Stanton’s inability to commit himself more fully to the antislavery crusade cast a shadow on his relationship with Chase. When Stanton failed to attend a Democratic convention in Columbus where antislavery issues were on the agenda, Chase chastised him for placing personal interests above political duties. “Why—why are you not here?” Chase lamented. “If I had foreseen you would not attend the Convention, I am certain I should not have left home.” Stanton’s reply expressed hurt at the censure in Chase’s letter, explaining that it was not merely private concerns that kept him away but a collision of obligations. “The practice of law,” he conceded, “furnishes employment for all my time and faculties…. Such to be sure is not the condition that dreams of early love pictured for my manhood—but in the field of life some as sentinels must perform the lonely round while others enjoy the social festivity of the camp.”
For Stanton, more than for Chase, the importance of the friendship exceeded political events and even personal ambition. “While public honors affords gratification,” Stanton wrote, “such friendship as yours is to me of inestimable value.” With sadness, he conceded that he was “well aware that public duties, the increasing pressure of private affairs as age advances, domestic vicissitudes and the inclination of the heart must cool the fervor of friendship among men.” Still, he hoped that he and Chase might someday stand side by side in the struggle against slavery.
So as 1847 drew to a close, the four men who would contend for the 1860 presidential nomination were deeply and actively involved in the political, social, and economic issues that would define the growing nation. Each embraced a different position along the spectrum of growing opposition to slavery. Yet while Seward, Chase, and Bates had each developed a national renown, few beyond Illinois knew of the raw-boned young congressman coming to the nation’s capital for the first time in his life.
CHAPTER 4
“PLUNDER & CONQUEST”
WASHINGTON WAS A CITY in progress when the Lincolns arrived at the wooden railroad station in December 1847 for the opening of the congressional session. The corner-stone of the Washington Monument would not be laid until the following summer. Cobblestoned Pennsylvania Avenue was one of only two paved streets. Not yet fitted with its familiar high dome, the Capitol stood on a hill that boasted “a full view of the cities of Washington, Georgetown, and Alexandria, and the varied and forest-clad hills in Maryland and Virginia.” In the backs of most houses, recalled one of Lincoln’s colleagues, “stood pig-styes, cow-sheds, and pens for the gangs of unyoked geese. During the day the animals and fowls roamed at will in lordly insolence, singly or in herds and flocks, through the streets and over the fields.”
Nevertheless, with forty thousand inhabitants (including several thousand slaves), the capital was a metropolis compared to little Springfield. It was filled with the landmarks and memorials of the history that so captivated the Lincolns. Some of the most illustrious personages of the age still walked the halls of Congress—John Quincy Adams tirelessly battling on behalf of antislavery petitions; the eloquent Daniel Webster, whose words, Lincoln believed, would outlive the age; John Calhoun, the acknowledged spokesman for the South, who had already led one effort at rebellion. These titans who had shaped the history of the past decades were joined by those who would play leading roles in the great drama to unfold—Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens, future president and vice president of the Confederacy; Stephen Douglas, Lincoln’s great rival; and Robert Barnwell Rhett, agitator of rebellion.
The Lincolns took up residence in Mrs. Spriggs’s Boarding House on Capitol Hill, on the site of the present Library of Congress. Soon a favorite among his fellow boarders, Lincoln was always ready with a story or anecdote to entertain, persuade, or defuse argument. Samuel Busey, a young doctor who took his meals at the boardinghouse, recalled that whenever Lincoln was about to tell a story, “he would lay down his knife and fork, place his elbows upon the table, rest his face between his hands, and begin with the words ‘that reminds me,’ and proceed. Everybody prepared for the explosions sure to follow.”
For recreation, Lincoln took up bowling with his fellow boarders. Though a clumsy bowler, according to Dr. Busey, Lincoln “played the game with great zest and spirit” and “accepted success and defeat with like good nature and humor.” When word spread “that he was in the alley there would assemble numbers of people to witness the fun which was anticipated by those who knew of his fund of anecdotes and jokes.” As ever, his quick wit and droll geniality provided a source of “merriment” for everyone around him.
While Lincoln attended meetings and congressional sessions, Mary was largely confined to the single room she shared with her husband and two small children—Robert, now five, and Eddie, two, whose often boisterous antics and excited running through the corridors did not endear Mary to her fellow boarders. None of the other congressmen in their boardinghouse were accompanied by wives. Indeed, most of the legislators in the city had left their families behind. Without female friends, Mary was compelled to spend most of the day alone with the children. Furthermore, the mores of the day forbade her to attend social gatherings and parties without her continually occupied husband. After a few months, by mutual consent, Mary and the children left Washington. Unable to return to their Springfield home, which was rented out for the congressional term, she took the children to her father’s elegant house in Lexington, Kentucky, beginning what would be the longest continuous separation from her husband in their twenty-three-year marriage.
