Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1
Page 30
Despite all this, the Sangamon County Whigs did nominate Lincoln at their convention that March, though they rejected all other Springfield residents save Edward D. Baker, whom they chose to run for state senate. (Why Lincoln did not receive that honor is unclear.) Lincoln reported that Ninian W. Edwards “was verry much hurt at not being nominated” and added that for his own part he “was much, verry much, wounded myself at his [Edwards’s] being left out. The fact is, the country delegates made the nominations as they pleased; and they pleased to make them all from the country, except Baker & me, whom they supposed necessary to make stump speeches.”168 (Lincoln was better known for his oratory than his organization al skills. Anson G. Henry complained that when it came to such tasks as compiling lists of important Whigs who should receive government documents, “You need not expect Stewart [John Todd Stuart], Baker or Lincoln to do this kind of work. I am the only working man of this Sort in Springfield. I have all my life beat the bush for others to catch the bird.”)169 On election day in August, Lincoln retained his seat in the General Assembly, coming in fifth in a field of ten, with 1,844 votes. The leading candidate received only 15 more votes than Lincoln, while the sixth-place finisher lagged 578 votes behind him.
In August, shortly after election day, the General Assembly began a session marred by special bitterness occasioned by an impending change in the partisan balance. The Democrats, aware that this session represented “the last apple they will have” because of the Whigs’ triumph in the national election, were “determined to extract every drop of juice while they have the chance.”170 Whig Senator William H. Fithian likened the Democrats to “the Indian who was badly wounded and knew that he must die [and therefore was] determined to do as much mischief before he did expire as he possibly could.”171 One Illinois Whig editor deplored the rampant partisanship of most lawmakers: “Elected at a time of high party excitement, and with an eye single to his blind devotion and subserviency to that party, … the Representative too frequently enters upon the discharge of his duties … governed and controlled only by the most sordid views, selfish motives, and basest passions, to which the asperity of party feeling can give birth.”172
Governor Thomas Carlin summoned the legislature to a special session beginning on November 23, two weeks before the constitutionally stipulated date for the regular session, in order to grapple with the mounting state debt. It seemed unlikely that Illinois could meet the interest payments due on January 1. Because the new capitol was still not quite ready for occupancy, the legislators met in Springfield churches. Once again, William L. D. Ewing defeated Lincoln for Speaker of the House. After some vigorous but futile attempts to have Vandalia restored as the state capital, the General Assembly then prepared to convene its regular session on December 7.
The Democrats tried to seize the moment for some mischief. Since a recent law provided that the Bank of Illinois would have to resume specie payments at the end of the “next session” of the legislature, Democrats argued that the Bank must meet that burdensome requirement as of December 5 when the special session closed. The Whigs, hoping to have the regular session combined with the special session and thus postpone the bank’s day of reckoning, boycotted the legislature, thereby preventing the necessary two-thirds quorum for adjournment sine die. When the representatives gathered on December 5, the Whigs stayed away, except for Lincoln, Joseph Gillespie, and Asahel Gridley, who were to observe the proceedings and demand roll call votes. The frustrated Democrats, eager to hurt the state bank by adjourning, instructed the sergeant-at-arms to round up absent Whigs. When that tactic failed, the Democrats managed to bring in enough of their own previously absent members to create a quorum. Lincoln and his two Whig colleagues angrily bolted for the door, which was locked. Because the sergeant-at-arms had received no instruction to unlock the door, he refused to do so. Lincoln then opened a window and stepped through, followed by Gillespie and Gridley. When the sergeant-at-arms was instructed to pursue, he exclaimed: “My God! gentlemen, do you know what you ask? Think of the length of Abe’s legs, and then tell me how I am to catch him.”173
This unconventional departure through the church’s first-floor window drew laughter from the Democratic members, who derisively shouted: “He who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day.”174 The Register sneered at the “gymnastic performance of Mr. Lincoln and his flying brethren” and recommended that the statehouse be raised “in order to have the House set in the third story! so as to prevent members from jumping out of the windows!” That way, “Mr. Lincoln will in future have to climb down the spout!”175 One observer reported that after the House adjourned, “Such a clapping of hands and stamping you never heard—on the whole I must say I consider the conduct of both parties disgraceful in the extreme.”176 Years later, Lincoln was ridiculed as “a long-legged varment” who was “great at jumping” and who “earned his membership in the junto by jumping out of the windows of the State House to save the bank.”177
Lincoln found this episode very embarrassing. According to Gillespie, he “always regretted that he entered into the arrangement as he deprecated everything that Savored of the revolutionary.”178 In later years, whenever the matter came up, he would change the subject.
