Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Wife-beaters also angered Lincoln, who in 1839 warned a hard-drinking Springfield cobbler to stop abusing his spouse. When this admonition went unheeded, Lincoln and some friends became vigilantes, as one of them later remembered: “The drunken shoemaker had forgotten Lincoln’s warning. It was late at night and we dragged the wretch to an open space back of a store building, stripped him of his shirt and tied him to a post. Then we sent for his wife, and arming her with a good stout switch bade her to ‘light in.’” She was “a little reluctant at first,” but “soon warmed up to her work, and emboldened by our encouraging and sometimes peremptory directions, performed her delicate task lustily and well. When the culprit had been sufficiently punished, Lincoln gave the signal ‘Enough,’ and he was released; we helped him on with his shirt and he shambled ruefully toward his home. For his sake we tried to keep all knowledge of the affair from the public; but the lesson had its effect, for if he ever again molested his wife we never found it out.”123

  Lincoln was generally chivalrous, even avoiding participation in rough gossip about women that many men engaged in. At least once in his New Salem years, however, he did humiliate a young woman with his legendary wit. While he was serving food at a party, “a girl there who thought herself pretty smart” protested that he filled her plate to overflowing. She remarked “quite pert and sharp, ‘Well, Mr. Lincoln, I didn’t want a cart-load.’” When she returned for more food, he announced in a loud voice: “All right, Miss Liddy, back up your cart and I’ll fill it again.” The guests all laughed at the embarrassed young woman, who spent the rest of the evening crying.124

  In the public letter announcing his candidacy for reelection in 1836, Lincoln also promised that as a legislator he would be guided by the wishes of his constituents insofar as he knew what those wishes were, and otherwise by “what my own judgment teaches me will best advance their interests.”125 The only policy issue he addressed was internal improvements, which he said should be funded with proceeds from the sale of federal lands rather than by state taxes and borrowing.

  In the 1836 campaign, Lincoln joined the Whig leadership and became a virtuoso belittler of Democrats. A legislative colleague from Sangamon County, Robert L. Wilson, “said that Lincoln was by common consent looked up to and relied on as the leading Whig exponent; that he was the best versed and most captivating and trenchant speaker on their side; that he preserved his temper nearly always, and when extremely provoked, he did not respond with the illogical proposal to fight about it, but used the weapons of sarcasm and ridicule, and always prevailed.”126

  During the campaigns of 1832 and 1834, Lincoln had been reserved and had stumped only in rural areas. But in 1836 he grew bolder and spoke in towns as well as villages, winning the respect of friends and the fear of opponents. His new style made him the leading Whig of the district. On the hustings he almost always kept his temper. A week after he declared his candidacy, however, he found it difficult to do so. When Colonel Robert Allen, a prominent Democrat known as a dishonest blowhard, told New Salemites that he could destroy the young politician by revealing information that he had, but that he would forbear releasing it, Lincoln charged that Allen would be “a traitor to his country’s interest” if he refused to make public his supposedly damaging facts.127 Later in the campaign, Lincoln called an anonymous critic “a liar and a scoundrel” and threatened “to give his proboscis a good wringing.”128

  When angry, Lincoln often resorted to ridicule. In July 1836, during a debate at Springfield he was attacked by George Forquer, a Democratic leader derided by Lincoln in the Sangamo Journal as “King George,” “the royal George,” and “the most unpopular of all the party.”129 Forquer, who had recently converted to the Democratic Party and had subsequently won appointment as register of the Springfield land office, owned a home widely considered the finest in Springfield. Adorning it was a lightning rod, an invention that fascinated Lincoln. In a “slasher-gaff “ speech, Forquer said: “This young man will have to be taken down; and I am truly sorry that the task devolves upon me.”

