Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  But Stephen T. Logan did want to run, and the Whig nominating convention chose him. Samuel C. Parks said that just before the Whig convention met, he—with Lincoln’s full knowledge—“canvassed the members of the convention and was compelled to report that, with the exception of himself and a certain other delegate from Christian county, he found no one who was favorable to Lincoln’s re-nomination.” Parks explained that the reason was not the Mexican War issue or Lincoln’s vow not to run again. Rather, it was “his failure to secure any substantial political patronage for the ‘faithful’ of his party in the district.”102 This objection was not entirely reasonable. The Democrats controlled the White House, and Lincoln could exercise little influence in patronage decisions. Years later, while president, he remarked to an importunate Democratic Representative: “That reminds me of my own experience as an old Whig member of Congress. I was always in the opposition, and I had no troubles of this kind at all. It was the easiest thing imaginable to be an opposition member—no running to the Departments and the White House.”103

  In August 1848, Stephen T. Logan lost the Seventh District congressional seat to his Democratic opponent, Major Thomas L. Harris, a hero of the Mexican War, by less than one percentage point (49.8% to 49.1%, 7,201 votes to 7,095). Losing this hitherto safe district was, David Davis lamented, “a terrible blow to the Whigs everywhere in the State.”104 Some Democratic observers, along with Herndon, saw in Logan’s defeat a repudiation of Lincoln’s antiwar stance. Logan himself attributed it in part to “Lincoln’s unpopularity.”105

  Lincoln did not concur in that judgment. He told William Schouler that “a good many Whigs, without good cause, as I think, were unwilling to go for Logan, and some of them so wrote me before the election. On the other hand Harris was a Major of the war, and fought at Cerro Gordo, where several Whigs of the district fought with him.”106 Complicating matters was the Liberty Party candidate, who won 166 votes (1% of the total), most of which would probably have gone to Logan if there had been a two-man race. Moreover, Logan and other Whigs were guilty of complacency. Logan “told his friends at and around Delevan that his Election was sure—That they need not go to the polls.”107 The Illinois State Journal blamed Logan’s defeat in part on “the inactivity of the whigs” and also on a German-language handbill circulated by the Democrats falsely alleging that Logan was a nativist bigot.108

  The greatest handicap the Whigs labored under was Logan’s off-putting personality. As one observer noted, the “suavity and affability so needful in winning popularity with the masses were wanting in his character, and he was too frank and unbending to be always popular with either the people or the politicians.”109 In fact, the voters regarded the Whig candidate as “a cold—avaricious and little mean man.”110 This unfortunate reputation was enhanced by Logan’s response to a Democratic charge that he had paid only 50¢ to help finance the return of a soldier’s body from Mexico; indignantly the wealthy Logan protested that he had contributed $3. Such tightfistedness did not sit well with some Whigs, who thought him “too selfish” and “cold and parsimonious.”111 Logan was also intellectually arrogant and domineering. Hezekiah Morse Wead, a fellow delegate to the 1847 Illinois constitutional convention, noted that Logan “is above all other men proud of his abilities & he gratifies that pride by the constant exercise of his powers.… Submission to his opinions is in his opinion, a duty due from other men, and that submission he intends to exact.” Logan, he concluded, “is what might safely be called a ‘smart’ man, but he is very far from being a great one.”112

  The victorious Major Harris believed that Logan, who “raised no enthusiasm and no sympathy,” failed to capitalize on strong Whig sentiment in the district.113 Harris’s triumph, James Shields exulted, was all the sweeter because it was “so unexpected and so extraordinary.”114 A Whig candidate more politically astute and personally appealing than Logan probably would have won. In November the Whig presidential nominee, Zachary Taylor, outpolled his Democratic opponent by 1,481 votes in the Seventh District.

