Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Regarding Southern threats to secede if Frémont were to win, Lincoln asked: “How is the dissolution of the Union to be consummated? … Who will divide it? Is it those who make the charge” that the Republicans threaten the existence of the Union? “Are they themselves the persons who wish to see this result? A majority will never dissolve the Union. Can a minority do it?”

  Lincoln denied that Frémont and his party were abolitionists. “I know of no word in the language that has been used so much as that one ‘abolitionist,’ having no definition.” Anticipating his famous “House Divided” speech of 1858, Lincoln argued that the federal government must be “put on a new track. Slavery is to be made a ruling element in our government. The question can be avoided in but two ways. By the one, we must submit, and allow slavery to triumph, or, by the other, we must triumph over the black demon. We have chosen the latter manner. If you of the North wish to get rid of this question, you must decide between these two ways—submit and vote for Buchanan, submit and vote that slavery is a just and good thing and immediately get rid of the question; or unite with us, and help us to triumph. We would all like to have the question done away with, but we cannot submit.”

  Lincoln movingly appealed to Democrats to honor the principles they had espoused before the introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Their party, he said, “has ever prided itself, that it was the friend of individual, universal freedom.” Now, to support Douglas’s handiwork, Democrats have abandoned their idealism. In closing, he implored Democrats to “come forward. Throw off these things, and come to the rescue of this great principle of equality.” He would not exclude former Whigs from his exhortation: “to all who love these great and true principles” he beckoned: “Come, and keep coming! Strike, and strike again! So sure as God lives, the victory shall be yours.”85

  According to a Democratic paper, Lincoln’s “very fair and argumentative address” proved “far too conservative and Union loving in his sentiments to suit his audience,” which frowned when he “proclaimed that the southern men had hearts, consciences and intellects like those around him.”86

  Returning to Illinois, Lincoln repeated his warning about the inevitable conflict between slavery and freedom. At Bloomington in September, he addressed a large crowd: “It is my sincere belief that this government can not last always part slave and part free.—Either Slavery will be abolished—or it must become equally lawful everywhere—or this Union will be dissolved. There is natural incompatibility between the institutions incident to Slave-holding States—so irreconcilable in their character, that they can not co-exist perpetually under the same Government.” When T. Lyle Dickey warned him that preaching such a doctrine would hasten the outbreak of a bloody civil war, Lincoln reluctantly agreed to stop.87

  Lincoln also spoke in Petersburg, where the local Democratic journal labeled him the “great high-priest of abolitionism,” the “depot master of the underground railroad,” and “the post mortem candidate for the vice presidency of the abolition political cock-boat.”88 In Jacksonville, the opposition press was more charitable, calling Lincoln “a fine speaker” and “certainly the ablest black republican that has taken the stump at this place.”89 Another observer praised Lincoln’s speech in Jacksonville, where he “held a great audience in breathless attention for some three hours, in sunshine & rain with their umbrellas over their heads, still shouting ‘go on’—while he was demolishing the Bucchaneers & Filmorites right & left so effectively that not a soul of them have dared to peep since except to say ‘I am for Fremont.’ ”90

  In August, Lincoln and Herndon felt optimistic about the outcome of the election. “We are gaining on the nigger Democracy every day,” Herndon informed Lyman Trumbull.91 Lincoln told the senator that “we shall ultimately get all the Fillmore men, who are real[l]y anti-slavery extension—the rest will probably go to Buchanan, where they rightfully belong.” A “great difficulty” in persuading antislavery Fillmore supporters to back Fremont “is that they suppose Fillmore as good as Fremont” on slavery expansion “and it is a delicate point to argue them out of it,” for “they are so ready to think you are abusing Mr. Fillmore.”92

