A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  ON DECEMBER 20, 1859, a full year after Jesse Fell had asked for an autobiography, Lincoln wrote, “Herewith is a little sketch, as you requested. There is not much of it, for the reason, I supposed, that there is not much of me.” Lincoln included an instruction, “If anything is to be made out of it, I wish it be modest, and not to go beyond the mate rial,” and a restriction, “Of course it must not appear to have been written by myself.”

  Lincoln surprised Fell by sending him only 606 words. In a political era of outsized campaign biographies, it was not what Fell was expecting.

  I was born Feb. 12, 1809, in Hardin County, Kentucky. My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families—second families, perhaps I should say. My mother, who died in my tenth year, was of a family of the name of Hanks, some of whom now reside in Adams, and others in Macon counties, Illinois. My paternal grandfather, Abraham Lincoln, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Kentucky, about 1781 or 2, where, a year or two later, he was killed by indians, not in battle, but by stealth, when [where?] he was laboring to open a farm in the forest. His ancestors, who were quakers, went to Virginia from Berks County, Pennsylvania. An effort to identify them with the New-England family of the same name ended in nothing more definite, than a similarity of Christian names in both families, such as Enoch, Levi, Mordecai, Solomon, Abraham, and the like.

  My father, at the death of his father, was but six years of age; and he grew up, litterally without education. He removed from Kentucky to what is now Spencer county, Indiana, in my eighth year. We reached our new home about the time the State came into the Union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up. There were some schools, so called; but no qualification was ever required of a teacher, beyond “readin, writin, and cipherin,” to the Rule of Three. If a straggler supposed to understand latin, happened to so-journ in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizzard. There was absolutely nothing to excite ambition for education. Of course when I came of age I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three; but that was all. I have not been to school since. The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity.

  I was raised to farm work, which I continued till I was twenty two. At twenty one I came to Illinois, and passed the first year in Macon county. Then I got to New-Salem (at that time in Sangamon, now in Menard county, where I remained a year as a sort of Clerk in a store. Then came the Black-Hawk war; and I was elected a Captain of Volunteers—a success which gave me more pleasure than any I have had since. I went the campaign, was elated, ran for the Legislature the same year (1832) and was beaten—the only time I ever have been beaten by the people. The next, and three succeeding biennial elections, I was elected to the Legislature. I was not a candidate afterwards. During this Legislative period I had studied law, and removed to Springfield to practice it. In 1846 I was once elected to the lower House of Congress. Was not a candidate for re-election. From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, practiced law more assiduously than ever before. Always a whig in politics, and generally on the whig electoral tickets, making active canvasses. I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

  If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes—no other marks or brands recollected. Yours very truly A. LINCOLN

  It was a spare autobiography at best. Lincoln offered no substantive comments on the past five years of his political career nor mention of the debates with Douglas.

  Lincoln still struggled with uncertainty about his national political prospects, but his self-understanding was being shaped by the affirmation of others. In the last five months of 1859, he had tested the political waters by traveling more than four thousand miles to deliver twenty-three speeches. He looked forward to speaking in Brooklyn. Even if he was unsure whether he could stand equal to Seward, Chase, Cameron, and Bates, he had come to believe it was time to send forth a trial balloon by complying with Fell’s request.

  Fell sent Lincoln’s autobiography to his friend Joseph J. Lewis, a prominent Republican lawyer in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Lewis was perplexed because he expected much more than the minuscule autobiography he received. He immediately wrote Fell asking for more information. Finally, Lewis wrote his own biography of Lincoln of nearly three thousand words and arranged for both biographies to be printed on February 11, 1860, in the Chester County Times. Copies were sent to other newspapers in Pennsylvania. The Chicago Press & Tribune printed the autobiography, with an editorial affirmation, on February 23.

  WHEN THE CALENDAR TURNED the page to January 1, 1860, the presidential guessing game became more earnest. Lincoln understood that an early announcement of his candidacy would prompt criticism from rivals who, at this point, were pleased to consider him as a candidate for vice president. In the nineteenth century, the most successful candidate at party conventions was often the one who did not seem to be seeking the office.

  On a cold January evening, when many lawyer-politicians were in Springfield arguing cases before the federal and Supreme Court, a small group of Republicans invited Lincoln to meet in the inner office of Illinois secretary of state Ozias Hatch. Some were thinking of nominating Lincoln as the favorite son of Illinois with no conviction that he could win. After considerable discussion, Lincoln was asked “if his name might be used at once in connection with the coming nomination and election.” Lincoln “with his characteristic modesty doubted whether he could get the nomination even if he wished it.” Someone then asked Lincoln, if he failed to get the nomination for president, would he accept the nomination for vice president. This time he did not hesitate. “No.” Lincoln requested that he could have until the next morning to consider their invitation to be a candidate for president.

