Violence often marred Illinois elections. Around the time of the debates in Springfield, for example, Usher Linder was speaking for the Whig cause in the statehouse and was continuously interrupted by hecklers in the balcony. At the conclusion of his remarks, Lincoln approached Linder, expressing concern for Linder’s safety: “Baker and I are apprehensive that you may be attacked by some of those ruffians who insulted you from the galleries, and we have come up to escort you to your hotel. We both think we can do a little fighting, so we want you to walk between us until we get you to your hotel.”104
In the second round of debates, which attracted an audience of about 500, Lincoln redeemed himself for his earlier failure. According to Gillespie, he “begged to be permitted to try it again and was reluctantly indulged and in the next effort he transcended our highest expectations[.] I never heard & never expect to hear such a triumphant vindication as he then gave of Whig measures or policy.”105 On December 18, Lincoln branded the Democrats’ subtreasury plan a “scheme of fraud and corruption.”106 Douglas responded in a manner that caused Lincoln to remark that he “is not now worth talking about.”107
The day after Christmas, Lincoln gave such a powerful address that it became the Illinois Whig Party’s textbook for 1840. He began by candidly admitting that it was “peculiarly embarrassing to me to attempt a continuance of the discussion, on this evening, which has been conducted in this Hall on several preceding ones. It is so, because on each of those evenings, there was a much fuller attendance than now, without any reason for its being so, except the greater interest the community feel in the Speakers who addressed them then, than they do in him who is to do so now. I am, indeed, apprehensive, that the few who have attended, have done so, more to spare me of mortification, than in the hope of being interested in any thing I may be able to say. This circumstance casts a damp upon my spirits, which I am sure I shall be unable to overcome during the evening.”
After this painful acknowledgment, Lincoln launched into a sober analysis of President Van Buren’s independent subtreasury scheme for government funds, a deflationary plan that, he argued, would create “distress, ruin, bankruptcy and beggary” by removing money from circulation. Hardest hit would be poor people in states with large tracts of public land. “Knowing, as I well do, the difficulty that poor people now encounter in procuring homes, I hesitate not to say, that when the price of the public lands shall be doubled or trebled … it will be little less than impossible for them to procure those homes at all.” Lincoln cited history to support his alternative to the subtreasury, a national bank, which for over forty years had managed to “establish and maintain a sound and uniform state of currency.” The Bank of the United States had performed this service cheaply, while the subtreasury would cost more and do less to restore prosperity. In addition, government money was safer in a Bank of the United States than it would be in the hands of government officials like those who had recently embezzled large sums. The Bank was clearly constitutional, Lincoln argued.
As he proceeded, Lincoln abandoned his didactic exposition of economic theory and history and began to scourge the Jackson and Van Buren administrations for their extravagant spending. He went on at length to rebut Douglas’s attempt to explain the federal government’s unusual expenses in 1838. Lincoln was occasionally abusive: he ridiculed arguments of the opponents of the Bank of the United States as “absurd;” he called Douglas “stupid” and “deserving of the world’s contempt;” and he labeled one of Douglas’s arguments “supremely ridiculous.” Lincoln indulged in some demagoguery, asking of the subtreasury: “was such a system for benefiting the few at the expense of the many, ever before devised?”
Warming to the task, Lincoln became almost hysterical as he savaged the Van Buren administration. “Many free countries have lost their liberty; and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption, in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its bosom are riding like demons on the waves of Hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course, with the hopelessness of their effort; and knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept way. Broken by it, I, too, may be; bow to it I never will. The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its Almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country, deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before High Heaven, and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty and my love.”108
Although such rhetorical bombast marred this speech, Lincoln made some legitimate economic points. The independent treasury scheme would have been deflationary, though not as badly as Lincoln predicted. Moreover, he sensibly praised the useful regulatory function that the Bank of the United States had served, something like the role that the Federal Reserve System would play at a later time.