EIGHTEEN MONTHS before Abraham Lincoln arrived in Washington, history had taken an irrevocable turn when Democratic president James Polk ordered American troops to occupy disputed territory between the borders of the United States and Mexico. Relations between Mexico and the United States had been strained for decades as quarrels over boundary lines simmered. Announcing that Mexico had fired upon American soldiers on American soil, Polk called on Congress not to declare war but to recognize that a state of war already existed.
The onset of war with Mexico aroused the patriotic spirit of the American people, who regarded the war as “a romantic venture in a distant and exotic land.” The Congress called for 50,000 men, but within weeks, 300,000 volunteers had poured into recruiting centers. Lincoln’s former rival, John Hardin, was “the first to enlist” in Illinois. He would be elected colonel of his regiment and would die a hero’s death at the Battle of Buena Vista. Edward Baker, still retaining his seat in Congress, would raise a regiment and, “with drums rolling and fifes shrilling,” would lead his troops “through flag-bedecked streets crowded with cheering thousands, amid the weeping farewells of women, the encouraging God-speeds of men.”
From the start, many leading Whigs questioned both the constitutionality and the justice of the war. “It is a fact,” Lincoln would later say, “that the United States Army, in marching to the Rio Grande, marched into a peaceful Mexican settlement, and frightened the inhabitants away from their homes and their growing crops.” By the time Lincoln took his congressional oath, the combat had come to an end. The peace treaty had only to be signed, on terms spectacularly advantageous for the victorious United States. At this point, Lincoln conceded, it would have been easier to remain silent about the questionable origins of the war. The Democrats, however, would “not let the whigs be silent.” When Congress reconvened, they immediately introduced resolutions blaming the war on Mexican aggression, thereby demanding that Congress endorse “the original justice of the war on the part of the President.”
On December 13, less than two weeks after his arrival in Washington, Lincoln wrote his law partner, William Herndon: “As you are all so anxious for me to distinguish myself, I have concluded to do so, before long.” Nine days later, he introduced a resolution calling on President Polk to inform the House “whether the particular spot of soil on which the blood of our citizens was so shed” belonged to Mexico or to the United States. He challenged the president to present evidence that “Mexico herself became the aggress
or by invading our soil in hostile array.”
The president, not surprisingly, did not respond to the unknown freshman congressman whose hasty reach for distinction earned him only the derisive nickname “spotty Lincoln.” A few weeks later, Lincoln voted with his Whig brethren on a resolution introduced by Massachusetts congressman George Ashmun, which stated that the war had been “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally” initiated by the president.
The following week, on January 12, 1848, Lincoln defended his spot resolutions and his vote on the Ashmun resolution in a major speech. He claimed that he would happily reverse his vote if the president could prove that first blood was shed on American soil; but since he “can not, or will not do this,” he suspected that the entire matter was, “from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.” Having provoked both countries into war, Lincoln charged, the president had hoped “to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory…that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.” He went on to liken the president’s war message to “the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream.” Perhaps recalling the turtles tormented with hot coals by his boyhood friends, Lincoln employed the bizarre simile of the president’s confused mind “running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.”
This maiden effort was not the tone of reasoned debate that later characterized Lincoln’s public statements. Nor did it obey his oft-expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion. Compelling as Lincoln’s criticisms might have been, they fell flat at a time when the majority of Americans were delighted with the outcome of the war. The Democratic Illinois State Register charged that Lincoln had disgraced his district with his “treasonable assault upon President Polk,” claimed that “henceforth” he would be known as “Benedict Arnold,” and predicted that he would enjoy only a single term. Lincoln sought to clarify his position, arguing that although he had challenged the instigation of the war, he had never voted against supplies for the soldiers. To accept Polk’s position without question, he claimed, was to “allow the President to invade a neighboring nation…whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary.”
Even the loyal Herndon feared that Lincoln’s antiwar stance would destroy his political future. “I saw that Lincoln would ruin himself,” Herndon later explained. “I wrote to him on the subject again and again.” Herndon was right to worry, for as it turned out, Lincoln’s quest for distinction had managed only to infuriate the Democrats, worry fainthearted Whigs, and lose support in Illinois, where the war was extremely popular. A prominent Chicago politician, Justin Butterfield, asked if he was against the Mexican War, replied: “no, I opposed one War [the War of 1812]. That was enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of war, pestilence and famine.” In the years ahead, Lincoln would write frequent letters defending his position. If he had hoped for reelection to Congress, however, despite the unofficial agreement with his colleagues that he would serve only one term, his prospects rapidly evaporated in the fever of war. Indeed, when Stephen Logan, the Whig nominee to replace him, was defeated, his loss was blamed on Lincoln.
As Seward understood better than Lincoln, Manifest Destiny was in the air. “Our population,” Seward predicted, “is destined to roll its resistless waves to the icy barriers of the north, and to encounter Oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific.” Though he wasn’t in favor of the war, Seward’s political astuteness told him it was a mistake to argue against it. He warned that he did “not expect to see the Whig party successful in overthrowing an Administration carrying on a war in which the Whig party and its statesmen are found apologizing for our national adversaries.”
