Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Prominent New England Republicans like Henry Wilson, Truman Smith, Nathaniel P. Banks, and Anson Burlingame sided with Greeley. On the floor of the House of Representatives, Massachusetts Congressman Burlingame called Douglas “gallant and gifted” and urged voters to stand by him and his Democratic allies “without distinction of party.”19 (In December 1858, Burlingame would express gratitude to Douglas Democrats for helping him win reelection.)

  Along with Greeley’s editorials, Burlingame’s speech—the first pro-Douglas public feeler by a Republican congressman—infuriated his party colleagues in Illinois. Contemptuously Lincoln referred to the Massachusetts congressman as “Sister Burlingame.” “There seems to be a considerable notion pervading the brains of political wet nurses at the East,” observed the Chicago Press and Tribune in response to Burlingame, “that the barbarians of Illinois cannot take care of themselves.” Caustically the paper remarked that “Mr. Burlingame would look well on the stump with a Douglas orator whose every other sentence contained a whisky-inspired jeer at the ‘Black Republicans.’ … If the Republicans of Illinois should now sink all party differences and reelect Mr. Douglas, their party would be so disintegrated that the State would be lost to freedom in 1860, or if saved, saved only because he (Douglas) allowed it to be saved. The Republican party would be wholly at his mercy.”20

  Lincoln, the obvious candidate to challenge the Little Giant for his senate seat, indignantly asked Lyman Trumbull, “What does the New-York Tribune mean by it’s constant eulogising, and admiring, and magnifying [of] Douglas? Does it, in this, speak the sentiments of the republicans at Washington? Have they concluded that the republican cause, generally, can be best promoted by sacraficing us here in Illinois?” Bitterly he added, “If so we would like to know it soon; it will save us a great deal of labor to surrender at once.”21

  Trumbull wondered how the Republicans ought to respond to the Little Giant’s revolt. “Should Douglas be driven out of the African democracy, as I think he will be, what are we to do with him? You know the ‘man who won the elephant’ found it difficult to dispose of him.”22 He told Lincoln: “I do not feel just now either like embracing Douglas, or assailing him. As far as he goes I believe him to be right, though his course now is utterly inconsistent with what it was a year ago.”23 Trumbull added that he had “seen the difficulty which the laudation of Douglas by Republicans was likely to occasion us in Ill[inoi]s” and had “remonstrated with some of our friends about it; but his course was so unexpected to many & was looked upon as such a God send that they could not refrain from giving him more credit than he deserves.” Some Republicans in Washington “act like fools in running after and flattering Douglas. He encourages it and invites such men as Wilson, Seward, Burlingame, [Marcus J.] Parrott, &c., to come & confer with him & they seem wonderfully pleased to go.”24 Republican Senator James Dixon of Connecticut wanted to establish yet another new party, with Douglas at its head, to overthrow the Southern-dominated Democracy. The Little Giant encouraged such courtship, telling Senator Henry Wilson “that he hoped ‘the Republicans would do as little as possible about Candidates for Eighteen sixty. Let the Charleston convention [of the national Democratic Party] be held, and when they have made their ticket we will all combine and crush it into powder.’ ”25 Alluding to these politicos (especially Seward), Chicago mayor John Wentworth, known as Long John because he was 6’9” tall, warned Lincoln: “you are sold for the Senate by men who are drinking the wine of Douglass at Washington.”26

  Douglas later denied consorting with the Republicans, though abundant evidence suggests that he did. Several times he informed prominent Republicans that he had severed his ties with the Democrats, that he had “checked his baggage through,” that “he had crossed the Rubicon and burned his boats,” that “hereafter he should be found in the opposition to the South.” On a map he pointed out how his plan to have the Pacific Railroad run southwest from the Missouri River would facilitate the influx of so many settlers that slavery could never take hold along its route. He also assured Republicans that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was essentially an antislavery statute.27 Anson Burlingame, Schuyler Colfax, and Frank Blair often met with Douglas at his house to hold private conversations during which the senator inveighed against Southern high-handedness. Colfax described at length a three-hour interview he and Burlingame had with Douglas on December 14, 1857. Blair also acknowledged that those meetings took place. The Little Giant asked Pennsylvania Congressman John Covode to request Trumbull to win the backing of Illinois Republicans for his reelection.

