In addition to these challenges at home, Lincoln and the Illinois Republicans had to contend with the Eastern Republicans’ persistent enthusiasm for Douglas. Norman B. Judd, Wentworth, Herndon, and others kept praising Lincoln to their friends in the East. Alluding to Seward, Herndon asked Theodore Parker to “tell him to keep his fingers out of our fight—keep his wishes to himself, if he is for Douglas.”57 In March, Herndon visited Washington, New England, and the Middle Atlantic states, ostensibly as a mere sightseer, but in reality acting as his partner’s eyes and ears. (As president, Lincoln would dispatch his personal secretaries and many others on such missions.) Lincoln, though he professed a liking for Greeley, was personally “dejected” by the influential editor’s support of Douglas, saying (in substance), that the man “is not doing me, an old Republican and a tried antislavery man, right. He is talking up Douglas, an untrue and an untried man, a dodger, a wriggler, a tool of the South once and now a snapper at it—hope he will bite ’em good—but I don’t feel that it is exactly right to pull me down in order to elevate Douglas.… I wish that someone would put a flea in Greeley’s ear—see Trumbull, Sumner, Wilson, Seward, Parker, Garrison, Phillips, and others, and try and turn the currents in the right directions. These men ought to trust the tried and true men.”58
Taking the hint, Herndon packed his bags and headed for Washington. There he met with Douglas, who told him: “Give Mr. Lincoln my regards when you return, and tell him I have crossed the river and burned my boat.” He added “that he and the Republicans would be together soon.” From Trumbull, Herndon learned that some Eastern Republicans were scheming to betray their Illinois counterparts by supporting Douglas’s reelection bid. Rumor had it that Greeley, Seward, Weed, Henry Wilson, and Douglas had struck a bargain whereby the Little Giant pledged to support Seward for president in 1860 if the editor of the Tribune would back Douglas’s reelection in 1858. Evidently, the Little Giant in the winter of 1857 had agreed to help defeat the Lecompton Constitution in return for Greeley’s promise to back him and other anti-Lecompton Democrats for reelection.
In New York, Herndon called on Greeley, who, he reported, “evidently wants Douglas sustained and sent back to the Senate.” Greeley “talked bitterly—somewhat so—against the papers in Ill[inoi]s—and said they were fools.” When Herndon referred to the Little Giant as one who had “abused and betrayed” the North, Greeley replied: “Forget the past and sustain the righteous.” The “Republican standard is too high,” the editor declared; “we want something practical.” The party platform, in his view, was “too abstract” and “ought to be lowered—‘slid down.’ ”59
After returning home, Herndon informed Greeley that Illinois Republicans could not possibly support Douglas. Three months later, Herndon scoffed at Greeley’s belief that Douglas might join the Republicans: “Did Douglas ever give an inch in his whole political life?” he asked. “He is the most imperious and selfish man in America. He is the greatest liar in the world.”60 Herndon doubtless wrote in consultation with Lincoln, who did not directly communicate with Greeley in 1858.
Seward’s role in Illinois politics is not clear. Privately, he lauded Douglas and other anti-Lecompton Democrats: “God forbid that I should consent to see freedom wounded, because my own lead or even my own agency in saving it should be rejected. I will cheerfully cooperate with these new defenders of this sacred cause in Kansas, and I will award them all due praise … for their large share of merit in its deliverance.”61 Yet when publicly accused of supporting Douglas, Seward through his allies vehemently denied it. In the summer, Seward urged his Illinois friend Samuel L. Baker to visit the prominent Whig John Bell of Tennessee and get him to endorse Lincoln. Baker reported to Lincoln that “Seward & Weed both assured me they would do all they could to help us with money & otherwise.”62 In December 1858, Douglas, in conversation with Charles Henry Ray, spoke freely about his cooperation with Seward; Ray was convinced that the two men had struck a bargain the previous year.
