For a muddy backwater of twenty thousand, Sangamon County—dubbed Empire County by its optimistic early residents—could be surprisingly cosmopolitan. The local schools taught Latin and Greek, Spanish and French. After the state capital was moved to Springfield in the late 1830s, the public square sprouted new shops, taverns, and hotels. When the legislature was in session, pretty young women flooded into the city to attend the balls and “hops.” At private salons draped in velvet and damask, local hostesses poured blackberry cordials and homemade wine, and served pound cake on china and silver place settings. With no streetlamps, and only lard oil and candles to light the affairs, the whole town could be plunged into virtual blackness on a moonless night. Still, there was something decidedly European about the capital’s pretentions. Springfield society, according to one acquaintance of Lincoln and Herndon, came complete with “priests, dogs, and servants.”26
Lincoln was not immediately charmed by the capital. The whole place was “rather a dull business,” he told a friend shortly after arriving. The young bachelor was lonely. “I have been spoken to by but one woman since I’ve been here, and should not have been by her, if she could have avoided it,” he complained. He eventually began showing up at the Edwards mansion on Aristocracy Hill each Sunday, relaxing in the shade of the thick canopy of trees on the grounds, and getting to know members of the powerful political family. Gangly, with a shock of unkempt black hair and enormous hands, he initially struck his host as “a mighty rough man.” Lincoln must have known he was out of place. But he was ambitious, a young politician on the rise, and Edwards was a leading patron of the aristocratic “silk-stocking” faction of the Whig party. Lincoln was impressed—if slightly intimidated—by the scene. There was, he wrote a friend, “a great deal of flourishing about in carriages” in Springfield.27
It was in the Edwards circle that Lincoln first met Mary Todd, the daughter of a Lexington banker who was staying at her brother-in-law’s mansion. Pretty but portly, with “clear blue eyes, long lashes, light brown hair with a glint of bronze, and a lovely complexion,” she was nearly as ambitious as Lincoln. Mary had grown up on a slaveholding estate in Kentucky, in a household full of French mahogany furniture and expensive Belgian rugs. She had studied her dance steps at Mentelle’s, a Lexington boarding school run by Parisian aristocrats. The schoolmistress, Madame Mentelle, could be slightly intimidating. As a girl in France, her father was said to have once locked her in a room with the corpse of an acquaintance to toughen her up. The young women were schooled as if the whole world were their salon. Mary, her cousin recalled, learned to speak “the purest Parisian.” Madame Mentelle’s husband, Augustus, would play the violin while the girls practiced steps that included “Spanish, Scottish, Polish, [and] Tyrolienne dances and the beautiful Circassian Circle.” In Springfield, Herndon later recalled, the urbane Mary “soon became one of the belles, leading the young men of the town [in] a merry dance.”28
Lincoln seemed like an odd match for the worldly-wise debutante. Mary was lively and outgoing. Lincoln was antisocial, a “cold man” who had “no affection,” Mary’s sister recalled. In the Edwards salon, Mary would do most of the talking, while Lincoln “would listen and gaze on her as if drawn by some superior power, irresistibly so.” Mary’s family was put off by Lincoln’s poor breeding. (The young woman’s stepmother liked to say that “it took seven generations to make a lady,” according to one historian.) But Mary was intrigued by the driven young lawyer. She told friends her ideal beau was a man destined for “position, fame, and power.” She was, her sister later recalled, “the most ambitious woman I ever saw.” More than a decade before the Civil War, Mary told a friend that she believed Lincoln would one day become president. “If I had not thought so,” she added, “I never would have married him, for you can see he is not pretty.”29
