An incident occurred at this time which had great effect in this direction. The negro son of a colored woman in Springfield had gone South to work. He was born free, but did not have his free papers with him. He was arrested and would have been sold into slavery to pay his prison expenses, had not Mr. Lincoln and some friends purchased his liberty. Previous to this Mr. Lincoln had tried to secure the boy’s release through the Governor of Illinois, but the Governor informed him that nothing could be done.
Then it was that Mr. Lincoln rose to his full height and exclaimed:
“Governor, I’ll make the ground in this country too hot for the foot of a slave, whether you have the legal power to secure the release of this boy or not.”
HELPS TO ORGANIZE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
The year after Mr. Trumbull’s election to the Senate the Republican party was formally organized. A state convention of that party was called to meet at Bloomington May 29, 1856. The call for this convention was signed by many Springfield Whigs, and among the names was that of Abraham Lincoln. Mr. Lincoln’s name had been signed to the call by his law partner, but when he was informed of this action he endorsed it fully. Among the famous men who took part in this convention were Abraham Lincoln, Lyman Trumbull, David Davis, Leonard Swett, Richard Yates, Norman, B. Judd and Owen Lovejoy, the Alton editor, whose life, like Lincoln’s, finally paid the penalty for his Abolition views. The party nominated for Governor, Wm. H. Bissell, a veteran of the Mexican War, and adopted a platform ringing with anti-slavery sentiment.
Mr. Lincoln was the greatest power in the campaign that followed. He was one of the Fremont Presidential electors, and he went to work with all his might to spread the new party gospel and make votes for the old “Path-Finder of the Rocky Mountains.”
An amusing incident followed close after the Bloomington convention. A meeting was called at Springfield to ratify the action at Bloomington. Only three persons attended—Mr. Lincoln, his law partner and a man named John Paine. Mr. Lincoln made a speech to his colleagues, in which, among other things, he said: “While all seems dead, the age itself is not. It liveth as sure as our Maker liveth.”
In this campaign Mr. Lincoln was in general demand not only in his own state, but in Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin as well.
The result of that Presidential campaign was the election of Buchanan as President, Bissell as Governor, leaving Mr. Lincoln the undisputed leader of the new party. Hence it was that two years later he was the inevitable man to oppose Judge Douglas in the campaign for United States Senator.