Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Sound the hewgag, strike the tonjon

  Beat the Fuzguzzy, wake the gonquong

  Let the loud Hosanna ring

  Bum tum fuzzelgum dingo bim.141

  A Pennsylvania Whig declared that instead of a formal platform, all the party needed to do was quote Taylor’s famous battlefield order: “A little more grape, Captain Bragg.”142

  Although many Northern Whigs were outraged by the nomination of a slaveholder who had never been a true backer of the party or its principles, Lincoln reported on June 12 that such disaffected elements “are fast falling in” and predicted that “we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious, triumph.” He took heart from the fact that “all the odds and ends are with us—Barnburners [Free Soil Democrats in New York], Native Americans, [John] Tyler men, disappointed office seeking locofocos, and the Lord knows what.” He gloated that “Taylor’s nomination takes the locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them, the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.”143 Even Horace Greeley ultimately supported Taylor in order to defeat “that pot-bellied, mutton-headed, cucumber Cass!”144

  En route back to Washington from Philadelphia, Lincoln stopped in Wilmington, Delaware, where he attacked Polk’s “high-handed and despotic exercise of the veto power” in “utter disregard of the will of the people,” and impugned his motives for provoking war with Mexico.145 Lincoln, like many other Whigs, charged that Polk started the war with Mexico to distract public attention from his failure to gain all of the Oregon Territory from Great Britain despite his belligerent campaign rhetoric about “fifty-four forty or fight.” Ten days later, on the floor of the House, Lincoln denounced Polk’s veto of an internal improvements bill and Cass’s hostility to federal support for such legislation. Although that subject had been debated early in the session, Lincoln may have refrained from speaking on traditional Whig economic policies until Taylor, whose views on those matters were sketchy, was safely nominated. Lincoln also probably realized that with the earlier ratification of a treaty ending the Mexican War, criticism of the administration’s conduct in provoking that conflict would no longer yield political dividends. A New York Tribune correspondent called it “a very sensible speech,” showing that Lincoln not only “understood the subject” but even “succeeded in making the House understand it.”146

  On July 27, Lincoln treated the House to a partisan stump speech on the presidential question. Prompted by criticism of Taylor’s pledge to use the veto power sparingly, it commanded the attention of his colleagues and gallery onlookers. Lincoln praised the general’s willingness to defer to Congress, for that accorded with the “principle of allowing the people to do as they please with their own business.” He admitted that he did not know if Taylor would join him in supporting the Wilmot Proviso. (Lincoln voted for the proviso or its equivalent at least five times during his congressional term.) As “a Western free state man, with a constituency I believe to be, and with personal feelings I know to be, against the extension of slavery,” Lincoln hoped and trusted that Taylor would sign a bill containing the controversial proviso. (He was right about his constituency; in 1849 the Illinois General Assembly voted to instruct the state’s congressional delegation to support measures excluding slavery from all territory gained from Mexico.) Lincoln may have learned that in May, Taylor had privately given assurances that he would not veto Wilmot’s measure. Since Cass would definitely support the expansion of slavery and veto the proviso, it was better to vote for a candidate who might not do so. Moreover, under a Cass administration, the country would probably embark on “a course of policy, leading to new wars, new acquisitions of ter[r]itory and still further extensions of slavery.”

  With his customary sarcasm and ridicule, Lincoln poked fun at Congressman Alfred Iverson of Georgia, who a day earlier had delivered a slashing speech after which, Lincoln said, “I was struck blind, and found myself feeling with my fingers for an assurance of my continued physical existence. A little of the bone was left, and I gradually revived.” Responding to Iverson’s claim that the Whigs had “deserted all our principles, and taken shelter under Gen: Taylor’s military coat-tail,” Lincoln accused the Democrats of having used “the ample military coat tail” of Andrew Jackson: “Like a horde of hungry ticks you have stuck to the tail of the Hermitage lion to the end of his life; and you are still sticking to it, and drawing a loathsome sustenance from it, after he is dead. A fellow once advertised that he had made a discovery by which he could make a new man out of an old one, and have enough of the stuff left to make a little yellow dog. Just such a discovery has Gen: Jackson’s popularity been to you. You have not only twice made President of him out of it, but you have had enough of the stuff left to make Presidents of several comparatively small men since; and it is your chief reliance now to make still another.” Lincoln then lampooned Cass’s military record, comparing it wryly to his own experience in the Black Hawk War.

