A fresh opportunity opened up for Lincoln when Logan decided to give up traveling and asked his junior partner to represent the firm on the Eighth Judicial Circuit. By 1843, the Eighth Judicial Circuit in cluded fourteen counties in central Illinois. Lincoln, on occasion, traveled beyond the circuit, all the way to Clark County, near the Indiana line, and into Madison County, on the Missouri border, to participate in cases. The firm was becoming one of the most prominent in the state.
Logan grew to appreciate his young partner’s distinctive skills. “I have seen him get a case and seem to be bewildered at first, but he would go at it and after a while he would master it. He was very tenacious in his grasp of a thing that he once got hold of.”
After three successful years, Lincoln’s partnership with Logan came to an end in 1844. Logan informed Lincoln that he wished to take his son David as a partner. This was understandable, and the partners parted and remained friends.
Logan and Lincoln handled approximately 850 cases together. Lincoln learned self-discipline and the art of case preparation from Logan, who had served previously as a circuit judge and had taught Lincoln to see cases from every possible point of view. Having learned much about the law and the courts, Lincoln was eager to start his own firm and began to search for a partner.
IN DECEMBER 1844, Lincoln selected an unlikely candidate, one that got Springfield’s tongues wagging. William Herndon, an intellectually curious but opinionated and garrulous young man, was born in Greens-burg, Kentucky, on December 25, 1818; his father, Archer Herndon, had moved his family to Illinois in 1820. After struggling with farming, they relocated in Springfield in 1825. Archer started the Indian Queen Tavern and Hotel, the first hotel of any prominence in Springfield, located at Second and Jefferson. Seven-year-old Billy had helped his father serve drinks and stable horses. Archer served in the Illinois Senate for eight years and had been one of the “Long Nine” who joined Lincoln’s effort to move the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield.
Archer Herndon possessed no formal education, but he was determined his children should receive what he was denied. After paying for his son to attend the Springfield schools, he sent Billy to the preparatory department of Illinois College in Jacksonville in the fall of 1836.
During his year there, Billy enhanced his budding interest in philosophy, borrowing from the library the school’s allotment of one large book or two small books for each student each week. He also got into more than his allotment of trouble with school officials for his clowning around and practical jokes.
Illinois College had grown from the dream of John M. Ellis, a Presbyterian missionary, who embraced the need for education in the West in 1829. Edward Beecher left his pulpit at the renowned Park Street Church in Boston to become the first president of the college in 1830. President Beecher and faculty members Jonathan B. Turner and Julian M. Sturtevant all brought their antislavery convictions with them from New England. They believed that immediate conversion should put people on the road to immediate abolition, the urgent goal of American moral reform. Beecher played a major role in the founding of the first antislavery society in Illinois in 1837.
Archer Herndon, a Jackson Democrat and pro-slavery man, had sent his son off to college, not expecting he would return as a convinced Whig and an antislavery man. When Billy came home to Springfield he argued with his father over his new antislavery convictions and moved out of his father’s house. He ended up working in Speed’s general store and was invited to stay in the room above the store with Speed and Lincoln.
Lincoln had encouraged Herndon to read law in the office of Logan and Lincoln in 1841. Herndon was admitted to the bar on December 9, 1844. When Lincoln invited Billy to join his practice, he was twenty-six, nine years younger than Lincoln.
Lincoln and Herndon rented an office in the new Tinsley Building on the public square in Springfield. A shingle with the names “Lincoln & Herndon” hung from hinges at the foot of the stairway.
From the beginning, Lincoln called Herndon “Billy,” while the junior partner addressed him as “Mr. Lincoln.” In their partnership, Lincoln decided he would travel the circuit while young Herndon would manage the firm and look after the books, a task Lincoln never liked. But Herndon proved no more adept at fiscal accountability than Lincoln; much of the time the books went neglected. As Logan’s junior partner, Lincoln had received only one-third of the firm’s proceeds. Although he was now the senior partner, Lincoln split all fees evenly with his new younger colleague.
