Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  As Scott observed, insult and ridicule were common in frontier politics, but Lincoln deployed them so mercilessly that they constituted a form of cruelty that reflected his primitive background. Not until midlife would Lincoln change his ways and earn a justified reputation for infinite forbearance and goodwill. If, as president, he could declare that he had “not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom,” during his youth and early adulthood he positively delighted in planting such thorns.135

  In a celebrated event at Springfield on July 20, for example, Lincoln excoriated Judge Jesse B. Thomas, who had been accused of writing anonymous letters for the press. In fact, Lincoln and his fellow Whigs were the authors of those letters, for which Thomas chided them in a speech. Lincoln’s riposte was merciless. He “began by saying, that he was a humble member of ‘the Long Nine,’ so that he could not swell himself up to the great dimensions of his learned and eloquent adversary. The effort to do so would, he feared, be attended with the fate of the frog in the fable, which tried to swell itself to the size of the ox. But he could do this—he could prick a few pin-holes in his adversary, and cut him down to his natural size.” Then he proceeded to describe “with minute accuracy, the political career of Judge Thomas, and his various somersaults.” He told how “a new light had struck the learned Judge, and with what wonderful agility he went right over.” As he delivered his “absolutely overwhelming and withering” remarks, Lincoln was “terrific in denunciation,” mimicking Thomas’s gestures and accent. The distraught Thomas “began to blubber like a baby, and withdrew from the assembly. He cried all the rest of the day.”136 The Democratic Illinois State Register chided Lincoln for his “rude assault upon the private character” of Thomas, declaring that even fellow Whigs were disavowing what became celebrated in the annals of Illinois politics as “the skinning of Thomas.”137 The next day a remorseful Lincoln apologized to Thomas.

  Lincoln also skinned Colonel Dick Taylor, a Democratic candidate for the state senate whose assaults on Whig elitism nettled him. The “showy, bombastic” Taylor was “a talkative, noisy fellow” and “a consummate fop” who “never appeared in public without a ruffled shirt, a blue coat and brass buttons, and a gold-headed cane.”138 When Taylor denounced Whigs as aristocrats, Lincoln “replied that whilst Col. Taylor had his stores over the county, and was riding in a fine carriage, wore his kid gloves and had a gold headed cane, he [Lincoln] was a poor boy hired on a flat boat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches and they were of buckskin.” He explained to the audience, “if you know the nature of buckskin when wet and dried by the sun they would shrink and mine kept shrinking until they left for several inches my legs bare between the top of my Socks and the lower part of my breeches—and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter: and so much tighter, that they left a blue streak around my leg which you can see to this day—If you call this aristocracy I plead guilty to the charge.”139 Lincoln then unbuttoned Taylor’s vest and out cascaded his ruffled shirt “like a pile of Entrails,” causing the crowd to “burst forth in a furious & uproarious laughter.”140

  Occasionally Lincoln’s attacks backfired. At Belleville, he sought to illustrate the economic distress brought about by the Panic of 1837 and Democratic policies. As an example, he noted that just that day he had seen a fine horse sold by a constable for the unusually low price of $27. At that, the constable, who was in the audience, cried out that the horse had only one eye. The “nonplussed” Lincoln “seemed rather depressed and was less happy in his remarks than usual.”141 A Democrat gleefully exclaimed: “How very fortunate for the Whigs that Mr. Lincoln saw the sale of the one-eyed horse that day! He was thus enabled to prove that Mr. Van Buren caused it, together with all the other ills of life that us poor mortals ‘are heir to.’ ”142 At Waterloo, down in Egypt, opposition speaker Adam Snyder scolded Lincoln for his low-road tactics and warned him “that if his mission was to convert the lost and benighted, other weapons must be used.”143 In Salem, Lincoln reportedly “was completely done up, even his anecdotes failed to command attention.” When an ally “told him he was wasting his time,” he replied: “it is a fact, but my friends at home think I am not doing my duty unless I am out, so I may as well stay.”144

  On the whole, though, Lincoln did well on the stump. In late May, the Quincy Whig reported that the Democrats “have not been able to start a man that can hold a candle to him in political debate,—All of their crack nags that have entered the lists against him, have come off the field crippled or broken down.”145 In a debate with John A. McClernand at Shawneetown on September 5, he impressed the crowd with “the novelty of his attacks, ludicrous comparisons and fund of anecdote.”146 He also won credit for eschewing criticism of Van Buren’s purportedly sybaritic style of living, a staple of Whig campaign strategy originated by Whig Congressman Charles Ogle of Pennsylvania. According to a letter in the Democratic Illinois State Register, at Shawneetown, Lincoln “emphatically declared that the Ogle mode of demagoguing is a small and contemptible affair” and “stated that he never alluded to the furniture of the President’s house himself, and that he knew it was a mere trick to gull the people—and his only justification for his party was that Mr. [ John Quincy] Adams was denounced on the same ground.”147