  Lincoln scornfully summarized Cass’s waffling course on the Wilmot Proviso: “When the question was raised in 1846, he was in a blustering hurry to take ground for it. He sought to be in advance, and to avoid the uninteresting position of a mere follower; but soon he began to see glimpses of the great democratic ox-gad waving in his face, and to hear, indistinctly, a voice saying ‘Back’ ‘Back sir’ ‘Back a little’. He shakes his head, and bats his eyes, and blunders back.” Lincoln also belittled Cass’s government financial accounts, which allegedly showed that the Michigander “not only did the labor of several men at the same time; but that he often did it at several places, many hundreds of miles apart, at the same time.” He went on to mock Cass’s “wonderful eating capacities,” which enabled him to consume “ten rations a day in Michigan, ten rations a day here in Washington, and near five dollars worth a day on the road between the two places!” Everyone, Lincoln remarked, has “heard of the animal standing in doubt between two stacks of hay, and starving to death. The like of that would never happen to Gen: Cass; place the stacks a thousand miles apart, he would stand stock still midway between them, and eat them both at once; and the green grass along the line would be apt to suffer some too at the same time.”

  After excoriating Polk’s conduct in bringing on the Mexican War, Lincoln alluded to the divisions within the New York Democratic Party, which reminded him of what “a drunken fellow once said when he heard the reading of an indictment for hog-stealing: The clerk read on till he got to, and through the words ‘did steal, take, and carry away, ten boars, ten sows, ten shoats, and ten pigs’ at which he exclaimed ‘Well, by golly, that is the most equally divided gang of hogs, I ever did hear of.’ ” Lincoln concluded by remarking, “If there is any other gang of hogs more equally divided than the democrats of New-York are about this time, I have not heard of it.”147

  Throughout the final half-hour of his idiosyncratic speech, Lincoln was so genial and humorous that his colleagues laughed uproariously several times. With comic gestures, he delivered his remarks while strolling up and down the aisle. Whig newspapers called the speech “excellent and humorous” and praised Lincoln as “a very able, acute, uncouth, honest upright man, and a tremendous wag withal!”148 He was in fact the leading Whig wag in Congress. Democrats also complimented him. When an Eastern Representative asked an Ohioan, “how did you like the lanky Illinoisan’s speech? Very able, wasn’t it?” the Buckeye replied: “the speech was pretty good, but I hope he won’t charge mileage on his travels while delivering it.”149 Senator Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, while observing Lincoln give this speech, asked who he was. “Abe Lincoln, the best story teller in the House,” he was told.150

  After Congress adjourned on August 14, Lincoln remained in Washington for nearly a month, helping the Whig Executive Committee of Congress organize the national campaign. He corresponded with several party leaders, who reported encouraging news, and sent out thousands of copies of speeches by himself and other Whigs. Like a benign men
tor, he urged young Whigs in Sangamon County to take an active role in the campaign and not passively look for instructions from their elders. “You must not wait to be brought forward by the older men,” he told William Herndon. “For instance do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men. You young men get together and form a Rough & Ready club, and have regular meetings and speeches.” When Herndon complained that the older Whigs were discriminating against the younger ones, Lincoln responded with paternal wisdom, urging him not to wallow in jealousy, suspicion, or a feeling of victimhood: “The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.”151

  Stumping for Taylor

  Lincoln stumped vigorously for Taylor. In late August and early September, he spoke in Washington and nearby Maryland. In September, he spent eleven days in Massachusetts. Remarking on Lincoln’s appearance in New England, the Chicago Democrat sneered, “Who would have thought it that Massachusetts would ever become so doubtful that it would be necessary to send to Illinois for aid? Well, Illinois has no use for her Whigs.”152 In fact, because Lincoln believed that Taylor had little chance of winning the Prairie State, he felt free to canvass New England rather than returning home.