EVEN AS LINCOLN was changing law partners, he became deeply involved in the political campaigns of 1844. The presidential contest pitted Henry Clay of Kentucky, leader of the Whigs, against James K. Polk of Tennessee, who as Speaker of the House had been President Andrew Jackson’s chief lieutenant in the bank war. James G. Birney of Michigan, a former Whig, was the standard-bearer of the antislavery Liberty Party. Throughout the campaign, Lincoln received many invitations to speak on behalf of Clay and various Whig candidates, which reflected his growing stature as a rising Whig politician.
He was invited to speak in southern Indiana and looked forward to returning to his boyhood home for the first time in fifteen years. On Thursday morning, October 24, 1844, Lincoln left Springfield by horseback. Journeying from the prairies of Illinois east to Indiana he met the changing colors of fall in the maple, oak, beech, hickory, and walnut forests of southern Indiana.
While speaking about a protective tariff at Rockport on October 30, 1844, a man about Lincoln’s age entered the courthouse. In the middle of his speech, Lincoln exclaimed, “There is Nat.” Lincoln had recognized his old schoolmate Nathaniel Grigsby. He stopped, “walked over the benches,” and joyfully greeted his boyhood friend.
The next day, Lincoln traveled to Gentryville where he visited more old friends. His visit to his boyhood haunts in the Pigeon Creek area stirred mixed memories. “I went into the neighborhood in that State in which I was raised, where my mother and only sister were buried,” he told an acquaintance later.
A year and a half later, in letters to Andrew Johnston, a lawyer in Quincy, Lincoln wrote of the “poetizing mood” triggered by the emotional experience of returning to his boyhood home. Lincoln included a poem about his feelings of visiting Indiana again.
My childhood’s home I see again,
And sadden with the view;
And still, as memory crowds my brain,
There’s pleasure in it too.
Lincoln confessed he was not sure “whether my expression of those feelings is poetry.” Even so, he needed to articulate such deep emotions.
Near twenty years have passed away
Since here I bid farewell
To woods and fields, and scenes of play,
And playmates loved so well.
He concluded with a sense of death and loss.
I range the field with pensive tread,
And pace the hollow rooms,
And feel (companion of the dead)
I’m living in the tombs.
Lincoln told Johnston that he could publish these words, anonymously, if he wished, in the Quincy Whig, which Johnston did two and a half years later.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF November 1844 disappointed Lincoln and the Whigs. James K. Polk, a rather colorless Democrat, out-polled Clay, with Birney, the antislavery candidate of the Liberty Party, a distant third. The contest turned on just a few counties in several states. Clay, a slaveholder, was nonetheless the infinitely better candidate than Polk, who had promised the annexation of Texas, which meant the possibility of the extension of slavery into a new state. Lincoln, deeply disappointed, believed if Birney had not been in the race, Clay would have won.
The defeat taught Lincoln that abolitionists and other extreme anti-slavery men would rather be right—what he called “righteous”—than win. That the election result continued to gnaw at him was evident in correspondence eleven months later with Williamson Durley of Hen-nepin, who called himself an abolitionist and a “Liber
ty man.” Lincoln told Durley, “If the whig abolitionists of New York had voted with us last fall, Mr. Clay would now be president, whig principles in the ascendant, and Texas not annexed.”
Lincoln recounted to Durley that he had met another Liberty man who said his religious principles forbade him to vote for Clay, a slaveholder. “We are not to do evil that good may come,” the man had said. Lincoln, quite exercised, offered both his own religion and logic in response. “This general, proposition is doubtless correct; but did it apply? If by your votes you could have prevented the extention, &c. of slavery, would it not have been good and not evil to have used your votes even though it involved the casting of them for a slaveholder?” Using biblical imagery, Lincoln stated, “By the fruit the tree is to be known. An evil tree can not bring forth good fruit. If the fruit of electing Mr. Clay would have been to prevent the extension of slavery, could the act of electing have been evil?” Sensitive to the misuse of religion, Lincoln would never forget this political lesson.
