#9 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. Toward the end of the 1858 campaign, Abraham Lincoln worried about election fraud. In this letter, he addressed the issue by warning Republican state party chairman Norman B. Judd that Democrats were sending Irish immigrant voters across central Illinois to cast illegal ballots. Lincoln offered what he called “a bare suggestion,” namely that Republicans might themselves consider employing a “detective” who could control the Irish voters –though by what means he did not specify. (By Matthew Pinsker)
“Like many of his party colleagues, Lincoln anticipated electoral fraud. To Norman B. Judd he expressed ‘a high degree of confidence that we shall succeed, if we are not over-run with fraudulent votes to a greater extent than usual.’ In Naples he had noticed several Irishmen dressed as railroad workers carrying carpetbags; he reported that hundreds of others were rumored to be leaving districts where their votes were superfluous in order to settle briefly in hotly contested counties. To thwart this so-called ‘colonization’ of voters, Lincoln offered Judd ‘a bare suggestion,’ namely, that where ‘there is a known body of these voters, could not a true man, of the ‘detective’ class, be introduced among them in disguise, who could, at the nick of time, control their votes? Think this over. It would be a great thing, when this trick is attempted upon us, to have the saddle come up on the other horse.’ It is not entirely clear what Lincoln intended; the ‘true man of the detective class’ was perhaps a bag man to distribute bribes.’
—Michael Burlingame, A Life, vol. 1 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1493
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Hon. N. B. Judd Rushville, Oct. 20, 1858
My dear Sir: I now have a high degree of confidence that we shall succeed, if we are not over-run with fraudulent votes to a greater extent than usual. On alighting from the cars and walking three squares at Naples on Monday, I met about fifteen Celtic gentlemen, with black carpet-sacks in their hands.
I learned that they had crossed over from the Rail-road in Brown county, but where they were going no one could tell. They dropped in about the doggeries, and were still hanging about when I left. At Brown County yesterday I was told that about four hundred of the same sort were to be brought into Schuyler, before the election, to work on some new Railroad; but on reaching here I find Bagby thinks that is not so.
What I most dread is that they will introduce into the doubtful districts numbers of men who are legal voters in all respects except residence and who will swear to residence and thus put it beyond our power to exclude them. They can & I fear will swear falsely on that point, because they know it is next to impossible to convict them of Perjury upon it.
Now the great remaining part of the campaign, is finding a way to head this thing off. Can it be done at all?
I have a bare suggestion. When there is a known body of these voters, could not a true man, of the “detective” class, be introduced among them in disguise, who could, at the nick of time, control their votes? Think this over. It would be a great thing, when this trick is attempted upon us, to have the saddle come up on the other horse.
I have talked, more fully than I can write, to Mr. Scripps, and he will talk to you.
If we can head off the fraudulent votes we shall carry the day. Yours as ever A. LINCOLN
#15 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. In the summer of 1854, Abraham Lincoln was a 45-year-old attorney and former one-term US congressman living in Springfield, Illinois. However, in this letter to Richard Yates, his local congressman and fellow Whig, Lincoln acted and sounded more like a political party boss than anything else. He used this letter to organize Yates’s announcement for his campaign for reelection to Congress. Lincoln wanted to avoid holding a convention to secure Yates’s renomination because the partisan situation that summer was in turmoil, not only over the controversy surrounding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but also because of the rise of anti-immigrant nativism. Lincoln made reference to coordinating with those so-called “Know Nothings,” in this letter by referring to their local leader, Benjamin S. Edwards, whom Lincoln deemed “entirely satisfied.” The newspapers did announce Yates’s availability the next week, though without mentioning the Whig Party label. He was ultimately defeated in the November 1854 midterm elections. (By Matthew Pinsker)
“Feeling again the joy of political combat, he devoted all his time to the anti-Nebraska cause, except for his necessary commitments to court cases. He became, in effect, Yates’s campaign manager, spending hours conferring with the Whig candidate and advising him on tactics. Learning that English settlers in Morgan County were disturbed by reports that Yates was a Know-Nothing, he drafted a letter denying the charge, which could be distributed ‘at each precinct where any considerable number of the foreign citizens, german as well as english—vote.’ When he heard that Democrats were whispering that Yates, though professing to be a temperate man, was a secret drinker, he recognized that the rumor might cost the Whigs the large prohibitionist vote and sought to kill the allegation. ‘I have never seen him drink liquor, not act, or speak, as if he had been drinking, nor smelled it on his breath,’ he wrote. But then–almost as if he realized that the future would show that Yates did indulge in liquor, to the point of being intoxicated when he was inaugurated as governor of Illinois in 1861—Lincoln carefully explained his own position to a friend: ‘Other things being equal, I would much prefer a temperate man, to an intemperate one; still I do not make my vote depend absolutely upon the question of whether a candidate does or does not taste liquor.'”
—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 171
I am disappointed at not having seen or heard from you since I met you more than a week ago at the railroad depot here. I wish to have the matter we spoke of settled and working to its consummation. I understand that our friend B. S. Edwards is entirely satisfied now, and when I can assure myself of this perfectly I would like, by your leave, to get an additional paragraph into the Journal, about as follows:
“To-day we place the name of Hon. Richard Yates at the head of our columns for reelection as the Whig candidate for this congressional district. We do this without consultation with him and subject to the decision of a Whig convention, should the holding of one be deemed necessary; hoping, however, there may be unanimous acquiescence without a convention.”
#16 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. In the summer of 1846, Abraham Lincoln was a Whig candidate for a seat in the US Congress. He was competing against Democratic nominee Peter Cartwright, a well-known Methodist minister who had been one of the earlier settlers of Sangamon County. Despite national attention on the Mexican War, this local race seemed to focus on more personal issues, such as Lincoln’s apparently unorthodox religious beliefs. In this handbill, distributed to voters and published in local newspapers (both before and AFTER the election, at Lincoln’s insistence), candidate Lincoln denied that he was an “open scoffer at Christianity” but admitted that he was not a church member and that he had once argued privately for a kind of deistic fatalism, what he called the “Doctrine of Necessity.” The explosive charges did not prevent Lincoln from defeating Cartwright and securing a term in Congress. (By Matthew Pinsker)
“This statement appeared less than forthcoming to some residents of the Seventh District. One of them said of Lincoln’s ‘lawyer like declaration’ that in ‘war, politics and religion, a ruse is admissible.’ In this document, Lincoln seemed to make two different claims: that he never believed in infidel doctrines, and that he never publicly espoused them. If the former were true, the latter would be superfluous; if the former were untrue, the latter would be irrelevant. Moreover, his reference to the doctrine of necessity was a dodge, for he was accused of infidelity, not fatalism. In addition, his assertion that he had ‘never denied the truth of the Scriptures’ is belied by the testimony of friends, as is the implication that he was skeptical only in his early years. After moving to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln continued expressing the unorthodox views he had proclaimed in New Salem.”
“Lincoln’s Democratic opponent was Peter Cartwright, the celebrated Methodist circuit rider, famed alike for his muscular Christianity and for his devotion to Jacksonian principles. Though Cartwright was personally popular, he was not an effective political campaigner, and his contest with Lincoln stirred little enthusiasm among voters. Indeed, there was so little interest in the campaign that newspapers only occasionally reported public appearances by either candidate and gave no extended accounts for their speeches. Toward the end of the campaign, growing desperate, Cartwright, in the words of one Whig, ‘sneaked through this part of the district after Lincoln, and grossly misinterpreted him’ by asserting that he was an infidel. Troubled that this accusation, which was similar to charges that had been raised in previous elections, might succeed in ‘deceiving some honest men,’ especially in the northern counties of the district where he was less well known, Lincoln published a little handbill answering Cartwright’s charges . . . Cartwright’s charge obviously had little effect. On August 3 the voters of the Seventh District elected Lincoln by an unprecedented majority.”
“In all except the most confidential company, Lincoln preferred not to talk about religion at all. And the more social and political prominence he acquired (or, in less friendly terms, the more he identified with the Whig Junto), the less ‘enthusiastic’ he allowed himself to be ‘in his infidelity.’ James Matheny noted that ‘as he grew older he grew more discrete—didn’t talk much before Strangers about his religion.’ And he would not have in 1846, either, if his Democratic opponent in the Seventh District congressional race had not decided to make an issue of it . . . Nothing better illustrates just how sensitive Lincoln was about discussions of his ‘infidelity’ than his decision on July 31, 1846, less than a week before the election, to issue a public handbill, replying to Cartwright’s charges . . . It [the handbill] was clearly aimed at damping down Cartwright’s ‘whispering’ without trying to pretend that the ‘whispers’ were entirely untrue.”
To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.
FELLOW CITIZENS:
A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular. It is true that in early life I was inclined to believe in what I understand is called the “Doctrine of Necessity” —that is, that the human mind is impelled to action, or held in rest by some power, over which the mind itself has no control; and I have sometimes (with one, two or three, but never publicly) tried to maintain this opinion in argument. The habit of arguing thus however, I have, entirely left off for more than five years. And I add here, I have always understood this same opinion to be held by several of the Christian denominations. The foregoing, is the whole truth, briefly stated, in relation to myself, upon this subject.
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.
