Republicans meeting in Decatur rejoiced at the swift decline of prohibitionist strength and had new confidence that they could defuse the nativist threat. According to Charles H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune, who would play a leading role at the editors’ conference, Republicans might win the support of the 20,000 antislavery Germans in Illinois by assuring them “that the party does not contemplate any change of the naturalization laws.” Ray predicted that with such a plank “in our temperate platform and [William] Bissell thereupon we can whip Douglas and Nebraska clean out of the state.”16 Ray nonetheless feared that the Democrats were scheming with the Know-Nothings to have Bissell nominated by the nativists before the Republican state convention, thus tainting him in the eyes of the Germans. “I am still of the opinion that K Nism will damage us,” Ray wrote in early May. If the Republicans repudiated nativism, “we get the German, English, Protestant Irish, Scotch and Scandinavian vote—in all about 30,000—more than double the K N strength, which in its palmiest days was not over 25,000 and is not now 15,000.”17
In Decatur, Lincoln helped draft a platform containing an antinativist plank. One editor, German-born George Schneider of the Chicago Staats-zeitung, who came to Decatur “with his war paint on,” had prepared a declaration sharply condemning Know-Nothingism.18 Because it provoked strong opposition, Schneider turned in desperation to Lincoln, who, after reading it, told the editors: “The resolution introduced by Mr. Schneider is nothing new. It is already contained in the Declaration of Independence and you cannot form a new party on proscriptive principles.” Lincoln’s intervention, according to Schneider, “saved the resolution” and “helped to establish the new party on the most liberal democratic basis.”19
Schneider’s memory may have been faulty, for the resolution adopted was clearly a compromise. On the one hand, it roundly condemned prejudice in the appointment of men to office: “in regard to office we hold merit, not birth place to be the test, deeming the rule of Thos. Jefferson—is he honest? is he capable?—the only true rule.” In dealing with immigration, the resolution declared that “we shall maintain the Naturalization laws as they are, believing as we do, that we should welcome the exiles and emigrants from the Old World, to homes of enterprise and of freedom in the New.” On the other hand, the resolution reached out to the Know-Nothings, who opposed public funding of Catholic schools: “while we are in favor of the widest tolerance upon all matters of religious faith, we will repel all attacks upon our Common School System, or upon any of our Institutions of an educational character, or our civil polity by the adherents of any religious body whatever.” Lincoln, with his strong desire to wean away the Know-Nothings, may have added the passage about schools.
Lincoln composed the “States Rights Plank” which read: “Resolved, That the conditions which are demanded under pleas of ‘rights’ as being essential to the security of Slavery throughout its expanded and expanding area, are inconsistent with freedom, an invasion of our rights, oppressive and unjust, and must be resisted.”20 The preamble and the other resolutions called for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise and endorsed the principle that slavery was local (and hence the exception) and freedom national (and hence the rule). But they also affirmed that the Fugitive Slave Act must be obeyed and that the federal government was not authorized to tamper with slavery in the states where it existed.21
After adopting this declaration of principles and naming a central committee (which included Herndon), the editors called for a state convention of antislavery forces to meet in Bloomington on May 29. It is likely that Herndon’s selection was made at the behest of Lincoln, who evidently wanted him to serve as his agent in building the party. (Selby recalled that when the committee was chosen, some of the members “were suggested by Mr. Lincoln, while the others received his approval.”)22 Throughout the winter and spring, Herndon conducted an active political correspondence, wrote editorials, delivered speeches on behalf of the cause, and helped with preparations for the Bloomington Convention. By having Herndon act as his surrogate, Lincoln probably sought to preserve his reputation as a Moderate.
The editors did not formally endorse a gubernatorial candidate, though some wanted to run Lincoln. He, however, had been trying, along with other antislavery leaders, to woo the popular antislavery Democrat and Mexican War hero, William H. Bissell, who seemed the most electable of all the anti-Nebraska leaders. In 1850 as a congressman, Bissell had achieved national renown by accepting Jefferson Davis’s challenge to a duel; the Illinoisan specified that the weapons should be army muskets charged with ball and buckshot, to be used at close range. An eloquent speaker, Bissell suffered from poor health, which made his availability problematic. (Lamed by syphilis contracted in Mexico, he would die in 1860 at the age of 49.)
