Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Eastman bypassed Lincoln and consulted with the more vocally antislavery Herndon, who assured him that his partner was “all right.”174 Herndon later recalled that the “Anti-Slavery men of Chicago—the whole north of this State, knew me early as an abolitionist. Hence trusted me—Sent down a committee to see me and enquired—‘Can Mr Lincoln be trusted’?” Herndon responded emphatically: “I pledge you my personal honor that at the proper time he shall be with us.”175 Herndon was persuasive. Later, Eastman told him that he had visited Springfield “to learn from some thing nearer than public report, and public life, what were Mr. Lincoln[’]s particular feelings and scruples in regard to the colored people of the United States. I wanted to know if he was their friend—if he was their friend, we knew he was a politician that could be trusted. You Satisfied me.”176

  With Eastman in the fold, Lincoln managed to convert another antislavery journalist, Charles Henry Ray, editor of the Galena Jeffersonian, who at first opposed his candidacy. In December, Ray told Washburne: “I cannot well go in for Lincoln or any one of his tribe. I have little faith in the strength of their anti-slavery sentiments, and as the slavery question is the only one likely to be discussed for years yet, let us have some one whose opposition to the institution admits of no question.” Ray confessed that “I am afraid of ‘Abe.’ He is Southern by birth, Southern in his associations and Southern, if I mistake not, in his sympathies. I have thought that he would not come squarely up to the mark in a hand to hand fight with Southern influence and dictation. His wife, you know, is a Todd, of a pro-Slavery family, and so are all his kin. My candidate must be like Caesar’s wife—not only not suspected, but above suspicion.” Ray also hesitated because he did not want to alienate anti-Nebraska Democrats by supporting a Whig. But, he added, “I do desire to lend a helping hand to check-mate the rascals who are making our government the convenient tool of the slave power; and if I can best do so by going for Lincoln, why, I am on hand.”177

  Over the next three weeks Ray grew to appreciate Lincoln, in part because of Washburne’s lobbying. According to Washburne, Ray “is in reality for the man who will be of the most service to him. He looks for an overthrow of the powers that be, and he wants friends in that contingency.”178 In January, the Galena congressman reported to Lincoln that Ray, who had won election as clerk of the Illinois State senate at the beginning of the month, “wants a position in the House next Congress and I am going to write him if you are elected, we will all take hold and help. I think he can do something with some of the Anti-Nebraska Democrats. He also wants the Legislature to do something for him in connection with the census. All these matters can be worked in.”179 (Ray won appointment as a trustee of the Illinois and Michigan Canal at Lincoln’s request.) On January 12, Ray confided to Washburne: “I have made up my mind—this is private—that our best course is to go in strong for Lincoln when the day comes, and I shall so advise our friends of the Anti-Nebraska party, and shall labor to that end.”180

  Ray may have been influenced by a talk Lincoln gave on January 4 to the Springfield chapter of the American Colonization Society in which he reviewed the history of the African slave trade and efforts to abolish it. He also introduced resolutions calling for the legislature to instruct the Illinois congressional delegation to restore the Missouri Compromise, to work to prevent the admission of Kansas or Nebraska as slave states, to “use their utmost endeavors to prevent domestic slavery ever being established in any country, or place, where it does not now legally exist,” to resist “to their utmost, the now threatened attempt to divide California, in order to erect one portion thereof into a slave-state,” and to oppose “the now threatened attempt to revive the African slave-trade.”181

  In addition to Washburne, another U.S. Representative from northern Illinois, Jesse O. Norton of Joliet, helped Lincoln woo legislators from that region. In December, Norton reported to Lincoln from Washington: “I have written to an influential Whig in Oswego (Kendall Co). to have your interests looked to in connexion with their Delegate. I have also written to my friend Strunk of Kankakee. I have also written a kind but pointed letter to Eastman of the Free West. I hope he will see the impropriety of his course.” Norton believed “that one of the main things to be done, is to keep down all bickerings in the newspapers, as leading almost certainly to heart burnings & a schism.” A month later the congressman urged Lincoln to accommodate antislavery militants: “it seems to me that, you might, by some concessions, such as could be made by you without any sacrifice of principle, bring the whole free soil element to your support. I speak of those who have hitherto been distinctive ‘Free Soilers.’ Are you bound to stand by every thing in the Compromise measures of 1850? Could’nt you concede to them a modification of the Fugitive Slave act? With this & such positions as you can assume in relation to the prohibition of Slavery in the Territories & the admission of additional Slave States, I cannot see why these men cannot unite upon you to a man.”182