Contributing Editors for this page include Stacy Hoeflich
Ranking
#20 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. In the fall of 1859, Abraham Lincoln received an invitation from the Young Men’s Republican Club of New York to join a prominent speakers series designed to introduce likely presidential candidates and leading Republicans, especially from the “West,” to New York audiences. Lincoln eagerly accepted the invitation but asked for extra time to prepare his remarks. The result was the lengthy, important and impressive speech delivered in February 1860 at the Cooper Institute or Cooper Union, a free educational institution established in lower Manhattan only the year before by industrialist Peter Cooper. In the excerpts below, Lincoln focused his attention on rebutting claims by Senator Stephen A. Douglas about the intent of the founders regarding slavery in the territories. Lincoln also addressed arguments directly to southerners and also to fellow Republicans as he covered topics such as John Brown’s raid and threats of disunion. (By Matthew Pinsker)
“One thing may be said with certainty. Had Lincoln failed at his nerve-wracking, physically exhausting, do-or-die New York debut, history would long ago have relegated his name to the trash heap of obscurity. In the words of a twentieth-century song, had he not made it here, he might not have made it anywhere. He would never have won his party’s presidential nomination three months later, or the bitter election that followed six months after the convention. He would never have confronted the agonizing choice between war and peace—to accept secession or fight to preserve the Union. And he would never have enjoyed the opportunity to strike a fatal blow against slavery, or to refashion American democracy into the global example he believed to be its rightful destiny. He would, to twist his own, later words, have ‘escaped history’ altogether.”
“Harold Holzer boldly calls the Cooper Union talk “the speech that made Abraham Lincoln president.” I will be so bold as to say that it was popular sovereignty that made Lincoln president. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act and the consequent turmoil in Kansas provided the political setting for Lincoln’s return to political prominence. More than that, it was in setting forth his reasons for opposing popular sovereignty that Lincoln articulated many of his central themes: slavery’s incompatibility with republicanism, its immorality, and the threat of a ‘middle ground’ doctrine about slavery such as popular sovereignty to republican liberty. Other Republicans also expressed a moral distaste for slavery and the fear that black slavery threatened white liberty. But they more often used the events in Kansas to indict popular sovereignty as policy. Lincoln concentrated on popular sovereignty as principle. This seemingly left him closer in perspective to Douglas than to his fellow Republicans, but it also meant that Lincoln attacked the very essence of popular sovereignty while other Republicans attacked only its effects. As Lincoln consistently noted, popular sovereignty attached no moral stigma to slavery. Lincoln’s concentration on what at Cooper Union he mocked as ‘the ‘gur-reat purrinciple’ of popular sovereignty allowed him to assert the true principle of the republic: freedom.”
“But the speech that he delivered, reading carefully and soberly from sheets of blue foolscap, quickly erased the impression of a crude frontiersman. It was a masterful exploration of the political paths open to the nation . . . As a speech, it was a superb performance. The audience frequently applauded during the delivery of the address, and when Lincoln closed, the crowd cheered and stood, waving handkerchiefs and hats . . . It was also a superb political move for an unannounced presidential aspirant. Appearing in Seward’s home state, sponsored by a group largely loyal to Chase, Lincoln shrewdly made no reference to either of these Republican rivals for the nomination. Recognizing that if the Republicans were going to win in 1860 they needed the support of men who had voted for Fillmore in the previous election, Lincoln in his Cooper Union address stressed his conservatism. He did not mention his house-divided thesis or Seward’s irrepressible-conflict prediction; Republicans were presented as a party of moderates who were simply trying to preserve the legacy of the Founding Fathers against the radical assaults of the proslavery element. Even Lincoln’s language contributed to the effect he sought; the careful structure of the speech, the absence of incendiary rhetoric, even the laborious recital of the voting records of the Founding Fathers, all suggested reasonableness and stability, not wide-eyed fanaticism. In short, it was, as one of the sponsors wrote, an enormous success.”
—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 238-240
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MR. PRESIDENT AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW-YORK:
…In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in “The New-York Times,” Senator Douglas said:
“Our fathers, when they framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now.”
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry: “What was the understanding those fathers had of the question mentioned?”
… The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty-one—a clear majority of the whole—certainly understood that no proper division of local from federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the federal territories; while all the rest probably had the same understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the text affirms that they understood the question “better than we.”
… It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.” And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior to the beginning of the present century, (and I might almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present century,) declare that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories. To those who now so declare, I give, not only “our fathers who framed the Government under which we live,” but with them all other living men within the century in which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with them….
…But enough! Let all who believe that “our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live, understood this question just as well, and even better, than we do now,” speak as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask—all Republicans desire—in relation to slavery. As those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because of and so far as its actual presence among us makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, but fully and fairly maintained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen—as I suppose they will not—I would address a few words to the Southern people. I would say to them:
You consider yourselves a reasonable and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like it to “Black Republicans.” In all your contentions with one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation of “Black Republicanism” as the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequisite—license, so to speak—among you to be admitted or permitted to speak at all….
… John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the two things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John Brown, Helper’s Book, and the like, break up the Republican organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling—that sentiment—by breaking up the political organization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a denial of your Constitutional rights. That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some right, plainly written down in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take slaves into the federal territories, and to hold them there as property. But no such right is specifically written in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implication.
Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events….
…A few words now to Republicans…. Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied and belabored—contrivances such as groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man—such as a policy of “don’t care” on a question about which all true men do care—such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance…LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
#21 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. The editors of Abraham Lincoln’s Collected Works have tentatively dated this fragment found in his papers as July 1, 1850. It appears to have been the draft of a speech that Lincoln must have given to younger members of the Illinois bar during the period in the early 1850s when he was most active as a circuit-riding attorney. In these notes, Lincoln offered a series of common sense observations about how to succeed in the legal profession (or any profession), but he punctuated his remarks by emphasizing the need for honesty, a standard he seemed especially determined to meet in his own career. (By Matthew Pinsker)
“In handling hundreds of cases in the circuit courts, Lincoln firmly reestablished his reputation as a lawyer. It was a reputation that rested, first, on the universal belief in his absolute honesty. He became known as ‘Honest Abe’—or, often, ‘Honest Old Abe’—the lawyer who was never known to lie. He held himself to the highest standards of truthfulness.”
—David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 149
Further Reading
For educators:
For everyone:
Winger, Stewart. “Review Essay: A New Lincoln Legal History: The First Generation.” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 32 (Summer 2012), http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0032.206
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I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as much material for a lecture in those points wherein I have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately successful. The leading rule for the lawyer, as for the man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave nothing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all the labor pertaining to it which can then be done.…
Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he cannot make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error to young lawyers than relying too much on speech-making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speaking, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of the law, his case is a failure in advance.
Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.
Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely be found than one who does this. Who can be more nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A moral tone ought to be infused into the profession which should drive such men out of it.
The matter of fees is important, far beyond the mere question of bread and butter involved. Properly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client. And when you lack interest in the case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take a note in advance. Then you will feel that you are working for something, and you are sure to do your work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee note—at least not before the consideration service is performed. It leads to negligence and dishonesty—negligence by losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing to refund when you have allowed the consideration to fail.
There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we consider to what extent confidence and honors are reposed in and conferred upon lawyers by the people, it appears improbable that their impression of dishonesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression is common, almost universal. Let no young man choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to the popular belief—resolve to be honest at all events; and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the choosing of which you do, in advance, consent to be a knave.
#22 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents
Annotated Transcript
Context. In this letter to his law partner written from Washington, Congressman Lincoln offered advice about how to get ahead. William H. Herndon was about a decade younger than Abraham Lincoln. Both were members of the Whig Party and had been active in politics around Springfield, Illinois. Responding to some complaints from Herndon about how older, more established figures in their party were holding back the younger, aspiring politicians, Lincoln identified himself as one of the “old men” and suggested to his friend that he stop blaming others. “The way for a young man to rise,” Lincoln wrote, “is to improve himself every way he can.” (By Matthew Pinsker)
“After Congress adjourned on August 14, Lincoln remained for nearly a month in Washington, helping the Whig Executive Committee of Congress organize the national campaign. He corresponded with several party leaders, who reported encouraging news, and he sent out thousands of copies of speeches by himself and other Whigs. Like a benign mentor, he urged young Whigs in Sangamon County to take an active role in the campaign and not passively look for instructions from their elders. ‘you must not wait to be brought forward by the older men,’ he told William Herndon. ‘For instance do you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by older men. You young men get together and form a Rough & Ready club, and have regular meetings and speeches.’ When Herndon complained that the older Whigs were discriminating against the younger ones, Lincoln responded with paternal wisdom, urging him not to wallow in jealousy, suspicion, or a feeling of victimhood:”
Your letter covering the newspaper slips, was received last night. The subject of that letter is exceedingly painful to me; and I can not but think there is some mistake in your impression of the motives of the old men. I suppose I am now one of the old men—and I declare on my veracity, which I think is good with you, that nothing could afford me more satisfaction than to learn that you and others of my young friends at home, were doing battle in the contest, and endearing themselves to the people, and taking a stand far above any I have ever been able to reach, in their admiration. I can not conceive that other old men feel differently. Of course I can not demonstrate what I say; but I was young once, and I am sure I was never ungenerously thrust back. I hardly know what to say. The way for a young man to rise, is to improve himself every way he can, never suspecting that any body wishes to hinder him. Allow me to assure you, that suspicion and jealousy never did help any man in any situation. There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury. Cast about, and see if this feeling has not injured every person you have ever known to fall into it.
Now, in what I have said, I am sure you will suspect nothing but sincere friendship. I would save you from a fatal error. You have been a laborious, studious young man. You are far better informed on almost all subjects than I have ever been. You can not fail in any laudable object, unless you allow your mind to be improperly directed. I have some the advantage of you in the world’s experience, merely by being older; and it is this that induces me to advise….
“In a private memo for himself, probably written in the summer of 1864, Lincoln ruminated on the Lord’s intentions. Dismayed by the terrible bloodshed of the spring campaigns, he asked why a benevolent deity would allow it: ‘The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true – that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.’ Lincoln had long been pondering the will of God, which was not clear to him.”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 34 (PDF), 3798-3799.
