Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  If Lincoln had acted as a peacemaker in the Wooldridge case, he played the opposite role in the summer and fall of 1837, waging a vituperative political and legal battle against a pompous attorney, James Adams, who affected fancy dress and enjoyed an unsavory reputation as a lawyer.

  The controversy involved both law and politics. Lincoln’s close friend, Dr. Anson G. Henry, wanted to unseat Adams as probate justice of the peace, an office Adams had held since the legislature appointed him in 1825. Adams, Lincoln believed, planted a story in the Illinois Republican, Springfield’s Democratic newspaper, charging that Dr. Henry, as a reward for writing press attacks on Democrats, had won appointment as commissioner to oversee construction of the new state capitol. According to the Republican, Henry, “a desperate, reckless adventurer,” was “unqualified” and had vastly overpaid a mechanic for demolishing the courthouse to make way for the statehouse and predicted that he would surely overpay contractors for the new building, too.23 A blistering rebuttal signed “Springfield” (probably by Henry) denounced the “filthy and reckless” attacks in the Republican, whose editors (including Stephen A. Douglas, who had recently moved from Jacksonville to serve as register of the Springfield land office and to write for the Republican) were “aliens in feeling from the community in which they live.”24

  The newspaper insults led to violence. Henry suspected that Douglas had written the abusive articles and resolved to demand that the editor, George Weber, identify their author. On June 26, 1837, Henry and several friends, armed with canes and pistols, confronted Weber, expecting him to be meek. Douglas, who had come to the office to sound a warning, was sitting there when the committee arrived and threatened violence. Weber punched the spokesman, prompting the delegation to depart.

  When Douglas wrote a vivid account of the fracas, Henry’s allies resolved to demolish the Illinois Republican office. The next evening, while the editor and his staff were out for dinner, a mob led by the inebriated sheriff of Springfield, Garret Elkin, broke down the door and set about wrecking the establishment. Weber and his three brothers, assisted by Jacob M. Early, promptly drove the vandals away.

  The following day a mob attacked Weber and his brother John on the street. Sheriff Elkin cudgeled the editor with a weighted whip-stalk, while Doctor Elias H. Merryman assaulted John with his fists. John counterattacked, butted Merryman in the stomach, bowled him over, and began to beat him severely. At that moment Jacob Weber came along and plunged a small knife into the back of Elkin, who fainted from loss of blood. Douglas successfully defended Jacob when he was tried for the stabbing.

  Lincoln joined the contest with his pen, spurred on not only by his friendship with Henry but also by a lawsuit against Adams. Lincoln and Stuart had been retained as counsel by Mary Anderson and her son Richard, heirs of the recently deceased Joseph Anderson, who had once employed Adams as an attorney. Joseph Anderson’s estate included two parcels of land, one of which was occupied by Adams, who claimed that Anderson had given it to him. Anderson’s widow sued, believing that Adams had obtained title fraudulently. Lincoln’s investigation of land records convinced him that Adams had forged documents. In six letters to the Sangamo Journal, published in June and July and signed “Sampson’s Ghost,” Lincoln accused Adams of fraud, forgery, and Toryism. (“Sampson” was Andrew Sampson, who had leased land to James Adams with the understanding that Adams would pay the taxes and that Sampson might reclaim the land by compensating Adams for any improvements he made to the property. Adams eventually claimed that he owned the lot in question, though clearly it belonged to Sampson. In the public letters, Lincoln conflated Sampson and Anderson.) Although the Toryism charge was inaccurate—Adams had served in the American army during the War of 1812—Lincoln maintained a generally moderate tone in the Sampson’s Ghost letters.

  But Lincoln skinned Adams savagely in an unsigned burlesque entitled “A Ghost! A Ghost!” which began with a slightly garbled quotation from one of his favorite plays, Hamlet:

  “Art thou some spirit or goblin damn’d

  Bringst with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell?”

  The “author” of this article is clearly meant to be James Adams, who relates how he had been drinking one night, had fallen off his horse, and was sleeping contentedly on the ground until accosted by a ghost (obviously representing Anderson), who declared in an Irish brogue, which Lincoln employed in jokes and even in formal speeches:

  “The rest of the dead is disturbed by the wickedness of the living. I loved my wife and children, and left them my little all. But it is taken away from them—and how can I rest in my grave in pace?”

