A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln chose to give his last speech of the campaign in Springfield on Saturday, October 30, 1858. An enthusiastic crowd of five thousand made it almost impossible for Lincoln to be heard. He became quite personal and emotional in his final words before friends and admirers. “Ambition has been ascribed to me,” Lincoln acknowledged.

  I claim no insensibility to political honors; but today could the Missouri restriction be restored, and the whole slavery question replaced on the old ground of “toleration” by necessity where it exists, with unyielding hostility to the spread of it, on principle, I would, in consideration, gladly agree, that Judge Douglas should never be out, and I never in, an office, so long as we both or either, live.

  He had ended on the high road of principle.

  LINCOLN VOTED EARLY in Springfield on Election Day, Tuesday, November 2, 1858. A cold rain covered the Illinois prairies and fell “incessantly” throughout the day in the state capital, turning the streets into a “horrid condition.” The Illinois State Journal reported that “Street fights are not as numerous as expected,” but by sundown, the “city prison is nearly full.”

  Republican candidates for the state legislature won the popular vote, 125,430 to 121,609. But Democrats won the contest for seats in the legislature by a vote of 54 to 46. Lincoln lost a split decision. It would be the legislators who would vote on January 5, 1859, and thus decide who would be the next U.S. senator. This Senate election, with its appeal to the people rather than to state legislators, was a first step on the long road toward the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, which would call for the direct election of senators.

  After monitoring the results far into the night at the telegraph office, Lincoln headed wearily for home. Some years later he recalled that on that dark and rainy evening he slipped, “but I recovered … and I said to myself, ‘It’s a slip and not a fall.’ ”

  IN A POSTELECTION INQUEST on their defeat, Republicans complained about the inequities of an antiquated apportionment of various Illinois legislative districts. William Herndon wrote a long letter to Theodore Parker, a New England transcendentalist minister, detailing what he deemed were “the causes of our defeat.” He blamed Horace Greeley: “His silence was his opposition;” he chastised Crittenden: “Thousands of Whigs dropped us just on the eve of the election, through the influence of Crittenden;” and he blamed the pro-slavery men who “went to a man for Douglas.” Finally, Herndon blamed “thousands of roving, robbing, bloated, pock-marked Catholic Irish” imported from St. Louis and other cities.

  Lincoln did not blame anyone. If there was one person he might have blamed, it was Crittenden. The Kentucky senator wrote Lincoln on October 27, 1858, stating that the publication in several Democratic newspapers of a private letter stating why he was supporting Douglas was “unauthorized.” Crittenden’s letter, in the confusion of the election, had been picked up at the post office but, Lincoln said, “was handed me only this moment.” Everyone around him was blaming Crittenden but, Lincoln wrote, “It never occurred to me to cast any blame upon you.” In a final sentence, Lincoln expressed magnanimity in defeat. “The emotions of defeat, at the close of a struggle in which I felt more than a merely selfish interest, and to which defeat the use of your name contributed largely, are fresh upon me, but even in this mood, I can not for a moment suspect you of anything dishonorable.” Lincoln’s magnanimity grew in part from his ability to attribute the best motives to those who were his opponents.

  The Chicago Press & Tribune, under the editorship of Joseph Medill and Charles Ray, said it best on November 10, 1858, five days after Election Day.

  Mr. Lincoln is beaten. We know of no better time than the present to congratulate him on the memorable and brilliant canvass he has made. He has created for himself a national reputation that is both envied and deserved; and though he should hereafter fill no official station, he has done the cause of Truth and Justice what will always entitle him to the gratitude of his party and the keen admiration of all who respect the high moral qualities, and the keen, comprehensive and sound intellectual gifts he has displayed.

  On November, 19, 1858, Lincoln wrote Dr. Anson Henry, his former doctor and Whig associate, now living in Oregon. He told his old friend, “I am glad I made the late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way, and though I sink out of view, and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”

  Mathew Brady took this photograph of a beardless Lincoln, in New York to deliver his Cooper Union address. It was later called “the photograph that made Lincoln president.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The Taste Is in My Mouth, a Little 1858–60

  LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Cooper Union address, February 27, 1860

  N NOVEMBER 3, 1858, THE DAY AFTER LINCOLN’ S DEFEAT IN THE SENATE election, Jeriah Bonham, editor of the Illinois Gazette in Lacon, asked, “What man now fills the full measure of public expectation as the statesman of to-day and of the near future, as does Abraham Lincoln? … We believe we but express the wish of a large majority of the people that he should be the standard-bearer of the Republican Party for the presidency in 1860.”

  Three days later, the Commercial Register of Sandusky, Ohio, carried a brief notice: “An enthusiastic meeting is in progress here to-night in favor of Lincoln for the next Republican candidate for President.”

  These first calls for Lincoln to run for president came from smalltown, little-known newspapers. But on November 10, 1858, only a week after Lincoln’s defeat, the Chicago Tribune printed the Commercial Register’s announcement without comment in the “Personal and Political” column of its popular weekly edition. The following day, the Chicago Democrat stated that Illinois should “present his [Lincoln’s] name to the National Republican Convention, first for President, and next for Vice President.” The Illinois State Journal of Springfield printed the “Lincoln for President” story from Sandusky on November 13, 1858, but it was buried in the “City Items and Other Matters” column without editorial comment.

