On February 8, the statehouse galleries and lobby were packed as the voting began. Lincoln received forty-five votes on the initial ballot, a mere five short of victory. (Because one senator persistently abstained, only fifty votes were required to win.) Those five votes could have been provided by Norman B. Judd, Burton C. Cook, Henry Baker, George T. Allen, and John M. Palmer, anti-Nebraska Democrats all. But adamant in their refusal to vote for a Whig, they united behind Lyman Trumbull, an antislavery Democrat from Alton who had just won a seat in the U.S. House. (Baker and Allen lived in Madison County, part of Trumbull’s district.) Those five liked Trumbull personally and regarded his election to the senate as essential to unite the opponents of Douglas’s popular sovereignty dogma, for it would lure thousands of Democrats, who would balk at the choice of Lincoln, to support the Anti-Nebraska Party.
In 1844, Trumbull had been passed over for the senate in part because of his condescending manner and aloof personality. Indeed, he enjoyed an unenviable reputation “as the most cold-blooded man who had ever appeared in public life in Illinois.”205 Thomas Ford, who said Trumbull was “devoured by ambition for office,” thought him “remarkable for a small, lean face, giving promise of narrow, cramped views, great prejudices and industry in finding fault with others.”206 In 1846, Gustave Koerner described Trumbull as the “most unscrupulous fellow on earth.” Referring to Trumbull’s unsuccessful bid for a seat in Congress, Koerner declared that the “slanders, contrivances, intrigues & conspiracies resorted to by him in this last canvass would fill a volume.”207 Born and raised in Connecticut, Trumbull came to Illinois in his early twenties, practiced law, entered politics, and earned respect, if not affection, for his powerful intellect, exceptional industry, skill as a debater, and mastery of constitutional law. But by opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, he alienated the pro-Nebraska Democrats, who regarded him as a combination of Judas and Benedict Arnold.
Lincoln understood that Trumbull’s supporters would be hard to woo. In mid-January he confided to Yates: “I may start with 20 or 25 votes, but I think I can, in a few ballots, get up to 48.… But how I am to get the three additional votes I do not yet see.” He predicted that the contest could degenerate into “a general scramble,” in which case anyone, including Trumbull, might win.208
Although it was speculated that Trumbull could have as many as eighteen votes on the initial ballot, he actually received only five, while Lincoln’s closest competitor, Shields, had forty-one. Over the next five ballots, Lincoln’s vote decreased, Shields’s held steady, and Trumbull’s grew. When it became clear that Lincoln could not win, Stephen T. Logan moved for adjournment till the morning, but the anti-Nebraska Democrats teamed up with their estranged party colleagues to defeat the motion. The seventh ballot created great excitement as the pro-Nebraska Democrats suddenly switched from Shields to Matteson, who received forty-four votes. On the eighth ballot the governor picked up two more while Lincoln’s total dwindled to twenty-seven and Trumbull’s swelled to eighteen. The following ballot showed Lincoln with fifteen, Trumbull with thirty-five, and Matteson with forty-seven. Sensing that the governor was about to win, some Nebraskaites grew nervous and declared that they preferred Lincoln or Lovejoy to the turncoat Trumbull. Jokingly, Lovejoy told them, “Boys, if you want me elected, you have got no time to lose, for it will be too late after another ballot.”209
Lincoln feared that Matteson would win on the next ballot. The governor, however, was hoist with his own petard, for Shields’s supporters deeply resented Matteson’s failure to back the incumbent. If a Democratic caucus had been held in a timely fashion, they believed, Shields would have won or, at the very least, the election of a senator would have been postponed; but to enhance his own prospects, Matteson had scotched the proposal for a caucus. Some of Shields’s angrier friends determined that Matteson would not gain by that move, and though they did not vote against the governor, they kept the anti-Nebraska forces apprised of Matteson’s maneuvers, including his “loan of money to certain Whigs and free soilers who were to vote for him.” They also reported that “certain men were voting for Judge Trumbull as a democrat a few times until both Shields and Lincoln could be dropped and Matteson brought into the field.” Some “Matteson men in disguise,” who “had been into all sorts of railroad and State fund speculation” with the governor, were ready “to desert Judge Trumbull whenever their votes could elect Gov. Matteson.”210 Tipped off by the disgruntled Shields men, Lincoln and his allies threw their support to Trumbull, who won on the tenth ballot, receiving fifty-one votes to Matteson’s forty-seven.
