Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  A Democratic newspaper in Peoria attacked Lincoln for virtually sanctioning miscegenation. In arguing “that no people were good enough to legislate for another people without that other’s consent; or in other words:—the people of Nebraska are not competent to legislate for the negro without the negro’s consent,” Lincoln had denied the legitimacy of Illinois’s constitutional provision forbidding whites and blacks to marry. After all, the paper asserted, that prohibition was made “without consulting the feelings of the negroes.” So if Lincoln is correct, “our laws ‘with adequate penalties, preventing the intermarriage of whites with blacks’ and that ‘no colored person shall ever, under any pretext, be allowed to hold any office of honor or profit in this state,’ ARE ALL WRONG, because each of these provisions have been adopted without the consent of the negro.”137

  The Peoria Republican took a more favorable view of “Lincoln’s truly able and masterly speech.” The editors said they had “never heard the subjects treated of so eloquently handled, nor have we often seen a speaker acquit himself with greater apparent ease and self-possession.”138

  After replying to Douglas at Springfield and Peoria, Lincoln planned to continue the pattern, starting at Lacon on October 17. The senator, however, had become hoarse and canceled his Lacon appointment. Lincoln, not wishing to take advantage of his rival’s indisposition, also called off his appearance there. Douglas recovered sufficiently to speak in Princeton on October 18 but the following day temporarily retired from the campaign trail to recruit his health; before election day he managed to give a few mores speeches. Meanwhile, Lincoln fulfilled engagements in Urbana, Chicago, and Quincy.

  Lincoln was, according to Herndon, “thoroughly displeased” by Douglas’s appearance at Princeton two days after he declined to renew their debate at Lacon because he was allegedly too unwell. Understandably, this action tended to confirm Lincoln’s belief that Douglas lacked political scruples. Four years later, Lincoln would have much more evidence of Douglas’s unethical nature.139

  As Lincoln was leaving Urbana in an ancient omnibus, a new friend, the young attorney Henry C. Whitney, criticized him for making the “most execrable music” on a harmonica. He replied: “This is my band; Douglas had a brass band with him in Peoria, but this will do me.” Whitney recalled that Lincoln’s “attire and physical habits were on a plane with those of an ordinary farmer.” His hat lacked any nap, his coat seemed ten years old, his boots were unshined, his valise “was well worn and dilapidated,” and his umbrella “was substantial, but of a faded green, well worn, the knob gone, and the name ‘A. Lincoln’ cut out of white muslin, and sewed in the inside.”140

  Senate Bid

  In November, Democrats lost badly throughout the Free States, including Illinois. “Never before have the democracy of Illinois been so completely vanquished,” observed the Joliet Signal.141 Opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act dominated both the legislature and the congressional delegation, gratifying antislavery journals like the New York Tribune, which deemed the election a referendum on Douglas: “No Senator of the United States ever before received such a withering repudiation.”142 Douglas’s Illinois colleague in the senate, James Shields, ascribed the defeat in their state to the Little Giant’s dictatorial insistence that all Democratic candidates support the unpopular Kansas-Nebraska Act. Many voters, Shields reported, thought that Douglas had become the tool of Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, who wanted Kansas, located on Missouri’s western border, to become a Slave State. Democrat John M. Palmer deeply resented the high-handed tactics of the Little Giant, whom he called “this miniature negro driver, this small sample of a Carolina overseer who speaks to us as if we were slaves.”143

  Despite the Democrats’ poor showing, Yates lost his bid for reelection, largely because he was labeled a Know-Nothing. The foreign-born overwhelmingly supported his opponent, Thomas L. Harris. Those same voters had already been alienated by the temperance crusade conducted in part by Whigs. Ironically, Yates was also hurt by rumors that he was a drunkard. In September, Lincoln reported that the congressman’s “enemies are getting up a charge against him, that while he passes for a temperate man, he is in the habit of drinking secretly,” a charge which Lincoln dismissed even though, as it turned out, Yates did in fact have a drinking problem.144 (Half a dozen delegates reported that Yates was drunk at the 1860 convention which nominated him for governor.) Democrats denounced Yates as a friend to blacks. As the Springfield Register said, “those who are in favor of repealing all laws making distinctions between whites and blacks, and are willing to let the negroes vote, sit on juries and give evidence in court against the white man, and that whites and blacks marry indiscriminately, just let them vote for Mr. Yates.” Illinois Democrats had concentrated their utmost efforts on defeating Yates. Douglas had issued orders to “beat the d[amne]d little pup.” In October it was reported that “the Douglasites would willingly lose every other of the nine Districts to see Thomas L. Harris elected.”145 The Democratic legislature had recently redrawn Yates’s district, lopping off northern counties where Whigs predominated and adding southern counties with more Democratic voters. Yates was further damaged by his failure to deliver on all his patronage promises.