“An officer confessed that ‘our men are sick of war. They fight without an aim and without enthusiasm.’ Lincoln fell into depression. Edward Bates described him as ‘wrung by the bitterest anguish – said he felt almost ready to hang himself.’ Gideon Welles said the president was ‘sadly perplexed and distressed by events.’ If so, it’s no wonder he thought more than ever about divine providence. In a fragment on divine will he wondered which side God truly favored, because ‘God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest,’ thought Lincoln, ‘yet the contest began. And having begun he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceed.’”
“In September 1862, Lincoln penned his ‘Meditation on the Divine Will,’ which clearly foreshadows the later speech.He leaves no doubt whatever as to God’s complete sovereignty: ‘The will of God prevails.’ The war exists, leading to Lincoln’s humble supposition concerning God’s will: ‘I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet.’ Moreover, the God whose will Lincoln contemplates is a personal God, actively involved in human affairs: ‘By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. . . . And . . . He could give the final victory to either side any day.’ We agree with Michael Nelson that ‘clearer evidence would be hard to find demonstrating not only that Lincoln’s religious views had changed over the years but also how they had changed. In his 1846 election handbill Lincoln had written that the human mind is governed by ‘some power, over which the mind itself has no control.’ Sometime between then and 1862, he had identified to his own satisfaction its source—no longer ‘some power,’ but rather ‘his mere quiet power.’’ Lincoln no longer believes in a mere abstract force, but in divine agency, a being with an independent will and the power to implement it. Beyond the content of the Meditation, it is important to emphasize that the document was not intended for publication but rather reflected Lincoln’s private thoughts. John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretaries, state that Lincoln wrote it ‘absolutely detached from any earthly considerations . . . It was not written to be seen of men. It was penned in the awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul trying to bring itself into closer communion with its Maker.’ Consequently, as Ronald White notes, the Meditation ‘becomes a primary resource in answering the question of the integrity of Lincoln’s ideas in the Second Inaugural.’ As ‘an authentic expression of his innermost views,’ this document in itself undermines the please-the-public dismissal of the Second Inaugural.”
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The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God.Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
“The following week, on January 12, 1848, Lincoln defended his spot resolutions and his vote on the Ashmun resolution in a major speech. He claimed that he would happily reverse his vote if the president could prove that first blood was shed on American soil; but since he ‘can not, or will not do this,’ he suspected the entire matter was, ‘from beginning to end, the sheerest deception.’ Having provoked both countries into war, Lincoln charged, the president had hoped to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory… that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy.’ He went on to liken the president’s war message to ‘the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream.’ Perhaps recalling the turtles tormented with hot coals by his boyhood friends, Lincoln employed the bizarre similar of the president’s confused mind ‘running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease.’ This maiden effort was not the tone of reasoned debate that later characterized Lincoln’s public statements. Nor did it obey his oft-expressed belief that a leader should endeavor to transform, yet heed, public opinion. Compelling as Lincoln’s criticisms might have been, they fell flat at a time when the majority of Americans were delighted with the outcome of the war.”
— Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 122.
“In treating the history of Texas, Lincoln uttered words that would return to haunt him thirteen years later when Southern states left the Union: “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and for a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement.” In this rather gratuitous passage, Lincoln may have been trying to curry favor with Southern Whigs resentful of Northern congressmen, like John Quincy Adams, who had denied the legitimacy of the Texas revolution of 1835-36. Lincoln was cooperating with several Southern Whig congressmen in an attempt to help Zachary Taylor of Louisiana win their party’s presidential nomination.”
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 8 (PDF), 782-783.
“Those first eager efforts of the newly minted congressman from Illinois to make his mark—his “spot resolutions” and his speech attacking Polk three weeks later—do not represent Lincoln at his best. They are too prosecutorial, peremptory, and even, in a few lines, rather personal and nasty about Polk in a quite un-Lincolnian way. But they certainly do represent a policy position resisting unabashed American expansionism. Despite the popularity both of expansion and of the war back home in the Western state of Illinois, and the unpopularity of opposition to either, Lincoln joined with the Whig consensus, which was strongest in the East. He not only joined it, but even as a freshman congressman became one of the earliest and strongest spokesman.”
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Mr. Chairman:
Some, if not all the gentlemen on, the other side of the House, who have addressed the committee within the last two days, have spoken rather complainingly, if I have rightly understood them, of the vote given a week or ten days ago, declaring that the war with Mexico was unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President. I admit that such a vote should not be given, in mere party wantonness, and that the one given, is justly censurable, if it have no other, or better foundation. I am one of those who joined in that vote; and I did so under my best impression of the truth of the case. How I got this impression, and how it may possibly be removed, I will now try to show. When the war began, it way my opinion that all those who, because of knowing too little, or because of knowing too much, could not conscientiously approve the conduct of the President, in the beginning of it, should, nevertheless, as good citizens and patriots, remain silent on that point, at least till the war should be ended. Some leading democrats, including Ex President Van Buren, have taken this same view, as I understand them; and I adhered to it, and acted upon it, until since I took my seat here; and I think I should still adhere to it, were it not that the President and his friends will not allow it to be so. Besides the continual effort of the President to argue every silent vote given for supplies, into an endorsement of the justice and wisdom of his conduct—besides that singularly candid paragraph, in his late message in which he tells us that Congress, with great unanimity, only two in the Senate and fourteen in the House dissenting, had declared that, “by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Government and the United States,” when the same journals that informed him of this, also informed him, that when that declaration stood disconnected from the question of supplies, sixtyseven in the House, and not fourteen merely, voted against it—besides this open attempt to prove, by telling the truth, what he could not prove by telling thewhole truth—demanding of all who will not submit to be misrepresented, in justice to themselves, to speak out—besides all this, one of my colleagues (Mr. Richardson) at a very early day in the session brought in a set of resolutions, expressly endorsing the original justice of the war on the part of the President. Upon these resolutions, when they shall be put on their passage I shall becompelled to vote; so that I can not be silent, if I would. Seeing this, I went about preparing myself to give the vote understandingly when it should come. I carefully examined the President’s messages, to ascertain what he himself had said and proved upon the point. The result of this examination was to make the impression, that taking for true, all the President states as facts, he falls far short of proving his justification; and that the President would have gone farther with his proof, if it had not been for the small matter, that the truth would not permit him. Under the impression thus made, I gave the vote before mentioned. I propose now to give, concisely, the process of the examination I made, and how I reached the conclusion I did. The President, in his first war message of May 1846, declares that the soil was ours on which hostilities were commenced by Mexico; and he repeats that declaration, almost in the same language, in each successive annual message, thus showing that he esteems that point, a highly essential one. In the importance of that point, I entirely agree with the President. To my judgment, it is the very point, upon which he should be justified, or condemned. In his message of Decr. 1846, it seems to have occurred to him, as is certainly true, that title—ownership—to soil, or any thing else, is not a simple fact; but is a conclusion following one or more simple facts; and that it was incumbent upon him, to present the facts, from which he concluded, the soil was ours, on which the first blood of the war was shed….
…Some time after my colleague (Mr. Richardson) introduced the resolutions I have mentioned, I introduced a preamble, resolution, and interrogatories, intended to draw the President out, if possible, on this hitherto untrodden ground. To show their relevancy, I propose to state my understanding of the true rule for ascertaining the boundary between Texas and Mexico. It is, that whereverTexas was exercising jurisdiction, was hers; and wherever Mexico was exercising jurisdiction, was hers; and that whatever separated the actual exercise of jurisdiction of the one, from that of the other, was the true boundary between them. If, as is probably true, Texas was exercising jurisdiction along the western bank of the Nueces, and Mexico was exercising it along the eastern bank of the Rio Grande, then neither river was the boundary; but the uninhabited country between the two, was. The extent of our teritory in that region depended, not on any treaty-fixed boundary (for no treaty had attempted it) but on revolution. Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the teritory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by oldlines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones. As to the country now in question, we bought it of France in 1803, and sold it to Spain in 1819, according to the President’s statements. After this, all Mexico, including Texas, revolutionized against Spain; and still later, Texas revolutionized against Mexico. In my view, just so far as she carried her revolution, by obtaining the actual, willing or unwilling, submission of the people, so far, the country was hers, and no farther. Now sir, for the purpose of obtaining the very best evidence, as to whether Texas had actually carried her revolution, to the place where the hostilities of the present war commenced, let the President answer the interrogatories, I proposed, as before mentioned, or some other similar ones. Let him answer, fully, fairly, and candidly. Let him answer with facts, and not with arguments. Let him remember he sits where Washington sat, and so remembering, let him answer, as Washington would answer. As a nation should not, and the Almighty will not, be evaded, so let him attempt no evasion—no equivocation. And if, so answering, he can show that the soil was ours, where the first blood of the war was shed—that it was not within an inhabited country, or, if within such, that the inhabitants had submitted themselves to the civil authority of Texas, or of the United States, and that the same is true of the site of Fort Brown, then I am with him for his justification. In that case I, shall be most happy to reverse the vote I gave the other day. I have a selfish motive for desiring that the President may do this. I expect to give some votes, in connection with the war, which, without his so doing, will be of doubtful propriety in my own judgment, but which will be free from the doubt if he does so. But if he can not, or willnot do this—if on any pretence, or no pretence, he shall refuse or omit it, then I shall be fully convinced, of what I more than suspect already, that he is deeply conscious of being in the wrong—that he feels the blood of this war, like the blood of Abel, is crying to Heaven against him. That originally having some strong motive—what, I will not stop now to give my opinion concerning—to involve the two countries in a war, and trusting to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory—that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood—that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy—he plunged into it, and has swept, onand on, till, disappointed in his calculation of the ease with which Mexico might be subdued, he now finds himself, he knows not where. How like the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream, is the whole war part of his late message! At one time telling us that Mexico has nothing whatever, that we can get, but teritory; at another, showing us how we can support the war, by levying contributions on Mexico. At one time, urging the national honor, the security of the future, the prevention of foreign interference, and even, the good of Mexico herself, as among the objects of the war; at another, telling us, that “to reject indemnity, by refusing to accept a cession of teritory, would be to abandon all our just demands, and to wage the war, bearing all it’s expenses, without a purpose or definite object[.]”…Again, it is a singular omission in this message, that it, no where intimates when the President expects the war to terminate. At its beginning, Genl. Scott was, by this same President, driven into disfavor, if not disgrace, for intimating that peace could not be conquered in less than three or four months. But now, at the end of about twenty months, during which time our arms have given us the most splendid successes—every department, and every part, land and water, officers and privates, regulars and volunteers, doing all that men could do, and hundreds of things which it had ever before been thought men could not do,—after all this, this same President gives us a long message, without showing us, that, as to the end, he himself, has, even an immaginary conception. As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show, there is not something about his conscience, more painful than all his mental perplexity!
