Though bitter, Hardin graciously refused to run as an independent candidate or otherwise injure Lincoln’s chances. He publicly declared that “if I had cause for personal complaint, I would rather suffer real or supposed wrong, than be the means of producing dissension amongst my political friends.”148 Lincoln, fearful of Whig defections, did his best to salve the wounded feelings of Hardin and his followers. By May 1, when the Whig District Convention assembled in Petersburg, Lincoln’s nomination was a foregone conclusion.
Lincoln may well have feared that Hardin might thwart his future aspirations. David Davis, for one, believed Hardin could have “controlled the politics & the affairs of the State.”149 In 1847, however, Hardin was killed in the Mexican War, thus clearing the political field for Lincoln. Baker, who could also have posed a threat to Lincoln’s political future, moved to Galena, Illinois, in 1848, and soon thereafter to California.
In late May, the Democrats of the Seventh District nominated the well-known Methodist circuit-riding preacher, Peter Cartwright, to run against Lincoln. (Earlier, when it seemed that John Calhoun might be the Democratic candidate, articles in the Sangamo Journal attacked Calhoun fiercely. The editor of the Illinois State Register accused Lincoln of penning those “bitter, unjust, and malignant” pieces.)150 Almost a quarter-century older than Lincoln, the colorful, energetic, ambitious Cartwright was an imposing man and a formidable foe. He was approximately 6 feet tall, strongly built, with a head of curly black hair above a round, clean-shaven face and piercing eyes. A contemporary said his “countenance … could blaze with mirth, flash with contempt, frown with wrath or darken with defiance. His intellectual faculties corresponded with his superb physical organism, and his perceptions were quick, clear, and usually correct. But giving intensity to his entire being was that indomitable energy characterizing those ‘born to rule,’ and securing to such a recognition of their position as ‘leaders.’ ”151 Around his home near Pleasant Plains, the combative Cart-wright was known as something of a bully. T. G. Onstot, a friend of the preacher, reported that he was “warlike” and “much like a boy with a chip on his shoulder.” But he had winning qualities too, Onstot recalled, among them “great conversational powers, coupled with keen wit.” A “man of great force of character,” he “generally carried his point” as a preacher and a politician. Onstot said that Cartwright “could interest a crowd as well as any man I ever knew.”152
Little is known about the Lincoln–Cartwright campaign, for the press virtually ignored it. Herndon described it as “an energetic canvass of three months … during which Lincoln kept his forces well in hand. He was active and alert, speaking everywhere, and abandoning his share of business in the law office entirely.”153 James Gourley recalled that Lincoln made a speech in Petersburg “against Peter Cartwright in his Congression[al] race—1846[.] He skinned Peter & Erastus Wright—the abolitionist.”154 The only extant newspaper report of an appearance by Lincoln merely noted that at Lacon, he “gave us a good speech” on the tariff. “In a most logical, argumentative effort, he demonstrated the necessity of a discriminating tariff, and the excellence of that adopted by the whig congress of 1842; and also that the consumer does not usually pay the tariff, but the manufacturer and importer.” Lincoln concluded “with some general observations on the Mexican war, annexation of Texas, and the Oregon question.”155
Those observations may have resembled what Lincoln told Williamson Durely in 1845: “I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation; inasmuch, as they were already a free republican people on our own model; on the other hand, I never could very clearly see how the annexation would augment the evil of slavery. It always seemed to me that slaves would be taken there in about equal numbers, with or without annexation.” But insofar as the annexation of Texas might strengthen slavery, he was opposed to it: “It is possibly true, to some extent, that with annexation, some slaves may be sent to Texas and continued in slavery, that otherwise might have been liberated. To whatever extent this may be true, I think annexation an evil.”156 Curiously, Lincoln ignored the objection that if Texas were admitted to the Union as a slave state, the proslavery forces would gain power in Congress and the electoral college.