  Evidently speaking for his law partner, William Herndon protested to Congressman Elihu B. Washburne about rumors “that Illinois was to be chaffered for, and huckstered off without our consent, and against our will:—that we were to get Treason and the Traitor as the consideration for the sale—that Douglas was to be elevated to the Senate again over the heads of long-pure and well tried Republicans.” In tones reminiscent of Lincoln’s heated complaint about John J. Hardin’s attempt to cheat him out of the nomination for the U.S. House a decade earlier, Herndon insisted that Illinoisans “want to govern ourselves ‘in our own way.’ We want the man that we want, and have him, and him alone.… We in Illinois know pretty well who the pimps of traf[f]ic are. N[ew] York—Massachusetts—may sell their own men just as they please, but Illinois is not for sale. We are not willing to be sacrificed for a fiction.” If the Republicans of Illinois were to run Douglas as their candidate for the senate, “the masses would drag us from power and grind us to powder.” The Little Giant’s “abuse of us as Whigs—as Republicans—as men in society, and as individuals, has been so slanderous—dirty—low—long, and continuous, that we cannot soon forgive, and can never forget.” If Douglas were to embrace the antislavery cause, “then it is sufficient time to ask us in Illinois to give up the great & honorable, and grab—raise the mean and undivine.”28

  In addition to wooing members of Congress, Douglas sent an emissary to ask the editor of the Chicago Press and Tribune, Charles H. Ray, if he would support the Little Giant for reelection as a Republican. “We are almost confounded here by his anomalous position,” Ray told Trumbull, “and know not how to treat him and his overtures to the Republican party.”29 In January, O. M. Hatch, the tall, lean, and affable secretary of state of Illinois, noted that party leaders “concluded to Keep cool for the present, and see what might be developed in Congress.”30 Congressman Elihu B. Washburne allegedly visited Ray at the behest of Horace Greeley seeking support for Douglas. After some discussion, Ray and other editors rejected Greeley’s overture. Ray urged Trumbull to “tell our friends in the House [presumably including Washburne], who may be more zealous than discreet, that we in Illinois have not delegated our powers to them, and that we may not ratify bargains that they make—in a word, that among the inducements which they hold out to the ‘distinguished Senator’ to ensure the continuance of his fight with the Administration, they must not hold up the Senatorship as the prize of his defection. I take it, that it is a foregone conclusion that Abm. Lincoln will be the next Republican candidate for Mr. Douglas’ seat, and that he will occupy it if we have a majority, or, that we must make up our minds to a fight.”31

  It is not clear if Washburne actually lobbied on behalf of the Little Giant. According to a correspondent of Long John Wentworth, he did. When Lincoln mentioned this rumor to the Galena congressman, he emphatically denied it, though he did tell Herndon in April: “I have said, God speed him [Douglas]. I am rejoiced to see him laboring so manfully in a direction to make some amends for the injury he has brought upon the country. He is doing a grand service for the republican party, and for one, while he pursues his present course, I shall not lay a straw in his path. He is fighting this Lecompton swindle in all its phases, with boldness and determination. If things go on, as it now seems inevitable, if he be not with us, a vast number of his followers will be, and hence I cannot see the wisdom of abusing him, or them, as matters stand now. I have no fears that
the republican party is to be swallowed by them. I say leave open wide the doors and invite all to come on to our platform and greet them with kind words. Our party is not so large but what it will hold a few more.”32

  Both Herndon and his partner ignored insinuations that Washburne was flirting with Douglas. Lincoln speculated to the congressman that the rumor was probably based on “some misconstruction, coupled with a high degree of sensitiveness,” and assured him: “I am satisfied you have done no wrong.”33

  Lincoln could not, however, share Washburne’s enthusiasm for Douglas. To Lincoln it appeared obvious that the Little Giant, though opposing Buchanan on a matter of fact (i.e., whether the Lecompton Constitution truly reflected the views of most Kansans), continued to side with the president on matters of general policy. In May, Lincoln told a friend: “there remains all the difference there ever was between Judge Douglas & the Republicans—they insisting the Congress shall, and he insisting that congress shall not, keep slavery out of the Ter[r]itories before & up to the time they form State constitutions.” By making common cause to fight the Lecompton Constitution, neither the Illinois senator nor the Republicans “conceded anything which was ever in dispute between them.”34

