Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  7

  “I Have Got the Preacher by the Balls”

  Pursuing a Seat in Congress

  (1843–1847)

  In 1843, Mary Lincoln, eager to get to Washington, urged her husband to run for Congress. He required little goading, for his ambition was strong. Because voters in the Sangamon region had sent a Whig, John Todd Stuart, to Congress in the two previous elections, whoever secured that party’s nomination would probably win. But Lincoln faced formidable challengers for that nomination, notably his friends Edward D. Baker and John J. Hardin.

  Political Rivals

  Charming, magnetic, and strikingly handsome, the English-born Baker was a renowned orator who could also impress with his abilities to sing, dance, play the piano, and compose poetry. Like Lincoln, Baker had grown up in poverty. His ambition was so intense that when he discovered that his English birth made him ineligible for the presidency, he allegedly wept as he criticized his parents: “In justice to me they might have come to America a few years earlier.” Impulsive, eager for glory, Baker won many friends—among them Lincoln—with his personal warmth, commanding presence, generosity, and joie de vivre. He was especially popular with young men, who loved and followed him unquestioningly.

  With the possible exception of Lincoln, Baker was the best Whig speaker in central Illinois. The “snarling silver trumpet of his voice” was clear and well-modulated, and his fluency and enthusiasm fascinated audiences. Whether on the stump or in front of a jury, Baker’s good-natured friendliness, impetuous delivery, and quick wit proved irresistible.1

  Not everyone admired Baker, however; many found him shallow, lacking in principle, and careless in business. Charles H. Ray spoke dismissively of his “frothy, ginger beer oratory,” and Herndon recalled that Baker’s “style and matter were not absolutely original—nor deep—nor exact—not what the world calls philosophic.”2 Other critics objected to Baker’s lack of “moral worth & stability of character.”3 John J. Crittenden thought his “moral weight is not as great as it should be.”4 Baker’s law partner, Stephen T. Logan, characterized him as “a brilliant man but very negligent” and complained that “I could not trust him in money matters. He got me into some scrapes by collecting and using money.”5 (At the time of his death early in the Civil War, Baker had failed to account for $10,000 that he had been given to raise a regiment.) Another law partner, Isaac Jones Wistar, recalled that Baker had squandered “his large fees as fast as received, and in spite of his great earnings, was most generally penniless.” (After his untimely death in 1861, his family was left destitute.) There was, said Wistar, “absolutely no trace of order or system” about his “ill-regulated and erratic character.” Relying on his prodigious memory, Baker kept financial records and case dockets in his hat or secreted about his person.6 In many ways, he seemed a perpetual adolescent.

  Baker was also hopelessly vain. Some contemporaries criticized the “excessive protuberance of the organ of self esteem upon Mr. B’s cranium.”7 Nothing made him happier than hearing people liken him to Napoleon I. Mary Lincoln’s cousin, Elizabeth Grimsley, told a friend in 1861, “I cannot bear that man. He seems to have such a supreme contempt for lesser intellects, that it quite lowers his own in my estimation.”8 In 1849, Baker’s aggressive pursuit of a cabinet position was regarded as a joke indicative of his unrealistic estimate of his own talent. David Davis admired Baker’s “genius & talents of a high order” but thought him “a queer fellow—the most restless man in the world, and of unbounded ambition.”9

  Despite his faults, Baker inspired in Lincoln a deep affection. He loved him as if he were his brother. In 1846, he named his second son Edward Baker Lincoln. Together Lincoln and Baker practiced law, championed the Whig Party, and debated religion.