It has been alleged that Lincoln initially supported the Mexican War in 1846 before changing his mind and criticizing it in 1847. In later years, the Illinois State Register claimed that “Lincoln went through the district and … at all times vowed his purpose to support a vigorous prosecution of the war.”157 Since the Register was trying to portray Lincoln, then a candidate for higher office, as a hypocrite, its account of his 1846 campaign is suspect. Direct evidence of Lincoln’s attitude toward the war is skimpy. The press reported that he, along with Governor Thomas Ford, Dr. Elias Merryman, David L. Gregg, and David B. Campbell, spoke to a group of cadets and militia members in Springfield on May 30, 1846. The brief newspaper account merely says that the speeches “were in the right spirit—warm, thrilling, effective,” and gave no details as to who said what.158 In all likelihood, Lincoln was agnostic about the war rather than a strong supporter. In January 1848, he asserted that when hostilities broke out, “it was my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended.”159 He later opined that “the principal motive” for the president’s decision to provoke the war “was to divert public attention from the surrender of ‘Fifty-four, forty, or fight’ to Great Britain, on the Oregon boundary question.”160
What Lincoln thought about the Oregon question is unknown. Democrats taunted him about his silence on the issue; in May 1846, the Illinois State Register asked, “Is Lincoln for 54 40 [i.e., all of the Oregon Territory], or is he for ‘compromising’ away our Oregon territory to England … ? This, the People ought to know, before they vote next August. No shuffling, Mr. Lincoln! Come out, square!”161 Albert J. Beveridge, noting that the Sangamo Journal enthusiastically supported the claim that the United States was entitled to all of the Oregon Territory, inferred that Lincoln did too, for his views and the Journal’s usually coincided. But in the summer of 1846, the Illinois State Register complained that while “the Oregon question was pending the Journal expressed no opinion in regard to it, for the reason that it had not the courage to go with its party, against the 54 40 claim of our government. Since the question has been settled, it denounces Mr. Polk for subscribing to the proposition for which every whig Senator voted.”162 In the spring of 1845, several mass meetings about the Oregon question were held at Springfield and addressed by many leading political figures of central Illinois, but not Lincoln. Like his opponents Stephen A. Douglas and John Calhoun, Lincoln’s Whig allies Edward D. Baker and John J. Hardin were outspoken champions of expelling the British from the lower half of the Oregon Territory, which was jointly occupied by Great Britain and the United States. Lincoln probably shared the views of most congressional Whigs, who urged a peaceful compromise with the British rather than the belligerent “Fifty-four forty or fight” stance favored by many senate Democrats.
Lincoln campaigned relentlessly, going around the district over and over. He spoke extensively during the 1846 campaign in Tazewell County, where Shelby Cullom’s family lived. Cullom’s father Richard drove Lincoln to his meetings throughout the county. In his stump speech, Lincoln would say: “Fellow citizens: Maj. Cullom has been everywhere with me, and has heard this speech time and again. The only way I can deceive him with it is to go down to the other end and give it to him backward.”163
Because of his campaigning and his extensive legal practice, Lincoln was well known throughout the district. In 1847, a Boston journalist described a stagecoach ride he shared with Lincoln from Chicago to Springfield. Once they reached the Seventh Congressional District, Lincoln “knew, or appeared to know, ever
y body we met, the name of the tenant of every farm-house, and the owner of every plot of ground. Such a shaking of hands—such a how d’ye do—such a greeting of different kinds, as we saw, was never seen before; it seemed as if he knew every thing, and he had a kind word, a smile and a bow for every body on the road, even to the horses, and the cattle, and the swine.”164
Lincoln spent little money on his election. Prominent Whigs collected a $200 campaign fund, of which the candidate used less than a dollar. “I did not need the money,” Lincoln said as he returned the balance of the cash. “I made the canvass on my own horse; my entertainment, being at the houses of friends, cost me nothing; and my only outlay was seventy-five cents for a barrel of cider which some farm-hands insisted I should treat them to.”165
Eighteen years later Lincoln described the 1846 campaign as the least acrimonious of his political career: “It is a little singular that I who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness: always but once: When I came to Congress it was a quiet time: But always besides that the contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with great rancor.”166 The canvass, however, was not without its ugly side. Cartwright avoided meeting Lincoln in public discussion and instead launched a whispering campaign denouncing his opponent as an infidel. Robert Boal of Lacon recollected that “Cartwright sneaked through this part of the district, after Lincoln, and grossly misrepresented him.”167 As a result, many pious Christian Whigs were reluctant to vote for Lincoln.
Such attacks angered Lincoln. When the president of Illinois College wished him success, Lincoln replied, “I do not know. We are dealing with men that would just as soon lie as not.”168 At Postville, where Cartwright had accused Lincoln of being a “skeptic,” the Whig candidate responded by reading to his audience a passage from the Illinois constitution stipulating that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state.” Lincoln then added: “Brother Cartwright may be well posted in theology but he is not informed as to the constitution of his own state which he has several times sworn to maintain.”169
Lincoln decided to meet the charge of atheism head-on. On July 31 he issued a handbill protesting that he was no “open scoffer at Christianity.” He acknowledged that he was “not a member of any Christian church” but asserted that he had “never denied the truth of the Scriptures” and had “never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.” At one time, he admitted, he “was inclined to believe in what … is called the ‘Doctrine of Necessity’—that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control.” He had even defended this proposition in private discussions—never publicly—but had given up doing so five years earlier. That doctrine, he asserted, was “held by several of the Christian denominations.” He declared that “I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion.” No man, he said, “has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.”170
Some residents of the Seventh District found Lincoln’s “lawyer like declaration” less than forthcoming. One said of it that in “war, politics and religion, a ruse is admissible.”171 The criticism has some merit, for in this document Lincoln seemed to make two different claims: that he never believed in infidel doctrines, and that he never publicly espoused them. If the former were true, the latter would be superfluous; if the former were untrue, the latter would be irrelevant. Moreover, his reference to the doctrine of necessity was a dodge, for he was accused of infidelity, not fatalism.