  Lincoln was needed in Massachusetts, where dissatisfaction with Taylor ran especially deep. Joshua Giddings had spoken against the general that summer to large and enthusiastic crowds in the state, and it seemed that Whig defections in November might prove serious. One young Bay State Whig bitterly complained that Southerners “have trampled on the rights and just claims of the North sufficiently long and have fairly shit upon all our Northern statesmen and are now trying to rub it in.”153 “Conscience Whigs” like Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, Charles Allen, and Anson Burlingame denounced Taylor and his “Cotton Whig” allies. Wilson, who in 1847 had said that the “free state Whigs must dictate the policy of the Party or the Party had better be defeated and broken up,” stormed out of the Philadelphia convention, declaring: “I will go home; and, so help me God, I will do all I can to defeat” Taylor. At that convention, which Horace Greeley called the “slaughter house of Whig principles,” Charles Allen announced that the party “is here and this day dissolved.”154

  In August, Wilson, Allen, Sumner, and other antislavery militants met at Buffalo, where they formed the Free Soil Party, selected as their presidential candidate Martin Van Buren (who in November would win 14% of the Northern popular ballots but no electoral votes), adopted a vigorous antislavery platform, and chose as their motto “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.” To some Boston Whigs these bolters seemed like “a set of Chinese bonzes, in gowns and pigtails, attempting to introduce the idolatrous worship of Foh-Even.”155 The new party’s gubernatorial candidate predicted that Van Buren would siphon off 25,000 Massachusetts votes from Taylor. Although they had no expectation that Van Buren could win, some Free Soilers hoped that his candidacy would throw the election into the House of Representatives. Just as Joshua Giddings had four years earlier campaigned to convince antislavery Whigs not to vote for the Liberty Party’s James Birney, so now Lincoln sought to persuade antislavery Whigs not to support the Free Soiler Van Buren.

  Searching for help, Massachusetts Whigs looked west. Some suggested that Ohio’s Senator Thomas Corwin should be invited, but he was busy campaigning back home. Lincoln may have been invited in lieu of Corwin. Like the Ohioan, Lincoln was hostile to slavery and a good Whig and had also made a notable speech criticizing Polk’s war policy. Lincoln’s attack on the president had won the approval of Massachusetts Whigs, including a Hingham resident who in March told his congressman: “Our attention has been arrested in this quarter by the able speech of Hon. Mr. Lincoln of Illinois.”156

  On September 13 the Massachusetts state Whig convention took place in Worcester, where Lincoln arrived two days earlier, evidently invited by his friend, Congressman Charles Hudson. The chairman of the Whig City Committee, Alexander H. Bullock, sought out Lincoln, explained the political situation in detail, and asked him to speak the next night as a substitute for the scheduled Whig orator, who had backed out at the last moment. The Illinoisan agreed, suggesting that a tariff speech might be suitable. Bullock urged that Lincoln instead address the Whig cause in general and that he do so discreetly lest he offend potential Free Soilers.

  Taking this advice, Lincoln repeated the congressional stump speech he had delivered in July, to which he appended a special plea to antislavery Whigs. Some of them found Van Buren suspect because of his tendency to accommodate slaveholders, his reputation as a clever political operator, and his espousal of negative government. Like other Whig campaigners, Lincoln argued that a vote for Van Buren was in effect a vote for Cass. For opponents of slavery to “unite with those [Democrats] who annexed the new territory to prevent the extension of slavery in that territory” seemed to Lincoln “to be in the highest degree absurd and ridiculous.” He criticized purists who intended to “do their duty and leave the consequences to God,” and he chastised the delegates to the Buffalo Free Soil convention for their silence about the Mexican War.157 The Free Soil platform, he said, “embraces a few general declarations in regard to other topics [than slavery], but they are so general” that they called to mind “the pantaloons offered at auction by a Yankee pedlar,” who described them as “large enough for any man and small enough for any boy.” He also asserted that Taylor would be a better Whig president than Clay, for “Taylor’s ground and the Whig ground is that the people ought to do as they please in regard to all questions of domestic policy,” whereas Clay “was and is always ready to give his opinions and preferences, and thus would present motives for others to prostitute themselves to gain favor with him, if in power.” The Whig failure to adopt a platform, Lincoln argued, was “preferable and far more useful to the great majority of the country than the variegated and impracticable ‘platforms’ that it had become the fashion … to adopt.”158

