative skills. He added an amendment obliging the selected city to contribute $50,000 and two acres of land for the new site of state buildings. Lincoln believed the amendment would ensure Springfield’s selection as it was the only city that could afford this new stipulation. One of the Long Nine, Robert T. Wilson, said Lincoln “never for one moment despaired” when on more than one occasion “to all appearances” the bill seemed “beyond resuscitation.” The voting was contentious, with much horse trading, or railroad trading, taking place. One member, disgusted, cast his vote for Purgatory, a place that could not be found on any Illinois map. Finally, on February 28, 1837, on the fourth ballot, the House and Senate voted to establish the new capital in Springfield. Lincoln and the other members of the Long Nine invited one and all to a lavish celebration party at Ebenezer Capps’s tavern, where they consumed eighty-one bottles of champagne and plenty of cigars, oysters, almonds, and raisins.
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ALARMED ABOUT THE RISE OF ABOLITIONISM and its call for interference with the institution of slavery in the Southern states, Governor Duncan brought to the legislature memorials from Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, New York, and Connecticut. On
January 12, 1837, a resolution deplored “the unfortunate condition of our fellow men, whose lots are cast in thralldom in a land of liberty and peace,” but stated that “the arm of the General Government has no power to strike the fetters from them.” The purpose of the resolution was both to denounce the abolitionist societies and affirm “that the right of property in slaves, is sacred to the slave-holding States by the Constitution.” The resolution stated that the federal government did not have the right to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia without the “consent” of the citizens of the district. Without much debate, the legislature adopted the resolution by a vote of 77 to 6. Lincoln was one of the six who voted no, his first public stand on the issue of slavery.
Illinois, though counting itself a “free” state, was not so free in the 1830s. In the two decades after Illinois became a state in 1818, the largest number of new settlers came from the South. Slavery persisted in the popular folkways of the state despite the provisions against it in the 1818 constitution. And slavery was growing in Missouri, the state’s neighbor to the west, which shares a long border with Illinois.
As Illinois grew in population, the debate about slavery became more divisive. Immigrants from New England and New York generally settled in northern Illinois. Although they were a small minority of the total population, they had loud antislavery voices. Immigrants from Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Kentucky tended to settle in central and southern Illinois, and most were pro-slavery. But not all. Some, like Thomas Lincoln, had immigrated to Illinois precisely because they did not like slavery in their home states.
In the last days of the legislative session, with Lincoln certainly thinking of the congratulations he would be receiving in Springfield for helping to relocate the capital, he decided to enter a protest. He had already served his most successful term, but he believed he needed to restore some balance to the resolution condemning abolitionism. He wanted to voice his dissent and found a cosponsor in Dan Stone, a Whig lawyer from Springfield. Stone, a Vermonter, opposed slavery.
Lincoln and Stone’s “protest against the passage” of the already adopted resolution began, “They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.”
Central to Lincoln’s protest was shifting the emphasis on the initiative to end slavery in the District of Columbia. The original resolution stated the matter in the negative: “Resolved, that the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, against the consent of the citizens of said District without a manifest breach of good faith.”
Lincoln and Stone turned that part of the resolution upside down by stating, “They believe that the Congress of the United States has the power under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District.”
Lincoln and Stone’s protest has often been called “cautious,” but their amendment should not be underestimated. In 1837, Lincoln publicly defined slavery as both unjust and bad policy. He reversed the resolution’s intent on slavery in the District of Columbia by affirming that Congress did have the power to abolish it under the Constitution. Lincoln knew he would gain no political points in central Illinois for the elements in his protest. He made his stand, not with the majority and their willingness to admit only a negative or passive role for government, but rather on government’s positive, active role in abolishing slavery.
Twenty-three years later in his autobiographical statement of 1860, Lincoln said little about his terms in the Illinois legislature, but he paused to recall his protest, even taking pains to cite the exact pages of the Illinois House Journal in which the protest is still printed. He asked Scripps to insert the entire protest in the campaign biography, which the Chicago Tribune writer failed to do.
THE TENTH LEGISLATIVE SESSION adjourned on March 6, 1837, and Lincoln returned to New Salem. The small town was dying as other Illinois towns were rising. The Sangamon River proved to be unnavigable. In 1836, New Salem had lost its post office. It was the beginning of the end. Many residents simply picked up their houses and stores and moved them two miles downstream to the newer town of Petersburg.
While living in New Salem, Lincoln had tested the waters of both politics and law and found that he could navigate both with strength and dexterity. At age twenty-eight, he left New Salem a profoundly different young man from the one who had arrived just six years earlier.
