A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln purchased a wedding ring at Chatterton’s Jewelry Store on the west side of the town square. He had the ring inscribed “Love is Eternal.” Around noon, Lincoln asked fellow Springfield lawyer James H. Matheny to be his best man. Mary hurried to ask her cousin “Lizzie” Todd and her good friend Julia Jayne to stand up with her. Elizabeth Edwards, fretting about what food to provide, sent out to Dickey’s, Springfield’s only bakery, for gingerbread and beer, and later decided to bake a cake, which did not turn out well.

  At seven o’clock on a rainy, tempestuous evening, the thirty-three-year-old Lincoln and the twenty-four-year-old Mary took their places in front of the fireplace of the Edwardses’ parlor. On the mantel two lamps were lit. The great difference between their heights, he an angular six feet four inches, and she barely five feet two inches, was striking. Mary wore a white muslin dress skirt. The Reverend Dresser, dressed in the vestments of the Episcopal Church, led the wedding service from the Book of Common Prayer. Abraham and Mary exchanged their vows, pledging themselves to each other. Saying “With this ring I thee wed,” Lincoln slid the band on Mary’s finger.

  ONE WEEK AFTER Lincoln’s wedding, he wrote to his friend Sam Marshall, an attorney in Shawneetown, Illinois, concluding his letter, “Nothing new here, except my marrying, which to me, is a matter of profound wonder.”

  From now on, Lincoln’s life would be like the three-legged stool that he had made as a boy in Indiana. The three legs gave the stool stability; if one leg were ever shortened or lengthened, the balance could become precarious. In the first leg of his adult life, Lincoln found success in politics; in the second leg, he established himself as a lawyer; in the third leg, he entered into marriage. The challenge that lay ahead would be how Lincoln could balance on all three legs as he reached for higher political office.

  This first known photograph of Abraham Lincoln was made by Nicholas H. Shepherd in his daguerreotype store on the Springfield town square. Lincoln’s muscular hands reveal his past, but his dress points to his future as a congressman.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Truth Is, I Would Like to Go Very Much 1843–46

  LET THE PITH OF THE WHOLE ARGUMENT BE “TURN ABOUT IS FAIR PLAY.”

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Letter to Benjamin F. James, editor, Tazewell Whig, December 6, 1845

  DOOR TO LARGER POLITICAL SERVICE UNEXPECTEDLY OPENED for Abraham Lincoln at the beginning of 1843. John Todd Stuart, his former law partner who had represented the Third Congressional District as the first Whig congressman from Illinois, announced that he would not seek a third term in the House of Representatives. Lincoln, having declined in the previous year to run for a fifth term in the state legislature, eagerly stepped forward to present his credentials for Congress.

  When Lincoln arrived in Illinois in 1830, the state was still entitled to only one representative, the same as when it achieved statehood in 1818. By 1833, with rising immigration, the number increased to two, and then three in 1835. For the elections of 1843, Illinois would have seven seats. The new Seventh Congressional District would be made up of eleven counties, the majority of the population coming from Sangamon County.

  The Whigs believed they could win the new Seventh District. Three men—John J. Hardin, Edward D. Baker, and Abraham Lincoln—all young lawyers, veterans of the Black Hawk War, and friends in the Illinois legislature, now became rivals for the Whig nomination to Congress. Everyone knew that winning the Whig nomination would be tantamount to winning the general election. The political race was on.

  —

  JOHN J. HARDIN, one year younger than Lincoln, was born in 1810 into a prominent political family in Frankfort, Kentucky. He graduated from Transylvania University in Lexington, studied law with Chief Justice John Boyle of the Kentucky Supreme Court, and entered the legal profession in 1831. That same year, Hardin moved to Illinois, setting up a law practice in Jacksonville, the county seat of Morgan County. Tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, Hardin had a bold face that reflected his determined personality. He was an excellent speaker, even though he had a slight speech impediment. He served in the Black Hawk War in 1832. First elected to the state legislature in 1836, he gave up his seat in 1842, the same year that Lincoln stepped down. As a fellow Whig, Hardin had actively opposed Lincoln on the internal improvements legislation. As a personal friend, Hardin had attempted to stop the duel between Lincoln and James Shields.