Warned that Seward’s allies in Illinois might balk if Lincoln’s candidacy were regarded as an anti-Seward gesture, Lincoln scouted reports that Seward or Greeley actually conspired with Douglas. On June 1, Lincoln told Charles L. Wilson that Greeley might prefer Douglas over himself, but “I do not believe it is so, because of any secret arrangement with Douglas.” Rather, it was “because he thinks Douglas’ superior position, reputation, experience, and ability, if you please, would more than compensate for his lack of a pure republican position, and therefore, his re-election [would] do the general cause of republicanism, more good, than would the election of any one of our better undistinguished pure republicans.” Lincoln extended this assessment to include Seward, speculating that the New Yorker “feels about as Greeley does; but, not being a newspaper editor, his feeling, in this respect, is not much manifested.” He assured Wilson that neither he nor his friends had “been setting stakes against Gov. Seward. No combination has been made with me, or proposed to me, in relation to the next Presidential candidate.”63
Although he did not write to Greeley, Lincoln actively corresponded with Illinois Republicans, promoting unity and giving advice about increasing the party’s strength in the legislature, which would choose a senator early in 1859. Perhaps at Lincoln’s bidding, his friend Jesse K. Dubois urged Republicans in northern Illinois to support a moderate platform, lest they drive off potential supporters in Egypt. Lincoln implored Wentworth’s enemies in Chicago to stop criticizing the mayor, warning that “the unrelenting warfare made upon him, is injuring our cause.”64
Lincoln denied that former Democrats like Wentworth were more likely than former Whigs to desert the Republican Party and support Douglas. There were, after all, some notable examples of pro-Douglas Whigs, among them President Jonathan Blanchard of Knox College, Buckner S. Morris, James W. Singleton, Usher F. Linder, Anthony Thornton, T. Lyle Dickey, and Edwin B. Webb, as well as Cyrus, Ninian, and Benjamin S. Edwards. Even Lincoln’s old friend Anson G. Henry supported the Little Giant, and John Todd Stuart declared that he sided with Douglas on the slavery issue, though out of friendship for his former partner he would neither campaign for the senator nor vote for legislators in November. In February, Simeon Francis wrote Douglas a fan letter.
Lincoln’s modesty in promoting his own candidacy disappointed Norman B. Judd, chairman of the state Republican Party, who declared on April 19: “If Lincoln expects to be Senator he must make a personal canvass for it in the center of the State. So I advised him two months ago—but I do not hear of any fruits.”65 Some northern Illinois Republicans had begun to argue that since Trumbull of Belleville was already in the senate, it would be fitting if a Northerner like W. B. Ogden or Elihu B. Washburne rather than Lincoln should be the party’s candidate to replace Douglas. When Boone County Republicans asked if he wanted a formal endorsement for senator, Lincoln declined: “I suppose it is hardly necessary that any expression of preference for U.S. Senator, should be given at the county, or other local conventions and meetings. When the Republicans of the whole State get together at the State convention, the thing will then be thought of, and something will or will not be done, according as the united judgment may dictate.”66
On April 21, fear that Douglas might seduce Illinois Republicans all but evaporated at the Democratic state convention in Springfield. There the delegates endorsed the party’s 1856 platform calling for popular sovereignty, berated Republicans harshly, and failed to denounce the Buchanan administration for supporting the Lecompton Constitution and for dismissing pro-Douglas government employees. This action alienated antislavery men who could have been won over by the Little Giant. Republicans rejoiced at the “hard blows, and withering strokes” that the pro-Buchanan and pro-Douglas factions administered to one another. “Oh what a sight!” Herndon exclaimed. “Plunderers of the People now at bloody war with each other over the spoils.” Douglas “cut his own throat with his own hands,” Herndon observed; “he cut himself loose from the Southern Democracy,
and … tore loose from, all Republican sympathy.”67 The disaffected pro-administration delegates, constituting roughly one-tenth of the total and calling themselves National Democrats, bolted the convention and resolved to hold a conclave of their own in June. Sneered at by their detractors as Buchaneers and Danites, they received patronage from the administration as it removed many of Douglas’s supporters from office.