  The ghost offered an autobiographical sketch: “I was born in ould Ireland—swate Ireland;—I kem over to Ameriky—to this blessed land. My wife and little ones came with me here—I bought a few acres—left it in the care of a friend—went farther and died.”

  When Adams (called “Stranger” in the article) responds, “And what of that? Most men die sometime or other,” the ghost accusingly says: “I left my land in the hands of a friend and that friend—Oh! be jiminys! what shall I say? My very grave cannot contain me.—My spirit wanders about seeking rest and finding none. My acres are in the hands of my friend—signed, sealed and delivered!”

  Adams: “But, perhaps, this transfer was legal.”

  Ghost: “By the hill of Hoath, ’tis a lie!”

  Adams: “Unless all the proceedings are regular, no transfer can stand, as you well know.”

  Ghost: “Jiminy’s gracious! ’’Tis signed with a cross, and I could write my name as well as any can! Oh jiminys! jiminys!”

  Adams: “Rather curious, I confess. But did you not make the assignment?”

  The ghost, his face radiating “anger, indignation, vengeance,” erupted: “Stranger! You lie! How could I assign a judgment before it was obtained? Be Jimininy Christ it is not so!”25

  Two weeks later, just before the election, the Sangamo Journal ran another story (probably by Lincoln) ridiculing Adams: “The recent noise and excitement made about the wounds and bruises received by Gen. Adams, reminds me of an adventure which happened to me while travelling to this county many years ago. Not far from this place I met a sucker late in the evening returning to his home. ‘Good evening friend,’ said I. ‘How far is it to Springfield?’ ‘Well, I guess its about five miles.’ ‘Are you just from there?’ ‘Well, I am,’ and said I, ‘What’s the news there?’ ‘Well, there’s nothing of any account but a sad accident that happened the other day:—you don’t know Gineral Adams?—Well, the Gineral went to stoop down to pick some blackberries and John Taylor’s calf gave him a butt right—’ ‘You don’t say so,—and did the Gineral die?’ ‘No, by G …, but the calf did!’ ”26

  The same day that this story appeared, Lincoln issued an anonymous handbill reviewing the complicated details of the lawsuit and once again accusing Adams of forgery. When queried, the editor of the Sangamo Journal, Simeon Francis, revealed Lincoln’s authorship of the handbill. Lincoln’s charge seems justified, based on the evidence he marshaled cogently, if intemperately, and also on Adams’s long record of ethical lapses. (In 1818, at the age of 25, Adams had been indicted for forging and backdating a deed in New York. Rather than standing trial, he jumped bail and fled the state, leaving behind his wife and young daughter. In 1832, he had unsuccessfully defended an impoverished man accused of murder and then fleeced the man’s family of their few worldly goods. In 1838, attempting to discredit a petition drive calling for the division of Sangamon County, Adams obtained a blank copy of the petition and forged the names of free blacks. At Springfield, he engaged in dubious land transactions, which Elijah Iles, one of the city’s founding fathers and most influential leaders, publicly denounced. Adams accused attorney Stephen T. Logan of slander, eventually dropping the charge and paying all court costs. In 1841, he so alienated his fellow Masons in Springfield that their lodge almost dissolved. Two years later, Adams committed bigamy; at that same time, he ran for office i
n Hancock County, though he was still a resident of Sangamon.)

  Lincoln’s assaults backfired: Adams won the August election handily, receiving 1,025 votes to Henry’s 792. Although Lincoln had built a strong case, the public evidently considered his tactics unfair and regarded Adams as a victim of persecution. The Democrats protested that Adams, “an infirm old man,” had been “wantonly slandered,” “bitterly persecuted,” and “deeply calumniated.”27 The Sangamo Journal acknowledged that if “a community can be made to believe, that an individual is persecuted, it is natural for them to sustain him.”28

