That affair also damaged other Republicans, especially Radicals like William Henry Seward, the front-runner for the presidential nomination as of October. His service as governor of New York and senator from that state had earned him respect, especially in advanced antislavery circles. But he had acquired an unmerited reputation as an extremist for his declaration in 1850 that there was a “higher law” than the Constitution and for an 1858 speech in which he alluded to an “irrepressible conflict” between North and South, widely misrepresented as a call for civil war. That speech also irritated former Democrats in the Republican coalition, who resented Seward’s implication that Jacksonian Democracy was always partial to slavery. Many Republicans thought of Seward as “a brilliant comet, with fiery tail and dragon claws, rushing through the political heavens to burn up” and destroy everything in its path.99 “Since the Humbug insurrection at Harpers Ferry, I presume Mr Seward will not be urged,” a Pennsylvanian told Lincoln.100 The influential journalist James Shepherd Pike “had a very strong belief in Mr. Seward[’]s nomination till since Mr. Brown visited Virginia. That little incident has thrown a new cloud over the presidential talk and I think obscured Mr. Seward[’]s prospects not a little.”101 The raid severely hurt Seward’s chances in Illinois in particular.
Aside from objections about radicalism, some frowned on Seward’s transparent eagerness for the presidency. In the spring, Maine Senator William P. Fessenden said that the New Yorker, who “already puts on the airs of a President in his intercourse with friends,” would “die if he is not nominated. He has forgotten every thing else, even that he is a Senator, & has duties as such.” Seward’s “friends appear so utterly indifferent to any result except his nomination, or any consequences which may follow that I am getting disgusted with the whole concern,” Fessenden confided to his son.102 Horace Greeley, who thought that John Brown’s action “will probably help us to nominate a moderate man for Pres[iden]t,” was convinced that an “Anti-Slavery man per se cannot be elected; but a Tariff, River-and-Harbor, Pacific Railroad, Free-Homestead man may succeed although he is Anti-Slavery.”103 To fill these qualifications, the Tribune editor favored Edward Bates, a colorless Missouri politician who was far too conservative for most Republicans. Bates also had suspect bona fides as a real Republican, for he had been a leader of the American Party in 1856. His prim personality led some to refer to him as “old Madame Bates.”104 Others deemed him “a man of very gentle, cordial nature, but not one of extraordinary brilliancy.”105 In Iowa, a Republican leader observed of the Missourian, “I go in for electing; but why go into the bowels of Niggerdom for a Candidate.”106 A Minnesotan warned that nominating “an old ‘granny’ like McLean or Bates will be a perfect wet blanket to all our zealous, working, reliable Republicans.”107
The most obvious beneficiary of John Brown’s raid was Lincoln, who seemed acceptably moderate compared to Seward and acceptably radical and energetic compared to Bates. In the late autumn, Lincoln expanded his political horizons westward with a visit to Kansas. Arriving at Elwood a week before the scheduled December 6 election in the Territory, he expressed relief that he was no longer in the Slave State of Missouri: “I am indeed delighted to be with you,” he told his hosts. “I can now breathe freely.”108 He gave speeches there and at Troy, Doniphan, Atchison, and Leavenworth, all located in a heavily Democratic region. In Elwood, he spoke informally to a crowd at the local hotel, even though he was tired and somewhat ill. Alluding to the bloody history of the Kansas Territory over the past five years, he said that “both parties had been guilty of outrages” and that “he had his opinions as to the relative guilt of the parties, but he would not say who had been most to blame.” Ultimate blame he put on the popular sovereignty doctrine itself. As for John Brown, who in 1856 had achieved notoriety in Kansas by cold-bloodedly murdering five settlers to retaliate for proslavery attacks, he observed: “We have a means provided for the expression of our belief in regard to Slavery—it is through the ballot box—the peaceful method provided by the Constitution.” Referring to the October raid on Harper’s Ferry, Lincoln continued: “John Brown has shown great courage, rare unselfishness.… But no man, North or South, can approve of violence or crime.”109