  How did Lincoln ponder this request? What did he say to Mary? He left no recollection about his deliberation or their discussion. The next morning he gave his friends permission, if they were “pleased” to do so, to work for him.

  On a sunny February 8, 1860, the Republican State Central Committee met and selected Decatur and May 23 as the place and time of the Republican state convention. A person notably absent from the decision was Lincoln’s longtime friend Orville Browning. That evening Lincoln called upon Browning at Room 30½ at the American House. Browning, who was supporting Bates, recorded what Lincoln said in his daily diary. “It is not improbable that by the time the National convention meets in Chicago [Lincoln] may be of the opinion that the very best thing that can be done will be to nominate Mr. Bates.”

  In January and February 1860, the newspapers proposing Lincoln’s name for the national ticket, both for vice president and president, grew in number. William O. Stoddard’s Central Illinois Gazette, in the thriving town of West Urbana (modern-day Champaign), was one of the first newspapers to place Lincoln’s name at the top of its columns in bold Gothic type. But these mastheads and editorial endorsements were mostly still in small-town papers.

  On February 16, 1860, the Chicago Press & Tribune endorsed “the nomination of Lincoln for the first place on the National Republican ticket.” The Tribune, under the leadership of Joseph Medill and Charles Ray, was becoming a major paper in the West. Medill, previously an editor in Cleveland, had been courted in the fall by supporters of Senator Chase of Ohio. Medill traveled to Washington in December to speak with members of Congress. He stayed into January, buttonholing whomever he could to talk about Lincoln. Day by day, the Tribune printed Medill’s reports under the column “Presidential.” The forceful February 16 editorial, probably written by Ray but with input from state chairman Judd, declared that the Tribune’s endorsement of Lincoln was not simply as a favorite son,
but as the one candidate who could carry Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. Medill followed up the editorial with a letter, signed “Chicago,” reporting that in Washington he now heard Lincoln’s name talked about for president “ten times as often as it was a month ago.”

  ONE WEEK AFTER the Tribune’s endorsement, Lincoln prepared to leave for Brooklyn to seek an even larger endorsement. He was confident about his preparation because, as Herndon observed, “No former effort in the line of speech-making had cost Lincoln so much time and thought as this one.” On the morning of George Washington’s birthday, Lincoln boarded a train at 11:15. Mary prevailed upon him to take her trunk instead of his old worn luggage.

  On his departure, the Democratic Illinois State Register offered its biting assessment of Lincoln’s mission: “SIGNIFICANT.—The Hon. Abraham Lincoln departs to day for Brooklyn, under the engagement to deliver a lecture before the Young Men’s Assn. of that city, in Beecher’s church. Subject, not known. Considerations, $200 and expenses. Object, presidential capital. Effect, disappointment.”

  After two and a half days’ onerous travel aboard five trains, Lincoln’s long train trip ended on Saturday in Jersey City where he boarded the Paulus Street ferry for the trip across the Hudson River. Upon arriving at the splendid six-story Astor House, Lincoln learned for the first time that he would not deliver his lecture at Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn, but at the Cooper Union in New York.

  On Sunday, Lincoln worshipped at the church in Brooklyn Heights where he had expected to deliver his lecture. He came to hear Henry Ward Beecher, who had assumed the pulpit shortly after the church was formed in 1847. Lincoln had followed Beecher’s opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his aid to “bleeding Kansas.” Visitors from across the United States came to see and be seen as Beecher regularly preached to congregations of 2,500 on Sunday mornings. Worshippers would have noticed the tall Lincoln, as his custom was to stand, out of respect to a God whom he always called “The Almighty,” during morning prayers.

  Lincoln attended Plymouth Congregational Church in Brooklyn Heights in order to hear Henry Ward Beecher, one of America’s most popular Protestant ministers.

  On Monday, on a walking tour of New York, Lincoln entered the new studio of photographer Mathew Brady, located at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Streets. Brady had opened his first Daguerreian Miniature Gallery in New York in 1844, and his first studio in Washington in 1849, where he photographed President Zachary Taylor and his cabinet. As Lincoln waited in the reception room, he met George Bancroft, the eminent historian whose work was popularly known as “Bancroft’s History” of the United States. Lincoln plied his humor on Bancroft. “I am on my way to Massachusetts where I have a son at school, if, report be true, already knows much more than his father.”

  Brady invited Lincoln into his “operating room” and sized up his subject. The photographer asked if he might adjust Lincoln’s collar. “Ah,” responded Lincoln, “I see you want to shorten my neck.”

