Lincoln

by David Herbert Donald

  The extension of slavery was another matter. Like many of his contemporaries, Lincoln viewed slavery as an institution that would die out if it was confined to the areas where it already existed. Unless slavery could expand, he was convinced, it would become so unprofitable that it would be abandoned. From this point of view it was important not to arouse Southern defensiveness of slavery, and for this reason Lincoln believed “that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its evils.” But it was equally important not to permit slavery to go into free territory.

  Even on this issue he tried not to be doctrinaire. He did not share the fears of abolitionists that the annexation of Texas would lead to the spread, and hence the perpetuation, of slavery. “Individually I never was much interested in the Texas question,” he wrote one member of the Liberty party. “I never could see much good to come of annexation...; on the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation. And if more were taken because of annexation, still there would be just so many the fewer left, where they were taken from.” This brought him to a restatement of his basic position: “I hold it to be a paramount duty of us in the free states, due to the Union of the states, and perhaps to liberty itself (paradox though it may seem) to let the slavery of the other states alone; while, on the other hand, I hold it to be equally clear, that we should never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly, to prevent that slavery from dying a natural death.” To this he added, significantly, that the duty of the free states included opposition to schemes “to find new places for it to live in, when it can no longer exist in the old.”

  Lincoln tried to maintain this balance after he took his seat in the House of Representatives. He took no part in the repeated and acrimonious debates over the Wilmot Proviso, which prohibited slavery in the territories acquired as a result of the Mexican War. During his first session in Congress his primary objective was the election of a Whig President, and, working closely with Southern Whigs like Stephens, he did not want to stir up sectional animosities. But he found it impossible to avoid the issue completely, and on at least five occasions, when the proviso was an issue, directly or indirectly, in a roll call, he voted for it.

  He found it harder to stay aloof in his second congressional session. Antislavery congressmen, frustrated in their repeated attempts to pass the Wilmot Proviso, now turned their energies toward ending, or at least restricting, slavery in the District of Columbia. This was a question on which Lincoln and other members of Congress had mixed feelings. On the one hand, he wished to be conciliatory toward the South, and he deplored abolitionist agitation as counterproductive. On the other, he, like most other free-state men, found slavery in Washington a perpetual source of offense and of embarrassment. Every congressman had some contact with the two thousand slaves in the national capital. Joshua Giddings’s experience was not unique. At Mrs. Sprigg’s boardinghouse he, along with the other boarders—possibly including Lincoln—was present when three armed men forced their way in to arrest one of the black waiters. The man had been working to purchase his freedom and had paid off all but sixty dollars of the price, when his master changed his mind and ordered the police to take him into custody. Even more troubling was the slave trade in Washington. Only seven blocks from the Capitol stood the warehouse of Franklin & Armfield, the country’s largest slave traders. Here, in what Lincoln called “a sort of Negro livery-stable,” droves of slaves were collected, kept temporarily, and then sent on for sale to the Deep South. This notorious slave trade, which offended many Southerners as well as Northerners, was the source of repeated taunts from foreign observers who pointed out the irony of men and women being sold within sight of the Capitol of a nation supposedly dedicated to liberty.

  Day after day, antislavery congressmen presented petitions from their constituents, calling for an end to slavery and the slave trade in the national capital. John Gorham Palfrey, one of the more aggressive Free-Soil representatives from Massachusetts, proposed to repeal all acts establishing or maintaining slavery in the federal district. Joshua Giddings favored holding a plebiscite in which residents of the District of Columbia could express their wishes as to the continuance of slavery. When pushed, Giddings announced that blacks as well as whites should vote in this election, saying that “when he looked abroad upon the family of man, he knew no distinctions” of race. The most successful of these efforts was that of Daniel Gott, a New York Whig representative, who managed, at a time when many Southerners were out of the chamber, to get the House to vote that the slave trade in the District of Columbia was “contrary to natural justice and the fundamental principles of our political system,... notoriously a reproach to our country throughout Christendom, and a serious hinderance [sic] to the progress of republican liberty among the nations of the earth.”

  In the angry discussion of these measures Lincoln rarely participated. He gave no explanation for his silence, but his position emerged from his votes. Firmly believing in the First Amendment right of all citizens to petition the government for a redress of grievances, he consistently favored receiving all memorials and petitions, from whatever source, on the subject of slavery and the slave trade in the District of Columbia. But with equal consistency he voted against resolutions like Gott’s that required the abolition of slavery or the ending of the slave trade without the consent of the inhabitants of Washington. His attitude was precisely what he had announced in 1837: he believed “that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia; but that that power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District.”