At the dinner following the editors’ convention, Lincoln announced his support for Bissell. When toasted as “our next candidate for the U.S. Senate,” he replied that “he was very much in the position of the man who was attacked by a robber, demanding his money, when he answered, ‘my dear fellow, I have no money, but if you will go with me to the light, I will give you my note.’ ” Lincoln added: “if you will let me off, I will give you my note.” The editors would not let him off, so, after apologizing for his presence, he spoke for half an hour. He “stated that he believed he was a sort of interloper there and was reminded of the incident of a man not possessed of features the ladies would call handsome, while riding on horseback through the woods met an equestrienne. He reined his horse to one side of the bridle path and stopped, waiting for the woman to pass. She also checked her horse to a stop and looked him over in a curious sort of a way, finally broke out with,
“Well, for land sake, you are the homeliest man I ever saw.”
“Yes, madam, but I can’t help it.”
“No, I suppose not, she said, but you might stay at home.”
Lincoln said “that he felt as though he might have stayed at home on that occasion.”23
Turning serious, Lincoln referred to the proposition some of the editors had made that he run for governor. “If I should be chosen,” he remarked, “the Democrats would say it was nothing more than an attempt to resurrect the dead body of the old Whig party. I would secure the vote of that party and no more, and our defeat will follow as a matter of course. But I can suggest a name that will secure not only the old Whig vote, but enough Anti-Nebraska Democrats to give us the victory. That man is Colonel William H. Bissell.”24
The editors’ convention had in effect launched the Republican Party of Illinois. Under Lincoln’s leadership, it steered a moderate course to avoid alienating potential allies, especially conservative Whigs and Know-Nothings; at the same time, it forcefully condemned the expansion of slavery. The editors shied away from the name “Republican,” which, as antislavery Congressman John Wentworth of Chicago observed, meant to many voters “a sort of Maine Law, Free Love, Spiritual Medium &c. &c. concern.”25 Indeed, the New York Herald charged that “Socialism in its worst form, including the most advanced theories of women’s rights, the division of land, free love and the exaltation of the desires of the individual over the rights of the family, and the forced equality of all men in phalansteries, or similar organizations, are a part of the logical chain of ideas that flow from the anti-slavery theory which forms the soul of black republicanism.”26 In some states, when antislavery forces banded together, they called themselves “the People’s Party” or “the Opposition” rather than Republicans. Understandably, then, the Illinois State Journal declared that the editors’ platform was “neither ‘Know Nothing’ nor ‘Republican.’ ”27
First Republican Convention
The gubernatorial nomination would be formally considered at the convention summoned for May 29, 1856 at Bloomington. Three weeks before that date, the anti-Nebraska forces in Sangamon County issued a call for a convention to choose delegates. Because Lincoln was at that time on the circuit, Herndon, who was busily promoting the convention, took the liberty
of signing his partner’s name to the call. (Herndon’s claim that he propelled a reluctant Lincoln to throw himself into the movement to establish the Republican Party is improbable. John M. Scott rightly observed that the Bloomington Convention came about “mainly through his [Lincoln’s] management and by his advice.”)28
Moderation was the watchword that spring. As Herndon told Lyman Trumbull, “We intend to get the best men in our State to attend the convention in Bloomington, and where we hope to be conservative—not hunkerish—firm—conciliatory—united, putting every man’s individual opinions on other questions out of sight, sinking them in the greater one of Slavery Extension” and to “frame some broad, liberal, conciliatory, firm, resolutions or platform.”29 E. B. Washburne urged Richard Yates to help recruit delegates for the Bloomington Convention: “If we will all wheel in under that Anti-Nebraska Convention Call, and go to work to get delegations from all the counties, we can have a convention, which in point of character and ability will be without a parallel in the state[’]s history.”30
