Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  A relieved Giddings reported that “we weathered the most dangerous point on the last night of the late session. Our barque will now glide along I think in smooth water.”223 Thus California and New Mexico remained unorganized as Taylor was inaugurated, which suited the antislavery forces, who felt that the “best thing that can be done in regard to the territories, this session, is to do nothing.”224 Giddings thought the March 3 vote “a fatal blow to the institution [of slavery], from which it never recovered. And its downfall may be dated from that eventful night.”225

  That winter congressmen also wrangled over the claim of the heirs of Antonio Pacheco, who sought compensation for a slave who had been taken away from him twelve years earlier. The army had seized Pacheco’s bondsman Lewis to serve in the Seminole wars; when the Indians captured Lewis, the military considered him to have gone over to the enemy. Hence at the end of the conflict Lewis was sent west with his captors. In debating this claim, Giddings and his allies insisted that humans could not be considered property and hence Pacheco’s claim should be denied. Lincoln voted regularly with the Giddings bloc on that claim, which ultimately failed to win approval.

  Patronage Scramble

  In the wake of Taylor’s victory, Lincoln was, as a constituent wrote, “harast to deth by applicants for the various offices.”226 Aggressive Whigs besieged members of Congress, clamoring for government jobs, including such posts as diplomats, customs collectors, postmasters, judges, attorneys, marshals, census takers, clerks, and land office registers and receivers. Lincoln could easily identify with John J. Crittenden, who in March reported: “I have never witnessed a greater or more widespread cupidity for office. It has absolutely sickened me.”227 Lincoln may well have exclaimed “amen!” when a constituent said, “You must find it irksome and troublesome attending to the numerous calls for office in our State.” He doubtless would have endorsed the sentiment expressed by David Davis, who in 1853 declared: “If men would use half the industry & energy, in any other calling, that they do, in running down an office, they would get rich.”228

  Lincoln conscientiously tended to the requests of office seekers, just as he had dutifully answered constituents’ mail and regularly voted on the floor of the House. (He missed only one quorum call and 13 of 456 roll calls during his term). But as a lame-duck freshman, he wielded little influence. “Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition,” he acknowledged in May 1849.229 Many Illinois Whigs were indignant at the shabby treatment his recommendations received from the Taylor administration. Although he later would say during his own presidency that “he did not regard it as just to the public to pay the debts of personal friendship with offices that belonged to the people,” Lincoln tried to procure jobs for some close personal and political friends, including Anson G. Henry, Jesse K. Dubois, and Simeon Francis.230 For Henry he won an Indian agency, and for Dubois, the receivership of public monies in Palestine, Illinois, but he failed to secure a position for Francis, who wanted to move to Oregon.

  Patronage distribution created bitterness. When Lincoln obtained the pension agency in Springfield for his brother-in-law, Dr. William Wallace, a defeated rival complained that “Mrs Lincoln said to some one the other day—that she was now so happy—that she had got Mr. L. to give the Pension Agency to the Doctor & now all of their family difficulties was made up—so you see I was offered up as a sacrifice—a sort of burnt offering—to heal family broils.”231 (Wallace had apparently been refusing to speak to Lincoln.) Lincoln turned down the request of George W. Rives, a Whig activist in Paris, Illinois, for a job in Minnesota because Anson Henry had applied for a job in that same territory. Later, when told that Rives had openly abused him for this decision, Lincoln grew irritated. In December 1849, Rives once again asked for a recommendation; Lincoln answered with some asperity that his “feelings were wounded” by allegations that Rives had criticized him. But after giving Rives a mild scolding, Lincoln magnanimously endorsed him anyway. In the 1850s, Rives became an enthusiastic supporter of Lincoln, whom he called “one of the best men God ever made.”232

  Lincoln’s characteristic diffidence handicapped him in patronage struggles. As a would-be Indiana postmaster observed in February 1849, “a modest man stands no chance now a days, either with the ladies, or as a successful applicant for the smiles of Government.”233 In writing recommendations, Lincoln would mildly and reasonably acknowledge that incumbents were able men who had opposed the Whigs and simply suggest the names of replacements if vacancies should occur. When endorsing one James T. B. Stapp, for example, he praised him as “better qualified” than other applicants but admitted that “a large majority of the whigs of the District” preferred someone else.234

