{"id":950,"date":"2013-06-28T20:36:33","date_gmt":"2013-06-28T20:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/?p=950"},"modified":"2016-06-20T13:48:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-20T13:48:43","slug":"plan-of-campaign-august-1840","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/plan-of-campaign-august-1840\/","title":{"rendered":"Plan of Campaign (August, 1840)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Annotated Transcript<\/h3>\n

1st. Appoint one person in each county as county captain, and take his pledge to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.<\/a><\/p>\n

On This Date<\/h3>\n

[Editorial Note: \u00a0The editors of Lincoln’s Collected Works put this undated “Plan of Campaign” as being created sometime in January 1840, but Matthew Pinsker, who edits this site, considers it more likely to have been created in August 1840, following the local Illinois elections.]<\/em><\/p>\n

HD Daily Report, August 1, 1840<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lincoln Log, August 1840<\/a><\/p>\n

Custom Map<\/h3>\n

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

How Historians Interpret<\/h3>\n

“Perhaps the two most prominent monuments of this aspect of his political life were his campaign plan for 1840 and his 1843 resolutions laying out a pattern of organization embracing local, county and district conventions with committees and captains at every level to carry on the electioneering work.”<\/p>\n

—Joel H. Silbey, “‘Always a Whig in Politics’ The Partisan Life of Abraham Lincoln,”<\/a>\u00a0The Journal of Abraham Lincoln Studies\u00a0<\/em>8, no. 1 (1986), 21-42.<\/p>\n

\u201cSetting aside his earlier fears that an enlarged party machinery could be ripe for manipulation by party elders, in January 1840, he became a coauthor of a circular that would \u2018appoint one person in each county as county captain,\u2019 with the precinct captain and section captain \u2018to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.\u2019 The Whigs, put on the defensive by the organizational structures of their Democratic opponents, were determined to tighten their own organization. \u2018Our intention is to organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls in the coming presidential election.\u2019”<\/p>\n

—Ronald C. White,\u00a0A Lincoln: A Biography<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2009), 92.<\/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
Lincoln’s Plan of Campaign in 1840<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
1st. Appoint one person in each county as county captain, and take his pledge to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Duties of the County Captain<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
1st. To procure from the poll-books a separate list for each Precinct of all the names of all those persons who voted the Whig ticket in August.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
2nd. To appoint one person in each Precinct as Precinct Captain, and, by a personal interview with him, procure his pledge, to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
3rd. To deliver to each Precinct Captain the list of names as above, belonging to his Precinct; and also a written list of his duties.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Duties of the Precinct Captain.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
1st. To divide the list of names delivered him by the county Captain, into Sections of ten who reside most convenient to each other.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
2nd. To appoint one person of each Section as Section Captain, and by a personal interview with him, procure his pledge to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
3rd. To deliver to each Section Captain the list of names belonging to his Section and also a written list of his duties.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
Duties of the Section Captain.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
1st. To see each man of his Section face to face, and procure his pledge that he will for no consideration (impossibilities excepted) stay from the polls on the first monday in November; and that he will record his vote as early on the day as possible.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
2nd. To add to his Section the name of every person in his vicinity who did not vote with us in August, but who will vote with us in the fall, and take the same pledge of him, as from the others.<\/span><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
3rd. To task himself to procure at least such additional names to his Section.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranking #54 on the list of 150 Most Teachable Lincoln Documents Annotated Transcript 1st. Appoint one person in each county as county captain, and take his pledge to perform promptly all the duties assigned him. On This Date [Editorial Note: \u00a0The editors of Lincoln’s Collected Works put this undated “Plan of Campaign” as being created […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10855],"tags":[10866,11642,11669,10864,11635,10865],"class_list":["post-950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-railsplitter","tag-antebellum","tag-management-style","tag-needs-close-reading","tag-notes","tag-partisanship","tag-private"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950","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=950"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4435,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950\/revisions\/4435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/lincoln\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}