  The Fillmore men proved very difficult to convert. In July, George T. Brown observed that the “Fillmorites are making a good deal of stir. Jo Gillespie is moving heaven and Earth.”93 The following month Richard Yates reported from Jacksonville that “the Fi[l]more diversion is large in this section of the State—splitting the Anti-Nebraska vote right in the middle. We have slight hopes of making it right yet, but very slight. If it’s leaders were true to their professions we would soon get them back, but with some of them I fear that a fondness for the ‘peculiar institution’ is a dominant motive.”94 In September, Lincoln heard from Yates that in central Illinois “there are five times as many proslavery whigs as we have estimated.”95 Lincoln appealed in vain to those erstwhile allies. At a Springfield meeting in September, he “received as many curses as blessings from the crowd,” which contained “insolent” Democrats, “surly” Know-Nothings, and others who were “cold and suspicious.”96 In late September Herndon told Wendell Phillips, “Had we a few months longer to go on I think we would carry this State for Fremont. Were the Republicans and the Americans to join, we could easily, now—at this moment, carry the State for Freemont.”97 But the American Party adherents would not fuse with the Republicans.

  Lincoln, who guessed that Buchanan would receive about 85,000 votes, Frémont 78,000, and Fillmore 21,000, urged an old friend, John Bennett of Petersburg, to reconsider his support for the ex-president: “Every vote taken from Fremont and given to Fillmore, is just so much in favor of Buchanan. The Buchanan men see this; and hence their great anxiety in favor of the Fillmore movement. They know where the shoe pinches. They now greatly prefer having a man of your character go for Fillmore than for Buchanan, because they expect several to go with you, who would go for Fremont, if you were to go directly for Buchanan.”98

  On September 8 Lincoln wrote a form letter to the supporters of the American Party’s candidate arguing that Fillmore could only win if the election were thrown into the House of Representatives, where the former president might prevail as a compromise candidate. But that would never happen if Buchanan carried Illinois, whose electoral votes, when combined with those of the South and of the Democratic standard-bearer’s home state of Pennsylvania, would assure his election. Therefore, Fillmore backers in Illinois should vote for Frémont because Fillmore had no chance of carrying the state. “This is as plain as the adding up of the weights of three small hogs,” Lincoln declared.99 He sent this letter, marked “confidential,” to many “good, steady Fillmore men” throughout the state.100

  In Bloomington on September 16, Lincoln ridiculed Douglas’s popular sovereignty scheme, which “reminded him of the man who went into a restaurant and called for a ginger cake which was handed to him but spying the sign ‘Sweet Cider for sale’ he handed the cake back and said he would take a glass of cider in its place.” After drinking the cider he started to leave, whereupon “the keeper called to him to come back and pay for his cider.” The customer replied: “Cider? Why I gave you the cake for the cider.”

  “Well then pay me for the cake.”

  “Pay you for the cake. I didn’t have the cake.”

  “ ‘Well,’ replied the keeper scratching his head, ‘that is so but it seems to me I am cheated some way in the deal.’ ”

  “And so,” said Lincoln, “somebody, the North or South, is bound to be cheated by Mr. Douglass’ theory of squatter sovereignty.”101

  In mid-September Lincoln spent another week stumping southern Illinois. The unpopularity of the Frémont-Dayton ticket in Egypt meant “my efforts are more needed” there than elsewhere, he lamented.102 The challenge was daunting. Old Whigs leaning toward Frémont were dissuaded by Edward Bates of Missouri, who was especially effective in Morgan, Sangamon, and Madison counties, where the outcome of the election hung in the balance.

  The follo
wing month Lincoln addressed a rally in Ottawa, where he was introduced as “Our next United States Senator.”103 In Belleville, the largest city in Egypt and home to many German Americans, including Lieutenant-Governor Gustave Koerner, Lincoln “referred to the Germans and the noble position taken by them in just and dignified terms. When he called down the blessings of the Almighty on their heads, a thrill of sympathy and pleasure ran through his whole audience.”104 Koerner, who introduced Lincoln to the crowd, recalled that he “spoke in an almost conversational tone, but with such earnestness and such deep feeling upon the questions of the day that he struck the hearts of all his hearers.” Saying that he had found “the Germans more enthusiastic for the cause of freedom than all other nationalities,” Lincoln “almost with tears in his eyes, broke out in the words: ‘God bless the Dutch!’ Everybody felt that he said this in the simplicity of his heart, using the familiar name of Dutch as the Americans do when amongst themselves. A smart politician would not have failed to say ‘Germans.’ But no one took offense.”105