Lincoln feared that some of Trumbull’s supporters might well defect to Matteson unless, as he put it, “they should be kept on T[rumbull’s side] by seeing my remaining men coming on to him. I accordingly gave the intimation which my friends acted upon, electing T[rumbull on] that ballot.” It was, he said, an impulsive decision, made in the “heat of battle.” Lincoln explained that “few, if any, of my remaining 15 men would have gone over from me without my direction; and I gave the direction, simultaneously with forming the resolution to do it.”211
Some of Lincoln’s fifteen die-hard supporters, notably Stephen T. Logan, wept bitterly at their man’s appeal to switch to Trumbull. One senator (George W. Waters) refused to vote for him, going instead for Archibald Williams. The rest reluctantly cast ballots for Trumbull, but Logan went along only after Lincoln begged him to do so. Logan had worked hard all winter for his former partner and understandably thought Judd, Palmer, et al. were acting most ungenerously.
Jubilation reigned among the anti-Nebraska forces at Trumbull’s election. A tremendous roar rang out in the lobby of Representatives Hall, which overflowed with well-wishers. The New York Tribune hailed the “glorious result” as “a fitting finale to the Repeal of the Missouri Compromise by Douglas & Co.”212 Zebina Eastman crowed that of “all the candidates named for the station, the successful one was the most obnoxious to the aspiring leader [Douglas], and whose election is the most mortifying to him personally and politically.”213 Similarly, the Chicago Tribune, which called Trumbull “a man of more real talent and power than Abram Lincoln,” thought that “a more decisive and emphatic rebuke to Stephen A. Douglas could not have been administered.”214
If Matteson and his friends did resort to bribery, which seems highly probable, then it is easy to understand why Lincoln rejoiced at thwarting the governor’s scheme. “I regret my defeat moderately,” he told Washburne, “but I am not nervous about it. I could have headed off every combination and been elected, had it not been for Matteson’s double game—and his defeat now gives me more pleasure than my own gives me pain.” Lincoln was not gloating or being vindictive; he was genuinely offended by Matteson’s tactics and regarded his defeat as a triumph for antislavery principles and a rebuke to Democrats who had supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act. “On the whole,” he mused to Washburne, “it is perhaps as well for our general cause that Trumbull is elected. The Neb[raska] men confess that they hate it worse than any thing that could have happened. It is a great consolation to see them worse whipped than I am. I tell them it is their own fault—that they had abundant opertunity to choose between him & me, which they declined, and instead forced it on me to decide between him & Matteson.”215
Lincoln correctly gauged the level of discomfort in the Douglas camp. Trumbull reported that the pro-Nebraska Democrats “are exhibiting towards me a great deal of ill natured & malignant feeling.”216 The editor of the Chicago Times told Douglas that Trumbull’s election constituted “the severest blow we could have received.”217 The Chicago Democratic Press echoed that sentiment: “no other man could have been elected to the Senate whose presence there would be regarded by Mr. Douglas as a more signal rebuke.”218
Though pleased that he had delivered a blow to the Douglas forces, Lincoln acknowledged that it “was rather hard for the 44 to have to surrender to the 5—and a less good humored man than I, perhaps would not have consented to it—and it would
not have been done without my consent. I could not, however, let the whole political result go to ruin, on a point merely personal to myself.”219
Despite the stoic tone of Lincoln’s letters, his failure to win the senate seat plunged him into depression. As Herndon noted, Lincoln “thirsted for public notice and hungered—longed for approbation and when he did not get that notice or that approbation—was not thoroughly appreciated [—] he writhed under it.”220 Elihu B. Washburne thought “no event in Mr. Lincoln’s entire political career … brought to him so much disappointment and chagrin as his defeat for United States Senator in 1855.”221 Shortly after the election, Joseph C. Howell reported that “Lincoln like his friends feels very much hurt.”222 When Samuel C. Parks, a pro-Lincoln legislator, tried to console him by saying he would