  If Yates bemoaned his defeat, Lincoln regretted his own victory in the legislative contest, for, as he soon learned, it rendered him ineligible for the U.S. senate seat that he hoped to gain when the newly elected General Assembly, with a slim majority of anti-Nebraska members, convened in January.

  It is uncertain just when the prospect of the senatorship first tickled Lincoln’s ambition, but as election day approached, it seemed clear that he might attain such a high office. On September 27, he wrote to George Gage, a candidate for the General Assembly, about the senatorship. Gage replied: “I have strong hopes we shall elect a Senator the ensueing session & that you will succede[.] Rest assured you have my best wishes[.] I shall try and render you all the assistance I can.”146 Around this time Lincoln read aloud to Henry C. Whitney passages from Byron’s “Childe Harold,” reciting the following canto “earnestly, if not, indeed, reverently”:

  He who ascends to mountain tops, shall find

  Those loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow;

  He who surpasses or subdues mankind

  Must look down on the hate of those below;

  Though high above the sun of glory glow,

  And far beneath the Earth and Ocean spread,

  Round him are icy rocks, and loudly blow

  Contending tempests on his naked head,

  And thus reward the toils which to those summits led.

  Whitney believed that Lincoln had “a premonition that he was destined to ascend to the mountain tops of human achievement.”147 In political terms, that mountain top was a U.S. senate seat. In 1859, he told Norman B. Judd: “I would rather have a full term in the Senate than in the Presidency.”148 A year later, Lincoln said: “I would rather have a full term in the Senate—a place in which I would feel more consciously able to discharge the duties required, and where there was more chance to make [a] reputation, and less danger of losing it—than four years in the Presidency.”149

  Invitations to speak outside his congressional district may have stoked Lincoln’s senatorial ambition. Horace White, urging Lincoln to campaign in Chicago, told him: “the Whigs are bound to elect a U.S. Senator in place of [James] Shields. Chicago has five votes in the Legislature and influences a great many more in Northern Illinois. Part of our Representatives in the next Assembly will be Whigs, part Free-Soilers & part Anti-Nebraska Democrats. These Democrats might bolt at the nomination of a Whig for the Senate.… The idea is to have you go to Chicago and make a speech. You will have a crowd of from Eight to ten or fifteen thousand and the result will be that the people will demand of their Representatives to elect a Whig Senator. What might be doubtful otherwise will thus be rendered certain.”150

  At the same time, Richard L. Wilson, editor of the Chicago Journal, told Lincol
n that “the defeat of Shields is certain.”151 Neither Wilson nor White specifically alluded to Lincoln’s own candidacy, but William H. Randolph of Macomb did. In his appeal for Lincoln to stump in western Illinois, Randolph said: “Your name is also spoke[n] of as a candidate for U S Senator[.] Can we not reasonably hope to elect a thorough anti Nebraska Legislature[?] If so we hope for your election to that place[.]”152 Abraham Jonas of Quincy, imploring Lincoln to canvass his locale, dropped a hint that he might thereby win support for a senate bid: “I trust you may be able to pay us the visit and thereby create a debt of gratitude on the part of the Whigs here, which they may at some time, have it in their power, to repay with pleasure and with interest.”153

  Lincoln, Herndon recalled, was “ambitious to reach the United States Senate, and warmly encouraged in his aspirations by his wife,” campaigned for the post with “his characteristic activity and vigilance. During the anxious moments that intervened between the general election [in November] and the assembling of the Legislature [in January] he slept, like Napoleon, with one eye open.”154 And he kept relentlessly busy pursuing the goal.