When the regular session began on December 7, 1840, the House of Representatives, finally meeting for the first time in the new capitol, wrangled over the debt crisis. Lincoln managed, after much cajoling, to persuade his colleagues to raise the general land tax and to issue special bonds to cover the pending interest obligations. Lincoln’s “interest bonds” scheme was criticized as “a mere gull trap, set for the purpose of catching money holders & sharpers.”179 The tax hike, however, yielded insufficient revenue to solve the problem, and in July 1841 the state defaulted on its interest payments, causing the price of Illinois bonds to plunge. A Democratic state senator complained that the “very men who voted for the rail Road system, men who indebted the State millions, are afraid to vote one cent of taxes on their constituents to sustain the tottering credit of the State.”180 In 1842, the state took in revenues of less than $100,000, while interest payments approached $800,000.
A struggle over the Whig-dominated supreme court convulsed the legislature. The justices had angered Democrats by overruling Governor Carlin’s decision to remove Alexander P. Field, a partisan Whig, from his post as secretary of state. When the court also seemed likely to weaken the Democrats’ electoral base by denying aliens the right to vote (most of the state’s 10,000 foreign-born voters were Democrats), the General Assembly entertained a motion to pack the supreme bench by adding five justices, a proposal that became “the Lion measure of the session.”181 The ensuing debate was, in the words of a state senator, “vehement & exciting, partaking much of party abuse & personal crimination.”182 In the midst of the heated exchanges, a member of the lower house reported that the “very Genius of Disorganization is holding the reins whilst Old Nick whips the horses. Every thing is done by party votes.”183 Beholding the spectacle from Washington, John Todd Stuart lamented: “I have often been ashamed of my State or rather of its Loco Legislators. They are a laughing stock.”184 Lincoln’s friend, Senator William H. Fithian, thought that he had previously seen “the business of the people … carelessly and tardily attended to by their Representatives,” but now he felt “compelled to say, I have never until this session, fully realized the length and breadth of the unparalleled embarrassments of the people of Illinois.”185
Although the main battleground of this war was in the House, Lincoln scarcely took part; he had prepared remarks that he could not deliver because speaker Ewing allowed the Democrats to cut off debate. On February 1, when the bill cleared the House by a 45–43 vote, the Sangamo Journal published a letter by a member of that body (probably Lincoln) indignantly protesting that the “Judiciary of Illinois is to be assailed, and the constitution in its spirit, if not in the letter, violated, and the members who would have raised a voice in its defence, are to be gagged into s
ilence!” Hyperbolically comparing the proceedings to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the author denounced Ewing and his “alarming” parliamentary rulings. He asserted that “it is sufficiently revolting to the feelings of freemen, to be gagged into silence under any circumstances,” but “if this gag law can be enforced, in relation to a particular measure before that measure is before the House, then any thing like freedom of debate may be cut off, and the members literally gagged into silence.”186
When Ewing rejected this protest as “gratuitous and unfounded,” the aggrieved legislator replied in a statesmanlike fashion, remarking that he “had not been induced by any unkind feelings towards the speaker” and that there was “no reason we should wound each other’s feelings, or that those civilities and kindnesses which mark the character and intercourse between gentlemen, should be violated and endangered.” He maintained that the “official conduct, or decisions of public officers is public property, and are fair and legitimate subjects of criticism, so that facts are correctly stated, and inferences fairly drawn. In my own much more humble sphere, I freely concede the right of investigating my public conduct, and if dealt ingenuously with, will not be found to complain.”187
Lincoln was not so conciliatory in late February, when he and thirty-four other Whig Representatives denounced the court-packing statute as “a party measure for party purposes,” which manifested “supreme contempt for the popular will,” undermined “the independence of the Judiciary, the surest shield of public welfare and private right,” and set a “precedent for still more flagrant violations of right and justice.”188 In April, a satirical communication in the Sangamo Journal, probably by Lincoln, suggested that the judiciary bill passed only because a member (Ebenezer Peck) was bought off with an appointment as clerk of the state supreme court. Another such communication, also probably by Lincoln, ridiculed Stephen A. Douglas for his inconsistency as an opponent of “life offices” who nevertheless accepted such a post as a supreme court judge.