Joshua Speed, recalling that Lincoln gave this address “without manuscript or notes,” marveled at his powers of concentration: “He had a wonderful faculty in that way. He might be writing an important document, be interrupted in the midst of a sentence, turn his attention to other matters entirely foreign to the subject on which he was engaged, and take up his pen and begin where he left off without reading the previous part of the sentence. He could grasp, exhaust, and quit any subject with more facility than any man I have ever seen or heard of.”109 (Responding to Speed’s observation “that his mind was a wonder,” Lincoln modestly remarked, “you are mistaken—I am slow to learn and slow to forget that which I have learned—My mind is like a piece of steel, very hard to scratch any thing on it and almost impossible after you get it there to rub it out.”)110 A Democrat who heard the speech remarked that Lincoln “surprised me by his ability and by his apparent logical frankness.… His statements were clear, and his arguments must have given great satisfaction to the party he represented. He asserted his propositions with firmness and supported them in the most effective manner.”111 Even the Register praised Lincoln’s effort as “in the main, temperate, and argumentative” and mercifully free of “coarse invective, unfounded ridicule, and personal abuse.” The Democratic editor said it was “pleasant to find a man among them [the Whigs] who occasionally is able to … deal in sober reason.”112 The speech was widely published in the Whig press and issued as a campaign document in pamphlet form.
Lincoln stumped for Harrison throughout Illinois. In March, Lincoln campaigned as he made his rounds on the legal circuit. With Edward D. Baker, he spoke in Jacksonville, where Douglas and the bibulous, combative Josiah Lamborn, a representative of the darker side of frontier politics, made their replies. Noted for “bitter and unmeasured” denunciations of Whigs, the tall, slender Lamborn had a peculiar tawny complexion and a crippling deformity that had evidently made him vengeful and acerbic.113 Lamborn’s undoubted brilliance was overshadowed by his lack of scruples and his drinking habits. He became an alcoholic, abandoned his family, and as attorney general of Illinois accepted bribes.
Lincoln spent much time in the southern part of the state, known as “Egypt,” chief stronghold of the Democratic Party. Lincoln’s speaking style, accent, and folksy approach to politics seemed more suitable to this area than to the northern part of the state. He canvassed Egypt most intensively after the August elections, in which the Democrats won the legislature and two of the state’s three congressional seats. He was joined by
his friend Edward D. Baker, former governor Joseph Duncan, and Alexander P. Field, the fiercely partisan Illinois secretary of state, a “tall, perfectly formed” man “with erect, soldierly bearing, and the polished manners of a born courtier” whose “otherwise handsome features were marred by a nodular, potato-like nose.”114 Field told a friend that the Whigs “lost the legislature in consequence of the Great Majorities against us in the southern part of the State. That part of the State has not been properly attended to or their Majorities certainly would have been greatly reduced. Baker (Ed) Lincoln Gov Duncan & myself are going to spend all our time in the Southern Counties discuss[ing] the principles of our party in every neighborhood: and challenge these men [Democratic leaders] to a fair discussion of this administration[,] organize our friends, [and] circulate documents amongst them.”115 The Democratic press sarcastically remarked, “Missionaries Field and Lincoln have again been sent forth … by the ‘Junto’ of Springfield, to make a last effort in bringing the ignorant and heathenish Democrats of Illinois from out of their blinded and self-destructive errors and threaten them with the anathema of the Holy Federal Church if they do not open their eyes.”116
Illness compounded the hardships of campaigning in such a primitive region. As Baker and Lincoln stumped Egypt, they found themselves “shaking with the ague one day, and addressing the people the next.” In the absence of railroads and stage lines, they had to ride on horseback with their clothes jammed into saddlebags. They covered vast distances through swamp and over prairie, all the while enduring miserable accommodations. But “no matter how tired, jaded and worn the speaker might be, he was obliged to respond to the call of the waiting and eager audiences.”117