IN THE FALL OF 1845, Lincoln began his campaign to win the Whig nomination for Congress, even though the Whig district convention was eight months away. He had met with Baker, who had succeeded Hardin, and received assurances that he would not run for a second term. In September, Lincoln traveled to Jacksonville to meet with Hardin. Two months later, he wrote Henry E. Dummer, Stuart’s former law partner, “I strongly suspect, that Genl. Hardin wishes to run again.” Lincoln knew he needed to make sure that Hardin would not be in a favorable position to seek another nomination.
He decided to put in place a comprehensive strategy. He wrote letters to prospective delegates, appealing to their sense of fairness. In his letter to Dummer, Lincoln reminded him of the agreement in 1843 between Hardin, Baker, and himself. “I know of no argument to give me a preference over him, unless it be ‘Turn about is fair play.’ ” Lincoln was careful not to disparage Hardin. To Dr. Robert Boal of Lacon, he wrote, “That Hardin is talented, energetic, usually generous and magnanimous, I have, before this, affirmed to you, and do not now deny. You know that my only argument is that ‘turn about is fair play.’ This he, practically at least, denies.” On January 8, 1846, Congressman Baker published in the Sangamo Journal his declaration of withdrawal, the timing of his announcement coordinated between him and Lincoln. Three days later Boal wrote to Hardin, “I do not well see how we can avoid adopting the maxim that ‘turn about is fair play,’ whether right or wrong, this is my only reason for favoring the pretensions of Mr. Lincoln.”
Lincoln began courting newspaper editors. His new law partner, William Herndon, observed, “He never overlooked a newspaper man who had it in his power to say a good or bad thing of him.” Lincoln understood the power of the press to influence public opinion. He wrote four letters to Benjamin F. James, editor of the Tazewell Whig, in December 1845 and January 1846, discussing the campaign and asking him about the likely positions of other editors and newspapers. Lincoln told James he needed seventeen votes to win the nomination over Hardin at the Whig convention and then listed where they were likely to come from in each county. He concluded by counseling the editor, “In doing this, let nothing be said against Hardin … nothing deserves to be said against him. Let the pith of the whole argument be ‘Turn about is fair play.’ ”
Lincoln had become practiced in the politics of personal persuasion. He decided to visit as many delegates, or persons influential with delegates, as he could. “It is my intention to take a quiet trip through the towns and neighbourhoods of Logan county, Delevan, Tremont, and on to & through the upper counties.” At the same time, Lincoln did not want to take anything for granted. He told editor James, “Don’t speak of this, or let it relax any of your vigilance.”
Lincoln believed that he was poised to win the nomination at the district convention. Hardin received this same message, even from his friends. One of Hardin’s ardent supporters wrote him that Lincoln “spins a good yarn, is what we call a clever fellow, has mixed much with our citizens, and has done much in sustaining Whig principles in Illinois. … Our people think that it is Abraham’s turn now.”
Still, Hardin pursued his goal of returning to Congress. He and his supporters proposed Lincoln for governor, but he was not interested. Next, Hardin put forward a plan to cancel the district convention and instead have a district primary in each county, stipulating that each candidate and his friends could not campaign outside their own county.
Behind these public maneuvers, a private correspondence was taking place between the two political opponents. Hardin wrote Lincoln on January 16, 1846, about his new rules for electing candidates. He argued that the convention system, which Lincoln had labored to put in place, was undemocratic because it limited those who could run for office. Lincoln replied on January 19, “I am entirely satisfied with the old system under which you and Baker were successively nominated and elected to congress.” Hardin replied to Lincoln in a second letter. The contents of that letter, not preserved, can be inferred, for Lincoln returned a lengthy letter, answering Hardin point by point. Lincoln, who had every reason to be irritated by Hardin, wrote with conciliation. “I believe you do not mean to be unjust or ungenerous; and I, therefore am slow to believe that you will not yet think better and think differently of this matter.” Hardin was not yet ready to accept Lincoln’s reasoning, for he sent his complete twelve-step proposal to the Sangamo Journal on February 16.
Within days of receiving Hardin’s proposals, however, the Sangamo Journal and other Whig newspapers printed an announcement that Hardin was withdrawing from the contest.
