{"id":1054,"date":"2013-06-29T12:53:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T12:53:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2016-06-18T20:21:02","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T20:21:02","slug":"letter-to-fillmore-men-september-8-1856","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-fillmore-men-september-8-1856\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Fillmore Men (September 8, 1856)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

“I understand you are a Fillmore man. Let me prove to you that every vote withheld from Fremont, and given to Fillmore,\u00a0in this state<\/em>, actually lessens Fillmore’s chance of being President.”<\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

HD Daily Report, September 8, 1856<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, September 8, 1856<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0Custom Map<\/h3>\n

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

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

“Lincoln recognized that the Republican party faced formidable problems in the 1856 presidential contest. \u00a0Not 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. \u00a0In 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. \u00a0In Republican newspapers his speeches were invariably praised as ‘unanswerable,’ showing ‘great eloquence and power.’ \u00a0Democratic papers described his speeches as ‘prosy and dull in the extreme.’ \u00a0He 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.'”<\/p>\n

\u2013David Herbert Donald,\u00a0Lincoln\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 192-194<\/p>\n

“On September 8, Lincoln wrote a form letter to the supporters of the American\u00a0party\u2019s candidate, arguing that Fillmore could only win if the election were thrown into\u00a0the House of Representatives, where the former president might prevail as a compromise\u00a0candidate. But that would never happen if Buchanan carried Illinois, whose electoral\u00a0votes, when combined with those of the South and of the Democratic standard bearer\u2019s\u00a0home state of Pennsylvania, would assure his election. Therefore Fillmore backers in\u00a0Illinois should vote for Fr\u00e9mont because Fillmore had no chance of carrying the state.”<\/p>\n

\u2013Michael Burlingame,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/em>\u00a0(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)\u00a0Unedited Manuscript By Chapters, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 11 (PDF), pp. 1213<\/a><\/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
Springfield, Sept. 8, 1856<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Dear Sir,\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
I understand you are a Fillmore man. Let me prove to you that every vote withheld from Fremont, and given to Fillmore,\u00a0in this state<\/em>, actually lessens Fillmore’s chance of being President.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Suppose Buchanan gets\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0the slave states, and Pennsylvania, andany other<\/em>\u00a0one state besides;\u00a0then he is elected<\/em>, no matter who gets all the rest.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
But suppose Fillmore gets the two slave states of Maryland and Kentucky; then Buchanan\u00a0is not<\/em>\u00a0elected; Fillmore goes into the House of Representatives, and may be made President by a compromise.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
But suppose again Fillmore’s friends throw away a few thousand votes on him, in\u00a0Indiana<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Illinois<\/em>, 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.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0for himself<\/em>, it is plainly his interest to let Fremont take it, and thus keep it out of the hands of\u00a0Buchanan.<\/em>\u00a0Be not deceived. Buchanan is the hard horse to beat in this race. Let him have Illinois, and nothing can beat him;\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>he will get Illinois<\/em>, if men persist in throwing away votes upon Mr. Fillmore.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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,\u00a0all\u00a0<\/em>the rest going for Fremont. Are not these newspapers a fair index of the proportion of the voters. If not, tell me why.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0them<\/em>, and therefore they help\u00a0it.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Do think these things over, and then act according to your judgment.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yours very truly,<\/span><\/div>\n
A. LINCOLN<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
(Confidential)<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking #105 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript “I understand you are a Fillmore man. Let me prove to you that every vote withheld from Fremont, and given to Fillmore,\u00a0in this state, actually lessens Fillmore’s chance of being President.” On This Date HD Daily Report, September 8, 1856 The Lincoln […]<\/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":[10866,11647,11633,6088,11669,11635,11658,10865],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honest-abe","tag-antebellum","tag-election-of-1856","tag-know-nothings","tag-letter","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-partisanship","tag-pragmatism","tag-private"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","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=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4341,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/4341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}