Back in Ohio, Salmon Chase told the abolitionist Gerrit Smith that he “would not have engaged in” the war, but in public he muted his opposition. For Chase was caught in a political dilemma. On the one hand, his antislavery allies in the Liberty Party were strongly against the war. If he wanted a seat in the U.S. Senate, however, he would need the support of Ohio Democrats, a task that would not be made easier by assaulting a Democratic president.
Of the four future presidential rivals, only Edward Bates matched the vehemence of Lincoln’s opposition. He charged Polk with “gross & palpable lying,” arguing that the true object of the war was “plunder & conquest.” Bates said he was ashamed of his Whig brethren who voted for the war, “actuated by a narrow & groveling policy, and a selfish fear of injuring their own popularity, & injuriously affecting the coming Presidential election.” To Bates, the war was part of a conspiracy to extend the reach of slavery—a belief he shared with many other Whigs, though not with Lincoln, who argued it was simply “a war of conquest brought into existence to catch votes.”
Whether or not it was begun to extend slavery, the war brought the issue of slavery expansion to the forefront. While the early battles were still raging, a little-known congressman from Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, had penned a historic amendment to a war appropriations bill providing that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory” acquired from Mexico—lands that would eventually comprise California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. This Wilmot Proviso was repeatedly passed in the House and repeatedly blocked in the Southern-dominated Senate. Its status became a battleground in the conflict between North and South. The issue of slavery in the territories would become the defining issue in the years that followed.
Seward, Chase, and Lincoln all favored the ban on slavery from entering the territories acquired from Mexico. Even before the Wilmot Proviso had been introduced, Lincoln positioned himself against the expansion of slavery, a position he would hold for the rest of his career, arguing that while the Constitution protected slavery in the states where it already existed, “we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death—to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.”
In Missouri, Bates also supported the Wilmot Proviso, though for different reasons. Bates considered the problem of extending slavery into these new lands a practical rather than a moral question. If Southerners brought their slaves into the West in large numbers, he feared that migration of free whites would come to a halt, thereby precluding growth and progress in the region. More important, he worried that the agitation over the slavery issue, which he blamed equally on Northern abolitionists and Southern extremists, would pull the country apart.
Bates had reason to fear so. South Carolina’s John Calhoun led the vocal opposition to the Proviso, denouncing it as an unconstitutional act that would deny Southerners the right to move freely “with their property” into commonly held American territory. Moreover, if slavery were banned from the new territories, free states would join the Union and skew the balance of power. The South, already losing ground in the House of Representatives to the more populous North, would lose its historic strength in the Senate as well. Southern interests would be subject to the dictates of an increasingly hostile North. This was a future the South would never accept. “The madmen of the North and North West,” editorialized the Richmond Enquirer, “have, we fear, cast the die, and numbered the days of this glorious Union.” Thus the debate over the war became a conflict over slavery and a threat to the Union itself.
DURING THIS PERIOD of great political stress and turmoil, Lincoln came to sorely miss the companionship of his wife and the presence of his children. The couple’s correspondence from this time gives us nearly all the direct evidence we have of their relationship. Almost all other information must be gleaned from outside observers, some of whom regarded Mary with extreme hostility or believed that she was unworthy of her husband.
“When you were here,” Lincoln wrote Mary on April 16, 1848, “I thought you hindered me some in attending to business; but now, having nothing but business—no variety—it has grown exceedingl
y tasteless to me…I hate to stay in this old room by myself.” He recounted with pride that he had gone shopping for the children, and told her how he enjoyed her letters. He was pleased to hear that, for the first springtime since he had known her, she had been “free from head-ache.” Then he added teasingly, “I am afraid you will get so well, and fat, and young, as to be wanting to marry again.”
“My dear Husband,” Mary answered, writing on a Saturday night after the children were asleep. “How much, I wish instead of writing, we were together this evening, I feel very sad away from you.” She described the children and their doings, and coyly needled that Mr. Webb, who had unsuccessfully sought her hand in their Springfield days, was coming to Shelbyville, Kentucky. “I must go down about that time & carry on quite a flirtation, you know we, always had a penchant that way.” In closing, she reassured him: “Do not fear the children, have forgotten you…. Even E(ddy’s) eyes brighten at the mention of your name—My love to all.”
Lincoln quickly responded: “The leading matter in your letter, is your wish to return to this side of the Mountains. Will you be a good girl in all things, if I consent?” Most likely, he was referring here to the problems Mary had experienced with the other boarders, and her unhappiness about the amount of work he had to do. Assuming that she had already affirmatively answered his question, he continued: “Then come along, and that as soon as possible. Having got the idea in my head, I shall be impatient till I see you.” These letters are replete with gossip about their acquaintances in Washington and Springfield, detailed news of the children, some mention of Lincoln’s political activities, gentle teasing, and expressions of longing, both for companionship and, by implication, for intimacy. In the fall of 1848, Mary and the children returned to Washington.
Team of Rivals Page 18