Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  The next day another fugitive from Kansas, James S. Emery of Lawrence, portrayed the outrages he had witnessed in that territory. After Emery described the sacking of Lawrence he watched Lincoln stride to the podium with a giraffe-like gait. His hair was tousled, his clothes were not neat, and his shoulders were stooped. But the delegates, so arrested by Lincoln’s intensely serious look, scarcely noticed his appearance. Emery recalled that he “at once held his big audience and handled it like the master he was before the people pleading in a great and just cause.”42

  Incredibly, Lincoln’s remarks on that occasion have not survived, and this oration, believed to be one of his masterpieces, has become known as the “lost speech.” Reporters were allegedly so carried away by it that they dropped their pencils and listened spellbound. Although many journalists were present, only two brief newspaper accounts of the speech’s substance are extant. According to the Alton Courier, edited by George T. Brown, Lincoln “enumerated the pressing reasons of the present movement,” said he “was here ready to fuse with anyone who would unite with him to oppose [the] slave power,” and referred to “the bugbear [of] disunion which was so vaguely threatened.” Apropos of Southern threats to secede, he said: “It was to be remembered that the Union must be preserved in the purity of its principles as well as in the integrity of its territorial parts.” He quoted from Daniel Webster’s famous reply to Robert Hayne in 1830: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.” Lincoln also rejected Douglas’s contention that his doctrine of popular sovereignty squared with the teachings of Henry Clay, and maintained that a “sentiment in favor of white slavery now prevailed in all the slave state papers” except for a few Border States.43

  Lincoln was doubtless referring to the Richmond Enquirer, which he saw regularly. That journal ran several inflammatory editorials declaring, among other things:

  “Slavery is the natural and normal condition of the laboring man, whether white or black.”

  “Make the laboring man the slave of one man, instead of the slave of society, and he would be far better off.”

  “Two hundred years of labor have made laborers a pauper banditti. Free society has failed, and that which is not free must be substituted.”

  “We do not adopt the theory that Ham was the ancestor of the negro race. The Jewish slaves were not negroes; and to confine the jurisdiction of slavery to that race would be to weaken its scriptural authority, for we read of no negro slavery in ancient times. Slavery, black or white, is necessary.”44

  The only other contemporary account of Lincoln’s remarks appeared in the Belleville Advocate, edited by Nathaniel Niles, a delegate to the convention: “Abraham Lincoln by his wonderful eloquence electrified the audience of two thousand men … and excelled himself. Men who had heard him often said he never spoke as well before.… He paid his respects to those ‘National Whigs,’ as they call themselves, who are all the time stepping about to the music of the Union! He had no doubt but that the music of an overseer’s lash upon a mulatto girl’s back would make some of them dance a Virginia hornpipe. ‘Let them step,’ said he, ‘let them dance to the music of the Union, while we, my old Whig friends, stand fast by Principle and Freedom and the Union, together.’ ”45

  In a dispatch written that day, John Locke Scripps described the delivery and reception of Lincoln’s speech: “For an hour and a half he held the assemblage spell bound by the power of his argument, the intense irony of his invective, and the deep earnestness and fervid brilliancy of his eloquence. When he concluded, the audience sprang to their feet and cheer after cheer told how deeply their hearts had been touched, and their souls warmed.”46 The Bloomington Pantagraph said of Lincoln’s words: “Several most heart-stirring and powerful speeches were made during the Convention; but without being invidious, we must say that Mr. Lincoln, on Thursday evening, surpassed all others—even himself. His points were unanswerable, and the force and power of his appeals, irresistible.”47