Wrapped in a buffalo robe to protect him against fierce cold winds, Lincoln traveled to Troy, an unimpressive hamlet where he spoke to a meager crowd of forty. A journalist described the event: “With little gesticulation, and that little ungraceful, he began, not to declaim, but to talk. In a conversational tone, he argued the question of Slavery in the Territories, in the language of an average Ohio or New York farmer.” He said that whenever “he heard a man avow his determination to adhere unswervingly to the principles of the Democratic party,” he was reminded of a lad in Illinois busily plowing. When he asked his father where to strike the next furrow, he was told: “Steer for that yoke of oxen standing at the further end of the field.” Just as the boy began to follow this instruction, the oxen started to move. The boy, in obedience to paternal instructions, followed them around the field and wound up plowing a circle rather than a line. A prominent slaveholder generously called Lincoln’s speech “the most able” and the “most logical” address he had ever heard, even though he disagreed profoundly with its conclusions.110
On December 2, from a church pulpit at Atchison, Lincoln spoke of Southern threats to secede, declaring “that any attempt at secession would be treason.” John J. Ingalls recalled that “none who heard him can forget the impressive majesty of his appearance as he drew himself up, and, leaning forward with his arms extended, until they seemed to reach across the small auditorium, said: ‘If they attempt to put their threats into execution we will hang them as they have hanged old John Brown to-day.’ ”111 After his speech, when told about a river in Nebraska called “Weeping Water,” Lincoln made one of his cornier puns: “You remember the laughing water up in Minnesota, called Minnehaha. Now, I think, this should be Minneboohoo.”112 Later, in conversation with the pro-slavery leader Benjamin F. Stringfellow, Lincoln said: “one of the arguments you Democrats used to present why Kansas should be a slave State was that no one but a ‘nigger’ could turn up the tough prairie sod. Now, in my time I have broken many acres of prairie sod, and under this argument the question recurs whether I am a white man or a ‘nigger.’ ”113 (Stringfellow allegedly considered Lincoln’s address “the greatest antislavery speech he ever heard.”)114
The following day in Leavenworth, Lincoln again addressed the case of John Brown: “Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right. So, if constitutionally we elect a [Republican] President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope and believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.”115 Still in Leavenworth two days later, he called any “attempt to identify the Republican party with the John Brown business” an “electioneering dodge.” A reporter noted that in “Brown’s hatred of slavery the speaker sympathized with him. But Brown’s insurrectionary attempt he emphatically denounced. He believed the old man insane, and had yet to find the first Republican who endorsed the proposed insurrection.” Slavery itself caused slave revolts, Lincoln maintained, and not outside agitation; the Nat Turner uprising of 1831 could hardly be blamed on the Republicans. He scotched the Democrats’ complaint that Republicans would grant citizenship to blacks by arguing that the Democracy consisted of two elements, “original and unadulterated Democrats” and “Old line and eminently conservative Whigs.” In two states that Democrats cited to prove their case against Republicans (New Hampshire and Massachusetts), laws enfranchising blacks were passed by Old Whigs and Democrats. The Wyandotte Constitution, framed by Kansas Republicans and ratified two months earlie
r, granted suffrage to whites only.116
Henry Villard, who had written so scathingly of Lincoln the year before, called this effort “the greatest address ever heard here.”117 Democrats objected to Lincoln’s exclusive focus on slavery. “Is there no other issue in this wide country, but that of ‘nigger’?” asked the Leavenworth Herald, which described the Illinoisan as “an imbecile old fogy of one idea; and this is—nigger, nigger, nigger.”118
Although Kansas Republicans were overwhelmingly pro-Seward, some talked of Lincoln for president. At Leavenworth, Able Carter Wilder grabbed the speaker by the hand and announced, “Here comes the next President of the United States.”119 Wilder, along with Daniel Anthony (brother of feminist leader Susan B. Anthony) and William Tholen, spent a cold evening with Lincoln in a room with a stove but no wood. When they resorted to some thick Patent Office reports for fuel, one of his companions asked Lincoln: “when you become President will you sanction the burning of government reports by cold men in Kansas territory?” “Not only will I not sanction it, but I will cause legal action to be brought against the offenders,” Lincoln jested.120
At dinner in the home of Mark Delahay, who had urged Lincoln to visit Kansas, the host announced to his half-dozen guests, “Gentlemen, I tell you Mr. Lincoln will be our next President.” Lincoln replied, “Oh, Delahay, hush.” Delahay protested: “I feel it, and I mean it.”121