In the 1840–1841 session, Lincoln once again fought on behalf of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, moving that the state increase the land tax and issue bonds to complete the project. A Democrat from Montgomery County countered with one of Lincoln’s own favorite tactics, the funny story with a concealed barb. He compared Lincoln to an Arkansas toper who had passed out and, when all other means to revive him failed, regained consciousness at his wife’s suggestion that a brandy toddy might be the best medicine. Upon hearing the words “brandy toddy,” the bibulous gentleman sat up, saying “that is the stuff!” Lincoln seemed to think the more debt that the state assumed, the better. Lincoln responded in kind. His critic’s actions during the legislative session, he quipped, called to mind an old Indiana bachelor who “was very famous for seeing big bugaboos in every thing.” One day while hunting with his brother, this gentleman fired repeatedly at a treetop. His sibling, who saw no target, asked what he was trying to shoot. When told that it was a squirrel, the brother, “believing that there was some humbug about the matter, examined his person, and found on one of his eye lashes a big louse crawling about. It is just so with the gentleman from Montgomery. He imagined he could see squirrels every day, when they were nothing but lice.”189 Lincoln’s remarks “convulsed the whole house,” forcing a halt to all business. The Speaker banged his gavel to no avail. Legislators of both parties laughed, “screamed and yelled,” “thumped upon the floor with their canes,” “clapped their hands,” “threw up their hats,” “shouted and twisted themselves into all sorts of contortions, until their sides ached and the tears rolled down their cheeks.” One spasm succeeded another until the Representatives “seemed to be perfectly exhausted.”190 Much as they admired Lincoln’s wit, the legislators rejected his argument that “to prosecute the work now was in fact the most economical plan that could be adopted: to stop it, would involve the State in much more debt and ruin.”191
Lincoln clashed with another Democrat, John A. McClernand, over the state bank. From southern Illinois, McClernand was a devoted foe of all banks. Vain and overbearing, he was an effective if unscrupulous speaker, always ready for a political fight. His knowledge of the classics, his grandiloquent manner, and his smooth delivery led people to call him “The Grecian Orator.”192 According to Gustave Koerner, McClernand “was bold in his assertions, denunciatory of his opponents, perfectly fearless, an experienced public speaker, never trying to persuade but to subdue.”193
McClernand and Lincoln held an especially heated debate over the question of whether the state bank should be the fiscal agent for Illinois. Lincoln, with asperity, accused Democrats of underhanded dealing. He declared that there was “a manifest disposition on the part of some of the Van Buren men to prop up the Bank, and it is perfectly apparent that the party are prepared to detach a fraction of themselves to go with the Whigs in sustaining the Bank—their usual policy—and then throw the odium of Suspension upon the Whigs.” Lincoln “said that he was tired of this business. If there was to be this continual warfare against the Institutions of the State, the sooner it was brought to an end the better. If the great body of the [Democratic] party would act upon conservative principles, he was willing to go with them, but this scheme of detaching a fragment from their party to help the Whigs pass a measure and then turn around and kick and cuff us for it, he had seen practiced long enough.”194 Lincoln’s attempt to protect the interests of the bank proved futile, for it was compelled to shut its doors the following year.