  Three days after the November election, Lincoln began writing a torrent of letters asking support for his senate bid. On November 10 he appealed to Charles Hoyt of Aurora: “You used to express a good deal of partiality for me; and if you are still so, now is the time. Some friends here are really for me, for the U.S. Senate; and I should be very grateful if you could make a mark for me among your members.”155 That same day he told Jonathan Y. Scammon of Chicago that some “partial friends here are for me for the U.S. Senate; and it would be very foolish, and very false, for me to deny that I would be pleased with an election to that Honorable body. If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please make a mark for me with the members.”156 The following day he asked Jacob Harding of Paris to visit his legislator and “make a mark with him for me,” for “I really have some chance.”157 Later that month he appealed to Thomas J. Henderson of Toulon: “It has come round that a whig may, by possibility, be elected to the U.S. Senate; and I want the chance of being the man. You are a member of the Legislature, and have a vote to give. Think it over, and see whether you can do better than to go for me.”158 The following month he told Joseph Gillespie that “I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator; and if I could have your support my chances would be reasonably good.”159

  In late November, belatedly realizing that his status as a member-elect of the General Assembly might render him ineligible for the senate, Lincoln formally declined election as a state Representative. Although this step helped pave the way for his elevation to the senate, it was risky, for anti-Nebraska forces enjoyed only a slim majority in the legislature and were divided by old party animosities. In the special election called to replace Lincoln, the Democratic candidate, Jonathan McDaniel, surprisingly defeated Republican Norman Broadwell. McDaniel’s supporters conducted a “still hunt,” eschewing an overt campaign and waiting on election day to vote until the last minute. This tactic lulled the Whigs into complacency. Although Yates had received 2,166 votes the previous month in Sangamon County, Broadwell won only 984. Lincoln had paid little attention to the Broadwell-McDaniel contest, in part perhaps because Broadwell favored Yates for the senate. Shields gloated over the unexpected result, telling Charles Lanphier, editor of the Springfield Register: “Nobly done. You are a glorious set of Democrats. You turned the tables upon the Whigs. They made a maneuver to crush us, and were blown up by a mine while making the maneuver. This is the best Christmas joke of the season.”160 Lincoln offered that same journalist a different gloss on the election: “It reminds me of Montecue Morris, a private in Baker’s regiment in the Mexican War. Some of the soldiers had purchased a barrel of cider and were retailing it, at good profit, for twenty cents a glass. Montecue, whose tent was backed up to the cider barrel tent, tapped the other end of the barrel, through his tent, and began retailing the cider at ten cents a glass. He sold considerable before he was detected. That’s the way we were served by the American vote and, while it’s funny, it hurts.”161

  It hurt more than Lincoln may at first have realized. The anti-Nebraska forces in the legislature were understandably angry at Lincoln and other Sangamon County Whigs for losing that seat. David Davis told Lincoln that voters would say “Damn Springfield—the Whigs have behaved so shamefully, that they ought to be punished & Lincoln should not be elected.”162 The Aurora Guardian objected to Lincoln’s resignation from the legislature: “This fact, together with his over-weaning anxiety to obtain the place, will stand, and ought to do, against him seriously.”163 The Rock River Democrat concurred, saying that Lincoln “overreached himself that time, and may do so again before a Senator is chosen.”164

  Broadwell’s defeat especially disenchanted the abolitionists. On December 29, an antislavery editor reported from Springfield that “I find here a strong feeling against Lincoln among those who should properly be his friends.… The election of that Nebraska man in the county of Sangamon to fill the vacancy occasioned by Abe’s resignation has done more than any thing else to damage him with the Abolitionists. That has put the seal to their discontent.”165 Lincoln also alienated antislavery Radicals by failing to make common cause with them when they gathered in Springfield to form the Illinois Republican Party. At that meeting, held on October 4 and 5, they elected Lincoln, without his knowledge, to their central committee. (When some delegates objected that Lincoln was too conservative on the slavery issue, the antislavery firebrand Owen Lovejoy vigorously defended him.) The following month Lincoln declined that honor, saying: “I have been perplexed some to understand why my name was placed on that committee. I was not consulted on the subject; nor was I apprized of the appointment, until I discovered it by accident two or three weeks afterwards. I supposed my opposition to the principle of slavery is as strong as that of any member of the Republican party; but I had also supposed that the extent to which I feel authorized to carry that opposition, practically, was not at all satisfactory to that party. The leading men who organized that party, were present, on the 4th. of Oct. at the discussion between Douglas and myself at Springfield, and had full oppertunity to not misunderstand my position.”166