“Though many northern Whigs were outraged by the nomination of a slaveholder who had never been a true supporter of the party or its principles, Lincoln wrote on June 12 that such disaffected elements ‘are fast falling in” and predicted that ‘we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious, triumph.’ He took heart from the fact that ‘all the odds and ends are with us – Barnburners [Free Soil Democrats in New York], Native Americans, [John] Tyler men, disappointed office seeking locofocos, and the Lord knows what.’ He gloated that ‘Taylor’s nomination takes the locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them, the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.’264 Even Horace Greeley ultimately supported Taylor in order to defeat ‘that pot-bellied, mutton-headed, cucumber Cass!’”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 8 (PDF), 809.
“On March 5, 1849, Abraham Lincoln stood among a throng of observers as Zachary Taylor was sworn into office, becoming the nation’s twelfth president. Lincoln had worked long and hard on the campaign trail stumping for the hero of the Mexican War, ‘Old Rough and Ready’ Taylor. The efforts of the outgoing Illinois congressman on Taylor’s behalf included mass mailings of pro-Taylor speeches and documents, active campaigning in four states — Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois — and enthusiastic pronouncements of Taylor as congressman. Lincoln had every right to feel proud of his efforts which — in his mind — helped to win the presidency for the Whig party. Moreover, with the Whigs in control of the executive branch of the federal government, political patronage posts were available in greater abundance.”
“In 1848, Congressman Lincoln abandoned his hero, Henry Clay, and worked for the presidential nomination of General Zachary Taylor, whose war record made him a more formidable candidate. Lincoln attended the Whig National Convention as Philadelphia in June, saw ‘Old Rough and Ready’ nominated and returned to Washington exulting over the discomfiture of the ‘locofocos’ – that is, the Democrats.”
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Washington, June 12. 1848
Dear William
On my return from Philadelphia, where I had been attending the nomination of “Old Rough”—I found your letter in a mass of others, which had accumulated in my absence. By many, and often, it had been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming, glorious, triumph. One unmistakable sign is, that all the odds and ends are with us—Barnburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office seeking locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. Some of the sanguine men here, set down all the states as certain for Taylor, but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Can not something be done, even in Illinois? Taylor’s nomination takes the locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them, the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and on which they are doomed to be hanged themselves.
Excuse this short letter. I have so many to write, that I can not devote much time to any one.
“A central claim of the American regime, of course, is that its separation of church and state promoted both civil and religious liberty – a claim Lincoln would defend throughout his political career. It is no surprise, then, that Lincoln’s proclamations of thanksgiving days promote both civil and revealed religion. He uses these occasions to foster civil religion, for the sake of preserving the Union, while he encourages citizens toe exercise their respective faith in revealed religion.”
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October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.
“In the 1830s and ‘40s Lincoln consistently defended both state and national banking. To him, the assault on the Bank of the United States was part of a general breakdown of respect for property and morality that was also manifesting itself in lynch law.”
“In this partisan speech, Lincoln did not forthrightly address all the criticisms of the bank. When the legislature incorporated the Bank of Illinois, it anticipated that its stock would be bought primarily by in-state investors. Instead, most shares were purchased by financiers in the East who deviously used the names of Illinois farmers as “owners” of the stock. Linder had justly accused the bank commissioners of violating the law. This Lincoln dismissed as a quarrel among selfish capitalists which was of no concern to the people. In fact, the law had been undermined. Lincoln was also disingenuous in alleging that the bank had met its legal requirement to redeem its notes in specie. This provision of the law was virtually nullified through clever arrangements by which the nine branches of the Bank of Illinois printed notes which could only be redeemed at the issuing branch. To ensure that few such requests for redemption were made, the branches brought their notes into circulation at remote sites. Though somewhat demagogic, Lincoln’s speech was predicated on the sound notion that economic growth required banks and an elastic money supply. His political opponents, with their agrarian fondness for a metallic currency, failed to understand this fundamental point. Banks, he knew, had a vital role to play in financing the canals and railroads essential for ending rural isolation and backwardness, a goal he cared about passionately.”
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 4 (PDF), 375.376.
“During his first two terms as a representative, Lincoln no doubt had numerous chances to speak, but the address to the Illinois house on the state bank (January 11, 1837) was the first of his speeches to be published verbatim. It is notable both for a persistent personal attack on Usher F. Linder (a Democrat from Coles County, Linder had introduced resolutions calling for a select house committee to investigate the troubled state bank) and for the sophistical logic and rhetoric Lincoln used to extend his ad hominem and dismantle the opposition’s arguments.”
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…Immediately following this last charge, there are several insinuations in the resolution, which are too silly to require any sort of notice, were it not for the fact, that they conclude by saying, “to the great injury of the people at large.” In answer to this I would say, that it is strange enough, that the people are suffering these “great injuries,” and yet are not sensible of it! Singular indeed that the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint. If the Bank be inflicting injury upon the people, why is it, that not a single petition is presented to this body on the subject? If the Bank really be a grievance, why is it, that no one of the real people is found to ask redress of it? The truth is, no such oppression exists. If it did, our table would groan with memorials and petitions, and we would not be permitted to rest day or night, till we had put it down. The people know their rights; and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded. Let them call for an investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call. But they have made no such call. I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank. It has doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its operations. No, Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the alarm, (which, by the way, is a false one.) It is he, [who,] by these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the people’s public treasure, for no other advantage to them, than to make valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr. Chairman, this movement is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.
“As the day of Speed’s wedding approached, Lincoln became agitated. On February 15, 1842, despite his misgivings, Speed married Fanny Henning, prompting Lincoln to write yet another revealing letter. When Speed wrote him shortly after the ceremony, Lincoln opened the envelope, as he later reported, “with intense anxiety and trepediation – so much, that although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the distance of ten hours, become calm.” With relief he told Speed, “our forebodings, for which you and I are rather peculiar, are all the worst sort of nonsense.” Speed confided his fear that the Elysium of which he had dreamed “is never to be realized.” Lincoln reassured him that “it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me, to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be no woman could do more to realize them, than that same black-eyed Fanny. If you could but contemplate her through my immagination, it would appear ridiculous to you, that any one should for a moment think of being unhappy with her. My old Father used to have a saying that ‘If you make a bad bargain, hug it all the tighter’; and it occurs to me, that if the bargain you have just closed can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that maxim to, which my fancy can, by any effort, picture.”Here Lincoln seemed to be telling himself that he should not be disappointed if Mary Todd did not measure up to his unreasonable ideal and that he should marry her even if the engagement was a ‘bad bargain.'”
— Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 6 (PDF), 546-565.
“This was the consummation letter. Speed got married on February 15, and clearly he had promised Lincoln that as soon as he possibly could after consummating his marriage he would write to report on its outcome. Speed, it seems, had barely tumbled out of his wedding bed on the morning of February 16 before he wrote Lincoln, who opened the letter with ‘intense anxiety and trepidation.’ In fact, even though ‘it turned out better than I expected’ Lincoln was still not calm ‘at the distance of ten hours.’ That is a long time for a man, then thirty-three years of age, to be experiencing such anxiety from the news of how his friend’s wedding night turned out.”
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Springfield, Feb: 25,1842
Dear Speed:
I received yours of the 12th. written the day you went down to William’s place, some days since; but delayed answering it, till I should receive the promised one, of the 16th., which came last night. I opened the latter, with intense anxiety and trepidation—so much, that although it turned out better than I expected, I have hardly yet, at the distance of ten hours, become calm.
I tell you, Speed, our forebodings, for which you and I are rather peculiar, are all the worst sort of nonsense. I fancied, from the time I received your letter of saturday, that the one of wednesday was never to come; and yet it did come, and what is more, it is perfectly clear, both from it’s tone and handwriting, that you were much happier, or, if you think the term preferable, less miserable, when you wrote it, than when you wrote the last one before. You had so obviously improved, at the verry time I so much feared, you would have grown worse. You say that “something indescribably horrible and alarming still haunts you.[”] You will not say that three months from now, I will venture. When your nerves once get steady now, the whole trouble will be over forever. Nor should you become impatient at their being even verry slow, in becoming steady. Again; you say you much fear that that Elysium of which you have dreamed so much, is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare swear, it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I now have no doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me, to dream dreams of Elysium far exceeding all that any thing earthly can realize. Far short of your dreams as you may be, no woman could do more to realize them, than that same black eyed Fanny. If you could but contemplate her through my immagination, it would appear ridiculous to you, that any one should for a moment think of being unhappy with her. My old Father used to have a saying that “If you make a bad bargain, hug it the tighter”; and it occurs to me, that if the bargain you have just closed can possibly be called a bad one, it is certainly the most pleasant one for applying that maxim to, which my fancy can, by any effort, picture.