Lincoln’s oratorical skills proved a valuable weapon in the Whig arsenal, for many Westerners seldom read newspapers and thus obtained political information solely from stump speakers. John Hay observed that it was difficult for city-dwellers “to form any adequate conception of the intense affection and eager interest that a … jolly, eloquent, and discreet partisan leader excites among his constituency of the backwoods.” His triumphs occur in “rural school-houses and groves,” where his “wit is rewarded by hearty laughter, and his eloquence by yells of approbation.” In regions with few sources of entertainment, “a popular orator, who can make men laugh and cry, becomes entwined with their sluggish, emotional natures, and a speech is to them not an incident of an evening, but the event of a week.”118
Baker’s style differed from Lincoln’s. An opponent recalled that Lincoln “did not possess the poetry and pathos of Baker or Linder, but he had an earnestness which denoted the strength of his inward convictions and the warmth of his heart.”119 Harman G. Reynolds, a prominent Mason in Springfield, recollected hearing Lincoln during this campaign: “The very first impression made upon us was that he could be implicitly trusted, and he had not spoken five minutes until we felt certain that he was a man of power.” Reynolds was especially struck by “the rich and musical intonation of his voice, his honest utterances, and naïve, homebred way of thinking and speaking, so unlike other men.”120
Connoisseurs of political speaking gave Lincoln good marks, despite some reservations about his appearance. Gustave Koerner reported that at a Belleville rally in April, the other orators “outshone Lincoln in melody of voice and graceful delivery,” but that he was the strongest “in argument.” Lincoln’s “appearance was not very prepossessing,” for his “exceedingly tall and very angular form made his movements rather awkward,” and his features, especially his high cheekbones, were unpleasant to behold, said Koerner. “His complexion had no roseate hue of health, but was then rather bilious, and, when not speaking, his face seemed to be overshadowed by melancholy thoughts.” Koerner observed Lincoln carefully and detected “a good deal of intellect in him, while his looks were genial and kind,” but doubted that he “had much reserve will-power.”121 Earlier that month, Lincoln won a more positive notice in a Whig newspaper, the Alton Telegraph, which reported that his “highly argumentative and logical” speech in that city “was enlivened by numerous anecdotes” and “was received with unbounded applause.” The Telegraph also noted that at Carlinville on April 6, Lincoln spoke “with great power and eloquence.”122
Negrophobia loomed large in the campaign. The few extant examples of Lincoln’s speeches show that he indulged in the same race-baiting that he had so freely employed four years earlier. For their part, the Democrats labeled Harrison an “Abolitionist of the first water” and a hypocrite who would “make slaves of White men” while making “free men of black slaves.”123 A Democratic campaign paper in Springfield denounced Lincoln and his fellow Whigs for seeking to deliver the federal government “into the hands of a set of fanatics, who boldly proclaim that they would sacrifice their country, its liberties, its honor, and its glory, TO MAKE THE NEGRO THE EQUAL OF THE WHITE MAN!” and alleged that wherever “an abolitionist is found, he is loud and warm in support of Harrison. There are some three hundred abolitionists, it is said, in the county of Sangamon, every one of whom is for Harrison.”124 In Springfield, Democrats attacked the Whigs for soliciting aid from “that separate, distinct, and fanatical party, called Abolitionists.”125
Responding in kind, Lincoln and other Whigs reiterated their earlier charges about Van Buren’s support for black suffrage in 1821. At Carlinville on April 6, Lincoln reportedly showed that the Democratic presidential nominee was “clothed with the sable furs of Guinea,” that his “breath smells rank with devotion to the cause of Africa’s sons,” and that his “very trail might be followed by scattered bunches of Nigger wool.”126 In a debate with Douglas, he said “that if his opponent tacked the wool upon Harrison’s head he would pull it off.” Douglas “retorted that he would begin just where the other gentleman left off, and that he would stick to the wool question.”127 In another debate with Douglas, Lincoln praised the Bank of the United States, denounced the president’s subtreasury plan, told “many highly amusing anecdotes which convulsed the house with laughter,” and “reviewed the political course of Mr. Van Buren, and especially his votes in the New York Convention in allowing Free Negroes the right of suffrage.”128 When Douglas accused the Whig presidential candidate of dodging the issue of abolitionism, Lincoln protested that the document cited by his opponent was not genuine.