The Whigs of the Seventh Congressional District convened in the Menard County Courthouse in Petersburg on Friday, May 1, 1846. The Committee on Nominations put forward Abraham Lincoln’s name, which was unanimously adopted. Starting with the May 7, 1846, issue, the Sangamo Journal carried as its masthead:
AUGUST ELECTIONS
For Congress
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
of Sangamon County
WITHIN TWO WEEKS of Lincoln’s nomination, distant dramatic events began that would have unforeseen implications for Lincoln’s political career. Military skirmishes between U.S. and Mexican forces in a disputed borderland prompted President Polk to declare war against Mexico on May 11, 1846. Though there were questions about who had initiated the hostilities, when Congress concurred with the president on May 13, war fever swept the country. Large cities and small hamlets alike rallied around the flag in patriotic rallies.
Springfield held a mass rally on May 30, 1846. John Hardin, a brigadier general in the Illinois militia, volunteered to organize the First Illinois Regiment of Volunteers, and seventy men signed up. Edward Baker, in Washington, announced he would soon lead the Fourth Illinois Regiment. Addresses offered by a number of leaders, including Lincoln and Governor Thomas Ford, called for “prompt and united action to support the Mexican War.”
Some influential Whigs saw Polk’s war declaration as a thinly disguised attempt to gain more territory for slavery. But these Whigs were immediately caught in the dilemma of how they could simultaneously resist the president, support the troops, and not appear to be unpatriotic.
TWO DAYS BEFORE the Springfield rally, the Democrats announced Lincoln’s opponent in the election for Congress: Peter Cartwright, one of the most colorful figures on the frontier. Cartwright, famous as a revivalist, had traveled by horseback through Methodist circuits in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. A preacher and a re former, he became an avowed enemy of both slavery and whiskey.
Twenty-four years older than Lincoln, Cartwright was born on September 1, 1785, in Amherst County, Virginia. As a young child, he moved with his family to Logan County, Kentucky, near the Tennessee border. At the turn of the century, a series of camp meetings in the region ignited what was called “the Great Revival.” In 1801, in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, upward of twenty thousand people camped for days in a festival atmosphere in order to hear protracted preaching. The fifteen-year-old Cartwright was
converted at one of those camp meetings. He joined the Methodist Church and quickly began his vocation as a revival preacher.
Cartwright settled in Sangamon County in 1824 because, as he would state in his autobiography, “I would get entirely clear of the evil of slavery.” Cartwright hated slavery, but he also despised abolitionism because he believed the rhetoric and tactics of abolitionists made it more difficult to speak with slave owners about changing their ways.
After four years in Illinois, Cartwright turned his religious convictions into political action by running for state office; he was elected to the Illinois General Assembly in 1828. Defeated in 1830, he ran again in 1832, this time coming in ahead of a young Abraham Lincoln from New Salem, defeated in his first run for political office.
Now, fourteen years later, Lincoln and Cartwright squared off to become the representative of the Illinois Seventh Congressional District. A rugged man, about five feet ten inches tall, Cartwright bore his nearly two hundred pounds on a medium frame. His resolute personality exuded from a face with high cheekbones, a firm jaw, and piercing black eyes. Cartwright’s Methodist district overlay some of the same territory as the Seventh District, but the Democrats knew they faced an uphill battle in the one supposedly safe Whig district in the state.
The trail of the campaign for Congress in 1846 has left few tracks. Lincoln and Cartwright never appeared together at any point in the contest. No debates took place.
In the latter days of the campaign, Whig friends informed Lincoln that “Mr. Cartwright was whispering the charge of [religious] infidelity against me” in some northern counties in the Seventh District. Lincoln was unsure of what to do. In a letter to Allen Ford, editor of the Illinois Gazette in Lacon, he stated that “Cartwright, never heard me utter a word in any way indicating my opinion on religious matters, in his life.” Lincoln thought that “nine out of ten have not heard the charge at all,” and to answer it might only lift up questions about his religious beliefs his opponent intended to raise. Lincoln finally decided to publish a handbill answering the charges, sent it to selected counties, and left it to the discretion of his friends as to whether it would help or harm.
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