He was ready to move to Springfield, which he had been instrumental in designating as the new capital of Illinois. With his political service moving ahead, and about to become a full-fledged lawyer, he looked forward to the next chapter in his life.
Lincoln moved to Springfield in 1837 and would spend much of his life in the law offices, courts, and stores on this square. The city grew in stature and population when the capital of Illinois moved there from Vandalia in 1839.
CHAPTER 6
Without Contemplating Consequences 1837–42
IF YOU WOULD WIN A MAN TO YOUR CAUSE, FIRST CONVINCE HIM THAT YOU ARE HIS SINCERE FRIEND.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Temperance address, Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1842
N THE MORNING OF APRIL 15, 1837, ABRAHAM LINCOLN SADDLED a borrowed horse, packed all his possessions into two saddlebags, and rode twenty miles into Springfield. He dismounted in front of Abner Ellis’s general store at 103 South Fifth Street, one of the buildings that crowded the west side of Springfield’s town square. Lincoln had worked for Ellis for a short time in his New Salem store. He entered the Springfield store, put his saddlebags on the counter, and inquired of a young clerk about a mattress, blankets, sheets, and pillow for a single bed. Joshua F. Speed, a blue-eyed, slender man who was actually one of the proprietors, walked about the store with Lincoln as he looked at bedding supplies and noted the costs.
They had never met, but Speed knew a good deal about Lincoln, who had already made a name for himself as an Illinois politician. Speed had been present the previous July when Lincoln, running for a second term in the state legislature, had participated in a candidates’ debate. Speed may have also read the April 15, 1837, Sangamo Journal, which announced that “J. T. Stuart and A. Lincoln, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, will practice, conjointly, in the Courts of this Judicial Circuit. Office No. 4, Hoffman’s Row, upstairs.”
As Lincoln and Speed returned to the front counter with the goods, Speed took his pencil and slate and calculated the costs of the bedding to be seventeen dollars.
Lincoln responded, “It is probably cheap enough; but I want to say that cheap as it is I have not the money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then.” After a long pause, he continued, “If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all.”
Speed was struck by the sadness of the man before him. “I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my life.” He liked the broad-shouldered young lawyer and offered a solution. “The contraction of so small a debt, seems to affect you so deeply, I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt.” Speed suggested, “I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”
“Where is your room?” Lincoln inquired.
“Upstairs.” Speed directed Lincoln to the stairs that led to the second floor above the store. Silently, Lincoln picked up his saddlebags and proceeded up the stairs.
In a few minutes Lincoln came back down with a different countenance. He declared, “Well Speed I’m moved.”
THE SPRINGFIELD TO WHICH Lincoln arrived in the spring of 1837 was an unprepossessing town of twelve or thirteen hundred inhabitants. Less than twenty years old, it was first settled by trappers and traders in 1818 and had become the seat of Sangam
on County in 1821. Local boosters called the county, which was half the size of Rhode Island, “the Empire County” because of its great expanse and natural wealth.
Most of the citizens of Springfield lived in small frame houses. A few impressive two-story brick residences stood out, even as a number of log cabins remained from pioneer times. In the center of town stood a two-story brick courthouse, with small buildings—mostly stores—lining the square around it. On July 4, 1837, two and a half months after his arrival, Lincoln witnessed the laying of the cornerstone at the new Greek Revival state capitol building. He heard an eloquent dedication address by lawyer and politician Edward Dickinson Baker.
An 1836 census revealed that there were nineteen dry goods stores in Springfield, six retail grocery stores, two clothing stores, two shoe stores, and four hotels. Among the craftsmen were tinsmiths, tailors, hatters, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and one barber. The young town boasted eighteen doctors and eleven lawyers who served a wide territory embracing a number of counties.
The town’s wide streets were not paved. In the wintertime men and women might sink into mud, while in the summer passing carriages and wagons raised billows of dust. Cows, hogs, and chickens meandered through the streets contesting for the right of way. “Hog nuisance” was one of Springfield’s greatest irritants. Hog holes greeted residents on nearly every street. The porkers roamed everywhere and citizens debated whether the hogs’ filth or constant grunting was the greater annoyance.
When the Illinois legislature voted to make Springfield the new state capital in February 1837, the city began to hum with energy and excitement. Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamo Journal, wrote of the town’s new prospects. “The owner of real estate sees his property rapidly en hancing in value; the merchant anticipates a large accession to our population and a corresponding additional sale for his goods; the mechanic already has more contracts offered him for building and improvement than he can execute; the farmer anticipates, in the growth of a large and important town, a market for the varied products of his farm.” Springfield’s citizens, including Abraham Lincoln, believed the new capital’s best days lay ahead.
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