  Four months earlier the Springfield Journal had run an editorial, which Lincoln may well have written, questioning Douglas’s sincerity. During the 1856–1857 session of Congress, the Little Giant had seemed unconcerned about fair play in Kansas: “if he did not cheer on the Border Ruffians in their work of devastation and plunder, we all know how he reviled and defamed the Free State men and Republicans, not only as the authors of these outrages, but as seeking to prolong the troubles in Kansas.” Republicans “most cheerfully give him all due credit for his recent condemnation of the Lecompton Constitution; but we demand to know why he did not lift up his voice in defense of popular sovereignty in Kansas, when Lawrence, Leavenworth and Osawatomie were ravaged, when he knew, or ought to have known, that till the present time there has been scarcely an office-holder in the whole Territory who was not notorious, during all the troubles there, as connected with the bandits who robbed and murdered the people, fleeing from their burning homes. He knows that Mr. Buchanan, instead of handling these men as pirates and outlaws, has appointed them to office in the midst of a people they have pillaged.”35

  While some of Lincoln’s friends dismissed Douglas’s rebellion as an election-year gimmick, others were truly tempted to ally with anti-Lecompton Democrats. Pascal P. Enos told Henry Wilson that although he supported Lincoln for the senate, he did not feel bound to oppose Douglas “under all circumstances.”36 In March, Ozias M. Hatch and Jesse K. Dubois asked Lincoln about overtures being made by Douglas’s allies. In reply, Lincoln urged them to resist the senator’s siren song: “we must never sell old friends to buy old enemies. Let us have a State convention, in which we can have a full consultation; and till which, let us all stand firm, making no committals as to strange and new combinations.”37

  In December 1857, Lincoln prepared a speech angrily warning Republicans not to flock to Douglas’s banner, no matter how much they might admire his attacks on the Buchanan administration. He scorned the demagoguery of the Little Giant, whom he called “the most dangerous enemy of liberty, because the most insidious one.”38 He was especially incensed at Douglas’s remarks in June 1857, when the Little Giant charged that whoever believed that blacks were included in the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that “all men are created equal” must necessarily “license him [the black man] to marry a white woman.” According to Douglas, the Founding Fathers “had witnessed the sad and melancholy results of the mixture of the races in Mexico, South America and Central America, where the Spanish, from motives of policy, had admitted the negro and other inferior races to citizenship, and consequently to political and social amalgamation. The demoralization and degradation which prevailed in the Spanish and French colonies, where no distinction on account of color or race was tolerated, operated as a warning to our Revolutionary fathers to preserve the purity of the white race.” The Founders understood “the great natural law which declares that amalgamation between superior and inferior races brings their posterity down to the lower level of the inferior, but never elevates them to the high level of the superior race.”39

  (In the 1858 campaign, Douglas would assert that the “experience of the world in all ages proves that the negro is incapable of self-government in all climes,” prompting a Republican paper to ask “what the experience of the world has to say on the subject of French, or German, or Russian, or Irish, or Italian capacity for self-government?”40 In that campaign, Douglas was also to argue that all presidents from the time of Washington had implicitly endorsed the proposition that blacks were not citizens by refusing to grant them passports.)

  Lincoln also condemned a resolution (allegedly written by Douglas) endorsed by Morgan County Democrats, who declared their opposition “to placing negroes on an equality with white men, by allowing them to vote and hold office, and serve on juries, and testify in the courts against white men, and marry white women, as advocated by those who claim that the declaration of Independence asserts that white men and negroes were created equal by the Almighty.”41 Lincoln further deplored the Little Giant’s allegation of November 1857, that “Black Republicans … will allow the blacks to push us from our sidewalk and elbow us out of car seats and stink us out of our places of worship.”42

  Douglas’s indifference to the evils of slavery, which contrasted starkly with the Republican view that the peculiar institution was “not only morally wrong, but a ‘deadly poison’ in a government like ours, professedly based on the equality of men,” aroused Lincoln’s ire. Republicans, he advised, should not “oppose any measure merely because Judge Douglas proposes it.” Indeed, they ought to join him in assaulting the Lecompton Constitution, which “should be throttled and killed as hastily and as heartily as a rabid dog.” But the “combined charge of Nebraskaism, and Dred Scottism must be repulsed, and rolled back. The deceitful cloak of ‘self-government’ wherewith ‘the sum of all villanies’ [i.e., slavery] seeks to protect and adorn itself, must be torn from it’s hateful carcass.”43