  Edward D. Baker, two years younger than Lincoln, was born in London, England, and immigrated to the United States with his family in 1816. Baker lived in Philadelphia until 1825, when his family moved to British socialist Robert Owens’s utopian community in New Harmony, Indiana. Later that same year, they settled in Illinois, first in Belleville and then in Carrollton. In 1835, Baker opened a law office in Springfield. Stunningly handsome and tall, with blue eyes, Baker was an inspiring if impetuous person. He was a lay minister in the Disciples of Christ Church, a denomination formed in 1832 from two revival streams, “Christian” and “Disciples,” which aimed to restore New Testament Christianity. Baker’s preaching experience prepared him to be a persuasive orator at Whig political rallies. He was elected to the state legislature in 1837 and to the state senate in 1840. Whig politics brought Baker and Lincoln together as kindred spirits.

  John J. Hardin, a talented lawyer and politician from Jacksonville, counted himself as one of Lincoln’s friends but became his opponent for the Whig nomination to Congress in 1843.

  Lincoln thought so much of Whig politician Edward D. Baker that he named his second son Edward after his good friend. Baker and Lincoln vied for the support of the Sangamon County Whigs in the run-up to the congressional election of 1843.

  IN HIS CAMPAIGN for Congress, Lincoln employed an aggressive multi-pronged strategy. Months before the election, he began writing Whig friends about his congressional aspirations. On February 14, 1843, he wrote Richard S. Thomas, fellow lawyer and active Whig from Virginia, Illinois. “Now if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don’t want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much.” Lincoln’s political ambition, muted in his first races for the state legislature, became more direct and visible when he decided to run for Congress.

  On March 4, 1843, the Whigs published an “Address to the People of Illinois,” signed collectively by five politicians, including Lincoln, who likely penned it. Who else but Lincoln would have pled for political action by appealing to Aesop, “that great fabulist and philosopher,” and to Jesus, “he whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers,” who “declared that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand’ ”? The campaign circular concluded, “At every election, let every whig act as though he knew the result to depend upon his action.”

  In advocating a convention system for nominating candidates, Lincoln moved to the front rank of Whigs. He knew the Democrats had advanced their party’s interests in recent years in part because of their adoption of a convention system, which ensured that the party would unite behind one candidate rather than divide its votes among several candidates. Many Whigs had resisted a convention system because they feared party bosses would easily manipulate it, putting forward candidates who were not the choice of the people. But Lincoln could see that a convention system could help Whigs at both the state and national level. The first nominating convention for the new Seventh District was scheduled to be held on May 1, 1843.

  As the convention approached, two difficulties clouded Lincoln’s candidacy. First, his opponents charged that as a result of his recent marriage to Mary Todd, he was now a candidate of the wealthy and influential. These detractors accused Lincoln of being a member of “the Junto,” a group of prominent business and political leaders in Springfield. Lincoln’s new brother-in-law Ninian Edwards was also a member of the Junto. Edwards’s aristocratic airs did not go over well with the Whigs, and Lincoln became guilty by association. Lincoln comment
ed on the irony of this in a letter to Martin S. Morris, a delegate from Menard County. “It would astonish if not amuse the older citizens to learn that I (a strange, friendless, uneducated, penniless boy, working at ten dollars per month) have been put down as the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.”

  A second problem was the issue of religion. It was well known that Lincoln was not a member of any church. Mary attended the Episcopal Church, viewed by many as the church of the wealthy. Baker, on the other hand, was an active member of the Disciples of Christ Church and had become known for his spellbinding lay sermons. The Whigs had always taken pride in their affirmation of Protestant Christian values. They criticized Democrats for either having no religious faith or having the wrong faith, by which they meant the Catholic faith.