  Reminiscent accounts tend to confirm the meager press reports. Thomas J. Henderson recalled that at one point, Lincoln, “after repelling with great power and earnestness the charge of disunion made against the Anti-Nebraska party,” stood up “as if on tip-toe, his tall form erect, his long arms extended, his face fairly radiant with the flush of excitement, and, as if addressing those preferring the charge of disunionism, he slowly, but earnestly and impressively, said: ‘We do not intend to dissolve the Union, nor do we intend to let you dissolve it.’ ” Then, Henderson said, “everybody present rose as one man to their feet, and there was a universal burst of applause … such as I have never seen on any other occasion. It was amid the wildest excitement and enthusiasm, continued for several minutes before Mr. Lincoln resumed his speech.”48 Others remembered Lincoln uttering a slightly different version of that rousing sentence, obviously a reply to Southern leaders who threatened disunion if an antislavery candidate won the White House: “We say to our Southern brethren: ‘We won’t go out of the Union, and you shan’t!’ ”49

  Judge John M. Scott of Bloomington recollected that as Lincoln began speaking, there was “an expression on his face of intense emotion seldom if ever seen upon any one before. It was the emotion of a great soul. Even in stature he appeared greater. A sudden stillness settled over that body of thoughtful men as Mr. Lincoln commenced to speak. Every one wanted to hear what he had to say.” After his customary slow beginning and careful choice of words, Lincoln steadily “increased in power and strength of utterance until every word that fell from his lips had a fullness of meaning not before so fully appreciated. The scene in that old hall was one of impressive grandeur. Every man, the venerable as well as the young and the strong, stood upon his feet. In a brief moment every one in that … assembly came to feel as one man, to think as one man and to purpose and resolve as one man.” It was, Scott believed, “the speech of his life in the estimation of many who heard it.… It was a triumph that comes to but few speakers. It was an effect that could only be produced by the truest eloquence.”50 Other eyewitness testimony confirms Scott’s awestruck account.

  The failure of newspapers to report the content of Lincoln’s remarks may have resulted from a deliberate political decision. It appears that the speech was not fully written out. Lincoln told the crowd the night before that he had prepared a speech, but he may have meant that he had assembled some notes or an outline. According to Joseph Medill, “Lincoln did not write out even a memorandum of his Bloomington speech beforehand,” but he carefully prepared it nonetheless. “He intended days before to make it, and conned it over in his mind in outline and gathered his facts, and arranged his arguments in regular order and trusted to the inspiration of the occasion to furnish him the diction with which to clothe the skeleton of his great oration.” After the address, “Mr. Lincoln was strongly urged by party friends to write out his speech, to be used as a campaign document for the Fremont Presidential contest of that year; but he declared that ‘it would be impossible for him to recall the language he used on that occasion, as he had spoken under some excitement.’ ” Beyond that excuse of faulty memory, however, Medill believed “that, after Mr. Lincoln cooled down, he was rather pleased that his speech had not been reported, as it was too radical in expression on the slavery question for the digestion of Central and Southern Illinois at that time, and that he preferred to let it stand as a remembrance in the minds of his audience.”51

  In 1908, Eugene F. Baldwin, a Peoria editor and publisher, agreed that “the great mass of the leaders felt that Lincoln made too radical a speech and they did not want it produced for fear it would damage the party. Lincoln himself said he had put his foot into it and asked the reporters to simply report the meeting and not attempt to record his words and they agreed to it.”52 Some biographers have endorsed this conclusion, which seems plausible, though no hard evidence supports it. It is also possible that reporters were indeed so caught up in the excitement that they stopped writing in order to listen. That had happened be
fore when Edward Bates delivered a stirring address at the Chicago River and Harbor Convention in 1847.