  Lincoln’s other rival for the congressional nomination, John J. Hardin, was a third cousin to Mary Lincoln and very popular with the transplanted Kentucky Whigs of the district. An able man with a quick, retentive mind, Hardin lacked Baker’s fluency as an orator. Though he tended to stammer and hesitate, his fierce sarcasm and cutting wit made him a formidable opponent. The wife of Governor Joseph Duncan described him as a “plain blunt man when his indignation was aroused [—] woe to the man who … felt the heavy strokes of his ‘meat-axe oratory.’ ”10

  Born in Kentucky a year after Lincoln, Hardin imbibed politics from his father, Martin D. Hardin, a U.S. senator, secretary of state of Kentucky, and a leading attorney so fierce that he was said to resemble “a kitchen knife whetted on a brick.”11 After graduating from Transylvania University in Lexington, Hardin studied law with the chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. In 1830, he moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, where he quickly achieved eminence. During the Black Hawk War he became a major general of the state militia, and in 1836 he won a seat in the General Assembly, to which he was reelected in 1838 and 1840. Colleagues in the legislature deemed him “clever,” “firm,” “fearless,” and “smart.”12 Lincoln characterized the intensely ambitious Hardin as “our best Whig,” a “man of desperate energy and perseverance” who “never backs out” and who was “talented, energetic, usually generous and magnanimous.”13 Much as he admired Hardin, Lincoln may have resented his jeering taunts about Lincoln’s celebrated exit through a window in an attempt to block a legislative quorum.

  During the winter of 1842–1843, Lincoln began his quest for the congressional nomination, to be decided at a convention in May. On February 14, Lincoln told a Whig leader in Beardstown, “if you should hear any one say that Lincoln don’t want to go to Congress, I wish you as a personal friend of mine, would tell him you have reason to believe he is mistaken. The truth is, I would like to go very much.”14 Two weeks thereafter, at a meeting of Whigs in Springfield, Lincoln drew up the party platform, opposing direct federal taxes and endorsing a protective tariff, a national bank, distribution to the states of proceeds from federal land sales, and the convention system of choosing candidates.

  Three days later there appeared a circular, written by Lincoln, elaborating on the various planks. Here he indulged in mild demagoguery, implausibly arguing that a protective tariff would burden “the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial laboring many … go entirely free.” Only those “whose pride, whose abundance of means, prompt them to spurn the manufactures of our own country, and to strut in British cloaks, and coats, and pantaloons, may have to pay a few cents more on the yard for the cloth that makes them.” Sarcastically, Lincoln remarked: “A terrible evil, truly, to the Illinois farmer, who never wore, nor never expects to wear, a single yard of British goods in his whole life.” The tariff was far preferable to a system of direct federal taxation, under which “the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and every other green thing.” All citizens would thus “be perpetually haunted and harassed by the tax-gatherer.” Lincoln ridiculed opponents of Henry Clay’s plan to distribute the proceeds of federal land sales: “Many silly reasons are given, as is usual in cases where a single good one is not to be found.” Lincoln’s intense hostility toward Whig deserters erupted in the circular’s denunciation of John Reynolds, William L. D. Ewing, and Richard M. Young, all of whom had been helped by the Whigs and who then became “perseveringly vindictive in their assaults upon all our men and measures.”

  Whigs must adopt the convention system, Lincoln argued, for “while our opponents use it, it is madness in us not to defend ourselves with it.” Nominating conventions created party harmony and united the faithful behind one candidate. “If two friends aspire to the same office, it is certain that both cannot succeed. Would it not, then, be much less painful to have the question decided by mutual friends some time before, than to snarl and quarrel until the day of the election, and then both be beaten by the common enemy?” To illustrate the point, Lincoln employed a scriptural aphorism that he would famously use in 1858: “he whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers has declared
that ‘a house divided against itself cannot stand.’ ”15

  During the first three weeks of March, supporters of Baker and Lincoln battled so strenuously for the endorsement of the Sangamon County Whigs that a Democratic paper remarked, “If we are to believe either of the two factions it would be difficult to decide which is the bigger rascal.”16 Baker ultimately outworked and outmaneuvered Lincoln to win the endorsement in Springfield on March 20. When the convention met, it appeared that Baker commanded an overwhelming majority. Asked to withdraw because Baker’s lead was so great, Lincoln graciously acquiesced that morning. But it turned out that his rival’s lead was much smaller than he had thought. If Lincoln had fought throughout the afternoon, he might have been nominated. Evidently overconfident, Lincoln had failed to match Baker’s relentless energy. The outcome mortified him and angered his wife, who roundly berated him for not working hard enough to win.