Most important, the anti-Nebraska forces needed to select the right gubernatorial candidate. As Lincoln had suggested at Decatur, William Bissell was the obvious choice. In January the colonel had indicated a willingness to run, saying that although his health was shaky and he would prefer to serve as a private in the ranks rather than a leader, he would do whatever the party thought best. By early May, he had changed his mind. As he explained to Trumbull, he began to fear the anti-Nebraska organization was not being formed for success: “The Convention at Bloomington is too likely to be composed of the same persons, and very few others, that composed the Decatur Convention. And nominations by such a convention are but the surest modes of killing off the nominees.” Instead of these Whig editors leading the way, he said, “the anti Nebraska Democrats ought to have rallied, and taken the control and direction of this Bloomington Convention—made it, and its candidates, their own.” Bissell concluded, “my present inclination is to decline a nomination, should one be tendered me.”31
Bissell’s reluctance placed the entire movement in jeopardy. No record of Lincoln’s direct attempts to reassure him survives, but through Herndon he indirectly conveyed the optimism needed to dispel Bissell’s gloom. Two weeks after Bissell had expressed his reluctance to run for the governorship, Herndon told Trumbull of an upbeat discussion he had just had with his partner: “Lincoln & myself had a long talk in reference to affairs, and I have never seen him so sanguine of success, as in this Election—he is warm. I gathered this from him,—recollect he has been round our Judicial Circuit—, that the people are warm and full of feeling on this question—this great & mighty issue. They have moved more since Bissell wrote you than in the past year—never saw so much ‘dogged determination’ to fight it out;—that Democrats are coming to us daily—… and if you will look over our papers you will see that Lincoln is correct. He says this—that some few corrupt old line whigs who are gaping for office in and about towns, are going with the nigger driving gentlemen [i.e., Democrats], but that the whigs & Democrats in the country are all right on the question, and are becoming more so every day—riper and riper they grow for Freedom the longer the time is extended.”32
Prospects brightened four days later when Bissell reversed course, informing George T. Brown, a leading organizer of the Bloomington Convention, that he would in fact accept the gubernatorial nomination, even though his health was so impaired that he could not campaign vigorously. Brown, who would preside at the opening of the conclave at Bloomington, had worked hard to ensure that the tone of “the proceedings will be conservative.”33 On May 27, Lincoln probably felt relieved as he boarded a train in Danville, where he had been attending court, and headed off to Bloomington; there, if Brown’s efforts proved effective, if Bissell honored his most recent pledge, and if the delegates ratified a moderate platform like the one hammered out at the editors’ conference in February, victory seemed entirely possible. While in Danville, Lincoln had also been able to recruit several young lawyers and editors to accompany him to Bloomington.
En route to the convention, Lincoln and Henry C. Whitney strolled about Decatur during a layover. Upon reaching the courthouse, Lincoln grew reminiscent, describing his experiences in Macon and Sangamon counties during the 1830s, the Hanks family, and the difficulties he had to overcome in his early life. Later that afternoon, seated on a tree trunk in a brush thicket, he expressed to his colleagues, including Joseph O. Cunningham, “his hopes and fears of the results of the coming convention, and of his earnest wish that the old Whig element from Southern Illinois might be well represented there.”34 He did not, Cunningham recalled, “attempt to conceal fears and misgivings entertained by him as to the outcome of the gathering. He was well assured that the radical element of the northern counties would be there in force, and feared the effect upon the conservative element of the central and southern parts of the State.”35 The next day, as his train rolled northward toward Bloomington, Lincoln anxiously inquired of fellow passengers if they were delegates from southern Illinois, ‘where antislavery sentiment was scarce.’ He was jubilant upon discovering two trainmates from Egypt who would attend the convention. Arriving in Bloomington the next day, Lincoln eagerly sought out Whig friends from Egypt, among them Jesse K. Dubois. Lincoln’s goal was to persuade Dubois and other Conservatives to unite with the abolitionists of northern Illinois and the Moderates of the central part of the state.