Lincoln remained in Kansas for the election on December 6. As he left Leavenworth for home, he seemed disappointed that the town’s Democrats had increased their majority over the last election despite his two speeches there. A Kansan sought to comfort him with the assurance that the Democrats’ margin of victory in Leavenworth County (1,404 to 997) would have been much larger “had he not aroused his sluggish, slumbering Abolition brethren.”122 Lincoln’s efforts in frigid, primitive Kansas testified to his devotion to the Republican cause. As a resident of Leavenworth observed, few politicos would “have been forced to do the work in which Abraham Lincoln volunteered. In dead of Winter he left the comforts of an attractive home to couple his energies with those of a young people in a distant Territory battling for the RIGHT.” Speaking at small towns before audiences no larger than 200, he “paid the kindest deference to all inquiries, and seemed gratified at any interruptions that indicated interest in his ‘talk,’ as he was pleased to term his able and eloquent efforts.” Referring to those small crowds, he said: “I never stop to inquire as to the character or numbers of those likely to hear me. To accomplish a little good is more gratifying to me than to receive empty applause.” He refused all offers of compensation, saying that the organizers’ “satisfaction was more than a sufficient return for the little he had done.”123
The Leavenworth Times sent Lincoln home with a verbal bouquet: “His short stay in Kansas has been full of significance. He has met a reception that would be extended to but few in the nation, and he has sown seed that cannot but be productive of great good.”124 But six months later those seeds did not sprout into votes at the Republican national convention, where every Kansas delegate supported Seward on all ballots. The more radical Republicans thought him too moderate, partly because his candidacy was championed by Delahay, who was identified with the conservative wing of the party. In March 1860, when asked for advice about where to settle, Lincoln told a friend: “If I went West, I think I would go to Kansas—to Leavenworth or Atchison. Both of these are, and will continue to be, fine growing places.”125
Combating Factionalism
Returning to Illinois, Lincoln found himself drawn at once into a nasty quarrel between two leading Republicans, Norman B. Judd and Long John Wentworth, whose feud threatened the party’s chances to carry the state in 1860. Wentworth, a spiteful marplot, accused Judd of behaving treacherously toward Lincoln by supporting Trumbull in the senatorial contest of 1854–1855, by bungling the campaign in 1858, and by championing Trumbull’s presidential bid in 1860. He also charged that Judd had misspent party funds and abused his power as state chairman in order to boost his own chances for the gubernatorial nomination. (Other aspirants for the governorship included the bibulous Richard Yates, who was successful, and Leonard Swett. Judd lost in part because the quondam Whigs, who dominated the party, resented his failure to support Lincoln for senator in 1855.) When Lincoln’s close friends like David Davis and William H. Herndon echoed Wentworth’s charges, Judd grew angry. “I have slaved for L[incoln] … and that I should today be suffering amongst his friends by the charge of having cheated him, and he silent is an outrage that I am not disposed to submit to,” he complained.126
On December 1, Judd wrote Lincoln protesting his failure to refute those allegations and asking him to write a vindication. Lincoln denied that he had neglected to combat such gossip and said that Judd’s letter “has a tone of blame towards myself which I think is not quite just.” After all, Lincoln observed, you did vote for Trumbull in 1855, though “I think, and have said a thousand times, that was no injustice to me.” Lincoln added: “As to the charge of your intriguing for Trumbull against me, I believe as little of that as any other charge.… I do not understand Trumbull and myself to be rivals. You know I am pledged not to enter a struggle with him for the seat in the Senate now occupied by him; and yet I would rather have a full term in the Senate than in the Presidency.”127
Wentworth’s anger at Judd evidently spilled over onto Lincoln. Long John’s newspaper, the Chicago Democrat, ignored Lincoln’s Ohio speeches, though the Press and Tribune published them. David Davis urged Wentworth to run those addresses, explaining that in central Illinois, opponents of Judd “love Lincoln very much and wish to see him elevated.” To achieve that elevation, he needed help, for his friends knew “that Lincoln has few of the qualities of a politician and that he cannot do much personally to advance his interests. They know him to be a guileless man and they think with many of the qualifications and talents for a statesman.” Such friends were therefore upset with Wentworth for failing to publish Lincoln’s September speeches.128
On December 14, Lincoln wrote a defense of Judd, full of praise but cautiously worded so as not to antagonize Wentworth: “I have been, and still am, very anxious to take no part between the many friends, all good and true, who are mentioned as candidates for a Republican Gubernatorial nomination; but I can not feel that my own honor is quite clear, if I remain silent, when I hear any one of them assailed about matters of which I believe I know more than his assailants.” He authorized publication of the letter, which appeared in late January 1860.129