I write another letter enclosing this, which you can show her, if she desires it. I do this, because, she would think strangely perhaps should you tell her that you receive no letters from me; or, telling her you do, should refuse to let her see them.
I close this, entertaining the confident hope, that every successive letter I shall have from you, (which I here pray may not be few, nor far between,) may show you possessing a more steady hand, and cheerful heart, than the last preceding it.
“A week after that wedding in Jacksonville, Lincoln asked Joshua Speed a pointed question: “Are you now in feeling as well as judgement, glad you are married as you are?” He acknowledged that such a query would be ‘impudent’ coming from anyone but himself, but he was sure Speed would pardon him. ‘Please answer it quickly as I feel impatient to know.’ Lincoln believed he could not wed Mary Todd unless Speed had found happiness in matrimony. In reply, Speed advised Lincoln ‘as a friend not to hesitate or longer doubt that happiness would be the result of his marriage to Miss Todd, giving his own experience of depression and melancholy before he and Miss Henning had finally made up and determined to risk their happiness in each other’s keeping.’”
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 6 (PDF), 580-581.
“Dueling had been outlawed in Illinois in 1839, but the seriousness of the issue was such that Lincoln agreed to meet Shields for a duel in Missouri. Lincoln, not as skilled a marksman as Shields, chose broadswords as his weapon of choice, a weapon much to his long-armed advantage. The men crossed the Mississippi to Missouri, but at the last moment the duel was called off. Perhaps, the absurdity of the weapons ended the affair. Nonetheless, Lincoln’s gallant effort and the protection of her honor must have impressed Mary Todd. Still reserved, Lincoln needed assurance from Speed that his own marriage was happy. Speed later claimed, ‘If I had not been married & happy… [h]e would not have married.’ Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd married hastily on November 4, 1842, before the groom entertained any more doubts.”
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Springfield, Oct. 5 1842
Dear Speed:
You have heard of my duel with Shields, and I have now to inform you that the duelling business still rages in this city. Day-before-yesterday Shields challenged Butler, who accepted, and proposed figh[t]ing next morning at sun-rising in Bob. Allen’s meadow, one hundred yards distance with rifles. To this, Whitesides, Shields’ second, said “No” because of the law. Thus ended, duel No. 2. Yesterday, Whitesides chose to consider himself insulted by Dr. Merryman, and so, sent him a kind of quasi challenge inviting him to meet him at the planter’s House in St. Louis on the next friday to settle their difficulty. Merryman made me his friend, and sent W. a note enquiring to know if he meant his note as a challenge, and if so, that he would, according to the law in such case made and provided, prescribe the terms of the meeting. W. Returned for answer, that if M. would meet him at the Planter’s House as desired, he would challenge him. M. replied in a note, that he denied W’s right to dictate time and place; but that he, M, would would [sic] waive the question of time, and meet him at Louisiana Missouri. Upon my presenting this note to W. and stating verbally, it’s contents, he declined receiving it, saying he had business at St. Louis, and it was as near as Louisiana. Merryman then directed me to notify Whitesides, that he should publish the correspondence between them with such comments as he thought fit. This I did. Thus it stood at bed time last night. This morning Whitesides, by his friend Shields, is praying for a new—trial, on the ground that he was mistaken in Merrymans proposition to meet him at Louisiana Missouri thinking it was the State of Louisiana. This Merryman hoots at, and is preparing his publication—while the town is in a ferment and a street fight somewhat anticipated.
But I began this letter not for what I have been writing; but to say something on that subject which you know to be of such infinite solicitude to me. The immense suffering you endured from the first days of September till middle of February you never tried to conceal from me, and I well understood. You have now been the husband of a lovely woman nearly eight months. That you are happier now than you were the day you married her I well know; for without, you would not be living. But I have your word for it too; and the returning elasticity of spirits which is manifested in your letters. But I want to ask a closer question—“Are you now, in feeling as well as judgement, glad you are married as you are?” From any body but me, this would be an impudent question not to be tolerated; but I know you will pardon it in me. Please answer it quickly as I feel impatient to know.
I have sent my love to your Fanny so often that I fear she is getting tired of it; however I venture to tender it again.
“At Gettysburg, Lincoln connected democracy’s preservation with ‘a new birth of freedom,’ and on one earlier occasion, Lincoln appears to have defined the word ‘democracy’ in direct opposition to slavery. The provenance of the tantalizing document is questionable, as is the date, although the editors of his collected work conjectured that he wrote it on August 1, 1858. ‘As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master, the scrap of paper reads, apparently in Lincoln’s handwriting. ‘This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.’ If Lincoln indeed wrote these words, he understood the meaning of democracy to embrace legal and social relations between humans as well as a political system: a democratic polity could never tolerate the essentially undemocratic condition of masters and slaves. By this definition, the slave South was no democracy. And by this definition, the crisis of democracy predated Southern secession.”
“And yet Lincoln’s definition of democracy in terms of slavery, however questionable as political science, cut to the heart of his thinking. It was certainly more than a mere political device; indeed he never appears to have used it in public. It becomes fully meaningful only if one recognizes that after 1854 slavery became the most direct antithesis of the American Dream I his thought, the diametrical opposite of the central idea of the Republic. If his definition of democracy is restated as follows, it still remains questionable political theory, but it will express his meaning in more accurate terms: As I would not want my chance to rise in life obstructed, so I would not want to obstruct the chance of others to rise. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”
“Although Andrew Jackson had said, ‘Never for a moment believe that the great body of the citizens … can deliberately intend to do wrong,’ Lincoln was dubious. His view of ‘the people’ consistently was cast within discussions of government, laws, the need for restraint. He was so little committed to Jackson’s shibboleth that although he analyzed other political concepts at length, he gave posterity a thirty-three-word definition of democracy. Lincoln was no democrat as the word was understood in his century. It is not surprising then that he left the Democratic party his father had supported and joined the Whigs.”
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As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.
“It is only this scrap of writing which makes the incident at all worthy of record. There could be no better exemplification of Mr. Lincoln’s character and caution than this short memorandum of instructions. It reflects all his directness of method, all his sincerity of dealing, all his determination to keep free from any entanglements of intrigue, and to expressly avoid any inferential obligations. ‘Commit me to nothing’ is his positive injunction; on the other hand the announcement of his motto ‘fairness to all’ is the promise of that broad liberality which he carried out as President, and through which he maintained the easy party leadership that secured his renomination and re-election.”
“Callers who tried to get at Lincoln personally in his temporary capital office were screened first by Nicolay, who was told to schedule interviews only if ‘indispensable’ and to ‘commit me to nothing’ Lincoln did not even write to the vice-presidential nominee whom the convention had selected for him Hannibal Hamlin, a former Maine Democrat, until mid-July.”
“Although concerned with progress in all the Northern states, he focused his attention primarily on the critical West. He urged Caleb Smith to do his utmost in Indiana, believing that nothing would affect the November results in Illinois more strongly than the momentum provided by an Indiana victory in the October state elections. In July, he sent Nicolay to an Indiana supporter who wished to prevent a Bell ticket from being placed on the ballot. ‘Ascertain what he wants,’ Lincoln instructed Nicolay. ‘On what subjects he would converse with me. And the particulars if he will give them. Is an interview indispensable? Tell him my motto is ‘Fairness to all,’ but commit me to nothing.’”
–Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 272.
NOTE TO READERS
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“In Quincy at the end of July, the proselytizers managed to convince some western Illinois Whigs, Free Soilers, and anti-Nebraska Democrats to band together on a platform opposing slavery expansion. When Lovejoy proposed that a state antislavery convention meet in Springfield that autumn, Lincoln replied that although he was ready to endorse the principles of the Quincy meeting, the time was not yet ripe for a new party. ‘Not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I,’ he told Lovejoy; ‘and yet the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do any thing, lest I do wrong.’ The Know Nothing organization had ‘not yet entirely crumbled to pieces,’ and until the antislavery forces could win over elements of it, ‘there is not sufficient materials to successfully combat the Nebraska democracy with.’ As long as nativists ‘cling to a hope of success under their own organization,’ they were unlikely to abandon it. ‘I fear an open push by us now, may offend them, and tend to prevent our ever getting them.’ In central Illinois, the Know Nothings were, Lincoln said, some of his ‘old political and personal friends,’ among them Joseph Gillespie of Edwardsville. Lincoln ‘hoped their organization would die out without the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them.’ Of course he deplored their principles: ‘Indeed I do not perceive how any one professing to be sensitive to the wrongs of the negroes, can join in a league to degrade a class of white men.’ He was not squeamish about combining with ‘any body who stands right,’ but the Know Nothings stood wrong.”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 11 (PDF), 1159.
“In the political confusion between 1854 and 1856, anti-Nebraska elements often sought coalitions with Know-Nothings in efforts that became known as “fusion.” Antislavery candidates for Congress in 1854 often received nativist support. In Illinois, candidates in the third, fourth, and seventh congressional districts were greatly aided by Know-Nothing endorsements. Indiana editor and budding Republican politician Schuyler Colfax published anti-Catholic stories in his newspaper. There was some ideological affinity between free soil and nativism. One free-soil paper suggested that the “two malign powers”—Slavery and Catholicism—”have a natural affinity for each other.” On the other hand, many anti-Nebraska leaders deplored the bigotry inherent in the Know-Nothings and were fearful of alienating the crucial support of Protestant Germans.”
