Springfield, Illinois, July 4, 1860
MY DEAR DOCTOR: Your very agreeable letter of May 15th was received three days ago. We are just now receiving the first sprinkling of your Oregon election returns—not enough, I think, to indicate the result. We should be too happy if both Logan and Baker should triumph.
Long before this you have learned who was nominated at Chicago. We know not what a day may bring forth, but today it looks as if the Chicago ticket will be elected. I think the chances were more than equal that we could have beaten the Democracy united. Divided as it is, its chance appears indeed very slim. But great is Democracy in resources; and it may yet give its fortunes a turn. It is under great temptation to do something; but what can it do which was not thought of, and found impracticable, at Charleston and Baltimore? The signs now are that Douglas and Breckinridge will each have a ticket in every State. They are driven to this to keep up their bombastic claims of nationality, and to avoid the charge of sectionalism which they have so much lavished upon us.
It is an amusing fact, after all Douglas has said about nationality and sectionalism, that I had more votes from the southern section at Chicago than he had at Baltimore. In fact, there was more of the southern section represented at Chicago than in the Douglas rump concern at Baltimore!
Our boy, in his tenth year (the baby when you left), has just had a hard and tedious spell of scarlet fever, and he is not yet beyond all danger. I have a headache and a sore throat upon me now, inducing me to suspect that I have an inferior type of the same thing.
Our eldest boy, Bob, has been away from us nearly a year at school, and will enter Harvard University this month. He promises very well, considering we never controlled him much. Write again when you receive this. Mary joins in sending our kindest regards to Mrs. H., yourself, and all the family.
LETTER TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN
Lincoln writes to introduce himself to the man who had been nominated as Vice President on the same ticket with him. They first met in Chicago after their election in November.
Springfield, Illinois, July 18, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: It appears to me that you and I ought to be acquainted, and accordingly I write this as a sort of introduction of myself to you. You first entered the Senate during the single term I was a member of the House of Representatives, but I have no recollection that we were introduced. I shall be pleased to receive a line from you.
The prospect of Republican success now appears very flattering, so far as I can perceive. Do you see anything to the contrary?
LETTER TO A. JONAS
(Confidential)
Abraham Jonas, an English-born Jew living in Quincy, III., was one of Lincoln’s best friends. He writes to him to deny that he had ever had any connection with the Know-Nothings who were violently opposed to all foreigners, Jews and Catholics. Lincoln wishes the whole matter to remain quiet since many of the Know-Nothings (who also called themselves “the Americans”) had joined the Republican party, and he was afraid of losing their support.
Springfield, Illinois, July 21, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges; but, in point of fact, I never was in one at Quincy or elsewhere. I was never in Quincy but one day and two nights while Know-Nothing lodges were in existence, and you were with me that day and both those nights. I had never been there before in my life, and never afterward, till the joint debate with Douglas in 1858. It was in 1854 when I spoke in some hall there, and after the speaking, you, with others, took me to an oyster-saloon, passed an hour there, and you walked with me to, and parted with me at, the Quincy House, quite late at night. I left by stage for Naples before daylight in the morning, having come in by the same route after dark the evening previous to the speaking, when I found you waiting at the Quincy House to meet me. A few days after I was there, Richardson, as I understood, started this same story about my having been in a Know-Nothing lodge. When I heard of the charge as I did soon after, I taxed my recollection for some incident which could have suggested it; and I remembered that on parting with you the last night, I went to the office of the hotel to take my stage-passage for the morning, was told that no stage-office for that line was kept there, and that I must see the driver before retiring, to insure his calling for me in the morning; and a servant was sent with me to find the driver, who, after taking me a square or two, stopped me, and stepped perhaps a dozen steps farther, and in my hearing called to some one, who answered him, apparently from the upper part of a building, and promised to call with the stage for me at the Quincy House. I returned, and went to bed, and before day the stage called and took me. This is all.
That I never was in a Know-Nothing lodge in Quincy, I should expect could be easily proved by respectable men who were always in the lodges and never saw me there. An affidavit of one or two such would put the matter at rest.
And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a point if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some degree of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge.
LETTER TO SAMUEL HAYCRAFT
There is reason to believe that Lincoln himself had been incautious enough to tell a newspaper correspondent that he had said he was afraid he would be lynched it he went to Kentucky. The New York Herald seized upon the item and gave it wide publicity—much to Lincoln’s embarrassment. Lincoln writes to Haycraft to cover himself lest the news be spread in Kentucky.
Springfield, Illinois, August 16, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: A correspondent of the New York Herald, who was here a week ago, writing to that paper, represents me as saying I had been invited to visit Kentucky, but that I suspected it was a trap to inveigle me into Kentucky in order to do violence to me. This is wholly a mistake. I said no such thing. I do not remember, but possibly I did mention my correspondence with you. But very certainly I was not guilty of stating, or insinuating, a suspicion of any intended violence, deception or other wrong, against me, by you or any other Kentuckian. Thinking the Herald correspondence might fall under your eye, I think it due to myself to enter my protest against the correctness of this part of it. I scarcely think the correspondent was malicious, but rather that he misunderstood what was said.