  Some of Baker’s supporters criticized Lincoln for his ties to the aristocratic Edwards and Todd families, which prompted Lincoln to remark laughingly: “Well that sounds strange to me for I do not remember of but one [member of those families] that ever came to See Me and While he Was in town he Was accused of Stealing a Jews Harp.” Publicly Lincoln may have made light of his opponent’s tactics, but privately he confided bitterly to a friend his astonishment that he could be portrayed as an elitist.

  Lincoln cited other considerations that worked against him. “Baker is a Camp-bellite,” he noted, “and therefore, as I sup[p]ose, with few acceptions got all that church.” (Campbellites, followers of Alexander Campbell, were also known as Reformed Baptists and later as Disciples of Christ.) Mary Todd had relatives in the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches, “and therefore whereever it would tell, I was set down as either the one or the other.” In addition, Lincoln complained, it was said that “no christian ought to go for me, because I belonged to no church, [and] was suspected of being a deist.” Moreover, with some Whigs his reputation suffered because of the notorious “duel” with Shields.17 Stung by the perception that he was a hot-headed, aristocratic nonbeliever, he emphatically assured James Matheny: “I am now and always shall be the same Abe Lincoln that I always was.”18

  Lincoln’s views on temperance may also have injured his candidacy. In the year leading up to the Springfield Whig convention, the temperance movement swept through the capital. The local chapter of the Washington Temperance Society (a precursor of Alcoholics Anonymous), founded in 1841 after proselytes from Alton had stirred up interest, had attracted over 350 members by year’s end. Lincoln had addressed the society at a meeting held in a church, and, noting that several of the society’s reformed drunkards were deemed too uncouth for the polite worshippers there, Lincoln chided self-righteous, “uncharitable,” “cold-blooded,” and “feelingless” reformers who held that drunkards “should be shunned by all the good and virtuous” as “utterly incorrigible.… moral pestilences.” Drunkards, he maintained, were people whose heads and hearts “will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class.” Indeed, Lincoln declared, there “seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant, and the warm-blooded, to fall into this vice. The demon of intemperance ever seems to have delighted in sucking the blood of genius and of generosity.” So he appealed to his Christian audience for forbearance: “If they believe, as they profess, that Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, die an ignominious death for their sake, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser condescension, for the temporal, and perhaps eternal salvation, of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their own fellow creatures.”19 This last sentence offended many in attendance, who interpreted it as a criticism of their piety. Insulted and outraged Christians complained: “It’s a shame that he should be permitted to abuse us so in the house of the Lord.”20

  (When defending some female temperance activists who been found guilty of demolishing barrels of liquor, Lincoln told the judge: “it might be well to offset the money damages with the damage which might have resulted if the destroyed liquor had been used for beverage purposes.” The women were fined 1¢.)21

  Over his protest, the Sangamon County Whigs chose Lincoln as a delegate to the congressional district convention, where he was obliged to vote for Baker. Though he lamented that “I shall be ‘fixed’ a good deal like a fellow who is made groomsman to a man that has cut him out, and is marrying his own dear ‘gal,’ ” Lincoln derived some solace from the action of the Menard County convention, which endorsed his candidacy.22 “It is truly gratifying to me to learn that while the people of Sangamon have cast me off, my old friends of Menard [New Salem was located in recently created Menard County] who have known me longest and best of any, still retain their confidence in me,” he told Martin S. Morris.23 When Baker tried to get Menard’s two delegates to vote for him, Lincoln protested: “This is all wrong. Upon the same rule, why might not I fly from the decision against me in Sangamon and get up instructions to their delegation to go for me? … I would as soon put my head in the fire as to attempt it.” He felt honor-bound not to hinder Baker’s nomination. “I should despise myself were I to attempt it,” he declared to Morris.24

