A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln was paying attention when Ohio Republicans, with emotions running high, met in a convention in Columbus on June 2, 1859. The convention enacted a plank in their party platform calling for “a repeal of the atrocious Fugitive Slave Law.” Lincoln, in response to these actions, wrote Ohio governor Salmon P. Chase. In an earlier letter Lincoln had expressed his gratitude to Chase for traveling to Illinois to campaign for him the previous summer. He called Chase “one of the very few distinguished men, whose sympathy we in Illinois did receive last year.” But they had never met. Lincoln now told Chase that the action of the convention “is already damaging us here.” He concluded by imploring, “I hope you can, and will, contribute something to relieve us from it.”

  Chase replied by declaring that this advice was inconsistent with the “avowal of our great principles” so evident in “your own example in that noble speech of yours at Springfield which opened the campaign last year.” Chase did not give an inch, replying that he believed the fugitive slave law to be unconstitutional, unduly harsh, and not possible to be carried out.

  Lincoln responded a week later by stating that, in theory, he believed Congress did have the authority “to enact a Fugitive Slave Law.” In practice, Lincoln was not so interested in discussing “constitutional questions” as he was concerned that “the introduction of a proposition for repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law, into the next Republican National Convention, will explode the convention and the party.”

  In May, Lincoln received a letter from Dr. Theodore Canisius, publisher of the Illinois Staats-Anzeiger, who was concerned about Republican involvement in a recent law passed in Massachusetts that obliged two years’ residence by immigrants after naturalization before they would be allowed to vote. Germans, the largest immigrant group in Illinois, worried that the Massachusetts law could spread to Illinois. Lincoln, who had worked hard to reach out to the German population, replied, “As I understand the Massachusetts provision, I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place where I have a right to oppose it.”

  Lincoln’s priorities were voiced in a letter to Schuyler Colfax, a young Indiana congressman. Lincoln told Colfax his concern was to “hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and particularly for the contest of 1860.” Lincoln believed, “The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to ‘platform’ for something which will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere.” He then named these “platform” issues: agitation against foreigners in Massachusetts; resistance to the fugitive slave law in New Hampshire; the repeal of the fugitive slave law in Ohio; and “squatter sovereignty” in Kansas. Lincoln told Colfax, “In these things there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions.” Thinking ahead to 1860, he concluded, “In a word, in every locality we should look beyond our noses; and at least say nothing on points where it is probable we should disagree.” Lincoln wrote to Chase, Canisius, and Colfax on individual matters, but the letters demonstrate the beginnings of his national party leadership.

  Salmon P. Chase, antislavery governor and senator from Ohio, would begin to cross paths with Lincoln often, starting in 1858, before becoming a rival for the Republican nomination for president in 1860.

  LINCOLN EXPANDED HIS NATIONAL influence by wielding his most developed political weapon: public speaking. Since 1854, Lincoln had spoken outside his home state only one time, in Michigan, but in 1859 he would speak in five states—Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kansas—and turn down invitations to speak in five more.

  The initial spark for his expanded speaking engagements was fanned by Lincoln’s old rival, Stephen Douglas. When the Ohio Statesman in Columbus announced on September 1, 1859, that Douglas would campaign in Ohio to support Democratic candidates in the upcoming state elections, the Republican leadership was startled. On the same day, William T. Bascom, secretary of the Ohio Republican State Central Committee, wrote Lincoln inviting him to speak in several cities in Ohio because “We desire to head off the little gentleman.”

  Lincoln was ever alert to the staying power of what he called “Douglasism.” He discerned that Douglas, blamed by Buchanan supporters for defeats in the recent elections for Congress and stripped of his chairmanship of the powerful Committee on Territories in an effort led by senators Jefferson Davis, John Slidell, and Jesse Bright, remained a resilient politician.

  Despite his setback, Douglas did not retreat from popular sovereignty. Instead, he decided to write a “manifesto” to promote his views. He had promoted popular sovereignty as a self-evident practical remedy for the imploding sectionalism of the day, but now he decided to explain the doctrine in broader theoretical and historical terms. In April 1859, Douglas contacted historian George Bancroft for assistance in understanding the principles involved in the conflict between the colonies and Great Britain. Douglas believed his essay was an opportunity both to give him the last word in the debates with Lincoln and also to answer Senator Albert G. Brown of Mississippi, who had attacked his ideas in the Senate in the winter of 1859. He published his long essay in September in Fletcher Harper’s Harper’s Magazine, the foremost literary periodical in the nation.

  Douglas’s manifesto, “The Dividing Line Between Federal and Local Authority: Popular Sovereignty in the Territories,” produced an instant impact. At the outset, Douglas took as one of his foils Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech to argue that for these Republican leaders, “there can be no peace on the slavery question—no truce in the sectional strife—no fraternity between the North and South, so long as this Union remains as our fathers made it—divided into free and slave states, with the right on the part of each to retain slavery so long as it chooses, and to abolish it whenever it pleases.” Douglas argued that popular sovereignty was the “great principle” of American history. The image of a dividing line was taken from the “immortal struggle between the American Colonies and the British Government.” He appealed to the “fathers of the Revolution” to anchor his ideas on self-government. He argued that for the revolutionary generation, slavery was always regarded as a domestic question to be decided locally. Lincoln read Douglas’s essay carefully, biding his time to the day when he would have the opportunity to respond.