  Two years later, while his party was suffering a setback nationally, the handsome, energetic, likable, hard-working Whig congressional candidate Richard Yates successfully challenged Harris, winning by a margin of 754 ballots, capturing 53 percent of the vote. The charming, impulsive, handsome, sociable Yates was far more prepossessing than Logan. He radiated sincerity and enthusiasm. John Hay reported that “Yates is the people’s darling. They like his pleasant voice and his genial eyes as much as they do his honor and his eloquence.”115 Yates was an exceptionally effective campaigner; as Nathan Morse Knapp put it, he “would tie the star-spangled banner over his opponent’s head, cork up his a[sshol]e with a newspaper copy of the Declaration of Independence, make a fourth of July speech in his ears, and leave before he could get discombobulated enough to see the track upon which the gallant Dick had departed!”116 Democrats complained that his addresses were “of the Fourth of July order, appealing to the friends, ‘the noble friends’ of his boyhood—pointing to the imaginary stars and stripes of his visions, reminding us of Bunker Hill, Concord and Lexington … and generally letting off at the crowd a series of sentimental fire works.”117

  When Logan ran for a seat on the Illinois State Supreme Court in 1855, he was “worse beaten than any other man ever was since elections were invented,” Lincoln remarked.118 (Logan lost 31,535 to 21,932—59% to 41%—to the little-known Onias C. Skinner of Quincy.) The previous year, on the other hand, Lincoln had run for the General Assembly and won the largest number of votes cast for any legislative candidate in Sangamon County. If he had truly alienated voters with his Mexican War stand, he would not have been so popular in 1854.

  Illinois Whigs other than Logan fared badly in the August 1848 elections. The party saw its share of the state House of Representatives decline from 33 percent to 31 percent, and Whig congressional nominees received 30,000 fewer votes than their Democratic opponents. In neighboring Missouri and Indiana, Whig candidates suffered similarly discouraging results.

  President-Making

  The presidential election of 1848 dominated the long first session of Lincoln’s congressional term. Both houses devoted so much attention to the subject that one journalist sniffed: “The time will come when the people will send men to Congress to do the business of the people—leaving to the people the liberty of making their Presidents.”119

  No sooner had Lincoln arrived in Washington in December 1847 than he was accosted by “the great Kentucky Kingmaker,” Senator John J. Crittenden, champion of Zachary Taylor’s candidacy. The influential Democratic leader, Duff Green, a boarder at Mrs. Sprigg’s, told Lincoln that Taylor would have the support not only of Whigs but also of Calhounites like himself. (Green’s nephew was Ninian W. Edwards, husband of Mary Lincoln’s sister Elizabeth.) Lincoln agreed with these veteran politicians. Fearing realistically that his “beau ideal of a statesman”—the septuagenarian Henry Clay, a three-time loser in presidential contests—was unelectable, Lincoln had already decided to support Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War. The traditional Whig issues—banks, tariffs, and internal improvements—had lost their popular appeal, as had Clay, who after his defeat in 1844 forswore another presidential race. But the Great Compromiser changed his mind and came to Washington in January 1848 to enlist support for yet another White House bid. A speech he gave at that time swayed many, including a congressman who said: “Mr. Clay speaks more charmingly than any other man—his voice is like the breaking of eggs into good wine—his power over a great audience is unequalled, and the enthusiasm of the people at the sound of his voice is like the shout of the morning stars.”120

  The Sage of Ashland was still eloquent, but his time was past. As early as the spring of 1847, after Taylor’s electrifying victory at Buena Vista in February over Santa Anna’s much larger army—following on the heels of his earlier triumphs at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey—Whig leaders had realized that the modest, unassuming, successful general was th
eir most eligible standard-bearer, a kind of modern-day Cincinnatus-cum-George-Washington. A Whig Representative from Georgia declared: “We go for success. The people have shown, in all cases, their partiality for military men whenever they have been placed before them. All the civil merits of waggon bills and mill boys cannot give the eclat of a single victory on the battlefield.”121 In June 1847 Representative George Ashmun of Massachusetts observed that the “Taylor fever has been spreading far & wide” and predicted that attempts to resist it would fail.122 The following January, another Bay State congressman lamented the rise of “military democracy,” complaining that “Our candidates, unless the war spirit is soon checked, will be taken from the Generals in the field.”123 But even in Massachusetts many Whigs were ready to embrace Taylor because he seemed likely to win. A journalist in Boston thought that “this fighting and voting every four years and getting beat is not what it is cracked up to be,” and urged his party to “Nominate the man who will beat; that is the one. If Taylor is the man, put him through.”124