“The failed Senate election of 1855 forced Lincoln to reexamine his resistance to fusion and to ask whether, once gain, his passion for loyalty had kept him loyal to a losing proposition… when Lovejoy urged Lincoln in August, 1855, to join a ‘fusion’ movement in Illinois, Lincoln patiently explained that ‘not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I,’ but still ‘the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do any thing, lest I do wrong.’ Later that month, he told Joshua Speed that as far as he was concerned, ‘I think I am a Whig.’ But there were voices all around him which argued that ‘there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist, which was just the kind of radical association that any fusion movement was likely to taint him with. One thing which was ‘certain,’ he told Speed, was that he was ‘not a Know-Nothing’ Lincoln ‘opposed Know-Nothingism in all its phrases, everywhere, and at all times when it was sweeping over the land like wildfire,’ Herndon remarked. As Lincoln told Lovejoy, ‘I do not perceive how anyone one professing to be sensitive to the wrongs of negroes, can join in a league to degrade a class of white men.’ Without any identifiable religion of his own, Lincoln shared none of the anxieties of Whig Protestants about ‘political Romanism,’ and found the Know-Nothings, even more than the Calhounites, a standing repudiation of what ‘as a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’’ That had not prevented the Know-Nothings from trying to recruit him in 1854 as a state legislative candidate, and rumors that he had secretly taken the Know-Nothing oath cost him at least one critical vote in the 1855 senatorial election. If this was the future of fusion, Lincoln was better off staying a Whig, for what that might be worth.”
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Springfield,
August 11- 1855
Hon: Owen Lovejoy:
My dear Sir:
Yours of the 7th. was received the day before yesterday. Not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I; and yet the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do any thing, lest I do wrong. Know-nothingism has not yet entirely tumbled to pieces—nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky & Alabama. Until we can get the elements of this organization, there is not sufficient materials to successfully combat the Nebraska democracy with. We can not get them so long as they cling to a hope of success under their own organization; and I fear an open push by us now, may offend them, and tend to prevent our ever getting them. About us here, they are mostly my old political and personal friends; and I have hoped their organization would die out without the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them. Of their principles I think little better than I do of those of the slavery extensionists. Indeed I do not perceive how any one professing to be sensitive to the wrongs of the negroes, can join in a league to degrade a class of white men.
I have no objection to “fuse” with any body provided I can fuse on ground which I think is right; and I believe the opponents of slavery extension could now do this, if it were not for this K. N. ism. In many speeches last summer I advised those who did me the honor of a hearing to “stand with any body who stands right”— and I am still quite willing to follow my own advice. I lately saw, in the Quincy Whig, the report of a preamble and resolutions, made by Mr. Williams, as chairman of a committee, to a public meeting and adopted by the meeting. I saw them but once, and have them not now at command; but so far as I can remember them, they occupy about the ground I should be willing to “fuse” upon.
As to my personal movements this summer, and fall, I am quite busy trying to pick up my lost crumbs of last year. I shall be here till September; then to the circuit till the 20th. then to Cincinnati, awhile, after a Patent right case; and back to the circuit to the end of November. I can be seen here any time this month; and at Bloomington at any time from the 10th. to the 17th. of September. As to an extra session of the Legislature, I should know no better how to bring that about, than to lift myself over a fence by the straps of my boots.
“Some said government should do no more than protect its people from insurrection and foreign invasion and spend the rest of its time dispassionately observing the way its people played out the cards that fate had dealt them. He scorned that view. He called it a ‘do nothing’ abdication of responsibility. ‘The legitimate object of government,’ he said, ‘is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves. There are many such things…,’ he said. So he offered the ‘poor’ more than freedom and the encouragement of his own good example: he offered them government. Government that would work aggressively to help them find the chance they might not have found alone. He did it by fighting for bridges, railroad construction and other such projects that others decried as excessive government. He gave help for education, help for agriculture, land for the rural family struggling for a start. And always, at the heart of his struggle and his yearning was the passion to make room for the outsider, the insistence upon a commitment to respect the idea of equality by fighting for inclusion.”
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves—in their separate, and individual capacities.
In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.
The desirable things which the individuals of a people can not do, or can not well do, for themselves, fall into two classes: those which have relation to wrongs, and those which have not. Each of these branch off into an infinite variety of subdivisions.
The first—that in relation to wrongs—embraces all crimes, misdemeanors, and non-performance of contracts. The other embraces all which, in its nature, and without wrong, requires combined action, as public roads and highways, public schools, charities, pauperism, orphanage, estates of the deceased, and the machinery of government itself.
From this it appears that if all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government.
“Lincoln recognized that the Republican party faced formidable problems in the 1856 presidential contest. Not only was it a new and imperfectly articulated organization, but it had powerful competition. . .The nativists, now calling themselves the American party, nominated ex-President Millard Fillmore, whose highly respectable Whig antecedents made him attractive to conservatives of all persuasions. . .Lincoln offered low-key, reasonable arguments to persuade American voters opposed to the expansion of slavery not to waste their votes on Fillmore, who had no chance of winning. In private letters to old Whig friends, Lincoln made the same argument, stressing that a vote for Fillmore was really a vote for Buchanan. . .What effect Lincoln had on the outcome of the 1856 election in Illinois was hard for him or anybody else to determine. In Republican newspapers his speeches were invariably praised as ‘unanswerable,’ showing ‘great eloquence and power.’ Democratic papers described his speeches as ‘prosy and dull in the extreme.’ He himself was under no illusions about the impact of his campaigning. . .In the end, the canvass verified the prediction Lincoln had made at the start: ‘With the Fremont and Fillmore men united, here in Illinois, we have Mr. Buchanan in the hollow of our hand; but with us divided, . . . he has us.'”
–David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 192-194
“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.”
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Springfield, Sept. 8, 1856
Dear Sir,
I understand you are a Fillmore man. Let me prove to you that every vote withheld from Fremont, and given to Fillmore, in this state, actually lessens Fillmore’s chance of being President.
Suppose Buchanan gets all the slave states, and Pennsylvania, andany other one state besides; then he is elected, no matter who gets all the rest.
But suppose Fillmore gets the two slave states of Maryland and Kentucky; then Buchanan is not elected; Fillmore goes into the House of Representatives, and may be made President by a compromise.
But suppose again Fillmore’s friends throw away a few thousand votes on him, in Indiana and Illinois, it will inevitably give these states to Buchanan, which will more than compensate him for the loss of Maryland and Kentucky; will elect him, and leave Fillmore no chance in the H.R. or out of it.
This is as plain as the adding up of the weights of three small hogs. As Mr. Fillmore has no possible chance to carry Illinois for himself, it is plainly his interest to let Fremont take it, and thus keep it out of the hands of Buchanan. Be not deceived. Buchanan is the hard horse to beat in this race. Let him have Illinois, and nothing can beat him; and he will get Illinois, if men persist in throwing away votes upon Mr. Fillmore.
Does some one persuade, you that Mr. Fillmore can carry Illinois? Nonsense! There are over seventy newspapers in Illinois opposing Buchanan, only three or four of which support Mr. Fillmore, all the rest going for Fremont. Are not these newspapers a fair index of the proportion of the voters. If not, tell me why.
Again, of these three or four Fillmore newspapers, two at least, are supported, in part, by the Buchanan men, as I understand. Do not they know where the shoe pinches? They know the Fillmore movement helps them, and therefore they help it.
Do think these things over, and then act according to your judgment.
“On February 22, 1842, Lincoln addressed the Washington Temperance Society of Springfield with a speech that enlarged his discussion of reason and tyranny in the 1838 Lyceum Address. His presentation was again ostensibly apolitical, though resonant with political implications. Most notably, it added shadow and light to the portrait of human nature and the task of self-government that he had begun to produce four years before. The Lyceum Address had sketched the disturbing advances of lawless passions and the arduous means with which their tyranny could be resisted by discovering unused resources of strength within American democracy. The temperance issue presented the problem in one of its most common, dramatic, and destructive forms. Alcohol was, after all, the proverbial fuel of anger and licentiousness, a notorious destroyer of self-governing activity. Habitual drunkenness was therefore a form of slavery, perhaps one of its most damaging forms because it worked to destroy even the free man’s power to love liberty. The temperance movement was, in Lincoln’s view, an opportunity to resist the encroachment of this broader tyranny—if temperance could be pursued without the movement itself becoming a tyrannical force. There is much in this 1842 address to suggest that it served several purposes. The antebellum champions of temperance had a strong philosophical affinity for the work of the antislavery cause. In the late 1830s and early ’40s, both movement were centered in churches, from which they drew vehement supporters such as Edward Beecher. In Illinois, the Presbyterians had played a major role in both movements, and it was in a Presbyterian church in Springfield that Lincoln spoke. Temperance and abolition forces were often entwined up to the mid-1850s, when vote-seeking Republicans began to downplay antidrinking sentiments that had antagonized voters they hoped to recruit to their cause, especially Irish and German immigrants. In the early 1840s, long before the emergence of the Republican Party, Lincoln’s brand of Whig politics explicitly favored attempts to alleviate the drinker’s plight and emphasized principles he would incorporate into the explicitly antislavery speeches he began to deliver in 1854. The Temperance Address gave Lincoln an opportunity to venture, in a displaced context, ideas about emancipation and the prospects for a gradual abolition of slavery.”
“Although the speech focuses ostensibly on temperance with regards to liquor, at bottom it is about temperance or moderation in speech—how citizens go about persuading one another on a given social or political issue. A close reading of the address reveals that the subtext about persuasion, and not the overt teaching about temperance advocacy, is the more serious objective of Lincoln. This becomes most evident when one looks at Lincoln’s own rhetoric, which fluctuates between plain, unornamented prose and florid, grandiose phrasing. Curiously enough, his speech takes on its most flowery and exaggerated cast when he uses biblical language. Lincoln’s Temperance Address, therefore, exhibits bot temperance and intemperance in its argument and leads the attentive listener or reader to draw conclusions about Lincoln’s opinion of the respective temperance reformers and the movement in general that are not obvious on a cursory hearing.”