  The opportunity came in Ohio. On September 15, 1859, Abraham and Mary boarded a train for Columbus. Mary, increasingly ambitious for her husband’s political future, relished this political trip. On the long train ride, she talked about their son Robert, whom they had recently sent off for Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Earlier in the year, Robert had failed fifteen of his sixteen entrance exams for Harvard, and thus the decision by his parents to enroll him for one more year of preparation in one of the nation’s leading preparatory schools. Whereas Douglas had been met at the train station in Columbus by a large crowd and a thirteen-gun salute, the Lincolns were not even greeted by a welcoming committee, and they walked alone to the Neil House.

  Lincoln spoke twice in Columbus, including on the east terrace of the state capitol where Douglas had spoken six days earlier, but neither speech was well attended. Lincoln asked, “Now, what is Judge Douglas’ Popular Sovereignty?” Lincoln answered, “It is, as a principle, no other than that, if one man chooses to make a slave of another man, neither that other man nor anybody else has a right to object.” Making sport of the recent Harper’s essay, Lincoln stirred the crowd to laughter when he declared, “His explanations explanatory of explanations explained are interminable.”

  A larger crowd greeted Lincoln in Cincinnati. In the audience he recognized people from Kentucky who had crossed the Ohio River to hear him. He aimed many of his forceful remarks at them. “I am what they call, as I understand it, a ‘Black Republican.’ I think Slavery is wrong, morally, and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.” He told these people from his native state, “I say to you, Kentuckian
s, that I understand you differ radically with me upon this proposition, that you believe Slavery is a good thing; that Slavery is right; that it ought to be extended and perpetuated in this Union.” Lincoln surely surprised his audience when he said, if you feel this way, “I only propose to try to show you that you ought to nominate for the next Presidency, at Charleston, my distinguished friend Judge Douglas.”

  In Ohio, Lincoln offered speeches that challenged Douglas’s assumption that the founding fathers, because some were slave owners, could not possibly have contemplated outlawing slavery in the future. Lincoln wanted to test this assumption by following the actions of these early leaders in subsequent votes, for example, the vote on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Lincoln declared it was the Northwest Ordinance that forbade slavery, not the exercise of popular sovereignty by states of the old Northwest.

  On his way home, Lincoln stopped in Indianapolis, where he spoke for two hours at the Masonic Hall. With Douglas still on his mind, Lincoln quoted the leitmotif of Douglas’s essay: “Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we lived, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.” Lincoln responded, “Our fathers who made the government, made the Ordinance of 1787.” He reminded his audience that Indiana “more than once petitioned Congress to abrogate the ordinance entirely” so they could “exercise the ‘popular sovereignty’ of having slaves if they wanted them.” Congress refused. If it were not for Congress, Lincoln declared, “Indiana would have been a slave state.”

  Lincoln’s political tour in Ohio bore fruit in a surprising turn of events. At some moment during the train trip from Columbus to Cincinnati, Lincoln remembered that he had left his debates scrapbook behind in his room at the Neil House. Frantic, he requested the assistance of Republican leaders in procuring its safe return, his plea bringing its existence to light. Before long, the Republican State Central Committee, working with Columbus publisher Follett, Foster and Company, contacted Lincoln about publishing an edition of the scrap-book that would include Lincoln’s Ohio speeches. Lincoln was delighted, since conversations in the spring with Illinois publishers had resulted in no offers.

  When Lincoln returned home from his Ohio speaking tour, he renewed his correspondence with Ohio politician Thomas Corwin. A former governor of Ohio who had recently been elected to the House of Representatives, Corwin wrote to Lincoln on September 25, 1859, expressing concern that the Republican party’s unremitting talk about slavery “will make the contest in 1860 a hopeless one for us.”

  Lincoln replied in a remarkable letter, long lost but recently found, expressing his belief about the role slavery should play in the presidential election of 1860. “What brought these Democrats with us! The Slavery issue. Drop that issue, and they have no motive to remain, and will not remain, with us. It is idiotic to think otherwise.” Lincoln clarified exactly what kind of candidate the Republicans should nominate.

  Do not misunderstand me as saying Illinois must have an extreme antislavery candidate! I do not so mean. We must have, though, a man who recognizes that Slavery issue as being the living issue of the day; who does not hesitate to declare slavery a wrong, nor to deal with it as such; who believes in the power, and duty of Congress to prevent the spread of it.

  “Idiotic.” Lincoln had never used that word before. In this letter, Lincoln, without betraying any sense that he might be that candidate in 1860, speaks in 1859 about his strong conviction that the Republican nominee ought to be someone who has demonstrated his opposition to the extension of slavery.

  Corwin replied to Lincoln’s letter on October 17. “Six months hence we shall see more clearly what at this time must remain only in conjecture.” The Ohio Congressman, who would become a strong supporter of Abraham Lincoln, proved to be prophetic.