LETTER TO SAMUEL HAYCRAFT
Lincoln writes to explain that Haycraft was in no way to blame for what had happened.
Springfield, Illinois, August 23, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 19th just received. I now fear I may have given you some uneasiness by my last letter. I did not mean to intimate that I had, to any extent, been involved or embarrassed by you; nor yet to draw from you anything to relieve myself from difficulty. My only object was to assure you that I had not, as represented by the Herald correspondent, charged you with an attempt to inveigle me into Kentucky to do me violence. I believe no such thing of you or of Kentuckians generally; and I dislike to be represented to them as slandering them in that way.
LETTER TO JOHN HANKS
John Hanks was a relative of Lincoln’s mother. He had been with Lincoln in Indiana, had helped him build a boat for Offut in 1831, and at the Decatur convention on May 9, 1860, had brought in the rail fences that had made Lincoln famous as the “Rail-splitter Candidate.” Lincoln writes to him to answer a query about the family.
Springfield, Illinois, August 24, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 23rd is received. My recollection is that I never lived in the same neighborhood with Charles Hanks till I came to Macon county, Illinois, after I was twenty-one years of age. As I understand, he and I were born in different counties of Kentucky, and never saw each other in that State; that while I was a very small boy my father moved to Indiana, and your father with his family remained in Kentucky for many years. At length you, a young man grown, came to our neighborhood, and were at our house, off and on, a great deal for three, four, or five years;
and during the time, your father, with his whole family, except William, Charles, and William Miller, who had married one of your sisters, came to the same neighborhood in Indiana, and remained a year or two, and then went to Illinois. William, Charles, and William Miller, had moved directly from Kentucky to Illinois, not even passing through our neighborhood in Indiana. Once, a year or two before I came to Illinois, Charles, with some others, had been back to Kentucky, and returning to Illinois, passed through our neighborhood in Indiana. He stopped, I think, but one day (certainly not as much as three); and this was the first time I ever saw him in my life, and the only time, till I came to Illinois, as before stated. The year I passed in Macon County I was with him a good deal—mostly on his own place, where I helped him at breaking prairie, with a joint team of his and ours, which in turn, broke some on the new place we were improving.
This is, as I remember it. Don’t let this letter be made public by any means.
LETTER TO ANSON G. CHESTER
(Private)
In the rough-and-tumble politics of the sixties it was not unusual to invent and even to forge documents that would discredit an opponent. Lincoln nails the lie to one of these—a forgery which stated that he had once slandered Thomas Jefferson.
Springfield, Illinois, September 5, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 1st is received. The extract upon a newspaper slip which you sent, and which I herewith return, is a base forgery, so far as its authorship is imputed to me. I never said anything like it, at any time or place. I do not recognize it as anything I have ever seen before, emanating from any source. I wish my name not to be used; but my friends will be entirely safe in denouncing the thing as a forgery, so far as it is ascribed to me.
(THE CLIPPING)
LINCOLN ON JEFFERSON.—The Macomb (Ill.) Eagle rakes up the following extract from a speech made by Mr. Lincoln in 1844:
“Mr. Jefferson is a statesman whose praises are never out of the mouth of the democratic party. Let us attend to this uncompromising friend of freedom, whose name is continually invoked against the Whig party. The character of Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puling about liberty, equality, and the degrading curse of slavery, he brought his own children to the hammer, and made money of his debaucheries. Even at his death he did not manumit his numerous offspring, but left them, soul and body, to degradation, and the cart whip. A daughter of this vaunted champion of democracy was sold some years ago at public auction in New Orleans, and purchased by a society of gentlemen, who wished to testify by her liberation their admiration of the statesman who ‘Dreampt of freedom in a slave’s embrace.’
“This single line I have quoted gives more insight to the character of the man than whole volumes of panegyric. It will outlive his epitaph, write it who may.”
LETTER TO NATHANIEL GRIGSBY
Nathaniel Grigsby was the brother of Aaron, whom Lincoln’s sister had married in 1826. She died in childbirth shortly afterwards. Part of the Grigsby family had moved to Missouri, and Lincoln writes to Nathaniel there.
Springfield, Illinois, September 20, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of July 19th was received only a few days ago having been mailed by your brother at Gentryville, Ind., on the 12th of the month. A few days ago, Gov. Wood of Quincy told me he saw you, and that you said you had written me. I had not then received your letter.
Of our three families who removed from Indiana together, my father, Squire Hall, and John D. Johnston, are dead, and all the rest of us are yet living, of course the younger ones are grown up, marriages contracted and new ones born. I have three boys now, the oldest of which is seventeen years of age.