  Soon thereafter a campaign encounter with another German won Lincoln a life-long devotee. In Pittsfield to deliver a speech, he called at the office of the Pike County Free Press to get some materials printed. The paper was edited by a young journalist, John G. Nicolay, who had helped arrange a political rally for Lincoln. Later that evening, as a member of the Republican committee, Nicolay was introduced to the speaker; that introduction changed his life. The young man became an enthusiastic admirer even before hearing the magnetic speech, which further strengthened his devotion to Lincoln. Four years later he would become Lincoln’s chief personal secretary.

  Nicolay’s fellow Germans struggled to balance their hatred of slavery with their revulsion against nativism. Traditionally Democrats, they despised the Kansas-Nebraska Act but loved its author, Douglas, for his opposition to the Know-Nothings. The Republicans’ choice of William Bissell sat well with the Germans, however. A leading Democrat had predicted in April that the “only danger we have to fear is that the Republicans will nominate Bissle, in which event our German vote may be endangered—We cannot persuade them that Bissle is not a Democrat and with a Catholic wife Know-Nothingism won’t take a good hold upon him.”106 To woo Illinois Germans, Lincoln urged the widespread dissemination of antislavery German newspapers and helped raise funds for the relief of Friedrich Hecker, a prominent German campaigner whose house had burned down in August.

  All the while the Democrats strove to pin the nativist label on the Republicans. In September, Lincoln heard rumors that Chicago Germans were deserting the party; “scared a little,” he anxiously asked Charles H. Ray if there were any truth in such reports.107 Despite this threat, the Republicans captured over half the German vote in November.

  The Democratic press also denounced Frémont supporters as “nigger-worshippers.” An account in the Joliet Signal of a Republican rally there on October 8 sarcastically observed that it “was a wonderful day for the niggers and nigger-worshippers of this county. Our city was literally filled with enthusiastic Fremonters.”108 The following week the Springfield Register declared: “Black republicanism not only teaches the doctrines of amalgamation with negroes, but it sets its negro advocates up to preach a dissolution of the confederacy. Can white men, who love their country, participate in this unholy work?”109 Another Democratic paper described the Republican program thus: “Down with the Foreigners and Up with the Darkies.… Imagine a big, burly, thick-lipped African crowding Gen. Shields away from the polls on election day! That is the practical working of the Fusion policy.”110 Democrats sang racist ditties like the following:

  Come Democrats and listen,

  And I will sing you a song.

  ’Tis all about the nigger-worshippers

  And it will not take me long.

  Fremont is on their platform,

  And their principles endorse,

  To worship niggers night and morn,

  And ride the Wooly Horse.111

  The Democrats’ tactics worked. Buchanan carried Illinois handily, winning 105,528 votes to Frémont’s 96,278 and Fillmore’s 37,531. Frémont received 74 percent of the vote in northern Illinois, 37 percent in the central part of the state, and 23 percent in Egypt (mostly from Germans living near St. Louis). Nationwide the Democratic nominee garnered 174 electoral votes to Frémont’s 114 and Fillmore’s 8; in the popular vote Buchanan won 45 percent of the ballots cast, Frémont 33 percent, and Fillmore 21 percent. Like Republicans throughout the North, the Frémonters of Illinois had failed to gain the support of either the conservative Whigs, who feared disunion, or the Know-Nothings, who believed the false charge that Frémont was a Catholic as well as the allegation that he was too radical on the slavery issue.

  Bissell, a moderate opponent of slavery who could not plausibly be accused of nativism, did far better than Frémont among the 1852 Scott voters, especially in southern and central Illinois. He won the governor’s race with 111,466 votes (47%) to his opponent’s 106,769 (45%). “This is glory enough for Ill[inoi]s,” Herndon crowed. “We Fremont men feel as if victory perched on our banner.”112 Despite this triumph, a conscience-stricken Bissell hesitated to take the oath of office, for in 1850 he had accepted Jefferson Davis’s challenge to a duel and was, he thought, ineligible to serve as governor because Illinois law disqualified from office-holding anyone who had issued or accepted a challenge to duel. Lincoln and other party leaders persuaded him to overcome his scruples and assume the governorship.