  Holding this view, Lincoln sought a compromise to end the debates that were beginning to tear his party apart just before a new Whig President was to be inaugurated. He prepared the way carefully. After drafting a proposal for compensated emancipation, he read it to Giddings and the other antislavery congressmen at Mrs. Sprigg’s mess and secured their approval. In principle, Giddings was opposed to paying any compensation to slave owners, but, as he noted in his diary, “I believed it as good a bill as we could get at this time, and was willing to pay for slaves in order to save them from the southern market as I suppose nearly every man... would sell his slaves if he saw that slavery was to be abolished.” Almost certainly Lincoln also got the blessing of Horace Mann, the Massachusetts anitslavery representative elected to succeed John Quincy Adams; years later he remembered how reasonable and kind Mann had been, adding, “It was something to me at that time to have him so—for he was a distinguished man in his way—and / was nobody.” Then he consulted William W. Seaton, the conservative Whig mayor of Washington, who edited the influential National Intelligencer, and, as he stated, “about fifteen of the leading citizens of the District of Columbia.” Hesitantly they endorsed his plan in principle—in Seaton’s case because he was sure that Giddings and his associates would kill it in the House. Lincoln, as Giddings recorded, “did not undeceive him.”

  On January 10, 1849, Lincoln gained the floor of the House to introduce a proposed substitute for Gott’s resolution, which was being reconsidered. He called for a referendum on slavery in the District of Columbia, in which “every free white male citizen” could participate. If a majority approved, slavery in the District would end, except for the personal servants of federal officials. Persons presently held in bondage would remain slaves, but the United States Treasury would pay “full cash value” to owners who agreed to free them. Children born of slave mothers after 1850 should be free. To sweeten this proposal for the slaveholding states, Lincoln required the municipal authorities in the District “to provide active and efficient means to arrest, and deliver up to their owners, all fugitive slaves escaping into said District.”

  Through quiet, patient negotiations, which would later be the hallmark of his president
ial administration, Lincoln had worked out a compromise that both antislavery men and defenders of Southern rights could accept. He believed his reasonable, moderate approach was one that Whigs should adopt toward all major national problems.

  Encouraged by the endorsements he received from the two extremes, Lincoln planned to submit a bill embodying his resolutions—only to find that support for his measure vanished once his plan was made public. On the Northern side, many antislavery men objected that paying slaveholders to emancipate their chattels would recognize the legitimacy of the “peculiar institution.” They also could not endorse the fugitive-slave provision of Lincoln’s proposal; in the mind of Wendell Phillips and other uncompromising abolitionists, it branded Lincoln permanently as “that slave hound from Illinois.” Ardent Southerners also rallied against Lincoln’s plan. Southern congressmen visited Mayor Seaton and persuaded him to withdraw his support of the plan because it was a covert first step toward abolishing slavery throughout the country. Not deigning to mention Lincoln by name, John C. Calhoun, the great Southern spokesman, used this proposal of “a member from Illinois” as one of the reasons why Southerners must band together to protect their rights; only thus could the North be “brought to a pause, and to a calculation of consequences.”

  Lincoln never introduced his bill. “Finding that I was abandoned by my former backers and having little personal influence,” he explained much later, “I dropped the matter knowing that it was useless to prosecute the business at that time.” He also began to feel that it was futile to hope that the Whig party could unite behind any constructive program.

  VII

  His discouragement was greater because the Taylor administration, which assumed office in March 1849, failed to use the patronage to cement the bonds of Whig party unity. Throughout the country Whigs assumed that Taylor’s victory meant that Democratic officeholders would be removed and replaced by the party faithful, and Lincoln, like every other Whig congressman, was besieged by applications from hungry constituents. Everybody, it seemed, wanted an appointment—as register of the land office in Vandalia, United States attorney, secretary to the governor of the Territory of Minnesota, United States marshal for the District of Illinois, purser in the United States Navy, postmaster in Springfield, pension agent, and so on.

  Conscious that every applicant who did not receive a job was potentially a political enemy, Lincoln took great pains to give encouragement without building false hopes. “I shall lay your letter by,” he told an early applicant; “and if the disposition of these offices falls into my hands, in whole or in part, you shall have a fair hearing.” To another he wrote frankly: “Two others, both good men, have applied for the same office before. I have made no pledge; but if the matter falls into my hands, I shall, when the time comes, try to do right, in view of all the lights then before me.” Still another gained assurance that his application would receive “that consideration, which is due to impartiality, fairness, and friendship.”

  In making recommendations to the incoming administration, Lincoln made it clear that he thought the spoils of office ought to be used to strengthen the Whig party. Recognizing that President Taylor was disinclined to make wholesale removals of Democratic incumbents, Lincoln insisted that “when an office or a job is not already in democratic hands, that it should be’given to a Whig”; otherwise, he warned, “I verily believe the administration can not be sustained.” Whenever he learned that a Democratic appointee was strongly partisan, he favored replacing him with a Whig. For instance, in supporting the candidacy of Walter Davis to be receiver of the land office in Springfield, Lincoln wrote candidly to the Secretary of the Interior that the present incumbent had adequately discharged the duties of that office, but he added: “He is a very warm partizan; and openly and actively opposed the election of Gen: Taylor ... the whigs here, almost universally desire his removal.” Similarly, in asking that his old friend, A. Y. Ellis, be appointed postmaster of Springfield, he wrote: “J. R. Diller, the present incumbent, I can not say has failed in the proper discharge of any of the duties of the office. He, however, has been an active partizan in opposition to us ... [and] he has been ... a member of the Democratic State Central Committee.”