The evening of the Democrats’ turbulent convention, Lincoln met in Springfield with two dozen leading Republicans to discuss strategy. Everyone in attendance was optimistic about the party’s chances and made it clear that they had no intention of supporting Douglas. They expressed great indignation at the course of Anson Burlingame and deplored the wavering of some Illinois congressmen, including Washburne. When some voiced concern that ex-Democrats in their party would desert Lincoln, George T. Brown reassured them that he had spoken with several Democrats-turned-Republican, all of whom vowed their determination to back Lincoln. Brown added that Trumbull’s election in 1855 made it morally imperative that he and other former Democrats in the party support Lincoln. Anxiety over Washburne’s reported apostasy was dissipated by State Representative Cyrenius B. Denio and Charles H. Ray, to whom the Galena congressman scoffed at rumors that he supported Douglas’s reelection. Lincoln was quite disturbed by the controversy over Washburne and assured Ray that he had given no credence to the rumors. He maintained that both Wentworth and Washburne were dependable.
Lincoln rejoiced that the badly divided Democrats left Springfield on April 21 “in not a very encouraged state of mind,” while the Republicans with whom he had conferred “parted in high spirits. They think if we do not triumph the fault will be our own, and so I really think.”68 The following day the Republicans agreed to hold their convention on June 16 at Springfield. As Herndon explained, “Probably, had not Douglas called his convention, or had he not taken the Cincinnati platform as the groundwork of his future course, then it is likely that a kind of compromise would have taken place, but now and on his present grounds—never.”69
Lincoln denied that he and his colleagues were plotting to make common cause with the pro-Buchanan National Democrats in order to defeat Douglas. “Of course the Republicans do not try to keep the common enemy from dividing; but, so far as I know, or believe, they will not unite with either branch of the division,” he said, adding that “it is difficult for me to see, on what ground they could unite; but it is useless to spend words, there is simply nothing of it. It is a trick of our enemies to try to excite all sorts of suspicions and jealousies amongst us.”70 The following month, Lincoln declared that “if being rather pleased to see a division in the ranks of the democracy, and not doing anything to prevent it” is proof of a conspiracy, then the accusation was valid. “But if it be intended to charge that there is any alliance by which there is to be any concession of principle on either side, or furnishing of the sinews, or partition of offices, or swopping of votes, to any extent; or the doing of anything, great or small, on the one side, for a consideration, express or implied, on the other, no such thing is true.”71
In fact, Republicans did work behind the scenes to promote discord in the Democratic ranks. Herndon freely acknowledged that the “Ill[inoi]s State Journal, and each and every Republican, is trying to create the split” between the Douglas and Buchanan forces; “we want to make it wider and deeper—hotter and more impassable. Political hatred—deep seated opposition is what is so much desired, and if we can do this between the worshipers of Buck & Dug we will effect it.”72 Lincoln was kept ignorant of such machinations. Herndon reported to Trumbull that his partner “does not know the details of how we get along. I do, but he does not. That kind of thing does not suit his tastes, nor does it suit me, yet I am compelled to do it—do it because I cannot get rid of it.”73 Since his father and brother staunchly supported Buchanan, Herndon was unusually well placed to learn the doings of the National Democrats.