  Most Illinois Republicans agreed that Douglas was hardly a fit champion of their cause, no matter how vehemently he combated the Lecompton Constitution. The Chicago Press and Tribune said that in battling the Lecompton fraud Douglas was simply “an efficient co-worker, and we shall treat him accordingly.” The Little Giant “has recanted none of his political heresies, nor has he given evidence of any intention of doing so.… [I]t is asking too much of the freemen of Illinois … to support a man for the Senate who, if not avowedly a champion of slavery expansion, gives all his influence to it, and against the personal and political rights of free white people who depend upon their own honest industry for a livelihood.”44 State Auditor Jesse K. Dubois remarked: “It is asking too much for human nature … to now surrender to Judge Douglas after having driven him by force of Public opinion to do what he has done to quietly let him step foremost in our ranks now and make us all take back seats.”45 The Illinois State Journal spoke bluntly: Republicans “intend to stand firmly by their own colors and let the Douglas men ‘skin their own skunks.’ ”46

  Many of the party faithful believed that Lincoln had earned the senatorial nomination. They regarded him as their most capable leader and felt that it was only fair to reward the magnanimity he had shown by bowing to Trumbull in the 1855 senate contest. The Clinton Central Transcript, observing that a “penitent prostitute may be received into the church but she should not lead the choir,” speculated that if the Republicans had no champion like Lincoln, a few might “lend a hand in again electing Judge Douglas.” But Lincoln deserved the party’s allegiance, and Republicans “do not feel like sacrificing the gallant Lincoln upon the shrine of the man who turned traitor upon treason, even though his future should be indorsed by Greeley & Co.”47 An editor in Dixon agreed: “We want no such ominous wooden horses run
into our camp. All eyes are turned toward Mr. Lincoln as … the unanimous choice of the people.”48 Charles Henry Ray urged Republicans to shun Douglas, insisting that “Abe Lincoln cannot be overlooked—should not be.”49 Gustave Koerner recommended that Republicans make the Douglasites “understand, that Lincoln is our man” and that “we will try every means to elect men favorable to him.”50 A Chicago Republican told Greeley, “We all think more highly of Douglas than we did a year ago, but still we hope to be pardoned for preferring one of the ‘truest and most effective advocates of Republican principles’ [i.e., Lincoln] to the Little Giant.”51 Heatedly John M. Palmer protested against the “Wall Street Operation” by which “Lincoln to whom we are under great obligations and all of our men … are to be kicked to one side and we are to throw up our caps for Judge Douglass and he very coolly tells us all the time that we are abolitionists and Negro Worshippers and that he accepts our votes as a favor to us.”52 In support of his candidacy, Long John Wentworth’s paper said: “Lincoln has worked hard and had nothing.”53

  Democrats tried to sow dissention and to alarm voters by alleging that despite his public praise for Lincoln, Wentworth was secretly maneuvering to win the nomination himself. “Under no possible circumstances will Wentworth allow Lincoln to be chosen,” declared Douglas’s organ, the Chicago Times, whose editor reported that Wentworth “openly declares that Lincoln can never get elected.”54 The Illinois State Register warned that “the Chicago autocrat of black republicanism will have complete control of a majority of the next legislature, and if that party should have a majority … he will control the nominations of its caucus.”55 In truth, though Wentworth may have harbored senatorial ambitions, he realized that his chances were poor, for his abrasive, arrogant personality had alienated many Republicans as well as former allies in the Democratic Party. He therefore did nothing to promote his own candidacy. Lincoln bemoaned the “everlasting croaking about Wentworth” in the Democratic press, which sought to frighten men into supporting Democratic candidates for the legislature because the Republicans might choose Wentworth senator. When Democrats also alleged that Lincoln had gained Wentworth’s support by agreeing to back Long John for governor, Lincoln denied it. “I am not directly or indirectly committed to any one” for governor, he told Charles L. Wilson. “I have had many free conversations with John Wentworth; but he never dropped a remark that led me to suspect that he wishes to be Governor. Indeed, it is due to truth to say that while he has uniformly expressed himself for me, he has never hinted at any condition.”56