  Lincoln took Norton’s advice, telling legislators that he would not pledge to vote against the Fugitive Slave Act, but he would vote to strip that law “of its obnoxious features.”183 Lincoln had already publicly declared that any legislation for the return of runaways “should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one.” This was a clear reference to the procedural problems and evidentiary bias against alleged runaways found in the Fugitive Slave Act.

  In gaining the support of antislavery legislators from northern Illinois, Lincoln received enthusiastic and invaluable help from his old congressional messmate, Joshua Giddings of Ohio. The day after Christmas, Washburne informed Lincoln that “I have this moment had a long talk with Giddings and he is your strongest possible friend and says he would walk clear to Illinois to elect you. He will do anything in the world to aid you, and he will to-day write his views fully on the whole subject to Owen Lovejoy, in order that he may present them to all the freesoilers in the Legislature. He will advise them most strongly to go for you en masse.” Giddings was as good as his word, writing to Lovejoy twice and showing the letters to other Illinoisans.184

  David Davis weighed in for Lincoln, too. Lobbying General Assembly members, Davis persuaded some antislavery militants to support the Springfield attorney. Other Eighth Circuit lawyers, including Leonard Swett and T. Lyle Dickey, also worked on Lincoln’s behalf. But a few Radicals, like Abraham Smith of Bureau County, remained obdurate. Smith told Lincoln bluntly: “I don[’]t like Lincoln personally—have much reason to dislike thee.”185 (The previous year, Lincoln had represented a client who successfully sued Smith for libel. The abolitionist probably also objected to Lincoln because of the Matson case, in which he defended a slave owner.)

  The same regional rivalry that had thwarted Lincoln’s bid for the commissionership of the General Land Office five years earlier continued to be a stumbling block for him. In December, Washburne advised him that an influential voter in Winnebago County complained “that the Springfield influence has always been against us in the north, and that if you should be elected the north would be overlooked for the center and the South part of the State.”186 Astounded by this objection, Lincoln assured Washburne that for “a Senator to be the impartial representative of his whole State, is so plain a duty, that I pledge myself to the observance of it without hesitation; but not without some mortification that any one should suspect me of an inclination to the contrary.” Citing his record in the General Assembly, where he had supported the Illinois and Michigan Canal (a pet project of northern Illinois) and other measures of interest to that part of the state, Lincoln protested that he would be “surprized if it can be pointed out that in any instance, the North sought our aid, and failed to get it.” Similarly, while in Congress he had offered his “feeble service” to promote the interests of northern Illinois. “As a Senator, I should claim no right, as I should feel no inclination, to give the central portion of the state any preference over
the North, or any other portion of it.”187

  By the time the legislature convened in early January, Lincoln’s hard work lining up the antislavery members had paid dividends; Washburne, Norton, Giddings, Ray, Davis, and others had overcome the objections of most abolitionists. Lincoln later told Norton: “Through the untiring efforts of friends, among whom yourself and Washburne were chief, I finally surmounted the difficulty with the extreme Anti-Slavery men, and got all their votes, Lovejoy’s included.”188 To help win the vote of abolitionist Senator Wait Talcott, who represented Winnebago and neighboring counties in the North, Washburne suggested that Talcott hire Lincoln to represent him in a major patent infringement case. Lincoln appealed directly to Talcott and won his support.

  As the General Assembly gathered, Lincoln was understandably confident of his prospects for the senatorship. Of the 100 members of the legislature, a majority opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the House of Representatives, Lincoln estimated that the Whigs and anti-Nebraska Democrats outnumbered the Democrats forty-four to thirty-one; their majority in the senate was only thirteen to twelve.