There is now a Republican electoral ticket in Missouri, so that you can vote for me if your neighbors will let you. I would advise you not to get into any trouble about it. Give my kindest regards to your brother Charlie. Within the present year I have had two letters from John Gorden, who is living somewhere in Missouri, I forget exactly where, and he says his father and mother are still living near him.
LETTER TO MRS. M. J. GREEN
Lincoln admits that he had never had much to do with ladies—not even to write to them.
Springfield, Illinois, September 22, 1860
MY DEAR MADAM: Your kind congratulatory letter, of August, was received in due course, and should have been answered sooner. The truth is I have never corresponded much with ladies; and hence I postpone writing letters to them, as a business which I do not understand. I can only say now I thank you for the good opinion you express of me, fearing, at the same time, I may not be able to maintain it through life.
LETTER TO MISS GRACE BEDELL
(Private)
A little girl in Westfield, New York, had written to the President-elect to suggest that he let his whiskers grow so as to appear more dignified for his new position. He writes to tell her about his family, and he queries the whiskers suggestion. When the train bearing him to Washington as President-elect stopped for a moment at Westfield, Lincoln asked for Grace Bedell. She was brought to the train and there was kissed by the newly whiskered man.
Springfield, Illinois, October 19, 1860
MY DEAR LITTLE MISS: Your very agreeable letter of the 15th is received. I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughter. I have three sons—one seventeen, one nine, and one seven years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family. As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affectation if I were to begin it now?
LETTER TO MAJOR DAVID HUNTER
(Private and confidential)
As election day approached, it became more and more evident that the South was determined to resist forcibly the election of a Republican President. For months Southern sympathizers in important Federal offices had been shipping arms and war material from Northern armories and arsenals to Southern ones. Threats of secession were made openly and, as is indicated in this letter, army officers of Southern birth were announcing their intention to desert. Lincoln here writes to Hunter asking for confirmation of such rumors.
Springfield, Illinois, October 26, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Your very kind letter of the 20th was duly received, for which please accept my thanks. I have another letter, from a writer unknown to me, saying the officers of the army at Fort Kearny have determined, in case of Republican success at the approaching Presidential election, to take themselves, and the arms at that point, South, for the purpose of resistance to the government. While I think there are many chances to one that this is a humbug, it occurs to me that any real movement of this sort in the army would leak out and become known to you. In such case, if it would not be unprofessional or dishonorable (of which you are to be judge), I shall be much obliged if you will apprise me of it.
LETTER TO GEORGE D. PRENTICE
(Private and confidential)
Lincoln writes to George D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, to assure him that his conservative views had been expressed again and again in the Republican platform and in his debates with Douglas which had been printed in hook form. On the original of this letter an endorsement in Lincoln’s handwriting appears on the back: “(Confidential). The within letter was written on the day of its date, and on reflection withheld till now. It expresses the views I still entertain.”
Springfield, Illinois, October 29, 1860
MY DEAR SIR: Yours of the 26th is just received. Your suggestion that I in a certain event shall write a letter setting forth my conservative views and intentions is certainly a very worthy one. But would it do any good? If I were to labor a month I could not express my conservative views and intentions more clearly and strongly than they are expressed in our platform and in my many speeches already in print and before the public. And yet even you, who do occasionally speak of me in terms of personal kindness, give no prominence to these oft-repeated expressions of conservative views and intentions, but busy yourself with appeals to all conservative men to vote for Douglas—to vote an
y way which can possibly defeat me—thus impressing your readers that you think I am the very worst man living. If what I have already said has failed to convince you, no repetition of it would convince you. The writing of your letter, now before me, gives assurance that you would publish such a letter from me as you suggest; but, till now, what reason had I to suppose the Louisville Journal, even, would publish a repetition of that which is already at its command, and which it does not press upon the public attention?
And now, my friend—for such I esteem you personally—do not misunderstand me. I have not decided that I will not do substantially what you suggest. I will not forbear from doing so merely on punctilio and pluck. If I do finally abstain, it will be because of apprehension that it would do harm. For the good men of the South—and I regard the majority of them as such—I have no objection to repeat seventy and seven times. But I have bad men to deal with, both North and South; men who are eager for something new upon which to base new misrepresentations; men who would like to frighten me, or at least to fix upon me the character of timidity and cowardice. They would seize upon almost any letter I could write as being an “awful coming down.” I intend keeping my eye upon these gentlemen, and to not unnecessarily put any weapons in their hands.
LETTER TO HANNIBAL HAMLIN
(Confidential)
On November 6, Abraham Lincoln had been elected President of the United States, and on the same ticket with him, Hannibal Hamlin had been elected Vice President. The two men had never met. Lincoln writes to arrange an interview with Hamlin in Chicago.
The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln Page 64