  WHILE BUSY IN COURT EACH DAY, Lincoln closely followed the 1859 elections held in a number of states. On October 14, the long-awaited results revealed that Republicans had triumphed in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Iowa. Returning on Saturday evening to Springfield, he had scarcely arrived at his residence when several hundred townspeople marched to Eighth and Jackson to persuade “Mr. Lincoln, the ‘giant killer,’ ” to speak at the capitol.

  Sometime that Saturday evening, or perhaps the next day, Lincoln opened the mail that lay waiting for him. In the stack was a telegram that read,

  Hon. A. Lincoln.

  Will you speak in Mr. Beechers church Broolyn on or about the twenty ninth (29) november on any subject you please pay two hundred (200) dollars.

  James A. Briggs

  Lincoln had long admired the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, one of America’s most prominent ministers. But who would the audience be? What would he say in this prominent setting? Lincoln had never been offered so large a fee to speak.

  On Monday morning, Lincoln bounced into his office eager to share his telegram with Herndon. His younger partner remembered how Lincoln “looked much pleased” at the invitation. Lincoln, eager to accept but knowing the demands of his law practice and his own need to prepare thoroughly, wrote requesting a date three months later, toward the end of February 1860. Lincoln’s “compromise” was accepted.

  Lincoln understood that he had been invited to deliver a lecture, not a campaign speech. Herndon pointed out that the invitation might be part of an effort by the New York committee to chip away at the candidacy of Seward, whose outspoken criticism of nativism and “Irrepressible Conflict” speech of 1858, in which he spoke of the inevitable collision of the North and South’s two social systems, made some leading Republicans nervous about his prospects in a presidential election. Further sleuthing revealed that Briggs, who tendered the invitation, was a Salmon Chase supporter. Lincoln’s excitement was tempered by awareness that the response to his recent lectures on “Discoveries and Inventions” had been underwhelming. Despite his confidence in his political stump speaking, he understood the address to an audience of Eastern sophisticates in Brooklyn would try his abilities.

  As Lincoln was enjoying the invitation, startling news broke that threatened to upset the entire antislavery movement. On the evening of Monday, October 16, 1859, John Brown, a fifty-nine-year-old abolitionist, led a band of twenty-one men, sixteen white and five black, in a raid against the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia. Brown’s plan was to use the raid as an opening attack to provide slaves with arms. But Brown had failed to notify any slaves of his intentions. After thirty-six hours, with no rebellion incited, Brown and his men surrendered inside the arsenal on October 18 to a detachment of U.S. Marines commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee.

  Leaders in the South, frightened, became furious when Brown aroused sympathy in the North. They quickly accused Northern abolitionists and Republicans of offering aid and comfort to such slave rebellions. Lincoln, the “Black Republican,” began preparations for his Brooklyn address as the nation’s politicians and newspapers continued to blame and praise Brown during his imprisonment and trial.

  Lincoln took advantage of the long lead time to be “painstaking and thorough” in his research for his lecture. It was not as though he started fresh, for he had been building a foundation in his speeches in Ohio. But there was much work to do. Herndon observed Lincoln as “he searched through the dusty volumes of congressional proceedings in the State Library, and dug deeply into political history.”

  On the last day of November 1859, Lincoln started for Kansas to fulfill a demanding speaking tour leading up to its crucial state election on December 6. On December 1, in the frontier town of Ellwood, on the evening before the hanging of John Brown, Lincoln offered his first public comment on the former Kansan. He stated that the attack by Brown was wrong for two reasons: It was “a violation of law” and “futile” in terms of its effect “on the extinction of a great evil.”

  Traveling down the Missouri River to Leavenworth, Lincoln told his audience in crowded Stockton’s Hall that the election in Kansas was not about a popular sovereignty that d
id not care whether slavery was right or wrong, but solely about the morality of “the slavery question.” In his conclusion, Lincoln offered a dire warning. “Old John Brown has been executed for a crime against a state.” If Kansas decided to join with those who would “undertake to destroy the Union,” then “it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with.”

  Lincoln returned home to discover that rumors were continuing to rock the Republican boat. In response to whispers that Lincoln might run for Trumbull’s Senate seat in 1860, and that Judd was secretly backing Trumbull, Lincoln said he would never run against Trumbull because “I would rather have a full term in the Senate than in the Presidency.”

  In the middle of December, Judd traveled to New York for a meeting of the Republican National Committee to select the site for the 1860 Republican convention. The loyalists for each leading candidate came to lobby for a city favorable to their man. Judd listened patiently as Seward partisans argued for Buffalo, New York; Chase supporters made a case for Cleveland or Columbus, Ohio; Cameron’s people wanted Harris-burg, Pennsylvania; and Bates’s men lobbied for St. Louis, Missouri. Lincoln revealed the state of his thinking in a letter to Judd a week earlier. “I find some of our friends here, attach more consequence to getting the National convention into our State than I did, or do.” Fortunately for Lincoln, the astute Judd understood the importance of the choice better than the man he was representing. Judd argued that since Illinois did not have a leading candidate, Chicago would be an ideal neutral site. In the final vote, Chicago defeated St. Louis by one vote.