  The chief business before the legislature was choosing a U.S. senator, a high-stakes contest that both sides desperately sought to win. As Washburne put it, the “whole country is looking to the election of Senator in our State, and should the Anti-Nebraska men fail to elect, a shout of triumph would go up from the Nebraskaites that would make us all hang our heads.”189 The Democracy justly feared that if an anti-Nebraska candidate won the senatorship, the nation would interpret it as a repudiation of Douglas and popular sovereignty. Lincoln reported in December that a leader of the regular Democrats had written to a legislator saying in effect that the anti-Nebraska forces “have a clear majority of at least nine, on joint ballot. They outnumber us, but we must outmanage them. Douglas must be sustained. We must elect the Speaker; and we must elect a Nebraska U S. Senator, or elect none at all.” Lincoln speculated that all pro-Nebraska members of the General Assembly received similar letters.190 From Washington, Yates informed Lincoln: “There is the greatest anxiety here as to the election of a Senator from our State—The peculiar connection of Douglas with the State & the Nebraska question causes that election to be looked to with more interest than that of any other State.”191

  Upon convening, the General Assembly filled all its offices save one with Democrats. By a vote of 40–24, Thomas J. Turner, an ardent prohibitionist and militant abolitionist, became speaker of the house. George T. Brown and Charles H. Ray were chosen secretary of the senate and enrolling and engrossing clerk, respectively. Only one Whig was elected in either chamber. “I do not say that the whigs have any pledges in return for this liberality,” a journalist observed, “but as all their efforts, hopes, and energies are concentrated upon the great object of securing the election of Senator … there can be no question but they will expect favors in return.”192

  Many Whigs besides Lincoln—including Cyrus Edwards, Joseph Gillespie, Don Morrison, Richard Yates, and Archibald Williams—hoped to win election to the senate as a result of such anticipated magnanimity. On January 6, Lincoln informed Washburne that other contenders’ prospects were poor, for he himself was the front-runner with twenty-six committals; no one else had more than ten. Lincoln began to make personal appeals to legislators once they assembled in Springfield. One recalled that when Lincoln approached them, his “manner was agreeable and unassuming; he was not forward in pressing his case upon the attention of members.” Yet before the conversation ended, the topic of the senatorship would arise, and Lincoln would say, in essence: “Gentlemen, this is rather a delicate subject for me to talk upon; but I must confess that I would be glad of your support for the office, if you shall conclude that I am the proper person for it.”193

  The Democrats anticipated that if the incumbent, James Shields, were unable to prevail, the legislature would adjourn without choosing his successor, thus leaving the seat vacant temporarily. Shields had injured his reelection chances by supporting the Kansas-Nebraska Act despite his opposition to it in principle. Anti-Nebraska Democrats like William H. Bissell and Lyman Trumbull were regarded as possibilities, though Bissell’s poor health seemed to disqualify him. Lincoln worried that pro-Nebraska Democrats, realizing that Shields’s prospects were hopeless, might unite behind Bissell, but that fear proved illusory. Douglas insisted that the party “stand by Shields to the last and make no compromises.” If the Irishman were to lose, then the Democrats could denounce their opponents as nativist bigots who opposed Shields simply because he had been born abroad.194

  By refusing to meet with the House, the senate Democrats delayed the vote. On January 12, the ever-optimistic Shields said of the anti-Nebraskaites: “A fusionist party cannot hold together long. Time kills it. Delay has killed them.”195 As the days passed, however, less optimistic Democrats grew concerned. On January 17, James W. Sheahan, editor of Douglas’s organ (the Chicago Times), wrote in alarm to Charles Lanphier at Springfield: “I think that all hope of electing Shields is gone: that the postponement of the election is a hazardous matter.” Anti-Nebraskaites “will let no means be untried to get a man. I think therefore that too long trifling with Shields’ name will not bring a vote to us, but will close some men against us, in which case they may slip over to the opposition. A new man should be talked of at once; and before the election, let a caucus be held, at which Shields’ declination should be read by some one.” But who should that new man be? Sheahan thought Governor Joel Matteson the most electable.