  Returning to Springfield, Lincoln was accosted on the train by a delegate who declared: “I never swear, but that was the damndest best speech I ever heard.”53

  On June 10, before a crowd at the Springfield courthouse, Lincoln hailed the work of the convention. The Democratic Register sneered: “his niggerism has as dark a hue as that of [William Lloyd] Garrison or Fred Douglass.”54

  The 1856 Campaign

  With Bissell heading their state ticket, anti-Nebraskaites had reason to be optimistic. “Since the nomination of Bissell we are in good trim in Illinois,” Lincoln reported. “If we can save pretty nearly all the whigs, we shall elect him, I think, by a very large majority.”55 But saving the old-line Whigs would not be easy; Archibald Williams described such a Whig as “a gentleman who takes his toddy regularly, and votes the Democratic ticket occasionally.”56

  Nationally, the Democrats reacted to the public revulsion against the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the turmoil in Kansas by rejecting both incumbent president Franklin Pierce and Stephen A. Douglas. Instead, they chose as their standard-bearer James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, who had recently been in London as U.S. minister to the Court of St. James and thus was untainted by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its consequences. This move alarmed Lincoln, who observed that “a good many whigs, of conservative feelings, and slight pro-slavery proclivities, withal, are inclining to go for him, and will do it, unless the Anti-Nebraska nomination be such as to divert them.”

  Lincoln, who had worked so hard to ensure that Illinois’s Republicans avoided taking a radical antislavery stance, hoped the Republican national convention, meeting in mid-June at Philadelphia, would follow suit. His favorite candidate was John McLean, whose nomination, he said, “would save every whig, except such as have already gone over hook and line.” The mainstream Whigs might, however, flee to Buchanan if the Republicans chose a Radical like Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts, William Henry Seward of New York, Frank P. Blair of Missouri, or John C. Frémont of California. Blair and Frémont might be acceptable to Illinois Whigs for vice-president, but not president. To former Democrat Lyman Trumbull, Lincoln pointed out that 90 percent of the anti-Nebraska votes came from “old whigs.” Rhetorically he asked: “In setting stakes, is it safe to totally disregard them? Can we possibly win, if we do so?” Alluding to his own defeat at Trumbull’s hands, he noted: “So far they have been disregarded. I need not point out the instances.” Lincoln assured Trumbull that he was “in, and shall go for any one nominated unless he be ‘platformed’ expressly, or impliedly, on some ground which I may think wrong.”57 Lincoln’s view was shared by his friend Orville H. Browning, who told Trumbull: “McLean, in my opinion, would be stronger in this state than any one whose name has been suggested. We have many, very many, tender footed whigs, who are frightened by ugly names, that could not be carried for Freemont, but who would readily unite with us upon McLean.”58

  Though chosen a delegate to the Republican national convention, Lincoln did not attend. At Bloomington he had declined the honor “on account of his poverty and business engagements,” but when Jesse W. Fell offered to pay his expenses, Lincoln said he might be able to go after all. At the last minute, however, Lincoln wired Fell that he could not accept, so Fell’s brother Kersey went as his replacement. At the same time, Lincoln, who was on the circuit, urged Trumbull to attend. On June 15, the senator replied that he had hesitated to go “but your letter just received decides the question. I will go … and do what I can to have a conservative man nominated and conservative measures adopted.”59 Lincoln wrote to Elihu B. Washburne endorsing McLean; delegates at the convention used that letter to bolster the Ohioan’s candidacy.

  At Philadelphia the Republicans did not choose a conservative candidate. To Lincoln’s dismay, John C. Frémont, a former Democrat known as “the Pathfinder” for his celebrated explorations in the West, secured the presidential nomination. William L. Dayton of New Jersey was selected as his running mate.

  Though chagrined by the nomination of Frémont, Lincoln doubtless found some consolation in the 110 votes he himself received for vice-president. The Illinois delegation had supported McLean for president; when that Ohioan lost, a leading Prairie State delegate, Congressman William B. Archer, resolved to nominate Lincoln for the second spot on the ticket. Working well into the night with Nathaniel Green Wilcox and Martin P. Sweet, Archer lined up support for Lincoln. At the Illinois caucus, Trumbull declared that they should pick “a man of decided Whig antecedents” for vice-president. When Wilcox suggested Lincoln, Trumbull said he had named a “very good man.” No one, however, seconded the motion. Several hours later, well into the night, Wilcox met with Archer and others, including two delegates from Indiana, Caleb B. Smith and Schuyler Colfax. Upon learning that Easterners were uniting on Dayton, Wilcox again suggested to Archer that they back Lincoln. Archer responded positively and summoned the other Illinois delegates, who resolved to present Lincoln’s name to the convention. Archer, Wilcox, William Ross, and others lobbied throughout the night, calling on Daniel S. Dickinson and Thurlow Weed of New York, Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, and Chauncey F. Cleveland of Connecticut. Archer asked a fellow congressman, John Allison of Pennsylvania, to nominate Lincoln.