Preserving Republican Unity
A threat to Republican unity emerged in early June when disgruntled Conservatives schemed to defeat Congressman Owen Lovejoy, whom the Illinois State Register called a “notorious nigger worshipping abolitionist.”74 Spearheaded by some of Lincoln’s close friends—including David Davis, Leonard Swett, T. Lyle Dickey, and Ward Hill Lamon—the anti-Lovejoy movement attracted conservatives like Josh Whitmore, who declared: “I am not only mad, but tired of this Nigger Worshipping. If Lovejoy is to be the nominee, I am ready to vote for a Douglas Democrat.”75 Lincoln, who received appeals from abolitionists to thwart the plot, warned Lovejoy that “[y]our danger has been that [the] democracy would wheedle some republican to run against you without a nomination, relying mainly on democratic votes. I have seen the strong men who could make the most trouble in that way, and find that they view the thing in the proper light, and will not consent to be so used.” But, he added, “they have been urgently tempted by the enemy; and I think it is still the point for you to guard most vigilantly.”76 When Lovejoy’s renomination seemed inevitable, Lincoln counseled Ward Hill Lamon not to support an independent candidate, for such a move would “result in nothing but disaster all round,” assuring a Democratic victory, injuring Lincoln’s chances for a senate seat, and destroying the reputation of the bolters’ nominee.77 In response to an attack on David Davis, who was accused of advising friends not to vote for Lovejoy, Lincoln wrote a pseudonymous letter to the Chicago Press and Tribune defending the judge: “Davis expects Lovejoy to be nominated, and intends to vote for him, and has so stated without hesitation or reserve.” Furthermore, Davis disapproved of “a scheme concocted by certain influential persons, to bring out a stump candidate without a nomination, for the purpose of ensuring Lovejoy’s defeat.”78 In thanking Lincoln, Davis explained that a bolt would probably have occurred if delegates had not feared that it would harm Lincoln’s senatorial prospects. When chastised for supporting an abolitionist who hurt the party’s chances statewide, Lincoln replied: “It is the people, and not me, who want Lovejoy. The people have not consulted me on the subject. If I had opposed Lovejoy, I doubtless should have repelled voters from among our own friends, and gained none from Douglas’ friends.”79 Lincoln was right about Lovejoy’s popularity; in November, he won reelection by the lopsided vote of 22,373 to 14,998, a more decisive victory than he had achieved in 1856.
Lovejoy’s candidacy drove T. Lyle Dickey from both the Republican Party and Lincoln, with whom he had been close since the 1830s. Born and raised in Kentucky, Dickey had been a devoted Henry Clay Whig with an abhorrence of abolitionism. When in August he announced his defection to the Democrats, Republicans expressed regret. Clifton H. Moore told Lincoln that Dickey “is to[o] good a man to loose” but added that he “will do us less harm” as “an open enemy” than he would “in pretending to be a republican & go growling about trying to sour every body.”80 Four years earlier, Dickey had told Lincoln, “I love you and want you to be a U.S. Senator”; now he denounced Lincoln for abandoning Henry Clay Whiggery.81
As the date for the Republican state convention approached, Lincoln grew optimistic. “I think our prospects gradually, and steadily, grow better,” he told Washburne on May 15. “There is still some effort to make trouble out of ‘Americanism.’ If that were out of the way, for all the rest, I believe we should be ‘out of the woods.’ ”82 Less sanguine Republicans feared that many of Illinois’s 37,351 Fillmore voters might make common cause with Douglas on a “Union-saving” platform.
Douglas remained a difficult and dangerous foe. Lincoln worried about his attempts to woo Republicans while holding on to Democrats by playing down his differences with the Buchanan administration. When in April the Little Giant refused to support the English bill (a Democratic compromise measure designed to heal the breach created during the fight over the Lecompton Constitution), Lincoln noted with satisfaction that many Illinois Democrats were “annoyed” and “begin to think there is a ‘negro in the fence,’—that Douglas really wants to have a fuss with
the President;—that sticks in their throats.”83 To Lincoln, Joseph Medill expressed “great alarm at the prospect [in the] North [of Illinois] of Republicans going over to Douglas, on the idea that Douglas is going to assume steep free-soil ground, and furiously assail the administration on the stump when he comes home.” Lincoln inferred that there “certainly is a double game being played some how.” The pro-Buchanan National Democrats were slated to hold a convention at Springfield in the second week of June. “Possibly,” Lincoln mused, “even probably—Douglas is temporarily deceiving the President in order to crush out the 8th of June convention here.” But he predicted the Little Giant’s attempt to please both factions would fail: “Unless he plays his double game more successfully than we have often seen done, he can not carry many republicans North, without at the same time losing a larger number of his old friends South.”84
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