  Lincoln responded witheringly: “The gentleman commenced his speech by saying that this young man would have to be taken down, alluding to me; I am not so young in years as I am in the tricks and trades of the politician; but live long, or die young, I would rather die now than, like the gentleman[,] change my politics, and simultaneous with the change, receive an office worth $3,000 per year, and then have to erect a lightning-rod over my house, to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God.”130

  In that same canvass, Lincoln attacked other Democratic leaders, most notably Dr. Jacob M. Early, a physician and Methodist minister called “The Fighting Parson,” whose skinning by Lincoln became a legend in Sangamon County. At a Springfield meeting, Lincoln, Early, John Calhoun, Richard Quinton, and Ninian W. Edwards addressed a large audience in the courthouse. After Edwards opened the event, the impulsive, hot-tempered Early, widely regarded as an excellent debater, followed. He sharply criticized Ninian Edwards, alleging that Edwards had chided the Democrats for their stand on black suffrage and declared that he “would sooner see his daughter married to a negro than a poor white man.”131 Edwards loudly denied Early’s charge. (In fact, Edwards was “naturally and constitutionally an aristocrat” who “hated democracy … as the devil is said to hate holy water.”)132

  Provoked by Early’s speech, Lincoln challenged him. Lincoln seemed embarrassed and began slowly, but as he went on he relaxed, his squeaky voice settled down, and his words began to pour forth smoothly. He roundly condemned the Democrats and was interrupted several times by outbursts of applause. According to John Locke Scripps’s 1860 campaign biography, when Lincoln took his seat, “his reputation was made.” He had not only “achieved a signal victory over the acknowledged champion of Democracy, but he had placed himself, by a single effort, in the very front rank of able and eloquent debaters. The surprise of his audience was only equaled by their enthusiasm; and of all the surprised people on that memorable occasion, perhaps no one was more profoundly astonished than Lincoln himself.”133

  Forquer and Early were not the only opponents to feel Lincoln’s sting in that campaign. In July, at a Springfield event, Lincoln “skinned” Richard Quinton, and at a meeting in Mechanicsburg he “peeled” another Democrat. Such tactics could be dangerous, for violence was not unknown in Illinois politics. After Usher Linder ridiculed the mayor of Quincy, that official ambushed him with a stout cudgel, landing several blows on the back of his head. Theophilus W. Smith, a state supreme court justice, once pulled a gun on Governor Ninian Edwards, who seized the weapon and broke Judge Smith’s jaw with it. At Springfield in 1839, Isaac P. Walker, after being verbally abused by attorney E. G. Ryan, flogged his traducer. Fifteen years later, Paul Selby, editor of the Morgan Journal, was caned on the streets of Jacksonville for criticism appearing in that paper.

  What Lincoln said as he “peeled” and “skinned” his victims is unrecorded, but he was almost certainly the author of many abusive, insulting, heavy-handed anonymous and pseudonymous attacks on Democrats that appeared in the Sangamo Journal. In 1835 and 1836, that Whig paper ran satirical letters ostensibly written by prominent Democrats, making their authors look ridiculous. In all likelihood, Lincoln wrote them, and they shed harsh light on the politics of that time and place.

  In February 1836, the Journal published two such epistles over the signature “Johnny Blubberhead,” a mocking sobriquet for George R. Weber, co-editor of Springfield’s Jacksonian newspaper, The Republican. Composed in a primitive dialect like that of Lincoln’s 1842 pseudonymous “Rebecca” missive (whose authorship Lincoln acknowledged), the first “Blubberhead” letter satirized the convention system and various Democratic leaders. John Calhoun, a leading Democrat, was burlesqued shamelessly. Blubberhead (Weber) reports to Democratic Congressman William L. May: “Since Cal[houn] lost part of his ear against the mantel piece he’s been lopsided, and I thinks it hurt his eyedears. He’s given greatly to talking t
o heself; and I heard him talk tother day so I was afeared that somethin was brewen. He said if he took $200 twas nobodys business; he needed it—he’d worked for the party—and he’d be (and then he used an awful word) if he did’nt blow up the whole party if they didn’t do somthin for him.” Blubberhead (Weber) recommended firing all the postmasters and outlawing the distribution through the mail of the Sangamo Journal as the “way what would make dimocrats of the Van Buren system.” He complained that May had allowed another printer, William Walters of Vandalia, to receive government patronage in Illinois: “This aint fair; you promised to give me all the printin and I holds you to your bargain. I would’nt a left the anti-masons if you had’nt promised me.” Alluding to charges against May involving theft and lechery, Blubberhead warned him against trying “your old Edwardsville tricks.”134