surely be elected senator in 1858, he predicted that “the taste for the senatorship would get out of his mouth” by then.223 Joseph Gillespie, another legislator active on Lincoln’s behalf, accompanied him home after the defeat and later recalled, “I never saw him so dejected. He said the fates seemed to be against him and he thought he would never strive for office again[.] He could bear defeat inflicted by his enemies with a pretty good grace; but it was hard to be wounded in the house of his friends.”224 One of those friends was John M. Palmer, an antislavery Democrat who had already offended his party by opposing the Kansas-Nebraska Act and said he therefore must vote for a Democrat for the senate. He recollected that Lincoln “felt hurt and was a little angry.”225
However dejected he may have been, Lincoln, at a party in honor of the senator-elect, cheerfully responded to a query about his disappointment by saying he was “not too disappointed to congratulate my friend Trumbull.”226 (Later, he praised Trumbull as “a peculiar man; peculiar for his rigid honesty, his high-toned independence, & his unswerving devotion to principle. A more conscientious man can not be found. He can not be bought; he can not be bribed; he can not be frightened out of what he knows to be right. I wish we had more such men as Lyman Trumbull than we have in public office.”)227 Recovering his good spirits, Lincoln told Samuel C. Parks he believed “that his defeat was the best thing that ever happened to him.”228 To young Shelby Cullom, who offered condolences, he replied: “my boy, don’t worry; it will all come right in the end.”229 When asked if he were bitter about Judd’s failure to support him, Lincoln replied: “I can’t harbor enmity to any one; it’s not my nature.”230 Lincoln’s magnanimity would eventually pay dividends, for the short, chunky, red-faced Judd was to play a key role in promoting his political fortunes.
Not all of Lincoln’s friends were as forgiving as he was. “There was a great deal of dissatisfaction throughout the State at the result of the election,” Parks reported. Because the Whigs “constituted a vast majority of the Anti Nebraska Party,” they understandably “thought they were entitled to the senate and that Mr. Lincoln by his contest with Mr. Douglas had earned it.”231 James Matheny denounced the Democrats who had refused to support Lincoln and called Trumbull “mean, low lived, [and] sneaking.”232 David Davis swore that if he had been in Lincoln’s place, he would not have capitulated. To a friend Davis wrote that he was unhappy with the election of Trumbull, who, he said, “has been a Democrat all his life—dyed in the wool—as ultra as he could be.” Davis thought Lincoln “ought to have been elected.… I had spent a good deal of time at Springfield getting things arranged for Lincoln, and it was supposed that his election was certain. I was necessarily absent the day of the election, & have been since glad of it, for I reckon that Trumbull’s election is better than that the matter should have passed over. But if I had been there, there were ten members of the Legislature, who would have fully appreciated the fact that 46 men should not yield their preference to 5.”233 Stephen T. Logan, “overcome with grief and emotion,” declared in the legislature that antislavery men who refused to vote for Lincoln had exhausted his patience: “A feather was light—but it was the last feather that broke the camel’s back. They have laid on us that last feather, and my back is broke.”234 (Abraham Smith, a conductor on the underground railroad, claimed that his opposition to Lincoln may have been the “feather that turned the scale.”)235 Joseph Gillespie angrily complained to Lincoln: “I am tired of being dragooned by some half dozen men who are determined either to rule or ruin. I am out of all temper with and have no faith in the honesty of men who insist that ten whigs shall go with one Democrat because they cannot in conscience vote for a Whig.” Gillespie was “well satisfied with Trumbull[,] yet his five particular friends who would rather see the Country go to the Devil than vote for a whig are not at all to my taste[.] I have made up my mind that henceforth I can be as reckless as they are.”236