Lincoln and Mary wed in November 1842. Herndon considered the bride “a polished girl, well educated, a good linguist, a fine conversationalist.” Still, Mary could also be “haughty.” Lincoln, Herndon recalled, had been attracted at least partly by Mary’s “family power.” Another old friend believed the marriage was “a policy match all around.” Mary provided Lincoln with an entrée not just to the party, but also to the wider world. The Whig ethos, the scholar Allen Guelzo has written, represented a promise of escape from “the restraints of locality and community”—an opportunity for young Americans “to refashion themselves on the basis of new economic identities in a larger world of trade.” The Edwards family, with their French conversationalists and worldly statesmen, seemed certain to widen Lincoln’s horizons. As a gift, Ninian W. Edwards once presented Lincoln with a copy of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Whatever Lincoln’s motives in courting Mary, he later told a friend that he considered his marriage a “matter of profound wonder.”30
Still, despite his new family’s influence in the party, Lincoln began noticing that his popularity with the city’s younger, working-class Whigs had dropped off after his marriage into Springfield’s aristocracy. In 1843 he wrote to a local politician complaining that he had been pigeonholed as “the candidate of pride, wealth, and aristocratic family distinction.” Even Lincoln sometimes mocked his inlaws’ pretensions. (“One ‘d’ was good enough for God,” he joked, “but not for the Todds.”) To succeed in Springfield politics, Lincoln would need a liaison to the city’s “young, rowdy set.” The energetic, likable Herndon had always carried weight with the “shrewd, wild boys about town” who resented the influence of the aristocrats. Shortly after his marriage to Mary, Lincoln asked the much less accomplished Herndon to be his law partner. “Billy,” Lincoln told the twenty-six-year-old, “I can trust you, if you can trust me.”31
The two men rented a spare, uninspiring office on Springfield’s central square. The place was usually a mess, and had windows that looked out over “stable-roofs, ash-heaps, and dingy back yards.” Lincoln stored some papers tucked into his stovepipe hat. He kept others among a bundle in a corner of the office with a note that read WHEN YOU CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE ELSE, LOOK INTO THIS. “The furniture, somewhat dilapidated, consisted of one small desk and a table, a sofa or lounge with a raised head at one end, and a half-dozen plain wooden chairs,” recalled a student who worked in the office. “The floor was never scrubbed.” Shelves above the desk bulged with law books. Lincoln liked to sprawl across the sofa and read aloud from the newspaper. Herndon found himself annoyed “almost beyond the point of endurance.” Lincoln neglected the office finances and shirked his legal research. Some days Herndon simply fled the office.32
Perhaps as escape from the drudgery of the law, both Lincoln and Herndon plunged into the national political swirl. As the 1844 presidential election approached, the debate over American expansion—specifically the annexation of Oregon and Texas—monopolized the national conversation. International affairs had long seeped into the American political dialogue; it had played a major role in both the 1796 and 1812 presidential elections. The 1844 contest, however, marks “the first presidential campaign fought primarily over foreign policy.” Though Lincoln considered annexation an “evil,” he later recalled that “individually I was never much interested in the Texas question.” He could not believe that absorbing the territory would make much of a difference either way. Lincoln soon discovered how wrong he was. In 1844, international relations would make for potent politics. For the young lawyer, the campaign proved to be a kind of foreign-affairs awakening.