  With more supplicants than jobs to satisfy them, Lincoln had to make choices, some of which were not popular back home. Dr. Richard F. Barrett, with whom Lincoln had served on the Illinois Whig Central Committee in 1840, talked with many Springfield party faithful who “all agree that men older in service and of more weight and strength of character could have been selected for office.”235 Among the most controversial appointees recommended by Lincoln was Turner R. King as register of the Springfield land office. King was “a kind of worthless man” in William Herndon’s estimation.236 Scandalized by the appointment, Dr. Barrett told Thomas Ewing: “I think Mr. Lincoln has been imposed upon by King, and his friends.” Barrett claimed that King, whom he had known for years, had become “a free drinker, card player, bankrupt, and loafer, and for months and years has done little or nothing for an honest livelihood,” and was therefore “wholly undeserving the patronage of the Government.”237 William Butler, who wanted the post that went to King, lodged similar complaints. In April, Lincoln informed Philo Thompson, King’s principal sponsor, that a “tirade is still kept up against me here [in Springfield] for recommending” King and urged Thompson to gather 200 to 300 signatures on a petition favoring King.238 In response, Thompson assured Lincoln that King was a “warm active whig” and sent a petition stating that while “King may sometimes drink spirits, or throw a Card for amusement,” he was not “an Abolitionist, a Drunkard and a Gambler” in “any true sense.”239 After receiving this document, Lincoln informed Ewing that there was “no mistake about King’s being a good man” and charged his friend William Butler with acting “in bad faith” by launching a “totally outrageous” assault on King.240

  Political calculation may have been behind Lincoln’s conduct in this matter. Lincoln favored King over his old friend William Butler because King resided in Tazewell County in the northern part of the Seventh Congressional District. King could help win it for Whigs like Lincoln. Moreover, King’s brother and business partner, Franklin, had influence with militant antislavery forces. Whatever the reason behind the appointment, Lincoln had made an enemy of Butler, who for the next decade opposed his political aspirations. That opposition would help thwart Lincoln’s bid to secure a political appointment for himself.

  Would-Be Bureaucrat

  At first, Lincoln had not planned to ask for an office at all, because, as he explained to Joshua Speed, “there is nothing about me which would authorize me to think of a first class office; and a second class one would not compensate me for being snarled at by others who want it for themselves.” He could, he said, “have the Genl. Land office [a position in the Department of Interior] almost by common consent,” but he did not wish to antagonize other Illinoisans who sought that lucrative post, which paid $3,000 a year.241 (The governor of Illinois earned $1,000 annually, and an Illinois Supreme Court justice $1,200.) In due course, however, Lincoln did become a candidate for that job and thereby found himself embroiled in a complicated and often mean-spirited struggle.

  The General Land Office was considered one of the more important government bureaus, whose commissioner supervised several dozen clerks. Illinois residents thought their state was entitled to that commissionership, for Ohio had controlled it for a de
cade, then Indiana for eight years, and Illinois (in the persons of James Shields and Richard M. Young) had done so for merely five years. It seemed only fair that a Sucker should be commissioner for a few more years, after which another western state could have a turn.

  Initially, Lincoln backed Cyrus Edwards for the job, based on recommendations by several Whigs, including William Thomas, Nathaniel Pope, and Lincoln’s old friend Joseph Gillespie. Although some Illinois party members were unenthusiastic about Edwards, when the governor and the legislature of Kentucky also endorsed him and appealed for Lincoln’s help in February, Lincoln agreed to press his candidacy.