  Shortly thereafter at Equality, Lincoln delivered a speech that sent the Whig faithful into ecstasies. He likened Democrat Josiah Lamborn’s switch from Whig to Democrat to the adventures of a slave in Kentucky who had been sent by his master to deliver two puppies to a neighbor. En route, the slave stopped at a dramshop for refreshment, leaving outside the covered basket containing the dogs. While he was imbibing, two jokers replaced the pups with piglets. Upon arrival at his destination, the slave was astounded to see that the canines had become porcine. Returning to his master, the slave once again paused at the dramshop, where the pranksters removed the pigs and restored the pups to the basket. When explaining to his master how the dogs had been transformed into pigs, the slave was startled to observe that the pigs were once again pups. The nonplussed slave expostulated: “I isn’t drunk, but dem dar puppies can be pigs or puppies just when dey please!” Just so, Lincoln said, Lamborn could be a Whig or a Democrat “just when he pleased.”148

  Lincoln could adapt his style to the situation. When he visited Mt. Carmel in early September, he delivered a “dignified and eloquent” address before a mixed audience in the afternoon and a more informal one to an all-male group that evening, when “he seemed to let himself down to their level, pouring forth a current of witticisms and anecdotes which aroused the wildest bursts of applause.”149 A Democratic paper reported that in Mt. Vernon later that month, as Lincoln again debated McClernand, he spoke with “much urbanity and suavity of manner” and “was listened to with attention.” He showed that he was “well calculated for a public debater,” for “he seldom loses his temper, and always replies jocosely and in good humor,” so much so that “the evident marks of disapprobation which greet many of his assertions, do not discompose him, and he is therefore hard to foil.”150

  On his swing through Egypt, Lincoln debated Isaac P. Walker, a toplofty, highly partisan, sarcastic, unpleasant Democrat. They clashed in Albion, where Walker had once lived. In his silk hat and black broadcloth suit, Walker looked far more distinguished than Lincoln, who wore blue jeans. But Lincoln’s wit offset his poor appearance and allowed him to prevail. In order to deprive his opponent of any advantage that his former residence in Albion might confer, Lincoln began by quoting from Byron’s poem “Lara”:

  He, their unhoped but unforgotten lord,

  The long self-exiled chieftain, is restored:

  There be bright faces in the busy hall,

  Bowls on the board, and banners on the wall.

  He comes at last, in sudden loneliness,

  And when they know not, when they need not guess,

  They more might marvel, when the greetings o’er,

  Not that he came, but why he came not b
efore.

  An onlooker remarked that “Lincoln’s sallies on ‘why he came not before’ had taken the wind out of his opponent’s sails completely.”151

  In late October, a Jacksonian legislator, Dr. William G. Anderson, repeatedly interrupted Lincoln’s speech at Lawrenceville, charging that the speaker was “falsifying the acts and record of the Democratic party.”152 Lincoln must have replied heatedly, for Anderson declared that Lincoln’s attack on him “imported insult” and ominously demanded an explanation. A duel seemed likely, but Lincoln disarmed that threat with a conciliatory reply: “I entertain no unkind feeling to you, and none of any sort upon the subject, except a sincere regret that I permitted myself to get into such an altercation.”153

  What Lincoln said in his many other speeches may be inferred from contributions in the Sangamo Journal and The Old Soldier, a campaign paper that he helped edit. Many of the opinion letters signed “A Looker-on,” “An Old Jackson Man,” and the like, were evidently Lincoln’s handiwork.

  In November 1839, “A Looker-on” excoriated Democrats for attacking the Illinois state bank, calling them “would-be dictators” whose charges were mere “absurdities.” The author, who claimed to have been in Vandalia in 1835 when the General Assembly chartered the bank, pointed out that leading Democrats had championed that institution. Similarly, in 1837 Democrats had procured the suspension of the requirement that the bank redeem its notes in specie. So, “A Looker-on” concluded, as the bank “is their own dog, they may whip it, and, I trust, the Whigs will only stand by and see it well done.”154

  Several articles by “An Old Jackson Man” roundly condemned the Van Buren administration for extravagance and corruption. Democrats had denounced John Quincy Adams for spending $12 million to $15 million annually, he pointed out, but Van Buren had expended over $40 million. Under Van Buren, “republican simplicity and economy” had been lost. He also alleged that Van Buren had bribed newspaper editors with patronage and had abandoned the one-term principle, which Democrats had championed in the 1820s. The Democratic Party in Illinois abused the patronage power, “An Old Jackson Man” charged: “Look at the list of Van Buren Conventions held throughout the State, in all of them you find the Registers and Receivers of Land Offices the prominent members of all such conventions, dictating to the people who they shall vote for almost every office, while the small fry, composing the main body of these dictatorial assemblies, is principally composed of post masters, office-holders and office seekers.” The Van Buren administration tolerated corrupt officials like William L. D. Ewing, who, when he stepped down as receiver of pubic monies at Vandalia, “was found a defaulter and judgment obtained against him, for about fifteen thousand dollars,” but the Democrats nonetheless ran him for the state senate, the U.S. senate, and made him acting governor and speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. The author also denounced the Van Buren administration’s proposal for a 200,000-man militia, which, he alleged, amounted to “a proposition to raise a standing army,” a “new engine of patronage and power.” This “Old Jackson Man” issued a warning: “Give to an ambitious and unprincipled President—the sub-treasury—the control of the national funds;—and to his army of office holders and office hunters, two hundred thousand trained militia men—twenty-five thousand men in each military division—twelve thousand five hundred men in actual pay and active service in each division,—the whole body looking to the President for appointment and promotion, the whole under his direction and control;—give him these, and you will afterwards scarce dare to refuse any thing his rapacity may demand.”155