  Baker had ample reason to woo the Menard County delegates, for John J. Hardin was emerging as a formidable rival at the district level. When the district convention assembled at Pekin on May 1, Baker and Hardin were virtually deadlocked, with seventeen delegates favoring Hardin and sixteen leaning toward Baker. Lincoln, the foremost advocate of Baker’s candidacy, appealed to a Menard County delegate, George U. Miles: “Other Counties have gone for me & are instructed for me if I’m a candidate—I[’]ll be nominated the lst ballot—My honor is out with Baker. I’d Suffer my right arm to be cut off before I’d violate it. It is impossible for me to run. I, after the Nominations, will get up & decline and I want you to go for Baker. Menard—your two votes—will settle the question. Baker will be nominated.” Miles refused, explaining that he and the other delegate from Menard County were “instructed to go for Hardin after you, and [I] will suffer my right arm Cut off before I’ll violate my instructions.”25

  In fairness, Baker should have received the Menard County votes and hence the nomination. A week before the convention, John Bennett of Petersburg reported that two formal meetings and several informal ones, including militia musters, had been held at which Menard County Whigs expressed their preference. All things considered, Bennett said, “I suppose Baker has a majority.”26 Miles and his colleague had been instructed to vote for Hardin at a meeting that attracted few voters, but later at a much more heavily attended gathering they received instructions to support Baker by an eighty-vote majority.27 A prominent Democrat in Petersburg, Thomas L. Harris, asserted that he significantly helped Hardin secure the nomination.

  Failing to win over the Menard delegates, Lincoln sought to assist Baker through other means. Immediately following Hardin’s nomination, Lincoln asked James Monroe Ruggles, the secretary of the convention, if he would favor a resolution supporting Baker for the following congressional term. When Ruggles answered affirmatively, Lincoln said: “You prepare the resolution—I will support it—and I think we can pass it.”28 That resolution caused a stir, especially among Hardin’s supporters. Introduced by Lincoln and moved by Ruggles, it said: “Resolved, That this convention, as individuals, recommend E. D. Baker as a suitable person to be voted for by the whigs of this district, for Representative to Congress, at the election in 1844, subject to the decision of a District Convention, should the whigs of the district think proper to hold one.” Following a heated discussion, it passed by a vote of nineteen to fourteen. This Pekin agreement seemed to establish a principle of one-term congressmen who would cede the seat to a successor in regular rotation, with Lincoln as the obvious heir-apparent to Baker. Such arrangements were not uncommon in the politics of the time.

  In mid-May, Lincoln told Joshua Speed that he would cheerfully abide by the results of the Pekin co
nvention: “we shall have no split or trouble about the matter; all will be harmony.”29 Lincoln’s friend Simeon Francis urged Hardin to “banish every thought from your mind that there is dissatisfaction with your nomination.”30 Playfully, Lincoln challenged Hardin to a contest: if Sangamon County delivered a majority for Hardin more than double the majority he won in his home county of Morgan, then the Morgan County Whigs would have to throw a barbecue for their counterparts in Sangamon. To help make sure that he won his bet, Lincoln campaigned for Hardin extensively throughout Sangamon County. But despite what he said to Speed, Lincoln apparently begrudged Hardin the nomination. He may also have felt that Hardin’s triumph over Baker was unfair. (Hardin’s reputation for integrity was not spotless; some questioned his honesty.) On election day Lincoln did not vote for Hardin, who won the district handily; instead, he cast ballots for justice of the peace and constable, refusing to express any preference for congressional or county office candidates. Such uncharacteristically spiteful behavior suggests the intensity of his disappointment. That disappointment was shared by his wife, who wept copiously on the day that Hardin left Illinois to take his seat in Congress.

  Domestic Life

  Mary Lincoln perhaps derived some consolation both from the house she and her husband bought in 1844 and from their growing family. After beginning their married life in the Globe Tavern, the Lincolns briefly moved into a small house on Fourth Street. On January 16, 1844, Charles Dresser (the minister who had performed their wedding ceremony) sold them a one-and-a-half-story, five-room cottage at Eighth and Jackson Streets, where they spent the next seventeen years. Lincoln gave Dresser $1,200 in cash and real estate worth $300. In May, Dresser handed over the deed to Lincoln, whose family moved in shortly thereafter. The house, conveniently located a few blocks from Lincoln’s office, had been built in 1839.