  May was an easy target for ridicule. A good stump speaker, he served in the Illinois General Assembly in the late 1820s and subsequently in the U.S. House of Representatives (1834–1839). Sandy-haired and powerfully built, May was a politician by profession and a reasonably able attorney. In 1834, though, a Springfield clergyman said that a “greater compound of meanness and stupidity was never mingled” than in May, who had been charged with a burglary a few years earlier. When the accusation appeared in the press, May rallied friends to testify that he had entered the house not to commit a crime but for illicit sexual intercourse. “This,” explained the nonplussed minister, “Mr. May published as his defense, and called upon the people to overlook the follies of his youth!”135

  The second Johnny Blubberhead letter was equally crude. Its author bemoaned the failure of the country to go to war with England in order to enhance Martin Van Buren’s electoral prospects. “We is very sorry that England has offered to mediate. Why did’nt you tell Mr. Van Buren not to accept it. If we can get a war agoing, as you say, we can use up all the revenue so that [Henry] Clay’s Bill [to distribute revenues from land sales to the states] can’t pass—and so as we can have thousands of officers to electioneer for Mr. Van Buren.” Blubberhead declared that “I is sorry Mr. Adams has become a dimocrat because as how a good many of our friends thinks it strange; and if they should come to find out that Mr. Van Buren depends altogether on the federals for his election, they will go off from us like shot from a shovel.”136

  Other scandalous letters of this sort, ostensibly by Democrats but doubtless penned by Lincoln, appeared that season in the Sangamo Journal. In March “Congressman May” lamented to Weber that since a war with France was not likely, one should be waged on the surplus funds of the federal treasury. “If we help ourselves to those funds, we can elect any man President we please,” the author declared. “Do all you can against Clay’s Land Bill by talking; but don’t publish anything on the subject. Should that bill pass and the surplus funds be divided among the States to make rail roads and canals and pay school-masters, the thing would be out with us.”137

  In another epistolary assault, “William Walters” reportedly urged Congressman May to admit publicly that in 1832 he had written a letter recounting the story of a corrupt bargain involving two Whigs, George Forquer and John Calhoun, who allegedly agreed to switch parties in return for appointment to government offices. In his supposed reply, “May” expressed anxiety that “the people of the West are too independent and highminded to submit to our dictation.” But Martin Van Buren, the Democrats’ presidential candidate in 1836, assured him that in time they would come around: “He says the people of New York proved somewhat refractory when the harness was first put upon them, and frequently kicked out of the traces, and occasionally broke the heads of their drivers; but by a free use of the whip and spur, holding a tight rein, and making examples of a few of the first offenders, they became so docile and gentle, that he could guide them without reins by the crook of his finger, or wink of the eye.” In Washington the system worked well: “Every thing that is determined by our chief is promptly executed, right or wrong. This thing of political honesty, which our opponents stickle so much about, has long since been ‘expunged’ from the vocabulary of our party.” Blubberhead regretted that May’s opponent would be John Todd Stuart: “This I have been dreading for a long time. You know he has ever been a thorn in our side, and that all our efforts to break him down, have failed.”138

  Other satirical letters purportedly by Democrats, full of sarcastic humor, focused on voting rights for blacks. Fifteen years earlier Martin Van Buren had endorsed limited suffrage for free blacks in New York. In 1840, Lincoln would openly attack Van Buren for this stand. In 1836 he may have done so publicly, but the meager record of his speeches for that year does not show it. Anonymous and pseudonymous journalism, probably by Lincoln, however, bristles with such assaults, which were not uncommon throughout the country. (There is a grim irony in Lincoln’s denunciation of Van Buren’s support of limited voting rights for blacks, for in 1865 John Wilkes Booth murdered Lincoln for publicly endorsing that very policy.)