  While Lincoln threw his weight behind Edwards, the only other Whig congressman from Illinois, Edward D. Baker, who had moved to Galena in 1848 and promptly won election to the House, supported Col. James L. D. (Don) Morrison, a haughty, demagogic, egotistical Whig state senator from St. Clair County and a Mexican War veteran. Morrison’s opponents charged that he would face a conflict of interest if he became commissioner, for he had purchased some ancient French claims to land near Peoria that would be extremely valuable if sustained. His ethical sense was so feeble that when he predicted to Governor John Reynolds that he would be rich some day, the Old Ranger replied: “I guess you will be, Don, if you can manage to keep out of the penitentiary that long.”242

  In response to Baker, Elihu B. Washburne of Galena, who probably would have won that district’s congressional seat if Baker had not intervened, acted for many who resented Baker’s pushiness. He came out against Morrison and backed Martin P. Sweet. Joining Washburne were influential Whigs like S. Lisle Smith and Justin Butterfield of Chicago. Thus a three-way contest developed, pitting Edwards, Morrison, and Sweet against one another.

  Lincoln, meanwhile, feared that a candidate from some other state might win the commissionership. In February, he told Joshua Speed that former Congressman Edward W. McGaughery of Indiana was lobbying for the job “and being personally known, he will be hard to beat by any one who is not.”243 (Cyrus Edwards’s main problem was that he was unknown in Washington.) Also in the hunt were aspirants from Alabama, Iowa, Florida, and Mississippi. To head off these interlopers, Lincoln and Baker agreed to support either Edwards or Morrison, who were to decide between them which one would drop out of the running. (Sweet had earlier withdrawn his candidacy.) On April 19, Lincoln told Edwards: “what I can do for you I shall do, but I can do nothing till all negotiation between you and Don is at an end, because of my pledge to Baker. Still they know at the Department I am for you.”244

  On April 6, fear that Illinois was not promoting a strong enough candidate led Anson G. Henry and four other Illinois Whig leaders to urge Lincoln to seek the commissionership himself, lest an out-of-stater win it. Illinois Whigs had already lost the chief justiceship of the Minnesota Territory by failing to unite on a candidate.

  Apparently, Lincoln had thought about applying even before Cyrus Edwards asked his help. Weeks earlier, when David Davis urged him to do so, Lincoln replied: “I do not much doubt that I could take the Land-office if I would. It also would make me more money than I can otherwise make. Still, when I remember that taking the office would be a final surrender of the law [practice], and that every man in the state, who wants it himself, would be snarling at me about it, I shrink from it.”245 Lincoln told Justin Butterfield “that he did not want the office of Commissioner of the land office and … could not afford to abandon his profession for a temporary appointment.”246 Denying that Lincoln’s legal career would suffer if he were to accept the commissionership, Davis reminded his friend that he would make little money at the bar unless he moved to a large city.

  On April 7, Lincoln, who had returned to Springfield a week earlier, cautiously replied to Anson G. Henry and other Whig chieftains, saying that “if the office can be secured to Illinois by my consent to accept it, and not otherwise, I give that consent.” Lincoln insisted that he “must not only be chaste but above suspicion.” If offered the job, he insisted, “I must be permitted to say ‘Give it to Mr. Edwards, or, if so agreed by them, to Col. Morrison, and I decline it; if not, I accept.’ ” He added that “if at any time, previous to an appointment being made, I shall learn that Mr. Edwards & Col. Morrison have agreed, I shall at once carry out my stipulation with Col. Baker.”247 Edwards said that he did not wish to burden his friends or to play the role of dog-in-the-manger and wanted Lincoln to feel “entirely untrammelled” to do what he thought best in order to defeat Baker’s candidate, whoever that might be.248

  A few days later, yet another formidable candidate entered the contest, Justin Butterfield, an able, witty attorney from Chicago. A native of New Hampshire, the 59-year-old Butterfield had practiced law in New York before moving to Illinois. In 1841, President John Tyler named him U.S. district attorney in Chicago, a post he held until 1844. Lincoln enjoyed telling how Butterfield “was asked at the beginning of the Mexican War if he were not opposed to it; he said ‘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.”249 Others, however, disliked Butterfield’s offensive sarcasm. In 1839, he came near fighting a duel with William L. D. Ewing.