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…Although the Temperance cause has been in progress for near twenty years, it is apparent to all, that it is, just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.
The list of its friends is daily swelled by the additions of fifties, of hundreds, and of thousands. The cause itself seems suddenly transformed from a cold abstract theory, to a living, breathing, active, and powerful chieftain, going forth “conquering and to conquer.” The citadels of his great adversary are daily being stormed and dismantled; his temples and his altars, where the rites of his idolatrous worship have long been performed, and where human sacrifices have long been wont to be made, are daily desecrated and deserted. The trump of the conqueror’s fame is sounding from hill to hill, from sea to sea, and from land to land, and calling millions to his standard at a blast.
For this new and splendid success, we heartily rejoice. That that success is so much greater now than heretofore, is doubtless owing to rational causes; and if we would have it to continue, we shall do well to enquire what those causes are. The warfare heretofore waged against the demon of Intemperance, has, some how or other, been erroneous. Either the champions engaged, or the tactics they adopted, have not been the most proper. These champions for the most part, have been Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents. Between these and the mass of mankind, there is a want ofapproachability, if the term be admissible, partially at least, fatal to their success. They are supposed to have no sympathy of feeling or interest, with those very persons whom it is their object to convince and persuade.
And again, it is so easy and so common to ascribe motives to men of these classes, other than those they profess to act upon. Thepreacher, it is said, advocates temperance because he is a fanatic, and desires a union of Church and State; the lawyer, from his pride and vanity of hearing himself speak; and the hired agent, for his salary. But when one, who has long been known as a victim of intemperance, bursts the fetters that have bound him, and appears before his neighbors “clothed, and in his right mind,” a redeemed specimen of long lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in eyes, to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever; of his once naked and starving children, now clad and fed comfortably; of a wife long weighed down with woe, weeping, and a broken heart, now restored to health, happiness, and renewed affection; and how easily it all is done, once it is resolved to be done; however simple his language, there is a logic, and an eloquence in it, that few, with human feelings, can resist. They cannot say that he desires a union of church and state, for he is not a church member; they can not say he is vain of hearing himself speak, for his whole demeanor shows, he would gladly avoid speaking at all; they cannot say he speaks for pay for he receives none, and asks for none. Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted; or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example, be denied.
In my judgment, it is to the battles of this new class of champions that our late success is greatly, perhaps chiefly, owing. But, had the old school champions themselves, been of the most wise selecting, was their system of tactics, the most judicious? It seems to me, it was not. Too much denunciation against dram sellers and dram-drinkers was indulged in. This, I think, was both impolitic and unjust. It was impolitic, because, it is not much in the nature of man to be driven to any thing; still less to be driven about that which is exclusively his own business; and least of all, where such driving is to be submitted to, at the expense of pecuniary interest, or burning appetite. When the dram-seller and drinker, were incessantly told, not in the accents of entreaty and persuasion, diffidently addressed by erring man to an erring brother; but in the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation, with which the lordly Judge often groups together all the crimes of the felon’s life, and thrusts them in his face just ere he passes sentence of death upon him, that they were the authors of all the vice and misery and crime in the land; that they were the manufacturers and material of all the thieves and robbers and murderers that infested the earth; that their houses were the workshops of the devil; and that their persons should be shunned by all the good and virtuous, as moral pestilences—I say, when they were told all this, and in this way, it is not wonderful that they were slow, very slow, to acknowledge the truth of such denunciations, and to join the ranks of their denouncers, in a hue and cry against themselves.
To have expected them to do otherwise than as they did—to have expected them not to meet denunciation with denunciation, crimination with crimination, and anathema with anathema, was to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree, and never can be reversed. When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a “drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason, and which, when once gained, you will find but little trouble in convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the contrary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho’ you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest.
On this point, the Washingtonians greatly excel the temperance advocates of former times. Those whom they desire to convince and persuade, are their old friends and companions. They know they are not demons, nor even the worst of men. They know that generally, they are kind, generous and charitable, even beyond the example of their more staid and sober neighbors. They are practical philanthropists; and they glow with a generous and brotherly zeal, that mere theorizers are incapable of feeling. Benevolence and charity possess their hearts entirely; and out of the abundance of their hearts, their tongues give utterance. “Love through all their actions runs, and all their words are mild.” In this spirit they speak and act, and in the same, they are heard and regarded. And when such is the temper of the advocate, and such of the audience, no good cause can be unsuccessful….
… If the relative grandeur of revolutions shall be estimated by the great amount of human misery they alleviate, and the small amount they inflict, then, indeed, will this be the grandest the world shall ever have seen. Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other of the nations of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of that long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.
But with all these glorious results, past, present, and to come, it had its evils too. It breathed forth famine, swam in blood and rode on fire; and long, long after, the orphan’s cry, and the widow’s wail, continued to break the sad silence that ensued. These were the price, the inevitable price, paid for the blessings it bought.
Turn now, to the temperance revolution. In it, we shall find a stronger bondage broken; a viler slavery, manumitted; a greater tyrant deposed. In it, more of want supplied, more disease healed, more sorrow assuaged. By it no orphans starving, no widows weeping. By it, none wounded in feeling, none injured in interest. Even the dram-maker, and dram seller, will have glided into other occupations so gradually, as never to have felt the shock of change; and will stand ready to join all others in the universal song of gladness.
And what a noble ally this, to the cause of political freedom. With such an aid, its march cannot fail to be on and on, till every son of earth shall drink in rich fruition, the sorrow quenching draughts of perfect liberty. Happy day, when, all appetites controled, all passions subdued, all matters subjected, mind, all conqueringmind, shall live and move the monarch of the world. Glorious consummation! Hail fall of Fury! Reign of Reason, all hail!
And when the victory shall be complete—when there shall be neither a slave nor a drunkard on the earth—how proud the title of that Land, which may truly claim to be the birth-place and the cradle of both those revolutions, that shall have ended in that victory. How nobly distinguished that People, who shall have planted, and nurtured to maturity, both the political and moral freedom of their species.
This is the one hundred and tenth anniversary of the birth-day of Washington. We are met to celebrate this day. Washington is the mightiest name of earth—long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name, an eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun, or glory to the name of Washington, is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked deathless splendor, leave it shining on.
“Lincoln, Herndon recalled, was ‘ambitious to reach the United States Senate, and, warmly encouraged in his aspirations by his wife,’ campaigned for the post with ‘his characteristic activity and vigilance. During the anxious moments that intervened between the general election [in November] and the assembling of the Legislature [in January] he slept, like Napoleon, with one eye open.’ Three days after the November election, Lincoln began writing a torrent of letters asking support for his senate bid. On November 10, he appealed to Charles Hoyt of Aurora: ‘You used to express a good deal of partiality for me; and if you are still so, now is the time. Some friends here are really for me, for the U.S. Senate; and I should be very grateful if you could make a mark for me among your members.’ That same day, he told Jonathan Y. Scammon of Chicago that ‘Some partial friends here are for me for the U.S. Senate; and it would be very foolish, and very false, for me to deny that I would be pleased with an election to that Honorable body. If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please make a mark for me with the members.’ The following day he asked Jacob Harding of Paris to visit his legislator and “make a mark with him for me,’ for ‘I really have some chance.’ Later that month, he appealed to Thomas J. Henderson of Toulon: ‘It has come round that a whig may, by possibility, be elected to the U.S. Senate; and I want the chance of being the man. You are a member of the Legislature, and have a vote to give. Think it over, and see whether you can do better than to go for me.’ The following month, he wrote Joseph Gillespie: ‘I have really got it into my head to try to be United States Senator; and if I could have your support my chances would be reasonably good.'”
“Lincoln was dismissive of nativism at least in private, and most of his biographers have quoted a handful of his now famous letters to figures such as political activist Owen Lovejoy and old friend Joshua Speed in the mid-1850s that contained some moving denunciations of nativist prejudice. Yet the new documents from the post-Collected Works period also illustrate how Boss Lincoln was also apparently able to compartmentalize his personal views whenever it came to the necessities of managing the party machinery. Lincoln’s outreach to Know Nothings, Americans, and former Fillmore men was not only persistent but also at times subtle. Consider this rarely cited 1854 note from the First Supplement (1974) to Chicago attorney and businessman Jonathan Y. Scammon. . . ‘If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary.’ Such a confidential double entendre might have been a mere coincidence, but most likely it was a clever pun intended to create some ambiguity as to whether or not Lincoln was kidding around or trying to signal implicit sympathy with the Know Nothings. Scammon cautiously declined to answer in writing, promising instead to ‘communicate personally.’ Scammon’s ties to the nativist movement, if any, remain murky, although all that really matters here is what Lincoln might have believed.”
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November 10, 1854
J.Y.Scammon, Esq
My dear Sir:
Some partial friends are for me for the U.S. Senate; and it would be very foolish, and very false, for me to deny that I would be pleased with an election to that Honorable body. If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please mark for me with the members. Write me, at all events. Direct to Springfield.
“Lincoln advised Whigs to ‘stand with anybody that stands RIGHT,’ even if it meant standing with the ‘abolitionist in restoring the Missouri Compromise,’ suggesting that there were moments when principle must overcome party. His words were put to a test almost immediately. . . The fusionists placed his name on the Republican State Central Committee, even though some of them expressed doubts about the sincerity of his views on slavery. The Douglas press gleefully pounced on the action as proof that Lincoln was an abolitionist after all. Deeply annoyed and perplexed, Lincoln protested that his name had been used without consulting him first. ‘I suppose my opposition to the principle of slavery is as strong as that of any member of the Republican party, he explained to Ichabod Codding, ‘but I had also supposed that the extent to which I feel authorized to carry that opposition, practically, was not at all satisfactory to that party.’ His response was equivocal; this time, political expediency overcame principle. Still, he did not ask that his name be removed, and he only implied that he was unwilling to serve. Perhaps the Republicans had misunderstood his position, he suggestion. Or had he misunderstood theirs? He was unwilling to commit himself to their cause, but he did not want to alienate them either.”