  In his letter to Morris, Lincoln wrote, “There was the strangest combination of church influence against me.” He said that Mary had relatives in both the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, and that often “I had been set down as either the one or the other.” But lately, he complained, “it was everywhere contended that no ch[r]istian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church, was suspected of being a deist, and had talked about fighting a duel.” He went on to tell Morris that Baker was not the cause of his problems. “I only mean that those influences levied a tax of a considerable per cent, upon my strength throughout the religious community.” Lincoln’s letter points to the role of religion in American politics in Lincoln’s day.

  Whigs from across Sangamon County met for the first step in the nominating process on March 20, 1843. The Baker followers arrived early at the statehouse in Springfield and managed to outmaneuver the Lincoln supporters. After the first ballots, Baker led. In the afternoon, the Baker supporters asked Lincoln, in the name of party unity, to withdraw his name, for it had become obvious that he would not win.

  But then an odd thing happened. The group wanted Lincoln to become the chairman of the Sangamon County delegation. He tried to decline, but they persisted, and Lincoln, an early advocate of the convention system, found it difficult to say no. And so it was that Lincoln arrived in the morning a candidate for Congress and left in the evening chairman of a delegation pledged to Baker. Lincoln, able to see the humor in any situation, wrote to Speed, “In getting Baker the nomination, I shall be fixed a good deal like a fellow who is made a groomsman to a man who has cut him out and is marrying his own dear gal.”

  LINCOLN JOINED WHIGS from across the district who assembled for the convention at the Tazewell County Courthouse in Pekin on May 1. Lincoln arrived at the head of the Baker delegation. He knew he had lost his bid to be elected in 1843, but he had not lost his ambition to serve in Congress.

  John J. Hardin won the Whig nomination for Congress. At this point Lincoln stood and urged the convention to adopt a resolution endorsing Baker as “a suitable person to be voted for by the Whigs of the district” in the succeeding election. The district convention adopted his motion by a vote of 18 to 14. In effect, the delegates were agreeing that Hardin should serve only a single term. Lincoln argued for a principle of rotation, a practice already in place in many states. The agreement, in spirit if not in letter, would hopefully assure Lincoln the nomination after Baker.

  The Whig convention to select their candidate for Congress in 1843 was held at the Tazewell County Courthouse in Pekin. Lincoln lost the nomination to Hardin, but suggested a rotation system whereby first Edward Baker and then he would be assured nomination as the candidates for future terms.

  Lincoln left Pekin on good terms with Baker, but in disagreement with Hardin about the principle of rotation. Ten days later, Lincoln, having heard that Hardin had some doubts “whether the whigs of Sangamon will support [him] cordially,” wrote to Hardin. “You must at once, dismiss all fears on that subject. We have already resolved to make a particular effort to give you the largest majority possible in our county.” He sought to reassure Hardin. “We have many objects for doing it. We make it a matter of honor and pride to do it; we do it, because we love the whig cause; we do it, because we like you personally.”

  On Election Day, Lincoln voted for the offices of justice of the peace and constable, but for no other candidates. Since voting was still done by voice, Lincoln’s vote became known. He did not vote for Hardin or any of the Whig candidates for county and state offices. An explanation was never offered. Hardin won the seat for Congress in the new Seventh District, receiving a majority of 504 votes in Sangamon County.

  THE CONGRESSIONAL CAMPAIGN of 1843 began just as Abraham and Mary Lincoln started their married life together. They rented one room at the Globe Tavern, a two-story plain wooden hotel on the north side of Adams Street, for four dollars a month, including board. The Lincolns lived in a cramped eight-by-fourteen-foot room on the second floor and took their meals in a common room with both long-term boarders and hotel guests. A gathering place for Whig politicians, the Globe was noisy day and night, in part because the hotel doubled as the main office for the stage lines serving Springfield. A bell rang at odd hours announcing the arrival of a stage.

  The Lincolns’ first child, Robert Todd Lincoln, named after Mary’s father, was born on August 1, 1843, nine months after their wedding. They called him Bob. The joy of his birth took some of the sting out of losing the nomination. After the baby’s birth, Lincoln began addressing his wife as “Mother.” She called him, in Victorian fashion, “Mr. Lincoln.”

