{"id":1090,"date":"2013-06-29T13:08:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T13:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2016-06-18T15:46:58","modified_gmt":"2016-06-18T15:46:58","slug":"letter-to-jonathan-scammon-november-10-1854","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/letter-to-jonathan-scammon-november-10-1854\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to Jonathan Scammon (November 10, 1854)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

 <\/p>\n

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

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. \u00a0If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please mark for me with the members.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

HD Daily Report, November 10, 1854<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, November 10, 1854<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

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

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

“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. \u00a0During 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.’ \u00a0Three days after the November election, Lincoln began writing a torrent of letters asking support for his senate bid. \u00a0On November 10, he appealed to Charles Hoyt of Aurora: ‘You used\u00a0to express a good deal of partiality for me; and if you are still so, now is the time. \u00a0Some 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.’ \u00a0That 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. \u00a0If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please make a mark for me with the members.’ \u00a0The following day he asked Jacob Harding of Paris to visit his legislator and \u201cmake a mark with him for me,’ for ‘I really have some chance.’ \u00a0Later 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. \u00a0You are a member of the Legislature, and have a vote to give. \u00a0Think it over, and see whether you can do better than to go for me.’ \u00a0The 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.'”<\/p>\n

\u2014Michael Burlingame,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln: A Life<\/em>\u00a0(2 volumes, originally published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) Unedited Manuscript By Chapter, Lincoln Studies Center, Volume 1, Chapter 10 (PDF), pp. 1123-1125<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

“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. \u00a0Yet the new documents from the post-Collected Works\u00a0<\/em>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. \u00a0Lincoln’s outreach to Know Nothings, Americans, and former Fillmore men was not only persistent but also at times subtle. \u00a0Consider this rarely cited 1854 note from the\u00a0First Supplement\u00a0<\/em>(1974) to Chicago attorney and businessman Jonathan Y. Scammon. . .\u00a0‘If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary.’ \u00a0<\/em>Such a confidential\u00a0double entendre<\/em> 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. \u00a0Scammon cautiously declined to answer in writing, promising instead to ‘communicate personally.’ \u00a0Scammon’s ties to the nativist movement, if any, remain murky, although all that really matters here is what Lincoln might have believed.”<\/p>\n

\u2014Matthew Pinsker, “Boss Lincoln: A Reappraisal of Abraham Lincoln’s Party Leadership,” in\u00a0The Living Lincoln,\u00a0<\/em>ed. by Thomas A. Horrocks, Harold Holzer, and Frank J. Williams (Carbondale: Souther Illinois University Press, 2011), 25-26<\/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
November 10, 1854<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
J.Y.Scammon, Esq<\/span><\/div>\n
My dear Sir:<\/span><\/div>\n
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. \u00a0If you know nothing, and feel nothing to the contrary, please mark for me with the members. \u00a0Write me, at all events. \u00a0Direct to Springfield.<\/span><\/div>\n
Let this be confidential.<\/span><\/div>\n
Yours as ever,<\/span><\/div>\n
A. Lincoln<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking #123 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents   Annotated Transcript 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. \u00a0If you know nothing, and feel […]<\/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":[10871,10866,11665,11633,6088,11669,11635,10865],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-honest-abe","tag-ambition","tag-antebellum","tag-election-of-1854","tag-know-nothings","tag-letter","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-partisanship","tag-private"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","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=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}