  On November 30, Zebina Eastman, an abolitionist from Chicago, declared in his newspaper The Free West: “We could not advise the republicans to support for this station [U.S. senator], Lincoln, or any of the moderate men of his stamp. He is only a Whig, and the people’s movement is no whig triumph. All of whiggery that survived has been crushed out in the recent Congressional election.” Eastman preferred Owen Lovejoy, Ichabod Codding, Richard Yates, and William Bissell to Lincoln.167 When criticized by the Chicago Press and Tribune, Eastman replied: “Our opposition is based upon short comings on the Republican basis. He is reported to be a Compromise Whig, and having a full attachment to that mummy of a party, which has done us no good in this State, but has brought upon us all the calamities and defeats of the Republican movement. He dares not oppose the fugitive slave law—and he would not pledge himself not to go against the admission of any more Slave States. If these cannot be gotten from him, of what service would he be in the Senate, when the Slavery question comes up? The Senator to be elected from this State, must be prepared to vote against the admission of Kansas or Nebraska as Slave States, or else we have only been fighting in the past election over the shell disgorged of the oyster.”168 (A Democratic editor in Joliet sneered at Eastman’s attack on Lincoln: “The Free West, … having received for the cause of abolition and nigger equality all the aid and comfort from the whigs that it demanded, now turns about and attempts to kick them out of the abolition ranks.”)169 Other antislavery militants favored Yates if an abolitionist like Codding or Lovejoy could not win.

  To help combat such opposition, Lincoln enlisted the aid of Congressman Elihu B. Washburne of Galena, a former Whig who had volunteered to do all he could to secure Lincoln’s election. The ambitious, obstinate,
strong-willed, and belligerent Washburne was a simple, earnest fellow, not intellectually gifted but with a deep streak of common sense. In December, Lincoln told him: “I have not ventured to write all the members [of the legislature] in your district, lest some of them should be offended by the indelicacy of the thing—that is, coming from a total stranger. Could you not drop some of them a line?” As time passed, Lincoln grew ever more concerned about his lack of support in northern Illinois. On December 14 he told Washburne that “there must be something wrong about U.S. Senator, at Chicago. My most intimate friends there do not answer my letters; and I can not get a word from them.” He asked the Galena congressman to “pump” John Wentworth, a leading anti-Nebraska Democrat from Chicago, to discover what was amiss.170

  Washburne jumped in to help, writing not only to legislators but also to Eastman, urging him to reconsider. The abolitionist editor would not yield and retorted that many anti-Nebraska Democrats “have a repugnance at voting for Lincoln,” who “did not give entire satisfaction to the Republicans in his speech in Chicago. Did not take high ground enough.”171 Washburne received similar word from Anson Miller of Rockford, who reported that he had “spoken with our Senator and Representatives as to Lincoln for U.S. Senator. They are not committed but one thinks L is not enough Anti Slavery. He wishes him—L—to take the ground of ‘no further extension of slavery’—‘no more slave territory.’ Better write Lincoln and suggest to him the absolute importance of taking high ground in the slavery question. Without this he cannot get the vote of the Northern members.”172

  In response, Washburne implored Eastman, whom he considered “easy to manage,” to be flexible and magnanimous: “I feel the greatest interest about the Senator. I am afraid our friends will be so impracticable that we may lose the fruits of our splendid victory. We must be yielding and liberal all round. I mentioned Lincoln, not because he had been a whig, but because he is a man of splendid talents, of great probity of character, and because he threw himself into the late fight on the republican platform and made the greatest speech in reply to Douglas ever heard in the State. I know he is with us in sentiment, and in such times as these, when we want big men and true men in the Senate, it seems cruel to strike him down. I thought, also he could combine more strength than any other man in the State. He has great personal popularity, and the entire confidence of all men of all parties. In the election for the legislature the whigs, it must be confessed, have been very liberal to the old democrats and free-soilers who came into the republican movement. I hope the same liberal spirit may continue to guide the new party.—I can say to you, that in the event of the success of Lincoln [neither] you, nor your friends will have any cause to complain. He will not only carry out our views fully in the Senate, but he will be with us in our views and feelings.”173