  Shortly after Robert’s birth, Abraham and Mary rented a frame cottage at 214 South Fourth Street for $100 per year. This three-room residence was but a way station on the road to purchasing a house. Lincoln, now making about $1,500 a year as an up-and-coming lawyer and working hard to retire the last of his “National Debt” from his New Salem days, began looking for a permanent home.

  Early in 1844, Abraham and Mary purchased their first home, the very same one-and-a-half-story frame house at Eighth and Jackson where Lincoln had called on the Reverend Henry Dresser on the day of their wedding sixteen months earlier. Lincoln agreed to pay Dresser $1,200 in cash plus the transfer of a lot immediately west of the public square that Lincoln and his law partner Stephen T. Logan had acquired together two years earlier.

  Abraham, Mary, and nine-month-old Bob moved into their new home on Friday, May 3, 1844. What mixed emotions this event must have brought. Abraham’s mind may have wandered back to the many places he had lived over the past thirteen years, none of which he could call home. Mary might have remembered the grand brick homes she had lived in while growing up in Lexington, Kentucky, or the magnificent Springfield home of her sister and brother-in-law, Elizabeth and Ninian Edwards, where she had lived for three years. This new home was far less than anything she had known before, while for Lincoln it was far more.

  The house, situated on a slight elevation, appeared a bit higher than some of the neighboring homes. Built in a Greek Revival style, it was typical of many of the newer Springfield homes and located a mere seven blocks from Springfield’s center and Lincoln’s law office.

  Since houses were not numbered in Springfield until 1873, they were usually identified with nameplates on the front door. The front door of the Lincoln home bore a simple black doorplate inscribed with silvered Roman characters: “A. Lincoln.”

  THE NEW HOUSE would remain the Lincoln family’s center for the next seventeen years. A second child, Edward Baker Lincoln, named after Edward Baker, Lincoln’s friend and political colleague, was born on March 10, 1846.

  Harriet Chapman, the daughter of Lincoln’s stepsister Sarah Elizabeth Johntson Hanks, came to the Lincoln home shortly after they moved in, working as a hired girl for a year and a half. She reported how much Lincoln enjoyed reading, especially aloud. His typical posture was to “turn a Chair down on the floor and put a pillow on it and lie there for hours and read.” She added her voice to the general observation that Lincoln was “remarkably fond of Children.”

  Mary was also an avid reader. She, too, typically read
aloud, and Abraham sometimes asked her to read to him. After their wedding, the Lincolns subscribed to the semiweekly Lexington Observer and Reporter. Mary took pleasure in reading aloud from her home paper to her husband.

  She enjoyed reading the novels and poems of Sir Walter Scott to her eldest son, Bob. One day she heard noises outside the front window. She looked to see Bob and a little playmate engaged in “a battle royal.” Bob was brandishing a fence paling instead of a lance, and declaring in a shrill voice, “ ‘This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon as I.’ ” Mary, sparkling with laughter, exclaimed from Scott’s Lady of the Lake, “ ‘Gramercy, brave knights. Pray be more merciful than you are brawny.’ ”

  IN THE SPRING OF 1841, Lincoln began working with his new partner, Stephen T. Logan. Though the two men were quite different in temperament, Lincoln enjoyed a much closer working relationship with Logan, nine years older, than with Stuart. The senior partner was conscientious, industrious, and exact in his approach to the law. Logan was no orator, but he argued his cases with persuasive, rational power. In the aftermath of the financial panic of 1837, Congress passed the Bankruptcy Act on February 1, 1842, the first such act in forty years. Logan and Lincoln pled more than seventy cases, representing both creditors and debtors but primarily arguing for relief for debtors, before the act was repealed thirteen months later.

  Lincoln and Logan moved into offices on the third floor of the new Tinsley building on Springfield’s downtown square in August 1843. A trapdoor connected the offices to the federal courtroom, from which the lawyers could listen in on the proceedings below. Lincoln was presenting more and more cases before the Supreme Court of Illinois, and his professional reputation was growing. Lawyers who lived far from Springfield began to refer their cases to him, confident that he would argue them with skill before the state’s highest court.