  “That’s just it,” Brady answered, and both of them laughed. For the first time in his life, Lincoln was posed standing rather than sitting down. Brady’s use of a pillar behind Lincoln’s right shoulder, and a table with books at his left hand, suggested not a Western frontier man, but the kind of erudite Eastern man Brady usually photographed. The photographer found himself challenged by Lincoln’s new but crumpled black suit. Finally, one of Brady’s assistants opened the lens to capture Lincoln’s likeness on a wet-plate glass negative.

  The photograph portrayed a Lincoln about to be auditioned at Cooper Union. It reflected Lincoln’s strength, but without the rough skin and tousled hair of earlier photographs. His firm expression, with his jaw set, may be attributed either to the ordeal of mid-nineteenth-century photography or to his self-confidence about that evening’s lecture.

  Lincoln arrived at the redbrick Cooper Union on Seventh Street between Third and Fourth avenues as snow was falling. Peter Cooper’s experimental school was a beehive of free classes ranging from art to engineering. Shortly before eight o’clock, guests began arriving in the basement auditorium, ultimately filling about three-quarters of the 1,800 seats. William Cullen Bryant, editor of the New York Evening Post, who had met Lincoln briefly in Illinois during the Black Hawk War, introduced Lincoln as “a gallant soldier of the political campaign of 1858.”

  Lincoln rose to speak. Charles C. Nott, a young lawyer and one of the event’s planners, described the speaker.

  The first impression of the man from the West did nothing to contradict the expectation of something weird, rough, and uncultivated. The long, ungainly figure, upon which hung clothes that, while new for the trip, were evidently the work of an unskillful tailor; the large feet; the clumsy hands, of which, at the outset at least, the orator seemed to be unduly conscious; the long, gaunt head capped by a shock of hair that seemed not to have been thoroughly brushed out made a picture which did not fit in with New York’s conception of a finished statesman.

  Lincoln began in his Indiana twang, “Mr. Cheerman …” After losing his place in his first few sentences, his nervousness dissipated and he settled in confidently to his long introduction, which achieved its power from his meticulous grasp of historical data. He had constructed his speech around a declaration Senator Douglas had made: “Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.” Lincoln stated, “I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse.” In a remarkable rhetorical strategy, Lincoln would repeat Douglas’s declaration fifteen times in his speech.

  As Lincoln began to question the meaning of Douglas’s words, one imagines that each time Lincoln repeated the question, the audience, becoming aware of Lincoln’s strategy, leaned forward in their seats, eager to hear how this resourceful Westerner would question, probe, rebut, and reframe Douglas’s affirmation. At the same time, Lincoln asked the question that had steered his meticulous research: “Does the proper division of local from federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories?”

  Lincoln enthralled his audience. He started by identifying the thirty-nine “fathers” as those who signed the Constitution at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He inquired how those thirty-nine expressed their understanding about the expansion of slavery into the territories in both preceding and following years through legislative votes. He specified the persons voting: four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819–20. Some voted on the issue more than once. Lincoln found twenty-three had made choices concerning this question, with no proof of the other sixteen acting in any way. Twenty-one of the twenty-three who understood the question “better than we,” acted consistently under the belief that the federal government did have the right to exercise power over slavery in the territories.

  Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech was really three speeches in one. With a transitional, “But enough!” Lincoln proceeded from speaking to the North to speaking to the South. He knew there was probably no one from the South in the audience, but, nevertheless, “if they would listen—as I suppose they will not—I address a few words to the Southern people.” What followed was a brief but powerful rhetorical section in which Lincoln convened a colloquy of accusations and answers.

  You say we are sectional. We deny it.

  You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it.

  You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it.

  Lincoln said that Southerners loved to quote George Washington’s warning against sectionalism in his Farewell Address but conveniently forgot that Washington had earlier signed the act “enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory.” Lincoln’s aim, by this and other examples, was to show that the responsibility for the divisional discord lay not with the North but with
the South.

  “But you will not abide the election of a Republican President!” Lincoln sealed this second section by a declaration and a story. “You say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us!” Lincoln asked his audience to imagine a highwayman holding a pistol to his ear and then muttering: “ ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’ ”

  In the final section, Lincoln spoke “a few words now to Republicans.” After summarizing his historical arguments, he offered a ringing ethical avowal. This speech, as indeed Lincoln’s political posture in 1860, has often been depicted as conservative, but his conclusion is directed toward those conservative Republicans who would concede too much to the South in search of an ephemeral peace. He made his point with a compelling cadence of question and answer.

  Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally surrendered to them? We know they will not.

  Will it satisfy them if… we have nothing to do with invasions and insurrections? We know it will not.

  Lincoln finally asked: “What will convince them?” His answer: “This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right.” Lincoln’s Cooper Union address concluded with an ethical imperative, first what we cannot do, and second, in a sentence that Lincoln capitalized, what we must do.

  Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. 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.