  Several of the applicants that Lincoln recommended for minor jobs did receive appointments, but he found the whole process frustrating and unsatisfactory. A lame-duck congressman, about to be succeeded by a Democrat, he did not have much influence with the Taylor administration. He was obliged to share control over the Illinois patronage with Baker, elected as a Whig representative in the next Congress, and inevitably there was a certain amount of friction. No one in Washington seemed to be listening to Lincoln’s requests or to acknowledge that his exertions in behalf of the Taylor cam’-paign entitled him to special consideration. By the beginning of May he lamented: “Not one man recommended by me has yet been appointed to any thing, little or big, except a few who had no opposition.”

  At the outset of Taylor’s administration Lincoln himself was not an office-seeker but supported Baker’s claim for a place in the cabinet or a foreign mission. At Lincoln’s urging, Speed appealed to the influential John J. Crittenden on his friend’s behalf, but the Kentucky governor had no favorable impression of Baker. “There is Lincoln,” Crittenden said, “whom I regard as a rising man—if he were an applicant I would go for him.” But the flattery did not turn Lincoln’s head. “There is nothing about me which would authorize me to think of a first class office,” he told Speed; “and a second class one would not compensate me for being snarled at by others who want it for themselves.”

  Shortly afterward he was ensnared in the very trap that he was trying to avoid. It became clear that the highest appointment to be given to any Illinois Whig would be that of commissioner of the General Land Office, a position that not merely paid the handsome salary of $3,000 a year but carried with it a great deal of power and some patronage. The commissioner was in general charge of all the public lands; his decisions determined how and when the lands were sold. He could do much to encourage the settlement of the West, and, since he controlled the sale of public lands to the state governments, he could promote the building of railroads and other internal improvements. Westerners thought it important to have the office filled by someone who knew Western laws and understood the needs of Western farmers and railroad developers; Illinois Whigs saw in the appointment a way of strengthening their party.

  Some of Lincoln’s friends urged him to apply for the post. It would be better than returning to his law practice, which, Judge David Davis warned, “at present promises you but poor remuneration for the labor.” “Were I in your place,” Davis suggested, “could I get it, I would take the Land Office.” The judge might also have mentioned that this need not be a dead-end job, instancing that James Shields, Lincoln’s old enemy, had held the office under President Polk, only to go on to election as senator from Illinois.

  But Lincoln’s interest was, at most, tepid. He was confident that “almost by common consent” the Whigs in Congress would support his candidacy, and he knew the job would pay him more than he could otherwise make; but he was reluctant to make “a final surrender of the law” as a career. Anyway, well before Taylor’s inauguration he had promised to give his support to Cyrus Edwards, a former Whig legislator and unsuccessful Whig candidate for governor, who was a relative of his brother-in-law, Ninian W. Edwards.

  But Edwards, it turned out, could not get the job because Baker disliked him and favored another candidate, James L. D. Morrison. As letters supporting both Edwards and Morrison piled up on the desk of Secretary of the Interior Thomas Ewing, there was a stalemate, and it seemed likely that Illinois might not receive the land commissioner’s appointment after all.

  At this point Lincoln’s friends insisted that he must seek the position himself. He continued to hesitate, because he and Baker had agreed that if either Morrison or Edwards could be persuaded to withdraw they would support the other. “In relation to these pl
edges,” Lincoln told his supporters, “I must not only be chaste but above suspicion.” He could take the appointment only if both Edwards and Morrison declined it.

  In April a new candidate appeared on the scene. Whigs in the rapidly growing northern section of Illinois felt that all appointments were going to the central and southern counties. “Mr. Lincoln,” one of them grumbled, “can see nothing North of Springfield and Jacksonville in a favorable light.” They were joined by E. B. Washburne and his Galena friends, eager to cut down Baker’s influence. Jointly they came up with the name of Justin Butterfield, a distinguished Whig lawyer of Chicago who had served as United States attorney under Harrison and Tyler. Butterfield had the endorsement of both Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, and Secretary Ewing considered him “the most profound lawyer in the state, especially as a Land lawyer.”

  The news of Butterfield’s candidacy aroused Lincoln. “He is my personal friend, and is qualified to do the duties of the office,” he admitted; “but of the quite one hundred Illinoisians, equally well qualified, I do not know one with less claims to it.” Butterfield had supported Clay, not Taylor, for the 1848 nomination and had hardly lifted a finger for the President’s election. His appointment would be “an egregious political blunder,” which would “gratify no single whig in the state, except it be Mr. B. himself.” Lincoln resolved to enter the field himself, and he began soliciting letters of support from leading Illinois Whigs and from congressmen he had known in Washington. In order to blanket the country, he even enlisted Mary to write letters.