{"id":1035,"date":"2013-06-29T12:41:41","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:41:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1035"},"modified":"2016-08-18T16:37:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T16:37:51","slug":"letter-to-owen-lovejoy-august-11-1855","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-owen-lovejoy-august-11-1855\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Owen Lovejoy (August 11, 1855)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Contributing editors for this page include James Duncan<\/em><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Ranking<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #0000ff; font-size: 36px;\">#96<\/span> on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/node\/40482\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Know-nothingism has not yet entirely tumbled to pieces&#8212;nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky &amp; 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.&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>On This Date<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu\/panel\/this_date\/1855-08-11\" target=\"_blank\">HD Daily Report, August 11, 1855<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thelincolnlog.org\/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&amp;day=1855-08-11\" target=\"_blank\">The Lincoln Log, August 11, 1855<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Close Readings<\/h3>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BccZCdvh-nc\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\nPosted at YouTube by &#8220;Understanding Lincoln&#8221; participant James Duncan, 2016<\/p>\n<h3>Custom Map<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?msid=214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=41.520403,-89.421844&amp;spn=0.366043,0.662613&amp;iwloc=0004e0630527f2d3a11ed\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3293\" src=\"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/files\/2013\/06\/Screen-shot-2014-01-26-at-6.01.47-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen shot 2014-01-26 at 6.01.47 PM\" width=\"484\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/files\/2013\/06\/Screen-shot-2014-01-26-at-6.01.47-PM.png 692w, https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/files\/2013\/06\/Screen-shot-2014-01-26-at-6.01.47-PM-300x272.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 484px) 100vw, 484px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?msid=214923210427089848626.0004def4e79e2ae545ca4&amp;msa=0&amp;ll=41.520403,-89.421844&amp;spn=0.366043,0.662613&amp;iwloc=0004e0630527f2d3a11ed\" target=\"_blank\">View in Larger Map\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n<p>\u201cIn 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. \u2018Not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I,\u2019 he told Lovejoy; \u2018and yet the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do any thing, lest I do wrong.\u2019 The Know Nothing organization had \u2018not yet entirely crumbled to pieces,\u2019 and until the antislavery forces could win over elements of it, \u2018there is not sufficient materials to successfully combat the Nebraska democracy with.\u2019 As long as nativists \u2018cling to a hope of success under their own organization,\u2019 they were unlikely to abandon it. \u2018I fear an open push by us now, may offend them, and tend to prevent our ever getting them.\u2019 In central Illinois, the Know Nothings were, Lincoln said, some of his \u2018old political and personal friends,\u2019 among them Joseph Gillespie of Edwardsville. Lincoln \u2018hoped their organization would die out without the painful necessity of my taking an open stand against them.\u2019 Of course he deplored their principles: \u2018Indeed 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.\u2019 He was not squeamish about combining with \u2018any body who stands right,\u2019 but the Know Nothings stood wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Michael Burlingame,\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.knox.edu\/documents\/pdfs\/LincolnStudies\/Burlingame,%20Vol%201,%20Chap%2011.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Abraham 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 11 (PDF),\u00a01159.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the political confusion between 1854 and 1856, anti-Nebraska elements often sought coalitions with Know-Nothings in efforts that became known as &#8220;fusion.&#8221; 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 &#8220;two malign powers&#8221;\u2014Slavery and Catholicism\u2014&#8221;have a natural affinity for each other.&#8221; 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Mitchell Snay, <a href=\"http:\/\/hdl.handle.net\/2027\/spo.2629860.0022.107\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cAbraham Lincoln, Owen Lovejoy, and the Emergence of the Republican Party in Illinois,\u201d <\/a><em>Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association<\/em> 22, no. 1 (2001): 82-99.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 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\u2026 when Lovejoy urged Lincoln in August, 1855, to join a \u2018fusion\u2019 movement in Illinois, Lincoln patiently explained that \u2018not even you are more anxious to prevent the extension of slavery than I,\u2019 but still \u2018the political atmosphere is such, just now, that I fear to do any thing, lest I do wrong.\u2019 Later that month, he told Joshua Speed that as far as he was concerned, \u2018I think I am a Whig.\u2019 But there were voices all around him which argued that \u2018there 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 \u2018certain,\u2019 he told Speed, was that he was \u2018not a Know-Nothing\u2019 Lincoln \u2018opposed Know-Nothingism in all its phrases, everywhere, and at all times when it was sweeping over the land like wildfire,\u2019 Herndon remarked. As Lincoln told Lovejoy, \u2018I 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.\u2019 Without any identifiable religion of his own, Lincoln shared none of the anxieties of Whig Protestants about \u2018political Romanism,\u2019 and found the Know-Nothings, even more than the Calhounites, a standing repudiation of what \u2018as a nation, we began by declaring that \u2018all men are created equal.\u2019\u2019 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Allen C. Guelzo, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=L7ZDo_sjOFMC&amp;pg=PA201&amp;dq=lincoln+know-nothing+illinois+lovejoy&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=0ahUKEwiGhdDYm6XNAhVBWj4KHbrcCygQ6AEILDAC#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false\" target=\"_blank\">Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President<\/a><\/em> (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1999), 201-202.<\/p>\n<h3>NOTE TO READERS<\/h3>\n<p>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&#8217;s Theatre and Gettysburg, please visit our Livestream page at <a href=\"http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/new.livestream.com\/gilderlehrman\/lincoln<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Searchable Text<\/span><\/h3>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Springfield,<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">August 11- 1855<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Hon: Owen Lovejoy:<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">My dear Sir:\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">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&#8212;nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky &amp; 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.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">I have no objection to &#8220;fuse&#8221; 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\u00a0honor of a hearing to &#8220;stand with any body who stands right&#8221;&#8212; 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 &#8220;fuse&#8221; upon.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">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.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">Yours truly<\/span><\/div>\n<div><span style=\"color: #c0c0c0;\">A. LINCOLN&#8212;<\/span><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contributing editors for this page include James Duncan Ranking #96 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript &#8220;Know-nothingism has not yet entirely tumbled to pieces&#8212;nay, it is even a little encouraged by the late elections in Tennessee, Kentucky &amp; Alabama. Until we can get the elements of this organization, there is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10856],"tags":[10866,11633,6088,10883,11669,11635,11658,10865],"class_list":["post-1035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honest-abe","tag-antebellum","tag-know-nothings","tag-letter","tag-manipulation","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-partisanship","tag-pragmatism","tag-private"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035","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=1035"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4572,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035\/revisions\/4572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}