  As usual, Lincoln made little impression at first. His awkward appearance and soft delivery did not bode well. But soon his humorous stories and anecdotes, eloquent passages, and sarcastic put-downs of Cass, Van Buren, and other Democrats elicited warm applause and loud cries of “Go on! go on!”159 The pro-Whig Boston Atlas called his address “one of the best speeches ever heard in Worcester” and claimed that it had caused “several Whigs who had gone off on the ‘Free Soil’ sizzle” to return to the party fold.160

  Thanks to his ingratiating Western style, which many Massachusetts Whigs found refreshing, Lincoln received invitations to speak from Boston, Taunton, New Bedford, Dedham, Dorchester, Cambridge, Chelsea, and Lowell, all of which he accepted. In New Bedford a Quaker diarist found Lincoln’s speech “pretty sound” but “not tasteful,” perhaps because, as a local Whig paper noted, it was “enlivened by frequent flashes of genuine, racy, western wit.”161 In Boston, Lincoln compared Van Buren “to a man having a gun which went off at both ends” and thus “would kill the object in view and those who supported him at the same time.”162 A Lowell resident testified that Lincoln “pointed his arguments with amusing illustrations and funny stories, which he seemed to enjoy as he told them, for he joined in a comical way in the laugh they occasioned, shaking his sides, which peculiar manner seemed to add to the good humor of the audience. He had a voice of more than average compass, clear and penetrating, pronouncing many of his words in a manner not usual to New England.”163

  From Boston to Dedham, Lincoln rode with George Harris Monroe, a young journalist who recalled that the silent, reserved Illinois congressman “was a
s sober a man in point of expression as ever I saw.” Once arrived, he continued to seem ill-at-ease, having little to say to the many people he met. They wondered if they had made a mistake by inviting him. Their doubts grew as he began speaking rather stiffly. Soon, however, he relaxed, rolling up his sleeves, loosening his tie, and captivating the audience with his casual manner and pungent humor. Monroe admired “the homely way he made his points,” with “no attempt at eloquence or finish of style.” The speech, Monroe thought, “was not a great one, but it was a marvel of cleverness.”164 Lincoln concentrated on Van Buren and said “very little against Cass except he was worth a million and a half dollars.”165

  In Taunton, the “Lone Star of Illinois,” as Lincoln was called, began his address leaning against a wall and speaking indifferently. As time passed, he warmed up and won over his audience with a barrage of “argument and anecdote, wit and wisdom, hymns and prophecies, platforms and syllogisms,” which a Whig paper said flew out “like wild game before the fierce hunter of the prairie.”166

  Free Soil editors were less enthusiastic. One of them ridiculed Lincoln’s defense of Whig vagueness on the issues: “This distinguished sucker went against all political platforms, and thus consoled the whigs for the loss of theirs. He told them that the whig party always went against executive influence, (which, for a party always out of power is not very wonderful,) and it would be inconsistent with this if their candidate should seek to influence them by expressing his opinions.”167 Another judged Lincoln to be “far inferior as a reasoner to others who hold the same views, but then he was more unscrupulous, more facetious, and with his sneers he mixed up a good deal of humor. His awkward gesticulations, the ludicrous management of his voice, and the comical expression of his countenance, all conspired to make his hearers laugh at the mere anticipation of the joke before it appeared.” The editor criticized Lincoln’s “recklessness and audacity” in misrepresenting the Free Soilers’ case. Lincoln quoted a Lowell Free Soiler who satirized the Whig argument thus: “General Taylor is a slaveholder, therefore we go for him to prevent the extension of slavery.” A more appropriate syllogism, Lincoln countered, would be: “Gen. Taylor is a slaveholder, but he will do more to prevent the extension of slavery than any other man whom it is possible to elect.” He then sarcastically summarized the Free Soil argument in yet another syllogism: “We can’t go for Gen. Taylor because he is not a Whig. Van Buren is not a whig; therefore we go for him.” Lincoln criticized Van Buren for favoring the Mexican War and Texas annexation, though in fact the former president had opposed both.168