In reacting indignantly to Trumbull’s victory, no one outdid Mary Lincoln, who denounced his “cold, selfish treachery.” She even turned on her old friend and bridesmaid Julia Jayne, now Mrs. Lyman Trumbull, calling her “ungainly,” “cold,” “unsympathizing,” and “unpopular.”237 Shortly after the election, she snubbed Julia Trumbull as the two women emerged from a church service; when Mrs. Trumbull tried to catch her eye, Mary Lincoln looked away. Julia persuaded her mother to invite Mrs. Lincoln to a party, but the invitation was declined. When the two politicians’ wives met by chance, Mary Lincoln was singularly ungracious. Julia reported that “I have shaken hands with Mary, her lips moved but her voice was not audible[.] I think she was embarrassed.”238
During the 1860 campaign, Republican leaders eager to smooth relations between Lincoln and Trumbull enlisted Mrs. Norman B. Judd’s aid in an attempt to heal the breach. At Springfield Mrs. Judd found neither Mary Lincoln nor Julia Trumbull willing to take the first step; eventually, after much cajolery, Mrs. Trumbull consented. But as she prepared to call on her former friend, she balked when Adeline Judd innocently observed, “You are doing a great service to the cause & the country by this act.” Flinging down her bonnet, Julia Trumbull declared that she would not be reconciled simply for political reasons. Undaunted, Mrs. Judd then turned to Mary Lincoln, who in time agreed to invite Mrs. Trumbull for a ride. At the Trumbull home, Mary Lincoln refused to accompany Adeline Judd to the door. “Why didn’t Mrs. Lincoln come in?” asked a miffed Julia Trumbull. “I told her not to,” replied Mrs. Judd. “I thought it was better.”
Despite this inauspicious start, the two former enemies spoke as they rode by the courthouse, where Lincoln, Trumbull, Judd, and others observed them. Judd blanched as one of the men whispered, “How did she do it?”
In August 1860, Judd told Mrs. Trumbull that “a systematic effort has been made for political purposes to poison Mary[’]s mind” against her, that John A. McClernand and another Democrat (unnamed) “instigated their wives to do it,” that Mrs. McClernand probably “was unconscious of it,” that “Mary had been told a great many things & advised if she had any self respect to keep away” from Julia Trumbull, that “Mary fully understood this attempt now & felt how unjust she had been” to Mrs. Trumbull and was “very happy to be again upon the old terms” with her former bridesmaid.
The rapprochement was short-lived, for relatives and politicians soon persuaded Mary Lincoln that the peace overture had been part of a plot to make former Democrats gain the upper hand over erstwhile Whigs in the Republican coalition. When invited to a party at the Trumbulls’ home, Mrs. Lincoln developed a convenient headache.
Early in the Lincoln administration at a presidential reception, Mrs. Trumbull paused in the receiving line to chat with the First Lady, who instructed the usher, “Tell that woman to go on.” “Will you allow me to be insulted in this way in your house?” Julia Trumbull asked the president.239
Shortly after her husband’s assassination, Mary Lincoln complained that Mrs. Trumbull “has not yet honored me with a call, should she ever deign, she would not be received—She is indeed ‘a whited Sepulchre.’ ”240
Judd, one of the five anti-Nebraska Democrats whose obstinacy spoiled Lincoln’s chances, appreciated that “Lincoln never joined in th
at clamor” against them. “He had the good sense to see that our course was the result of political sagacity,” Judd explained. “If we had voted for him, we should simply have been denounced by our own papers as renegades who had deserted the democrats and gone over to the Whigs.” But as events unfolded, “that charge couldn’t be maintained a moment against us.” To the contrary, “we could maintain our entire consistency as anti-Nebraska Democrats, and that enabled us to carry over a fraction of the Democratic party sufficiently large to give us control of the State.”241
Some of Lincoln’s admirers reconciled themselves to his defeat after Trumbull attacked Douglas in the senate. In 1857, John H. Bryant of Princeton, brother of the poet and antislavery leader William Cullen Bryant, told Trumbull that “I often hear it said, that the Legislature when they elected you, did the best thing they could have done, that you had met your adversary [Douglas] … with more adroitness and skill, than probably any other man could have done. For Mr Lincoln I know the people have great respect, and great confidence in his ability and integrity. Still the feeling here is, that you have filled the place, at this particular time, better than he could have done.”242
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