  Lincoln continued to attack Adams even after the election. On September 6, he published a detailed rejoinder to Adams’s defense, which had appeared in the Illinois Republican that day. In that document, Lincoln sneered at Adams’s alleged misunderstanding of a situation that “the greatest dunce could not but understand.” To one of Adams’s arguments Lincoln scornfully replied, “Is common sense to be abused with such sophistry?” To Adams’s assertion that Lincoln’s testimony conflicted with that of the Recorder of Deeds (Benjamin Talbott), Lincoln retorted: “Any man who is not wilfully blind can see at a blush, that there is no discrepancy between Talbott and myself.” He called an affidavit by Adams’s son-in-law-to-be “most foolish,” and deemed Adams himself a “fool.” Lincoln concluded that one of the witnesses cited by Adams must be some “black or mulatto boy” because he had observed an important event while in the kitchen of Adams’s house. He termed Adams’s assertions of fact “false as hell.”29

  On October 7, the Sangamo Journal ran a letter by “An Old Settler” (probably Lincoln) accusing Adams of fraud in yet another land transaction. He sententiously declared that Adams “may wince, and screw as other men of the same character usually do, under the lash of Justice and the power of Truth, still he shall not escape.”30 Eleven days later, Lincoln deplored the general’s “rascality” and called his defense “foolish,” “ludicrous,” and “contradictory.”31 Once again, Lincoln had the better argument, but his snide, contemptuous tone undermined his effectiveness.

  In 1838, an anonymous piece in the Sangamo Journal (probably by Lincoln) once again attacked Adams: “Who is so blind that cannot see the finer marks of forgery in the last [issue of the] Republican? Do we not see evident marks of meanness? But is it surprising that one who has been guilty of defrauding the widow and the orphan—one who has been guilty of repeated acts of baseness—should stop at anything? … He stands the living evidence that man is corrupt by nature.”32 When Adams responded to the charges of forgery that had been brought against him in New York, the Sangamo Journal published a rejoinder, also probably by Lincoln, alleging that Adams distorted the facts and that he had left New York owing debts still unpaid.

  Eventually, the Anderson lawsuit languished, neither dismissed nor pursued, until the death of Adams in 1843, whereupon the court abated the suit. For all the vituperation Lincoln unleashed on their behalf, Anderson’s heirs never did receive the land.

  Adams was not Lincoln’s only target in the 1837 political campaign. On July 1, a special legislative election was held to choose a replacement for Daniel Stone, who had resigned his seat in the General Assembly to accept a judgeship. The Whig candidate, Lincoln’s close friend Edward D. Baker, ran against Lincoln’s former boss, surveyor John Calhoun. On election eve, an anonymous screed, probably by Lincoln, appeared in the Sangamo Journal denouncing Calhoun and other members of Springfield’s Democratic “Junto,” among them John Taylor and the owners of the Illinois Republican. The author accused them of treason against Sangamon County and Springfield because the previous winter they had lobbied to have the county divided up and to have the paper town of Illiopolis chosen as the new state capital. Their motives were selfish; they and their associates owned land in Illiopolis and in villages, including Petersburg, which they hoped would become the seats of new counties created from Sangamon. To enrich themselves, they were making common cause with the spokesmen for Vandalia, who wished to repeal the law designating Springfield as the new state capital.

  In the pages of the Sangamo Journal, a satirist (probably Lincoln) ridiculed William Walters, co-editor of the Illinois State Register, as a “broken down hack.”33 Another scornful letter from the same pen alluded to the split within the Democratic ranks between the old Jacksonians and new converts who were seizing control of the party. In the letter the author has John Calhoun, ostensibly bitter at his electoral defeat in 1834, say: “I thought … that I would go to work like an honest man and no longer attempt to obtain a living by locating towns [as county surveyor].”34

  Special Legislative Session

  In July 1837, as the combative Lincoln waged a newspaper war against James Adams and others, Governor Joseph Duncan summoned the legislature to Vandalia for a special session to address the consequences of the financial panic that had struck that spring, drying up the market for Illinois bonds. The state bank was in danger of losing its charter, a development that, in turn, might delay construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. In response to this crisis, Duncan recommended that the legislature scrap the internal improvement scheme it had passed earlier that year.