  In a similar vein, “Son of an Old Ranger” attacked Van Buren’s record in the War of 1812: while Harrison “was camped in the field or ranging our frontiers, fighting our battles, defending our women and children from the murderous tomahawk and scalping knife, and adding new lusture to the American name with his splendid victories,” at the same time Van Buren “was in the New York Legislature, voting for Rufus King, the federal anti-war candidate for Senator.”156 When a Democratic campaign paper alleged that Harrison had not behaved heroically at the Battle of Raisin River, a “Kentucky Volunteer” (probably Lincoln) replied: “I have no doubt the writer of the above lines had rather be considered a knave than a fool, and therefore, I shall pitch him on to the first horn of the dilemma, and treat it as a base attempt to deceive the people.”157

  In a public debate at Petersburg, Lincoln attacked Archer Herndon, who had accused Lincoln of being “an interloper.” Lincoln replied that “when he had been a candidate as often as Herndon he would quit.”158 Herndon was also assailed in the press. A letter by “A Citizen” (probably Lincoln) chastised him for supporting Van Buren in 1840 after having opposed him four years earlier. Condemning this apostasy, “Citizen” sneered: “If any man does deserve office at the hands of Van Buren, you surely do. To sustain him, you have sacrificed all—character, reputation, conscience, and the good opinion of tried friends.” This citizen did not eschew strong language; he called Herndon a “traitor” and scorned his “truckling and fawning—a bowing and scraping to the powers that be—which, in the absence of any other testimony than your own professions of honesty, furnishes us with the best key to your motives.”159 The combative Herndon heatedly rejected such charges made by members of what he called “the British-Negro-Indian-Sympathy-and-Anti-Republican-Blood-hound party.”160

  A writer (probably Lincoln) pretending to be Herndon asked Van Buren: “We know you honestly consider the negroes, particularly the fat sleek ones, superior to poor white folks; but why, in the name of Guinea itself, can you not suppress even your honest sentiments until after the election?”161

  In November, Harrison swamped Van Buren, carrying nineteen of the twenty-six states. The president did manage to eke out a victory in Illinois, capturing 51 percent of the votes to Harrison’s 49 percent. Hard times, Van Buren’s bland personality, and the vogue for egalitarianism combined to doom the incumbent. His victory in Illinois, the only free state he carried other than New Hampshire, apparently owed much to immigrants who worked on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. David Davis, a Whig friend of Lincoln who narrowly lost a bid for the state senate, complained that “if the Irish did not vote more than 3 times we could easily carry the State.” Davis added that the “Irish vote along the line of the canal increased (at the late election) most wonderfully, and in nearly every other county of the State, the Whig vote has enlarged greatly.”162

  Like Davis, Lincoln was angered by such irregularities. On election day, when he heard that an Illinois railroad contractor had brought a construction gang to take over the polls, Lincoln told him menacingly: “you will spoil & blow if you live much longer.” That night Lincoln confided to Joshua Speed, “I intended to Knock him down & go aw[a]y and leave him a-kicking.”163 On a similar occasion in Springfield, Lincoln stymied a group of Democrats who had threatened to seize the polls and prevent their opponents from voting. Armed with an ax handle, he scared off the obstructionists. When the legislature convened soon after the November elections, Lincoln proposed an investigation of electoral fraud.

  Despite the result in Illinois, Lincoln was jubilant over Harrison’s victory. (In Springfield, Harrison won 63 percent of the vote, slightly more than the 59 percent that Whig presidential candidates usually received there.) At a raucous celebration, Lincoln “made a great deal of sport with his speeches, witty sayings and stories.” He “even played leap-frog.”164

  In 1840, Lincoln sought a fourth legislative term, though in March he told Stuart that “I think it is probable I shall not be permitted to be a candidate.”165 Many Sangamon County Whigs outside the capital had resisted the convention system and objected to the “Springfield Junto” that supported it. The “Junto” had further alienated voters by opposing the division of the county. Thomas J. Nance, a Democrat in Rock Creek near New Salem, criticized the Junto to a resident of the capital: “Most of our citizens are becoming acquainted with the officious meddling of a few me
n.… this disposition to misrepresent all our reasonable askings will have one good effect—this is to convince us that we must unite to repel their dictating edicts.”166 At a meeting in South Fork, voters declared that they “disapprove of the dictative course pursued by the Springfield Junto of lawyers and office holders.” They threatened to “do all we can to put the Junto down.”167 In 1839, the “Junto” had also antagonized some Whigs by selecting John Bennett of Petersburg, rather than Bowling Green, as a candidate for the General Assembly.