  Some Illinois Whigs had caught the Taylor fever in the spring of 1848. In March, Silas Noble of Dixon announced that he was “for any Whig we can beat the Loco’s with. I would rather beat them with Henry [Clay] than any other man but if we cannot beat them with him let us try Old Rough & Ready.”125 John J. Hardin acknowledged that “Clay has more devoted friends than any other man in the nation; but owing to the prominent & decided part he has taken on all subjects for 40 years past, he has an amount of personal opposition accumulated against him, which (although wholly unjust) makes it very easy to excite prejudice against him.”126

  On August 30, 1847, Whig Party leaders attending a state constitutional convention gathered at the Springfield home of Ninian W. Edwards to discuss the presidential election. According to one delegate, James W. Singleton, Lincoln explained that the purpose of the meeting was to choose “some other man than Henry Clay as the standard bearer of the Whig party.” Lincoln put forward Taylor’s name and urged “the necessity of immediate action,” for “if the Whigs did not take Taylor for their candidate,” then “the Democrats would!” (As late as March 1848, Democrats still contemplated drafting the apolitical general.) Lincoln reportedly asserted that “the Whig party had fought long enough for principle, and should change its motto to success!” After resolutions were adopted “in accordance with the views expressed by Mr. Lincoln,” Clay stalwarts Singleton and Charles Constable “immediately left the house.” Lincoln, Singleton claimed, “even went so far as to try to prevent me from taking a seat in the Philadelphia Convention [of the national Whig Party], and urged me to surrender my seat to Dr. [Elias] Zabriskie—Zabriskie then being a citizen of New Jersey, and not Illinois, because Zabriskie was for Taylor, and I was for Henry Clay, for the Presidency.”127

  In Congress, Lincoln struck up a pro-Taylor partnership with the tiny, frail sickly, brilliant Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. Stephens was eager to nominate the slaveholding general in order to protect Southern interests, which seemed ominously threatened by the introduction of the 1846 Wilmot Proviso prohibiting slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. (It passed the House but failed in the senate.) As enthusiastic backers of the Hero of Buena Vista, they formed the first Congressional Taylor Club, dominated by Southerners. Calling themselves “the Young Indians,” they corresponded with Whigs in all regions as they organized the Taylor movement.

  Stephens admired Lincoln, who, he recollected, “was careful as to his manners, awkward in his speech, but was possessed of a very strong, clear and vigorous mind.” Lincoln “always attracted and riveted attention of the House when he spoke,” for “his manner of speech as well as thought was original.” Lincoln “had no model. He was a man of strong convictions and was what [Thomas] Carlyle would have called an earnest man.”128 In turn, Lincoln thought highly of the charming, kind, fiercely individualistic Stephens. Of all the Southern Whigs, Lincoln’s favorite was Stephens. On February 2, 1848, Lincoln reported to Herndon that the Georgia Representative, “a little slim, pale-faced, consumptive man, with a voice like [Stephen T.] Logan’s has just concluded the very best speech, of an hour’s length, I ever heard. My old, withered, dry eyes, are full of tears yet.”129 (In that speech, Stephens declared that “the principle of waging war against a neighboring people to compel them to sell their country, is not only dishonorable, but disgraceful and infamous.”)130

  In December and January, Lincoln worked behind the scenes with Stephens and other Young Indians to promote Taylor’s candidacy. On February 9, Lincoln publicly declared that he, like many other Whig leaders in Illinois, was “decidedly in favor of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for the next Presidency.”131 He supported Old Rough and Ready “because I am satisfied we can elect him, that he would give us a whig administration, and that we can not elect any other whig.” With Taylor heading the ticket, Lincoln predicted that the Whigs would gain one more House seat in Illinois and probably win the state’s electoral votes. To an Illinoisan who feared that Clay supporters could not be induced to back Taylor, Lincoln explained that he sided with Taylor “not because I think he would make a better president than Clay, but because I think he would make a better one than [Democrats like] Polk, or [Lewis] Cass, or [James] Buchanan, or any such creatures, one of whom is sure to be elected, if he is not.”132 Clay, Lincoln believed, stood “no chance at all.” Even if the Kentucky statesman managed to gain New York, which he had narrowly lost in 1844, he would fail to carry Tennessee as well as the new states of Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin in 1848. Another alternative to Taylor, the colorless, chilly Supreme Court Justice John McLean, was “not ‘a winning card’” in Lincoln’s opinion.133