For years American settlers had been flooding west and south. The slang GTT—“Gone to Texas”—was quickly taking its place in the national lexicon. The clamor for territory drowned out all other campaign issues. The Whig nominee, Henry Clay, made the case that taking Texas would shatter the sectional balance, touching off “an insatiable and unquenchable thirst for foreign conquest.” During a speech at the Illinois statehouse one night in May, Lincoln agreed that annexation would be “altogether inexpedient.” He complained that Democrats were obsessed with the
issue, and mockingly suggested that their campaign slogan be changed to “nothing but Texas.” Unfortunately for the Whigs, Americans were also captivated by annexation. In November 1844 the expansionist Democratic candidate, a relative unknown named James K. Polk, defeated Clay for the White House. A little over a year later, Congress voted to absorb Texas.33
American Blood upon American Soil
Polk moved swiftly to shore up his new acquisition. “The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our government,” he declared during his inaugural address on a rainy March day. “Foreign powers should therefore look on the annexation of Texas to the United States not as the conquest of a nation seeking to extend her dominions by arms and violence, but as the peaceful acquisition of a territory once her own.” Still, Polk had designs on territory far beyond Texas. The president particularly coveted the land owned by Mexico that makes up modern-day California, with its Pacific ports and promises of trade far beyond the continental United States. Polk dispatched an envoy to Mexico City with an offer of $15 million to $20 million for the western regions. In case the Mexicans were inclined to waver, he also ordered a unit of two thousand troops under General Zachary Taylor to march deep into Texas, almost to the Rio Grande.34
The land between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande was cowboy country, a dusty, sun-bleached stretch of territory that had long been populated mostly by longhorn cattle and the Mexican rancheros and vaqueros that tended to them. Texans claimed the Rio Grande as the legitimate border, but Mexicans—and even many Americans—considered the area disputed territory. Now Polk’s men ordered Taylor to push as close to the Rio Grande “as prudence will dictate.” The general was instructed not to fire on the Mexicans unless they crossed the river or “an actual state of war should exist.” Yet when Polk’s envoy was rejected by Mexican officials in December, tensions increased decidedly. In January 1846, Polk ordered Taylor’s men still closer to the border. The general’s force, which had swelled to 3,550 men, marched to the river just across from the Mexican town of Matamoros. Before aiming their cannon at the town, the soldiers hoisted the American flag and obnoxiously blared “The Star-Spangled Banner.”35
By March, the American troops were eager for a fight. They had spent a long winter enduring torrential rains in leaking tents. Brawls broke out among the troops. Wary Mexicans carefully watched the gringos from their rooftops in Matamoros. To the Americans, Mexico seemed to beckon from across the river. The young men were desperate for female companionship. (One lieutenant, Ulysses S. Grant, was nearly drafted by his fellow soldiers to play a woman in a performance of The Moor of Venice.) American soldiers watched in amazement as pretty young Mexican women crept down to the Rio Grande, stripped off their clothes, and then leaped nude into the water.36
In mid-April, Mexican forces quickened their calls for an American retreat. The Mexican commander demanded that the U.S. troops withdraw, or else “arms, and arms alone, must decide the question.” Taylor then blockaded the Rio Grande, virtually guaranteeing that the Mexicans would be forced to attack. On April 26, 1846, a unit of Mexican solders crossed the Rio Grande into disputed territory and ambushed the Americans, killing eleven soldiers and capturing many more. “Hostilities may now be considered as commenced,” Taylor declared.37
Polk seized his opportunity. He hastily put together a message to Congress asking for a declaration of war. “Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon the American soil,” Polk insisted. (Many of his countrymen—including Lincoln—would ultimately dispute that claim.) “As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the interests of our country.”38
The war in Mexico coincided with a period of rising ambition in Lincoln. Herndon later remarked that his law partner’s drive was like “a little engine that knew no rest.” For years Lincoln had been angling for a spot in Congress. As tensions rose along the Mexican border, Lincoln flooded the region with letters making the case for his candidacy. “I wish you would let nothing appear in your paper which may operate against me,” he wrote to one editor in November 1845. “I now wish to say to you that if it be consistent with your feelings, you would set a few stakes for me,” he implored another acquaintance. The young lawyer insisted that after years of patiently supporting other Whig candidates for the congressional seat, he was now entitled to his own shot. “Turn about is fair play,” he implored potential allies. Lincoln’s main competition was John J. Hardin, a talented politician who had once helped to avert a duel between Lincoln and a man the young lawyer had insulted. Hardin shrewdly tried to tap into the increasingly bellicose mood over Mexico. He insisted to one correspondent in early 1846 that it was “the duty of all true patriots to strengthen the hands of the government by all means against all aggression and insult from foreign nations.” Ultimately Lincoln managed to secure the nomination, but only after severely straining his relationship with Hardin.39