In addition, Lincoln’s assertion that he had “never denied the truth of the Scriptures” is belied by the testimony of friends, as is the implication that he was skeptical only in his early years. After moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln continued expressing the irreverent views he had proclaimed in New Salem. John Todd Stuart recalled that “he was an avowed and open Infidel—Sometimes bordered on atheism.… Lincoln went further against Christian beliefs—& doctrines & principles than any man I ever heard: he shocked me.… Lincoln always denied that Jesus was … the son of God.”172 James Matheny also said he was “shocked” by Lincoln’s views on religion. Lincoln, he said, “was an infidel—have heard Lincoln call Christ a bastard.… Lincoln attacked the Bible & new Testament on two grounds—1st From the inherent or apparent contradiction under its lids & 2dly From the grounds of Reason—sometimes he ridiculed the Bible & New Testament—sometimes seemed to Scoff at it.” Though Matheny knew Lincoln well from 1834 to 1860, he “never heard that Lincoln changed his views.”173 Lincoln told his unbelieving protégé William Herndon “a thousand times that he did not believe that the Bible, etc., were revelations of God, as the Christian world contends.”174 Lincoln often discussed Christianity with Edward D. Baker; the former challenged the authenticity of the scriptures, while the latter defended them. Lincoln was never “ribald or blasphemous in the slightest degree.” Their “controversy was candid and sincere: Lincoln seemed unable to … bring his mind to the belief that they [scriptures] were inspired.”175
In Springfield, Lincoln also debated religion with Albert Taylor Bledsoe, a Whig leader and attorney. In 1842–1843, while both men boarded at the Globe Tavern, “Lincoln was always throwing out his Infidelity to Bledsoe, ridiculing Christianity, and especially the divinity of Christ.”176 From “various conversations with him on the subject of religion,” Bledsoe recalled that Lincoln “always seemed to deplore his want of faith as a very great infelicity, from which he would be glad to be delivered.” Lincoln spoke about this subject “with an air of such apparent modesty, that his gloom and despair, seeming to border on a state of insanity,” aroused in Bledsoe “no other feeling than one of deep compassion.”177
Lincoln’s 1846 handbill may seem to have been a clever attorney’s ingenious exercise in obfuscation, but it was more than that. The “doctrine of necessity,” as Lincoln understood it, was a kind of determinism akin to that of Jeremy Bentham and of later depth psychologists who maintained that acts and thoughts are dictated by forces beyond the control of the rational, conscious individual. Lincoln believed that no act was unselfish. For example, when he aided birds or animals in distress, he was not behaving altruistically; he selfishly wished to avoid the pain that his hypersensitive conscience would cause him if he did not so act. At the opposite end of the moral spectrum, unkind and ungenerous acts were often committed not out of malice or evil, but because their perpetrators were in the grip of unconscious forces and “knew not what they did.” This belief inclined Lincoln to be unusually charitable, forbearing, nonjudgmental, compassionate, and forgiving, especially in his later years. Yet Lincoln found determinism hard to square with the fundamental principles of law and morality. He told his good friend Joseph Gillespie “that he could not avoid believing in predestination although he considered it a very unprofitable field of speculation because it was hard to reconcile that belief with responsibility for one[’]s act[s].”178
Cartwright’s tactics availed him little in those localities where he and Lincoln were well known, but in the northern part of the district the whispering campaign proved effective. Shortly after the election, The Illinois Gazette of Lacon declared that “Mr. Lincoln is right in supposing that Mr. Cartwright circulated the story [about Lincoln’s infidelity] in this county, and also that he, Mr. L., lost some votes thereby. It appears the Rev. gentleman circulated the same story in other parts of the District.” The Gazette’s editor, Allen Ford, denounced such reveling “in the filth of defamation and falsehood.”179
Though he lost Woodford and Marshall counties, Lincoln won th
e district’s other nine as he captured 56 percent of the vote, topping Hardin’s 53 percent in 1843 and Baker’s 52 percent in 1844. His success was part of a national trend, which saw Whigs triumphant in 53.6 percent of congressional contests, a substantial improvement over the party’s showing in 1844 and 1845. The turnout in the Seventh District in 1846 was somewhat lower than it had been in 1843 and 1844, perhaps because the outcome was a foregone conclusion and also because many voters were serving in the Mexican War, which had broken out three months earlier. The Illinois State Register blamed Cartwright’s defeat on “General Apathy,” noting that the traditionally large Whig majority in the district “has served to dispirit the democrats and deter them from exertion.”180
Many Democrats probably supported Lincoln, for in the Seventh District the Whig nominee for governor received only 426 more votes than his Democratic opponent, while Lincoln won 1,511 more votes than Cartwright. Some of the men who voted for both Lincoln and the Democratic gubernatorial candidate may have objected to Cartwright’s profession. During the campaign, “an aspiring Democrat said to Mr. Lincoln, ‘Such is my utter aversion to the meddling of preachers in politics, that I will vote for you Even at the risk of losing cast with my party, if you think the contest doubtful.’ ” Lincoln responded: “I would like your vote, but I fully appreciate your position, and will give you my honest opinion on the morning of Election day.” When that day arrived, Lincoln confidently told this Democrat: “I am now satisfied that I have got the preacher by the [balls], and you had better keep out of the ring.”181 Other opponents of the Whig Party may have voted for Lincoln because they admired (in the words of a Springfield Democrat) “his commanding talents and deserving popularity.”182
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 43