  Ignoring this advice, the General Assembly, which met for less than two weeks, first turned its attention to a bill repealing the other major legislation of the last session, the capital removal statute. The champion of repeal, William L. D. Ewing, an able, ambitious, conceited politico, had a reputation for using violence. The short, muscular, impulsive Ewing had several times been indicted (and once convicted) for assault and battery. In 1831, while drunk, he stabbed and badly injured a man who disagreed with him on a minor matter. As receiver of the Vandalia land office, he was found guilty of neglecting his duties. He was also indicted for other misdeeds, among them adultery. In an 1840 quarrel, Ewing threw a chair at a legislator from Chicago, Justin Butterfield. When the two men arranged to fight a duel, only Butterfield’s decision to withdraw prevented bloodshed. In his attack on the capital-removal law, Ewing sarcastically denounced “the arrogance of Springfield,” maintaining that “its presumption in claiming the seat of government—was not to be endured,” and accused the Long Nine of logrolling.

  To respond, the Whigs chose Lincoln, who “retorted upon Ewing with great severity; denouncing his insinuations in imputing corruption to him and his colleagues, and paying back with usury all that Ewing had said.” Onlookers feared that Lincoln “was digging his own grave; for it was known that Ewing would not quietly pocket any insinuations that would degrade him personally.” Ewing then asked the Sangamon County delegation: “Gentlemen, have you no other champion than this coarse and vulgar fellow to bring into the lists against me? Do you suppose that I will condescend to break a lance with your low and obscure colleague?” Usher F. Linder and other observers expected “that a challenge must pass between them,” but cooler heads prevailed and no duel took place. (Linder said many years later that “this was the first time that I began to conceive a very high opinion of the talents and personal courage of Abraham Lincoln.”)35 Ewing’s bill was referred to a special committee, chaired by Lincoln, who amended it to have Springfield pay the $50,000 it had pledged before work could begin on the statehouse. The measure as amended passed the House but died in senate.

  In the brief 1837 session, the General Assembly bristled with hostility toward banks because of the financial panic. As David Davis observed in July: “There are a great many radicals … as well as desperate men, a great share of whom by some fortuitous circumstances, are members of the Legislature—and the cry at present—from one end of the State to the other—is—down with the Bank.” Davis detected political opportunism at work in this assault.36 Representative Samuel D. Marshall wryly and correctly predicted that “the bank will not go down. The leaders of the Van Buren party are too much in debt to it to suffer such a result.” The Democrats had made threatening noises because they “only wanted the Whigs to take the responsibility so that they might afterwards abuse the Bank
again and charge the legalising of the suspension on the Whigs.”37 In fact, Democrats did rally to support the bank. One of them, John Pearson, reflected the views of many colleagues when he said of that institution: “A thing may have been unwise in its creation & yet afterwards prove detrimental to us in its destruction, as some have reasoned in regard to this Bank.… If the sudden repeal or even an opposition to this Bank will injure the works the people have begun, why then it is our duty not to oppose it.”38 With the help of such Democrats, Lincoln and his fellow Whigs thwarted attempts to repeal the 1835 charter of the Bank of Illinois. Under that law, if the bank suspended specie payments (redemption of its notes in gold and silver on demand) for more than sixty days, it must disband. The bank did suspend such payments on May 27, 1837, in response to the financial panic. The Whigs managed to persuade the General Assembly to allow the bank to continue its existence temporarily.

  Politics, 1838–1840

  In the following year’s election campaign, the county division issue dominated Sangamon County politics, with the Democrats favoring the proposed change and the Whigs opposing it. Lincoln went to work in the press. Writing from “Lost Townships,” an author signing himself “Rusticus”—probably Lincoln—attacked the proposal in the Sangamo Journal. On April 15, 1838, Rusticus denounced the editor of Springfield’s Illinois Republican for catering to land speculators by supporting their attempt to cut up Sangamon “into a litter of counties.” Rusticus reported: “I was called on last week, and urged to go for new counties. And what upon earth am I to gain, said I. Why your farm may be made the county seat. It is high and rolling, has a fine view and is in the neighborhood of a large body of timber, and is about in the middle of the proposed new county.” Two weeks later Rusticus called the plan to divide Sangamon County into “pea-patch counties” a plot “to benefit certain speculators who own town lots in Allenton, Pulaski and Petersburg” and “to gratify a few men who want offices.”39 In June, Rusticus again inveighed against “dangerous demagogues and speculators,” declaring that “[e]very man cannot have a county seat at his door, nor ought he to desire it.”40