  The next day Allison complied, describing Lincoln as a “prince of good fellows, and an Old-Line Whig.” Seconding the nomination, Archer declared that he “had been acquainted with the man who had been named for 30 years. He was born in gallant Kentucky, and was now in the prime of life … and enjoying remarkable good health. And, besides, the speaker knew him to be as pure a patriot as ever lived. He would give the Convention to understand, that with him on the ticket, there was no danger of Northern Illinois. Illinois was safe with him, and he believed she was safe without him. With him, however, she was doubly safe.”60 Suddenly an Ohio delegate interrupted Archer, shouting out: “Will he fight?” To the amusement of the delegates, Archer, “a grey-haired old gent, slightly bent with age,” then “jumped straight from the floor, as high as the Secretaries’ table, and cried out, shrill and wild, ‘Yes.’ ” The delegates were “convulsed, and a tremendous yell of approbation substantially inserted a fighting plank in the platform.” According to the journalist Murat Halstead, Archer “slightly spoiled the effect of his vaulting performance, adding: ‘Why, he’s from Kentucky, and all Kentuckians will fight.’ There was a peculiar restlessness and heavy breathing through the multitude, showing that they were strong in the faith that men born north of the Ohio could fight as well as those who had suffered the accident of birth on the other side of that stream.”61

  Also seconding Lincoln’s nomination was John M. Palmer, who said: “I have known him long, and I know he is a good man and a hard worker in the field, although I never heard him—for when he was on the stump, I dodged. He is my first choice .… We can lick Buchanan any way, but I think we can do it a little easier if we have Lincoln on the ticket with John C. Fremont.”62 Representative John Van Dyke of New Jersey, who had served with Lincoln in the Thirtieth Congress, added his voice to the modest chorus of praise: “I knew Abraham Lincoln in Congress well, and for months I sat by his side. I knew him all through, and knew him to be a first-rate man in every respect.”63

  These gratifying accolades came too late; Dayton won on the second ballot, largely because of his conservative Whig background, because his state was doubtful, because he had supported McLean, because he was not a Know-Nothing, and because he had ingratiated himself with the antislavery forces by endorsing an amendment to the Fugitive Slave Act providing jury trials for accused runaways. Wilcox thought that if the entire Illinois delegation had worked for Lincoln from the start, and if the convention had delayed selecting a vice-presidential candidate for a few hours, Lincoln would have won.

  Lincoln did not actively encourage friends to promote his vice-presidential candidacy. He had earlier told
O. B. Ficklin, who suggested that he might be suitable for that honor: “There is one office I am not fitted for—the office of vice-president.” Ficklin “knew he referred to his lack of grace and elegant manners, so desirable in a presiding officer [of the U.S. Senate]. He had no thought of becoming President—the Senate was his aim.”64

  Word that he had been seriously considered for the vice-presidency may have changed Lincoln’s mind. Jesse W. Weik wrote that this “tribute to his genius and ability” reportedly “afforded him more real gratification than any other which came to him during the years of his political activity.”65 When the news arrived of his near-nomination for vice-president, Lincoln modestly shrugged it off, saying the candidate being discussed was probably Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts. After friends showed him that indeed he was the one who almost won the vice-presidential nomination, he remained seemingly unmoved, but according to James H. Matheny, it may have inspired him to think of running for the presidency, and Henry C. Whitney believed that “from that time Lincoln trimmed his sails to catch the breeze which might waft him to the White House.”66