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Springfield,
Novr. 27. 1854
I. Codding, Esq
Dear Sir
Your note of the 13th. requesting my attendance of the Republican State Central Committee, on the 17th. Inst. at Chicago, was, owing to my absence from home, received on the evening of that day (17th) only. While I have pen in hand allow me to say I have been perplexed some to understand why my name was placed on that committee. I was not consulted on the subject; nor was I apprized of the appointment, until I discovered it by accident two or three weeks afterwards. I suppose my opposition to the principle of slavery is as strong as that of any member of the Republican party; but I had also supposed that the extent to which I feel authorized to carry that opposition, practically; was not at all satisfactory to that party. The leading men who organized that party, were present, on the 4th. of Oct. at the discussion between Douglas and myself at Springfield, and had full oppertunity to not misunderstand my position. Do I misunderstand theirs? Please write, and inform me.
“Lincoln turned down suggestions to use money to help line up delegates. His friend Mark W. Delahay had complained to him that Seward spent freely to win support in Kansas and that ‘we, your friends, are all very poor,’ and hinted that ‘a very little money now would do us and you a vast deal of good.’ Lincoln would have none of it: ‘I can not enter the ring on the money basis – first, because in the main, it is wrong; and secondly, I have not, and can not get, the money.’ Yet, he added, ‘for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right, and indispensable.’ So saying, he agreed to give Delahay $100 to enable him to attend the Chicago convention, assuming that he would be chosen a delegate. In fact, Delahay and all other Lincoln supporters in Kansas were defeated. Upon learning of this development, Lincoln advised Delahay not to stir the Seward delegates ‘up to anger, but come along to the convention, and I will do as I said about expenses.’ The following day, Lincoln told a correspondent who had proposed some scheme involving the expenditure of $10,000: ‘I could not raise ten thousand dollars if it would save me from the fate of John Brown. Nor have my friends, so far as I know, yet reached the point of staking any money on my chances of success.’”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 14 (PDF), 1625-1626.
“During most of the nineteenth century, presidential candidates did not campaign openly; the post was supposed to seek the man. Lincoln remained true to that tradition, but a number of managers pushed his campaign… When E. Stafford suggested that Lincoln raise a campaign chest of $10,000, the candidate replied “’I could not raise ten thousand dollars if it would save me from the fate of John Brown. Nor have my friends, so far as I know, yet reached the point of staking any money on my chances of success.’”
–Lowell H. Harrison, Lincoln of Kentucky(Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000).
NOTE TO READERS
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Springfield, Illinois, March 17, 1860.
Dear Sir: Reaching home on the 14th instant, I found yours of the 1st. Thanking you very sincerely for your kind purposes toward me, I am compelled to say the money part of the arrangement you propose is, with me, an impossibility. I could not raise ten thousand dollars if it would save me from the fate of John Brown. Nor have my friends, so far as I know, yet reached the point of staking any money on my chances of success. I wish I could tell you better things, but it is even so. Yours very truly,
“In that hectic time, Lincoln followed the advice he had offered twelve years earlier when he suggested that the newly-installed president, Zachary Taylor, should announce: “by the Eternal, I take the responsibility.”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 23 (PDF), 2411.
“Lincoln had every right to feel proud of his efforts which — in his mind — helped to win the presidency for the Whig party. Moreover, with the Whigs in control of the executive branch of the federal government, political patronage posts were available in greater abundance. Even before Taylor’s inauguration, aspiring office seekers assailed Lincoln with requests for public jobs. These requests ranged from postmaster to that of charge d’affaire. The young congressman, who was nearing the end of his only term in the United States House of Representatives, diligently forwarded all applications to the appropriate department head, exerting great efforts to secure patronage jobs for his constituents and for Illinois Whigs generally.”
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Springfield, Ill., July 28, 1849.
Hon. J. M. Clayton.
Dear Sir:
It is with some hesitation I presume to address this letter—and yet I wish not only you, but the whole cabinet, and the President too, would consider the subject matter of it. My being among the People while you and they are not, will excuse the apparent presumption. It is understood that the President at first adopted, as a general rule, to throw the responsibility of the appointments upon the respective Departments; and that such rule is adhered to and practised upon. This course I at first thought proper; and, of course, I am not now complaining of it. Still I am disappointed with the effect of it on the public mind. It is fixing for the President the unjust and ruinous character of being a mere man of straw. This must be arrested, or it will damn us all inevitably. It is said Gen. Taylor and his officers held a council of war, at Palo Alto (I believe); and that he then fought the battle against unanimous opinion of those officers. This fact (no matter whether rightfully or wrongfully) gives him more popularity than ten thousand submissions, however really wise and magnanimous those submissions may be.
The appointments need be no better than they have been, but the public must be brought to understand, that they are the President’s appointments. He must occasionally say, or seem to say, “by the Eternal,” “I take the responsibility.” Those phrases were the “Samson’s locks” of Gen. Jackson, and we dare not disregard the lessons of experience.
“Lincoln continued reading Shakespeare well after he left New Salem. The Bard of Avon ‘was his constant companion. He took a copy with him almost always when traveling, and read it at leisure moments.’ He especially liked political figures, including Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus. His favorite plays were Hamlet and Macbeth. As president, Lincoln recited soliloquies from Hamlet and Richard III and told an actor that he had read and re-read Shakespeare ‘perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader.’”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 3 (PDF), 228-229.
“Lincoln also acquired a taste for poetry, especially Burns and Shakespeare; and it is worth remembering in this context that Burns was read in the early nineteenth century as a religious skeptic, while the Shakespeare Lincoln liked best had a strong whiff of fatalism to it. Lincoln’s comment to the actor James Hackett in 1863 that he preferred the king of Denmark’s “soliloquy in Hamlet commencing ‘O, my offence is rank'” to the more celebrated “To be, or not to be,” is usually treated as an embarrassing but amiable example of an amateur’s enthusiasm. Not enough interpreters of Lincoln have taken the trouble to read the soliloquy (act 3, scene 3) and notice that it speaks in agonizing tones about the inability of human beings to choose, on their own, even the most desirable ends:
“He spent much of his time, for instance, in reading newspapers—not the comprehensive journals of today, but small sheets filled almost entirely with political matter highly colored by the partisan bias of each editor. He was inordinately fond of such humorists as Artemus Ward and Petroleum V. Nasby, frequently reading passages from their writings to the members of his cabinet. In striking contrast was his passion for Shakespeare. Here again his propensity to dig deeply even if narrowly is illustrated. Though he was familiar enough with Hamlet and Macbeth and a few other plays to challenge the interpretations of the foremost Shakesperian actor of the time, he casually confessed that several of the plays he had not even read.”
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Executive Mansion,
Washington,
August 17, 1863.
My dear Sir:
Months ago I should have acknowledged the receipt of your book, and accompanying kind note; and I now have to beg your pardon for not having done so.
For one of my age, I have seen very little of the drama. The first presentation of Falstaff I ever saw was yours here, last winter or spring. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay is to say, as I truly can, I am very anxious to see it again. Some of Shakspeare’s plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard Third, Henry Eighth, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing “O, my offence is rank” surpasses that commencing “To be, or not to be.” But pardon this small attempt at criticism. I should like to hear you pronounce the opening speech of Richard the Third. Will you not soon visit Washington again? If you do, please call and let me make your personal acquaintance.
“Of all the clamorous horde, none dismayed Lincoln more than the eminent Shakespearean actor, James H. Hackett. After seeing Hackett play Falstaff, the president wrote him a fan letter. The indiscreet actor allowed it to get into the hands of newspapers, including the New York Herald, which ridiculed Lincoln’s taste in soliloquies. Abashed, Hackett apologized to Lincoln, who replied: ‘Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject. . . . My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print; yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments upon it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.’ The friendly correspondence between them ended when Hackett asked for a diplomatic post that could not be given. John Hay recalled that a ‘hundred times this experience was repeated: a man would be introduced to the President whose disposition and talk were agreeable; he took pleasure in his conversation for two or three interviews, and then this congenial person would ask some favor impossible to grant, and go away in bitterness of spirit.’”
–Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 2, Chapter 35 (PDF), 3868.
“That same year, the celebrated Shakespearean actor James Hackett made public a letter from Lincoln in which the Shakespeare-loving president un-inhibitedly identified his favorites among the Bard’s play and soliloquies. Perhaps aware that Hackett was a longtime friend of his rival Henry Raymond, Bennett pounds on the letter, editorializing: ‘Mr. Lincoln’s genius is wonderfully versatile. No department of human knowledge seems unexplored by him. He is equally at home whether discussing divinity with political preachers, debating plans of campaign with military heroes, [and] illustrating the Pope’s bull against the comet to a pleasure party from Chicago… It only remained for him to cap the climax of popular astonishment and admiration by showing himself to be a dramatic critic of the first order, and the greatest and most profound of the army of Shakespearean commentators.’ When Hackett wrote Lincoln to apologize for inadvertently giving the Herald and opportunity to taunt him, Lincoln assured him that he need not worry. Shrugging off his long years of experience as a target of newspaper mockery, Lincoln sighed: ‘I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.’”
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Private
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 2. 1863.
James H. Hackett
My dear Sir:
Yours of Oct. 22nd. is received, as also was, in due course, that of Oct. 3rd. I look forward with pleasure to the fulfilment of the promise made in the former.
Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject mentioned in that of the 22nd. My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print; yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments upon it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.