  To embarrass Van Buren and his supporters, Whigs in the 1835–1836 special session of the Illinois Legislature introduced a resolution condemning several Democratic policies and slyly included as one of them: “Colored persons ought not to be admitted to the right of suffrage.” When, as expected, the Democrats voted against that omnibus resolution, Whigs, including Lincoln, taunted them for implicitly endorsing black voting rights. The Sangamo Journal protested that Illinois “is threatened to be overrun with free negroes” and suggested that such undesirables be sent to Van Buren’s home state of New York.139 (In fact, the census of 1835 showed that of the 17,523 people in Sangamon County, only 104 were black.) The editor denounced Van Buren’s running mate, Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, as “the husband of a negro wench, and the father of a band of mulatoes.” (Johnson did have a black mistress who bore him two children.) As election day drew near in 1836, the Journal asked: “If Mr. Van Buren be made the president, is it not reasonable to suppose that before his term of service expires, free negro suffrage will prevail throughout the nation? If Col. Johnson be elected, will not every future aspirant to the vice presidency, set about qualifying himself for public favor by marrying a negress? If these men be elected, how long before poor white girls will become the waiting maids of sooty wenches? How long before we shall have a negro president? How long before white men and black men will have passed away, and the whole population of the country become one huge mass of degenerate and stupid mulatoes?”140

  In January 1836, Lincoln in an anonymous dispatch to the Sangamo Journal chastised Democratic legislators for opposing the proposition “that the elective franchise should be kept free from contamination by the admission of colored voters.”141 Four months later, as the political campaign heated up, a letter in the Sangamo Journal, also probably by Lincoln, put the following words into the mouth of a Democratic congressman: “if we could only carry our plan into effect to allow free negroes to vote … I think our democratic principles would flourish for a long time.”142 In the same issue of the Sangamo Journal appeared a letter ostensibly written by a black gentleman named “Sees-Her,” but in all likelihood it was composed by Lincoln:

  Massa Prenter:

  When I was up dare in Springfield the pepul kep axin me, How’s the election gwine down in your parts? Now I couldnt den exactly precisely tell how de folks was gwine—but I been asken all around sence, and I gest wants to tell presactly how it is. De gemm’en ob coler all gwine for dat man wat writes de epitaphs of truth and vartue wid a syringe—some to Mr. Katshoun [Calhoun], and skuire the Builder [William Carpenter]. Dis brings me to a write understandin—for to no what make de niggers all vote for dese men.

  Now I spose you knows as how you sees dese men goes for Wanjuren [Van Buren], and that dare tudder man wat lub de nigger so. Wanjuren says de nigger all shall vote, and dat oder man in Kentucky state [Richard M. Johnson], is goin to make all the nigger women’s children white. Oh hush, ha, he, ho! Youd split your sides laffin to hear Capun [Calhoun] tell how much W
anjuren is goin to do for de nigger—de ways deys goin for him, man—oh, hush! and dat man who used to buse old Jackson so, case as how he was ginst the niggers voting—ah, law! de way he roots for Wanjuren now is sorter singular—he look precisely like a pig off in a Corn Field—wid one ear marked, so he massa know 'em. De way de niggers is goin for him now, oh hush! And skuire, the builder, de ways dey is going to run him ahead em all aint nobodys business—kase as how hese goin to sen all dese poor white folks off to Library [Liberia], and let the free niggers vote—and wen we send all dese tarnal white folks off, we’se goin to send him to Kongress, and den de niggers will be in town! oh, hush!

  In grait haist, yours.143

  The Journal also ran a purported Democrat’s lament that some party loyalists had grown disenchanted with their legislative ticket of “three preachers and an advocate for the right of suffrage to be extended to negroes.”144 In June another such letter had a Democrat complain: “The people are up in arms about the matter [the Democrats’ vote in the legislature on black suffrage]. They say.… that they don’t like that a free negro should crowd them away from the polls.” They were upset because “two of the Van Buren Electoral Ticket … voted that … free negroes ought to vote at elections.”145 Into the mouth of a Democratic editor whose paper (The Republican) had collapsed, an anonymous satirist put these words: “We were the more anxious to keep the Republican agoing, because we wished to defend the conduct of our friends in the Legislature last winter, in regard to their votes in favor of negro suffrage.… I do believe if free negroes were allowed to vote here, they [the Democrats] would get every vote.”146 All of these pieces were very probably written by Lincoln.