  Other newspapers would add their approbation at the end of 1858, but the speculation about Lincoln’s future in higher office often was as much about praising him for what he had accomplished in the debates in 1858 as about what he might achieve in 1860. Some of this commendation mentioned Lincoln at the end of a list of potential candidates, which usually started with Senator William H. Seward of New York and Senator Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, and often included Edward G. Bates of Missouri and Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania.

  AT DUSK ON A COLD DECEMBER DAY, as Lincoln was leaving the McLean County courthouse in Bloomington, Jesse Fell, lawyer, land speculator, and the founder of the Bloomington Pantagraph, met him on the south side of the public square. Fell asked whether he could have a word in his brother Kersey’s law office. Fell and Lincoln had roomed together as members of the state legislature at Vandalia in the early 1830s. He had been one of the organizers of the Republican convention in Bloomington in 1856. He nominated Lincoln for the Senate in June 1858, and was secretary of the Republican State Committee. As the two sat amid calf-bound legal books, Fell told Lincoln he had recently returned from an extensive trip to Pennsylvania, New York, and New England. Everywhere he traveled he found people asking the question: “Who is this man Lincoln?” Fell responded that there were two giants in Illinois, a little one they knew, “but that you were the big one they didn’t all know.”

  Fell told Lincoln he could become a viable candidate for president in 1860, but it was critical that his name become better known in the East, especially in Pennsylvania. He knew from his wide-ranging contacts that Seward, thought by many to be the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president, was not popular in Pennsylvania. If Pennsylvania, and several other
states in the East, were to rally behind Lincoln, they would first need to know more about him. Fell proposed that Lincoln write an autobiographical statement to be published in several Eastern newspapers.

  “Oh, Fell, what’s the use talking of me for the Presidency,” Lincoln replied, “whilst we have such men as Seward, Chase, and others, who are so much better known to the people?” Lincoln told Fell, “Everybody knows them. Nobody, scarcely, outside of Illinois, knows me.” Fell was particularly struck by what Lincoln said next. “Beside, is it not, as a matter of justice, due to such men, who have carried this movement forward to its present status, in spite of fearful opposition, personal abuse, and hard names?”

  Lincoln concluded, “I admit the force of much that you say, and admit that I am ambitious, and would like to be President; I am not insensible to the compliment you pay me, and the interest you manifest in the matter, but there is no such good luck in store for me, as the Presidency of these United States.” Besides, “there is nothing in my early history that would interest you or anybody else.” With these words, Lincoln put on his “dilapidated” shawl and walked out into the darkness.

  At the very moment that Lincoln was saying no to Fell’s initiative, he was taking his own initiative to publish his personal scrapbook of the debates. Throughout the summer and fall of 1858, Lincoln, by scissors and paste, had placed in a two-hundred-page scrapbook the texts of speeches and debates, primarily from the Chicago Press and Tribune and the Chicago Times. On virtually every page, he wrote in his distinctive handwriting titles, captions, a variety of notes, and corrections to the texts. Four days after he met with Fell, he told Henry C. Whitney, “There is some probability that my Scrap-book will be reprinted.”

  Lincoln was actually ambivalent about the presidency in December 1858. Fell’s request may have collided with Lincoln’s innate caution or with his Victorian sense of modesty in speaking about oneself, whereas the texts of the debates were a public record. Lincoln’s ambition was not simply to preserve the historical record of the debates, but to advance his reputation. In the winter of 1858–59, consumed by his law practice and averse to letting the scrapbook out of his hands, Lincoln made no headway in securing a publisher.

  FOUR DAYS AFTER the November election, Lincoln and Herndon were back in court in Springfield. For nearly six months, Lincoln had neglected his law practice. He went without income and paid nearly all of his own expenses during the Senate campaign. When state Republican chairman Norman Judd wrote after the election requesting his help in paying off Republican campaign debts, Lincoln replied, “I have been on expenses so long without earning any thing that I am absolutely without money now for even household purposes.”

  Lincoln returned to his law office to answer clients complaining of lack of action on their lawsuits. Samuel C. Davis and Company, wholesale merchants in St. Louis, had written Lincoln on October 1, 1858, annoyed that their “interests have been so long neglected.” Lincoln replied on November 17, explaining that he had just seen their letter because he had been “personally engaged the last three or four months.” Usually even tempered, Lincoln betrayed his annoyance. “I will have no more to do with this class of business. I can do business in Court, but I can not, and will not follow executions all over the world.” Lincoln concluded by offering to “surrender” these matters to other lawyers.

  Lincoln’s attempt to balance law and politics had become more difficult than ever before. His impatience came through in a number of letters to clients. In November, he wrote former governor Joel Matteson that “we have performed no service” in a case for the Chicago and Alton Railroad, “but we lost a cash fee offered us on the other side.” In December, he told lawyer William M. Fishback, “I wish you would return and take charge of this business” with Samuel C. Davis and Company. After receiving two letters from a cousin in Lexington, Kentucky, Lincoln replied, “It annoys me to say that I can not collect money now.”