  Butterfield had lobbied the Taylor administration for the job of Treasury Department solicitor, but when he saw his chances fading, he turned his attention to the General Land Office post. On April 12, Josiah M. Lucas, an Illinois Whig journalist serving as a clerk in that agency, alerted his longtime friend Lincoln that “Butterfield is trying his best for the place, although not here in person, he is operating through friends,” among them Interior Secretary Thomas Ewing, Congressman Truman Smith, and Senator Daniel Webster.250 In May, the outgoing commissioner of the General Land Office, Richard M. Young (whom Butterfield denounced as “the most treacherous whining sniveling creature that ever existed”), had reported similar developments to Lincoln and urged him to “lay modesty aside and strike for yourself—From what I can learn Mr. B[utterfield] of C[hicago]—contrary to what he said to me when you was here, and after having lost the Solicitorship of the Treasury, is now playing a strong game for the Land office. Some think he will succeed—now can[’]t you prevent, by urging the claims of one A. Lincoln—who I am sure would be more acceptable here than any Whig in Illinois? What say you—Whatever you do, it will be well for it to be done quickly—and I am very sure that you can succeed better with this man Lincoln, than any person else.”251 On May 13, William H. Henderson, a former colleague of Lincoln’s in the Illinois Legislature, made a similar appeal from Washington: “you should come on here without delay” for “your success would be better secured by your presence. It is said that the President is for you, & perhaps a majority of the Cabinet, and that Mr. Ewing is warmly in favour of Friend Butterfield of Chicago.” Five days later Henderson was more importunate: “Your friends require your immediate presence[;] delay is fatal.”252

  Butterfield complained that “Lincoln appears to think that he has an absolute right to the support of all the members of the Cabinet who served with him in Congress [i.e., Postmaster General Jacob Collamer and Navy Secretary William B. Preston]. A sentiment of this kind will not go down with the People, who will never subscribe to the doctrine that one election to Congress confers a right to a continual claim to future offices.” He also argued that a majority of Illinois’s delegates to the 1848 Whig national convention favored his candidacy; that he was the choice of “an overwhelming Majority of the Whigs of the Northern part of the State which contains the only Whig congressional district in the State and is entitled as a matter of right and Justice to this office”; and that his own “qualifications for the office are paramount to Mr Lincoln.”253 Butterfield accused Lincoln’s friends of conducting “a foul plot to defeat me by falsehood fraud and misrepresentation.”254 He was particularly suspicious of Edward D. Baker, whose opposition had “its origin in personal malice and hostility because I ridiculed his attempts to force himself upon the President for a Cabinet appointment.”
255

  Like some other Whigs, Lincoln did not believe that Butterfield had earned a patronage reward. Butterfield had supported Clay for the presidency in 1848 and did little for the party during the campaign. Butterfield’s appointment, predicted Thomas Mather, “would be odious in the extreme” to most Illinois Whigs.256 Lincoln called Butterfield his “personal friend” who was “qualified to do the duties of the office,” but insisted that “of the quite one hundred Illinoisans, equally well qualified, I do not know one with less claims to it.” Heatedly, he declared that it would “mortify me deeply if Gen. Taylor[’]s administration shall trample all my wishes in the dust.”257 To Secretary of the Navy William B. Preston, Lincoln complained: “In 1840 we fought a fierce and laborious battle in Illinois, many of us spending almost the entire year in the contest. The general victory came, and with it, the appointment of a set of drones, including this same Butterfield, who had never spent a dollar or lifted a finger in the fight.” Eight years later Butterfield was similarly inactive. “Yet, when the election is secured by other men’s labor, and even against his effort, he is the first man on hand for the best office that our state lays any claim to. Shall this thing be?” Employing imagery that he would later use when denouncing slavery, Lincoln predicted that Illinois “whigs will throw down their arms, and fight no more, if the fruit of their labor is thus disposed of.”258 Lincoln, who hated to see some people enjoy the fruit of others’ labor, urged Duff Green to use his influence to defeat Butterfield by supporting Morrison, Edwards, or himself. He implored Joseph Gillespie to write to Crittenden or Taylor. To Indiana Congressmen Elisha Embree and Richard W. Thompson he predicted that the appointment of Butterfield would be “an egregious political blunder” and solicited them to lobby Taylor; both responded positively.259