Energetically but discreetly, holding no official position other than the chairman of the nominations committee, Lincoln was the master spirit of the convention, managing through some political alchemy to convince former enemies to set aside their differences and cooperate for the greater good. Chicago delegate John Locke Scripps thought that “no other man exerted so wide and salutary an influence in harmonizing differences, in softening and obliterating prejudices, and bringing into a cordial union those who for years had been bitterly hostile to each other.”36 Whitney “never saw him more busily engaged, more energetically at work, or with his mind and heart so thoroughly enlisted.” Although Lincoln “was in a state of enthusiasm and suppressed excitement throughout this convention,” he “kept his mental balance, and was not swerved a hair’s breadth from perfect equipoise in speech or action.” (Whitney was in a good position to observe Lincoln, for he stayed with him at David Davis’s house during the convention.)37
In promoting moderation at the convention, Lincoln had help from T. Lyle Dickey and Archibald Williams, who were also staying at the Davis home. Those three, said Whitney, “did more than all others combined in shaping the moderate and conservative” platform.38 In particular, they helped craft the main slavery plank in the platform, which said: “Resolved, That we hold, in accordance with the opinions and practices of all the great statesmen of all parties, for the first sixty years of the administration of the government, that, under the constitution, congress possesses full power to prohibit slavery in the territories; and that while we maintain all constitutional rights of the south, we also hold that justice, humanity, the principles of freedom as expressed in our Declaration of Independence, and our national constitution and the purity and perpetuity of our government, require that that power should be exerted to prevent the extension of slavery into territories heretofore free.”39 In justifying this stance to radical Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Lincoln said: “Your party is so mad at Douglas for wrecking his party that it will gulp down anything; but our party [Whig] is fresh from Kentucky and must not be forced to radical measures; the Abolitionists will go with us anyway, and your wing of the Democratic party the same, but the Whigs hold the balance of power and will be hard to manage, anyway. Why I had a hard time to hold Dubois when he found Lovejoy and Codding here; he insisted on going home at once.”40
Intervening to settle more disputes between Radicals and Conservatives, Lincoln offered advice on the other platform planks, which were based on the document adopted at the Decatur editors’ conference. They denounced the
violence in Kansas, called for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise, urged the admission of Kansas as a Free State, professed devotion to the Union, pledged to “support the constitution of the United States in all its provisions,” criticized nativist bigotry (“we will proscribe no one, by legislation or otherwise, on account of religious opinions, or in consequence of place of birth”), and attacked the administration of Governor Matteson.41 The platform was adopted unanimously.
The convention chose a slate of presidential electors, headed by Lincoln and Frederick Hecker, a German-born antislavery leader who persuaded many of his fellow countrymen to support the Republican Party. Lincoln was also named a delegate to the Republican national convention, scheduled to meet in June at Philadelphia.
Uniting the delegates was their indignation at events in Kansas, where on May 21 pro-slavery militia sacked the Free Soil town of Lawrence, and in Washington, where on May 22 Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina cudgeled abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts into insensibility at the Capitol. Earlier in May another Southern-born Democratic congressman, Philemon T. Herbert of California, shot and killed an Irish waiter in a Washington hotel dining room. Those violent acts enraged the North. In the subsequent election campaign, Republicans aroused the Free States with their appeal to remember “bleeding Kansas and bleeding Sumner.” Fueling the anger in Bloomington were refugees from Kansas, including Governor Andrew H. Reeder, who on the night of May 28 described to a crowd the violence he had observed in that territory before being compelled to flee for his life. The people who heard Reeder speak called for Lincoln, who briefly compared the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise to the destruction of a fence, thus allowing one man’s cattle to eat the crops belonging to his neighbor. Lincoln also spoke of the outrages in Kansas, including the destruction of newspaper offices and the dismissal of government employees for political reasons.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 74