Ten days after Lincoln’s nomination, Polk asked Congress for his declaration of war on Mexico. Americans immediately rallied around the flag. When Congress asked for fifty thousand volunteers, three hundred thousand answered the call. The prairie “blazed with martial spirit.” Illinois had long been one of the most hawkish states in the union. More young men asked to enlist than there were spaces in the state’s three regiments. Hardin quickly shipped off to the front lines. The new recruits, Herndon later recalled, included “some of the bravest men and the best legal talent in Springfield.” Missouri ended up being the only state that sent more volunteers to Mexico than Illinois.40
Lincoln remained behind, plugging along with his campaign amid the tumult. He seems, at first, to have tried to avoid the issue of expansionism. The Democratic Illinois State Register hammered Lincoln, attempting to force him to define his positions on foreign policy. The paper particularly needled him about Oregon, which Illinoisans coveted even more than Texas. Hawkish Midwesterners had been insisting on a territorial concession from Britain reaching all the way up to the 54’40” line of latitude—a demand that many Whigs considered unnecessarily provocative. Was Lincoln for “ ‘compromising’ away our Oregon territory to England” like “his brother Whigs in Congress?” the State Register asked. “No shuffling, Mr. Lincoln! Come out square!”41
On Mexico, at least at first, Lincoln seemed to share the country’s sense of outrage. In late May he spoke at a war rally in Springfield, delivering what the local newspaper reported as a “warm, thrilling, and effective” appeal to support the troops. Herndon later recalled that his partner had “urged a vigorous prosecution” of the war and “admonished us all to permit our government to suffer no dishonor, and to stand by the flag till peace came and came honorably to us.”42
Regenerating the World
The war dominated news coverage throughout the summer. New technologies like the telegraph and the steam-powered printing press had revolutionized the American media during the 1840s. The first telegraph line was built two years before the war, and the Hoe rotary press, which used steam power to spin a series of cylinders, was patented in 1847. Both inventions spawned a new “penny press”—cheap newspapers that printed lurid war reports and egged on the public and Congress. The Mexican War also heralded the birth of the modern war correspondent. The ink-stained adventurers sent their dispatches back from the front lines via telegraph. The whole apparatus worked to encourage the American thrust west and south. The new technology, notes historian Daniel Walker Howe, “proved a major facilitator of American nationalism and continental ambition.”43
A new national spirit of reform grew hand in hand with the telegraph and the penny press. The technology seemed to reinforce beliefs—particularly among evangelical Christians and many romantic transcendentalists—that the millennium was at hand. A Boston magazine declared it “a great blessing”
for Mexico to be conquered, and looked forward to the day when America would “regenerate the world.” Supercilious volunteers wrote home from Mexico about the nation’s “national indolence” and “air of decay.” When a country “keeps a ‘disorderly house,’ ” the Democratic Review declared, “it is the duty of neighbors to interfere.”44
Although the war fervor was particularly intense in New York and the Midwest, enthusiasm cut across party and geographic lines.45 “We are now all Whigs and all Democrats,” declared one newspaper reporter, echoing Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural address. The whole war effort was draped in a kind of romantic gauze. Soldiers wrote home about the beauty of Mexican women. “Nearly all of them have well-developed, magnificent figures,” wrote one captain, and they “dress with as little clothing as you can well fancy.” American factory girls shamelessly flirted with young soldiers. Vigilant parents had to keep a tight leash on teenage boys, many of whom were eager to run off and join the fighting. Hacks churned out novelettes lauding the mission. In the books, notes historian Robert W. Johannsen, U.S. troops were “cast as redeemers, striving to free the people from the bondage imposed by government and Church, to regenerate the nation, and bring it to a state of true republicanism.”46
Lincoln was a cautious pragmatist and not given to swooning. Still, the young candidate found himself in a political quandary. On the one hand, he remained wary of overthrowing the sectional balance. Still, it would have been impossible for Lincoln to completely ignore the popular enthusiasm at home. In July, Lincoln’s old friend (and sometime political foe), the British-born Edward D. Baker, received special permission to take a leave of absence from Congress and recruit an Illinois unit to follow him to Mexico. Thousands of Springfieldians poured into the streets, hoisting American flags and howling their approval. Baker marched his unit through the throng amid whistling fifes and pounding drums.47
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