  Lincoln’s only speeches during the four months after the election took place in courtrooms. In the early spring of 1859, he resumed traveling the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which had been reduced from fourteen to five counties in 1857. Completing the circuit in Danville in early May, he returned to Springfield, where he handled a heavy caseload before the U.S. Circuit Court until the end of June.

  THE YEAR 1859 would be full of political surprises for Lincoln, but it did not start out that way. On January 5, the Illinois legislature gathered in Springfield to cast their votes for the U.S. Senate. Rumors persisted that there would be some defections from the Democratic ranks, with some pro-Buchanan legislators expressing their anger at Douglas by voting for Lincoln. In the end, however, all fifty-four Democrats voted for Stephen Douglas and all forty-six Republicans voted for Lincoln.

  Bitterly disappointed, Lincoln pondered his options for 1860. He wrote to Judd, “In that day I shall fight in the ranks, but I shall be in no ones way for any of the places.” Lincoln’s comment meant that he had decided not to seek the other U.S. Senate seat from Illinois in 1860 because Lyman Trumbull would surely run for a second term. Lincoln was sounded out by friends to run for governor, but he was not interested in a state office, even the highest one. Now beaten twice for the Senate, this meant Lincoln’s only course seemed to be to wait six more years until 1864 to challenge Douglas—again.

  His main political task at the beginning of 1859, now that he had become the recognized leader of the Republicans in Illinois, was marshaling a party many predicted would soon splinter and divide. Lincoln’s leadership was based on loyalty forged through lengthy years in Illinois politics and in the camaraderie of the Eighth Judicial Circuit. These Lincoln men were joined by a few former Democrats, whom Lincoln had known for much less time, but who had come to appreciate both his integrity and political abilities.

  Lincoln would demonstrate his political wisdom not only in bringing these men together, but in occasionally keeping them apart. They trusted Lincoln, but many distrusted one another. The advisers were rivals both for Lincoln’s attention and for Illinois political offices. Norman Judd, a former Democrat, was resented by former Whigs for the power he wielded as chairman of the Illinois Republican State Central Committee. He was a resident of northern Illinois, and many believed he slighted the crucial counties in central Illinois in the 1858 Senate campaign. Richard Yates and Leonard Swett, who both disliked Judd, became his rivals for the Republican nomination for governor in 1860. “Long John” Wentworth and Judd carried on a feud through the pages of two Republican papers vying for dominance, Wentworth’s Chicago Democrat, and the Chicago Tribune, which took Judd’s side. Wentworth, in commenting on the Republican organization in the state, summed up the problem in a letter to Judge David Davis. “I look upon the whole management as making Lincoln incidental to the project of certain men for the future.”

  ON APRIL 13, 1859, Thomas J. Pickett, editor of the Rock Island Register, wrote Lincoln that he was eager to write to “the Republican editors of the State on the subject of a simultaneous announcement of your name for the Presidency.” Lincoln replied immediately, “I must in candor say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency,” adding, “I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made.” Lincoln was not being unduly modest. He was fully aware of the shortcomings of his candidacy, which he believed would be brought into the open if he decided to throw his hat in the ring. He was painfully aware of his lack of education. He had served only a single term in Congress, and was certain that “spotty” Lincoln, the congressman who critics said had failed to support the troops, would be dredged up from his past. He had never held an executive post as had the two front-runners, Seward and Chase, each having served as governor of their states.

  Though he refused Pickett’s offer, Lincoln was aware that his influence was expanding beyond Illinois in the spring of 1859, when political leaders in other states
began to ask for his help.

  Lincoln received an invitation to attend a festival in Boston in April 1859, in honor of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. He could not attend but sent a letter. “All honor to Jefferson,” Lincoln declared across the miles and years. Alert to the ironies in American history, Lincoln recalled that two great parties had been formed at the birth of the Republic, but seventy years later they had completely changed places. Modern Republicans, descendants of the old New England Federalists, paradoxically, had ended up preserving the principles of Jefferson. Lincoln illustrated his point by the story of two drunken men who engaged in a fight with the result that “each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into the other.” The contemporary application: “The democracy [Democrats] of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.” Lincoln’s compelling words would receive wide circulation in the Republican press.

  In May, Lincoln turned down an invitation to speak at the founding convention of the Republican Party in Kansas but presented his counsel about identity and membership: “The only danger will be the temptation to lower the Republican Standard in order to gather recruits. … In my judgment such a step would be a serious mistake—would open a gap through which more would pass out than pass in.” To Kansas Republicans, Lincoln offered his definition of “the o[b]ject of the Republican organization—the preventing the spread and nationalization of Slavery.”

  He began to offer his advice on passionately debated issues in other states he believed would impact the prospects for Republican victories in 1859 and 1860. In Ohio, a contentious issue was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The controversy was raised to a fever pitch in the fall of 1858 when a federal marshal arrested John Price, a slave who had lived in Oberlin for some time. Residents of Oberlin stormed the hotel in nearby Wellington where Price was being held, freed him, and took him back to Oberlin, where the president of Oberlin College hid him in his home before friends spirited him away to Canada.