Lincoln took further steps as a peacemaker. When Judd threatened Wentworth with a libel suit, Long John asked Lincoln to represent him; he declined, offering instead to mediate the dispute. He suggested that Wentworth withdraw charges impugning Judd’s character and state that “I have made no reflections upon Mr Judd, morally, socially, pecuniarily, professionally, and in no other way, save politically, and if I have used any language capable of different construction I have not intended it & now retract it.”130 At the February meeting of the Republican State Central Committee in Springfield, Lincoln vainly tried to get the two antagonists together, recommending that they stop their press attacks on each other. Judd complied, withdrawing his suit and supporting Wentworth’s successful bid for the Chicago mayoralty. On the heels of that victory in March, Trumbull optimistically speculated that Wentworth’s opposition to Judd “would cease since the magnanimous support he has just rec[eive]d from Mr. Judd’s friends.”131 But in fact Long John, who resented Lincoln’s attempt to please all parties, fought fiercely and successfully to deny Judd the gubernatorial nomination. David Davis found him “insane almost on the subject of Judd.”132 The vindication that Lincoln provided may have pleased Judd but, Lincoln ruefully remarked, “Some folks are pretty bitter towards me” on account of it, for they interpreted it as an endorsement of Judd’s candidacy for the governorship.133
Boosting Lincoln’s Candidacy
In late January 1860 at Springfield, Judd
along with Lincoln attended a caucus of leading Republicans who wished to boost Lincoln’s vice-presidential candidacy. Few of them thought he had a chance to head the national ticket, for, as Governor Bissell explained, “Lincoln is every thing that we can reasonably desire in a man, and a politician. Still, I do not suppose that many of our friends seriously expect to secure his nomination as candidate for the Presidency. In fact they would be very well satisfied, probably, if he could secure the 2d place on the ticket.”134 A Peoria Republican prophesied that with Lincoln as his vice-presidential running mate, Seward would be unbeatable. David Davis confided to a friend that he would like to see Lincoln nominated for president, but he assumed the party would choose either Bates or Seward. Some supporters believed it best to run Lincoln for governor in 1860, for the U.S. senate in 1864, and for president in 1868. Throughout southern Illinois, Lincoln’s potential candidacy was regarded skeptically. Ben L. Wiley from Anna thought Lincoln “a good, amiable and talented gentleman, but is not in my opinion the man for the times.”135 Less flatteringly, A. M. Blackburn of Jerseyville insisted that Lincoln “will not do at all. He has been twice beaten for Congress—He is not available—Nor do I think he has talent or standing for the place. Why he is named I cannot see.”136 In March, Henry Barber, who chaired the Washington County Republican convention, said that “no one expects Lincoln to get the nomination.”137 Three months earlier, when Horace Greeley asked several leading Republicans in Quincy whom they supported for president, only one named Lincoln.
The foremost spirit at the January meeting in Springfield, Jackson Grimshaw, had been organizing Cameron-Lincoln clubs throughout Illinois and intended to win more backing for that effort. Judd reported that he “strongly opposed this action, saying the proper and only thing to do was to claim the Presidency for him [Lincoln] and nothing less.”138 Judd was evidently persuasive, for Grimshaw asked Lincoln “if his name might be used at once in Connection with the Coming Nomination and election.” With “characteristic modesty,” Lincoln responded by expressing doubt “whether he could get the Nomination even if he wished it and asked until the next morning to answer … whether his name might be announced as one who was to be a candidate for the office of President.” Leonard Swett accosted him, saying: “Now, see here, Lincoln, this is outrageous. We are trying to get you nominated for the presidency, and you are working right against us. Now you must stop it, and give us a chance.” Lincoln “laughed, and said it wasn’t serious enough to make any fuss about, but he promised he wouldn’t interfere if we were bound to put him forward.” The following day he agreed to his friends’ request, but when they inquired if they might push for his nomination as vice-president in case the presidential bid failed, he demurred, saying: “My name has been mentioned rather too prominently for the first place on the ticket for me to think of accepting the second.”139 In the spring of 1859, when Elijah M. Haines informed him that friends might be able to win him the second place on the national ticket, Lincoln had answered with a statement implying that the vice-presidency “was scarcely big enough for one who had aspired to a U.S. Senatorship.”140
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