In a March 1840 debate with Douglas at Jacksonville, Lincoln ambushed the Little Giant on the abolition issue. While preparing for that event, Lincoln had his “head-strong and revengeful” friend Dr. William H. Fithian, a skilled practitioner of political dirty tricks, write to Van Buren asking if William M. Holland’s biography of the president accurately described Van Buren’s support for black suffrage in 1821.129 Van Buren confirmed Holland’s account. In a debate with Douglas, Lincoln asserted that Van Buren “had voted for Negro Suffrage under certain limitations.” When Douglas denied it, Lincoln read aloud from Holland’s life of the president. Douglas called it a forgery, whereupon Lincoln produced Van Buren’s letter to Fithian. Douglas angrily seized the volume, damned it, and flung it out into the audience.130 At Pontiac, Illinois, Douglas had misquoted Holland’s biography of Van Buren. When Lincoln reached Bloomington, he asked David Davis to obtain a copy of that volume. Davis did so, and the next day Lincoln confronted Douglas with it.
In justifying his tactics, Lincoln told James Matheny that Douglas “was always calling the Whigs Federalists—Tories—Aristocrats” and alleging that “Whigs are opposed to liberty—Justice & Progress. This is a loose assertion I suppose to Catch votes. I don’t like to catch votes by cheating men out of their judgment, but in reference to the whigs being opposed to Liberty &c let me Say that that remains to be seen & demonstrated in the future. The brave don’t boast. A barking dog don’t bite.”131
In April, Lincoln once again used Holland’s life of Van Buren to prove that the president had “advocated and supported Abolition principles, and opposed in the New York Convention the right of universal suffrage.” Addressing a Whig
rally in heavily Democratic Belleville, he charged that “Van Buren had always opposed the interests of the West—was in feeling and principle an Aristocrat—had no claims upon the people on the score of Democracy, and was unworthy of their confidence and support.” Lincoln analyzed Van Buren’s rise to power “in a manner which drew forth bursts of applause and peals of laughter from the assemblage.”132
Lincoln’s Whig friends also emphasized the race issue. The Sangamo Journal denounced Van Buren’s “love for free negroes,” manifested not only in his previous support for black suffrage, but also in his tolerance for courtroom testimony by blacks. In 1839, at the court martial of a naval officer, two free blacks who had witnessed the alleged crime testified against the officer, who was convicted and cashiered. Calling this a “monstrous and high-handed proceeding,” the Journal protested Van Buren’s refusal to declare a mistrial. The Journal declared that this would lead to a day when black testimony, even from slaves, would place whites at the mercy of blacks. Not stopping there, the editor predicted that Van Buren’s approval of the court martial verdict would lead to black suffrage and “one step more—too horrid to be contemplated—and that amalgamation.”133
Lincoln’s oratory in 1840, like that of other Harrison campaigners, tended to pander to popular taste. In an unusually perceptive commentary on the young Lincoln, John M. Scott, an attorney who eventually became chief justice of the Illinois State Supreme Court, described one of Lincoln’s speeches during that campaign. The young legislator, “already regarded as one of the ablest of the Whig speakers in that campaign,” stood in a wagon to address his audience. There was something “in him that attracted and held public attention,” Scott recalled. “Even then he was the subject of popular regard because of his candid and simple mode of discussing and illustrating political questions.” In 1840, the dominant economic issues “were not such questions as enlisted and engaged his best thoughts—they did not take hold of his great nature and had no tendency to develop it.” Occasionally “he discussed the questions of the time in a logical way, but much time was devoted to telling stories to illustrate some phase of his argument, but more often the telling of these stories was resorted to for the purpose of rendering his opponents ridiculous.” That “was a style of speaking much appreciated at that early day.” In such oratory, Lincoln “had no equals in the state.” A story he told was “not one it would be seemly to publish, but rendered as it was in his inimitable way it contained nothing that was offensive to a refined taste.” Scott noted Lincoln’s gift for telling off-color stories in a way that “they gave no offense even to refined and cultured people.” That day Lincoln’s story was met “with loud bursts of laughter and applause.” It placed “the opposing party and its speakers in a most ludicrous position,” and it “gave him a most favorable hearing for the arguments he later made in support of the measures he was sustaining.” In that period, Lincoln’s mastery of humor was very effective and made him a popular speaker. Acknowledging that it was “not a fair mode of treating an adversary,” Scott explained that “it is a mode of attack greatly relished by popular assemblies” because “most people like to see their opponents discomfited by being made the butt of a well told story.”134
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