  Some Whigs objected to Taylor because his views on public affairs were quite unknown. In late January, congressional Whigs decisively rejected the Young Indians’ attempt to secure an endorsement for their man. At the same time, newspapers published letters by Taylor in which he refused to be trammeled by any party’s principles or nomination. Such statements injured Taylor’s standing among Whigs. Particularly damaging was an April letter appearing in the Richmond Whig that reaffirmed Taylor’s status as a no-party candidate. Caleb B. Smith of Indiana reported that 75 percent of his fellow Northern Whig congressmen thought “that Genl. Taylor cannot be run with the least prospect of success in the North, if he shall adhere to his present position of declining to give his opinions. The idea of running him as a ‘No Party candidate’ is out of the question.”134 Senator Willie Mangum of North Carolina and others like him believed that Taylor was too stand-offish and insufficiently committed to Whig principles.

  To meet these objections, Lincoln proposed that Taylor announce his intention to endorse a national bank if Congress were to pass a bill establishing one; recommend a higher protective tariff; pledge not to abuse his veto power; and seek to acquire no territory from Mexico “so far South, as to enlarge and agrivate the distracting question of slavery.”135 Other Young Indians offered similar advice. In April, Taylor responded by issuing a statement identifying himself as a Whig, denouncing wars of conquest, and proclaiming his willingness to sign Whig economic measures into law if they were passed by Congress.

  When Usher F. Linder expressed concern that Whig criticism of the Mexican War might injure Taylor’s chances, Lincoln denied that he had opposed the war per se, for he—unlike some antiwar congressmen—always voted in favor of supplies for the troops. His criticism of Polk did not constitute opposition to the war. To Linder’s contention that attacks on the president rob “Taylor and Scott of more than half their laurels,” Lincoln replied that over forty congressmen backed Taylor and all had voted for the Ashmun amendment. Linder had asked, “have we as a party, ever gained any thing, by falling in company with abolitionists?” Lincoln pointed to the election of 1840, when abolitionists joined forces with the Whigs to elect Harrison. Moreover, Lincoln argued, critics of Polk were not necessarily abolitionists; in fact, thirty-seven Whig Representatives from Slave
States had voted for the Ashmun amendment.136

  Linder’s observation about abolitionists was curious, for radical opponents of slavery displayed little enthusiasm for Taylor. In 1847, Joshua R. Giddings declared that the Whigs “who have got up this movement in favor of Gen. Taylor, knowing him to be in favor of extending slavery, are men of desperate political fortunes, who have become anxious to share in the spoils of office; they are men who would sell their party, their country and their God for an ephemeral success, or to enable them to bask in the sunshine of executive favor.”137 Another Ohio congressman acidly remarked of Taylor’s candidacy: “To kill women and children and hurry men unprepared to eternity because they refuse to give us their land now free in order that we may cover it with slaves, are certainly high qualifications, for the highest office in the gift of a free nation of professing Christians.”138 Taylor’s ownership of a Louisiana plantation worked by scores of slaves hardly endeared him to opponents of the peculiar institution like Horace Greeley, who insisted that Whigs “cannot, with any decency, support Gen. Taylor. His no-party letters; his well understood hostility to the Wilmot Proviso; his unqualified devotion to slavery; his destitution of qualifications and principles, place him ‘at an immeasurable distance’ from the Presidency.… If we nominate Taylor, we may elect him, but we destroy the Whig party. The off-set to Abolitionism will ruin us.”139

  Most Whigs, however, agreed not with Greeley but with former Congressman Edward McGaughey of Indiana, who believed that the party “must have the aid of gunpowder—the fortress of Locofocoism can not be taken without it.”140 In June, the Whig national convention assembled at Philadelphia, with Lincoln in attendance, and chose Taylor to run against the bland Michigan Senator Lewis Cass, whom the Democrats had nominated the previous month. The Whigs’ failure to adopt a platform led one disillusioned Michigan editor to satirize the party’s principles in nonsense verse: