{"id":1009,"date":"2013-06-29T12:31:46","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1009"},"modified":"2016-06-20T14:17:46","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T14:17:46","slug":"letter-to-william-kellogg-december-11-1860","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-william-kellogg-december-11-1860\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to William Kellogg (December 11, 1860)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n

#83<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

“Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his ‘Pop. Sov.’ Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later.”<\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

HD Daily Report, December 11, 1860<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, December 11, 1860<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
\nView in Larger Map<\/a><\/p>\n

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

\u201cWhen William Kellogg, an Illinois Republican congressman, proposed a compromise including extension of the Missouri Compromise line, the paper denounced him: \u2018He has sold himself to the slave power.\u2019 Two weeks before Lincoln\u2019s inauguration, the New York Times <\/em>complained that the Republicans lacked a \u201csettled plan\u201d for dealing with secession. In fact, throughout the crisis Lincoln displayed remarkable consistency He proved willing to compromise on issues had always considered inessential, but refused to countenance any concession that rank the risk of sundering the Republican party and surrendering the results of the election before his administration began. In December 1860 and January 1861, he intervened forcefully in congressional deliberations, something no previous president-elect had done, to delineate what kinds of conciliatory measures he would and would not support.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery<\/a> <\/em>(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), 152.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“On December 6, Lincoln wrote to Congressman Kellogg, who had asked him for guidance: ‘Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under gain; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his \u2018Pop. Sov.\u2019 Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later. You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the constitution ought to be enforced \u2013 to put it on the mildest form, ought not to be resisted.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013 Michael Burlingame,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript by Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 17 \u00a0(PDF),\u00a01938-1939.<\/p>\n

NOTE TO READERS<\/h3>\n

This page is under construction and will be developed further by students in the new \u201cUnderstanding Lincoln\u201d online course sponsored by the House Divided Project at Dickinson College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. To find out more about the course and to see some of our videotaped class sessions, including virtual field trips to Ford’s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n
Private & confidential..<\/span><\/div>\n
Springfield, Ills.<\/span><\/div>\n
Dec. 11. 1860<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Hon. William Kellogg<\/span><\/div>\n
My dear Sir—\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his “Pop. Sov.” Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the constitution ought to be enforced—to put it on the mildest form, ought not to be resisted. In haste<\/span><\/div>\n
Yours as ever<\/span><\/div>\n
A. LINCOLN<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking #83 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript “Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his ‘Pop. Sov.’ Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later.” On This Date HD Daily Report, December 11, 1860 The Lincoln Log, December 11, 1860 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10859],"tags":[10866,6088,11642,11669,11635,10865,69,70,10890,10876],"class_list":["post-1009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-savior-of-the-union","tag-antebellum","tag-letter","tag-management-style","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-partisanship","tag-private","tag-secession","tag-slavery","tag-stephen-a-douglas","tag-younger-readers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4454,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009\/revisions\/4454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}