  Matteson, who discreetly opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, had managed to ingratiate himself with both factions of the Democratic Party. By 1854, he had become one of the most popular and trusted politicos of Illinois, for he entertained lavishly and avoided controversy timidly. Even the Whigs harbored few negative feelings for him. But if the popular Matteson were to become a senate candidate, the Democrats had to move quickly, for another aspirant, the vain, wealthy William B. Ogden of Chicago was busily bribing legislators to support his candidacy. “Ogden has bought up some of the doubtful men,” Sheahan reported, “& unless our man goes to work, he will find the market empty. Hopes ought to be held out to Matteson that Shields will not be in the way.”196

  Though unannounced as a candidate for the senate seat, Matteson, also a wealthy man, was quietly bribing legislators himself. Elected governor in 1852, he would soon become celebrated for his corruption. As he was about to leave office in 1856, he fraudulently redeemed $388,528 worth of twenty-year-old canal scrip for new state bonds. The scrip had already been redeemed once but had not been canceled; Matteson knowingly enriched himself at the expense of the state. When the General Assembly investigated this scheme in 1859, it became known as the Great Canal Scrip Fraud, one of the worst political scandals in nineteenth-century Illinois. An anti-Nebraska Democrat, George T. Allen, who called pro-Nebraska Democrats “a den of thieves, drunkards gamblers and blackguards,” told Lyman Trumbull in 1866 that “the Democratic, or Nebraska, members of the Legislature employed every means to buy my vote for Matteson” during the senatorial election eleven years earlier.197 Evidently aware of such bribery attempts, the Quincy Whig rejoiced that the Nebraskaites had failed to “buy or bully a sufficient number of members to reverse” the people’s “plainly expressed will.”198 The Chicago Democrat declared that “it is time our Legislature was composed of other than marketable material.”199

  Matteson worked industriously to line up votes. The first legislator he approached was John Strunk, a Kankakee Whig who at the beginning of the legislative session had told Lincoln that he “would walk a hundred miles” to elect him. In February 1855, Lincoln reported that “Strunk was pledged to me, which Matteson knew, but he succeeded in persuading him that I stood no chance of an election, and in getting a pledge from him to go for him as second choice.”200 Strunk was a good friend of the governor. Matteson then got anti-Nebraska Democrats E. O. Hills, Gavion D. A. Parks, David Strawn, Henry S. Baker, A. H. Trapp, and Frederick S
. Day to follow suit, even though he was assuring other legislators that he would support Douglas through fair weather and foul. With these seven votes in hand, Matteson then assured the pro-Nebraska Democrats that he could win if he had their support after they had cast a few ballots for other candidates. Matteson’s appeal led them to abandon Shields in his favor. Meanwhile, Democrats had gained control of the state senate with the defection of Whig Don Morrison and anti-Nebraska Democrat Uri Osgood, who was allegedly “bought outright.”201 The senate then refused to hold a joint session with the House to elect a senator until Matteson had lined up the necessary votes. And so it was not until February 8 that the joint session took place.

  Although Matteson tried to operate behind the scenes, rumors began circulating about his candidacy. In late January, John Todd Stuart’s wife Mary Stuart reported from Springfield that the “senatorial election has not yet come on, but it is believed now that Gov. Matteson has a better chance of success than any other, of the numerous candidates.”202 Richard J. Oglesby heard reports that Lincoln’s “chance is growing small by degrees.”203 The anti-Nebraska Democrat John M. Palmer told his wife: “I think Gov. Matteson will be elected Senator. The chances are that both wings of the democracy will unite on him.” The logic behind choosing Matteson was, Palmer explained, simple: “He is anti Slavery in all his antecedents and is a decided anti-Douglas man which is the real point involved in the controversy. The great end we have in view is the organization of the Democratic party on the basis of the personal independence of its Members. Shields goes now which will be a warning that Douglas cannot disregard. He will see the handwriting upon the wall.”204