  Lincoln accurately ascribed Buchanan’s success to lack of cooperation among his opponents and to the Democrats’ race-baiting. Republicans, Lincoln told his political allies, “were without party history, party pride, or party idols,” and were merely “a collection of individuals, but recently in political hostility, one to another; and thus subject to all that distrust, and suspicion, and jealousy could do.” The Democrats enjoyed a significant advantage, for their ranks contained “old party and personal friends, jibing, and jeering, and framing deceitful arguments against us” while dodging the real issue. “We were constantly charged with seeking an amalgamation of the white and black races; and thousands turned from us, not believing the charge (no one believed it) but fearing to face it themselves.”113

  Taking a longer view, Lincoln hailed the election result as a milestone on the road to equal rights. “Our government rests in public opinion,” he told Republican banqueters in December. “Public opinion, on any subject, always has a ‘central idea,’ from which all its minor thoughts radiate. That ‘central idea’ in our political public opinion, at the beginning was, and until recently has continued to be, ‘the equality of men.’ And although it was always submitted patiently to whatever of inequality there seemed to be as matter of actual necessity, its constant working has been a steady progress towards the practical equality of all men.” Reiterating a theme he had stressed at the Bloomington convention six months earlier, Lincoln called the presidential contest “a struggle, by one party, to discard that central idea, and to substitute for it the opposite idea that slavery is right, in the abstract, the workings of which, as a central idea, may be the perpetuity of human slavery, and its extension to all countries and colors.” To promote the ideal of equality, the solid majority who opposed Buchanan must unite. Warming to his theme, Lincoln said, “Let every one who really believes, and is resolved, that free society is not, and shall not be, a failure, and who can conscientiously declare that in the past contest he has done only what he thought best—let every such one have charity to believe that every other one can say as much. Thus let bygones be bygones. Let past differences, as nothing be; and with steady eye on the real issue, let us reinaugurate the good old ‘central ideas’ of the Republic. We can do it. The human heart is with us—God is with us. We shall again be able not to declare, that ‘all States as States, are equal,’ nor yet that ‘all citizens as citizens are equal,’ but to renew the broader, better declaration, including both these and much more, that ‘all men a
re created equal.’ ”114

  This eloquent address helped clinch Lincoln’s reputation as the leader of Illinois’s Republicans. A correspondent of the Illinois State Journal declared: “There is no man upon whom they would so gladly confer the highest honors within their gift, and I trust an opportunity may not long be wanting which will enable them to place him in a station that seems to be by universal consent conceded to him, and which he is so admirably qualified by nature to adorn.”115

  To Noah Brooks, Lincoln expressed guarded hopes for the future. While “the Free Soil party is bound to win, in the long run,” it was not certain that its victory was imminent. “Everything depends on the course of the Democracy. There’s a big antislavery element in the Democratic party, and if we could get hold of that, we might possibly elect our man in 1860. But it’s doubtful—very doubtful. Perhaps we shall be able to fetch it by 1864; perhaps not.”116 Lincoln’s pessimism seemed justified in April 1857, when Republicans lost the Springfield municipal elections. “We quarreled over Temperance,” Herndon explained; “we ran some K[now] N[othing]s, and the Dutch to a man united against this proceeding: we are whipped badly.… We have learned a good lesson—do better next time.”117

  Newspapers would play a central role in building up the party. Anticipating the 1860 election, Lincoln and Frank Blair laid plans to have the Missouri Democrat of St. Louis, which had a large circulation in southern Illinois, become a Republican paper that year. The Louisville Journal would follow suit, as would an unnamed Virginia newspaper. All this was to seem coincidental and thus make the Republican Party appear strong and growing stronger. Lincoln also helped found the Republican Club of Springfield, organized by the photographer John G. Stewart, a friend of Robert Lincoln and a veteran of the Frémont campaign.