With his departure from the General Assembly, Lincoln found himself out of office for the first time in seven years. He had chosen not to seek reelection, for he wished to obtain the Whig nomination for Congress. The apprentice phase of his political career was thus over.
Since entering the legislature in 1834, he had gained stature. In December 1840, a member of “the lobby”—a kind of mock legislature that met in the capitol after the General Assembly sessions adjourned for the day—called him “emphatically a man of high standing,” a “self-made man, and one of the ablest, whether as a lawyer or legislator, in the State. As a speaker he is characterized by a sincerity, frankness, and evident honesty, calculated to win the attention and gain the confidence of the hearer.”195 (Thomas J. Henderson, who recalled hearing Lincoln during this session of the General Assembly, was less favorably impressed, saying that he “was awkward in manner, when speaking, with a swaying motion of body and a swinging of his long arms that were somewhat ungraceful.” Henderson “heard members laughing and talking about appointing a committee to hold his coat tails when he was speaking and keep him still.”)196 A few months later, the Fulton Telegraph said: “we think the great talents, sacrifices and high standing of Mr. Lincoln should bring our friends to the decision of taking him up as a candidate for Governor.”197
Lincoln had little interest in that post, for Whigs stood no chance of winning statewide office. In July 1841, a western Illinois newspaper reported that “since his return from the circuit [in mid-June], Lincoln declines being considered as a candidate for Governor.”198 Five months later, the Sangamo Journal announced that “since Mr. Lincoln returned from the circuit, he has expressed his wishes not to be a candidate for Governor.”199 An item in that same paper the following year finally scotched the proposal: “We do not believe that he desires the nomination. He has already made great sacrifices in sustaining his party principles; and before his political friends ask him to make additional sacrifices, the subject should be well considered. The office of Governor, which would of necessity interfere with the practice of his profession, would poorly compensate him for the loss of four years of the best portion of his life.”200 (Some Whigs also objected that Springfield should not have both the party’s only congressional seat and the governorship.)
In 1840, Lincoln’s ambition had grown more intense, fueled by his new status as a presidential elector, Whig campaign manager, chief stump speaker and organizer, as well as Whig floor leader in the state House of Representatives. William H. H
erndon believed that “Lincoln as Early as 1830 be[g]an to dream of a destiny—I think it grew & developed & bloom[ed] with beauty &c in the year 1840 Exactly. Mr Lincoln in that year was appointed general Elector from the State—Mr Lincoln told me that his ideas of [becoming] something—burst on him in 1840.”201
Lincoln now felt ready to advance from the state to the national legislature. In the General Assembly he had learned how to build coalitions, how to persuade his colleagues to do his bidding, and how to roll logs. According to Lyman Trumbull, a colleague in the Illinois House of Representatives, Lincoln was viewed “by his political friends as among their shrewdest and ablest leaders, and by his political adversaries as a formidable opponent.” Trumbull, who was critical of Lincoln, nonetheless acknowledged that among the highly talented men who served in the legislature in 1840–1841, “he stood in the front rank.”202
But for all Lincoln’s growing sense of strength and competence, there was, as Samuel C. Parks noted about the Lincoln of 1841, “nothing to indicate the future reformer, either in religion, or morals, or politics.”203 His greatness as a moral statesman in years to come would have been hard to predict based on his legislative record, which showed him to be likable and clever, but little more. He understood the nuts and bolts of lawmaking and excelled at ridiculing Democrats. In his leadership role, however, he curiously had little to do with framing legislation. Of the 1,647 bills passed during Lincoln’s four terms, he directly introduced only 10; another 21 had been brought forward by committees on which he served. Lincoln offered only eight resolutions and fourteen petitions. It is no wonder that fellow Whig leaders observed that during his years in the legislature, Lincoln “never gave any special evidence of that masterly ability for which he was afterward distinguished.”204 By the age of 32, Lincoln had proved himself to be an ambitious, gifted partisan but exhibited few signs of true statesmanship.