The Papers and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Complete

by Abraham Lincoln

"While he [Col. Taylor] was making these charges against the Whigs over the country, riding in fine carriages, wearing ruffled shirts, kid gloves, massive gold watch-chains, with large gold seals, and flourishing a heavy gold-headed cane, he [Lincoln] was a poor boy, hired on a flatboat at eight dollars a month, and had only one pair of breeches to his back, and they were buckskin,—'and,' said Lincoln, 'if you know the nature of buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun, they will shrink,—and mine kept shrinking, until they left several inches of my legs bare between the tops of my socks and the lower part of my breeches; and, whilst I was growing taller, they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter, that they left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day. If you call this aristocracy, I plead guilty to the charge.'" Hitherto Sangamon County had been uniformly Democratic; but at this election the Whigs carried it by an average majority of about four hundred, Mr. Lincoln receiving a larger vote than any other candidate. The result was in part due to a transitory and abortive attempt of the anti-Jackson and anti-Van-Buren men to build up a third party, with Judge White of Tennessee as its leader. This party was not supposed to be wedded to the "specie circular," was thought to be open to conviction on the bank question, clamored loudly about the business interests and general distress of the country, and was actually in favor of the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the public lands. In the nomenclature of Illinois, its members might have been called "nominal Jackson men;" that is to say, men who continued to act with the Democratic party, while disavowing its cardinal principles,—traders, trimmers, cautious schismatics who argued the cause of Democracy from a brief furnished by the enemy. The diversion in favor of White was just to the hand of the Whigs, and they aided it in every practicable way. Always for an expedient when an expedient would answer, a compromise when a compromise would do, the "hand" Mr. Lincoln "showed" at the opening of the campaign contained the "White" card among the highest of its trumps. "If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall vote for Hugh L. White for President." A number of local Democratic politicians assisting him to play it, it won the game in 1836, and Sangamon County went over to the Whigs.

At this election Mr. Douglas was made a Representative from Morgan County, along with Col. Hardin, from whom he had the year before taken the State's attorneyship. The event is notable principally because Mr. Douglas was nominated by a convention, and not by the old system of self-announcement, which, under the influence of Eastern immigrants, like himself, full of party zeal, and attached to the customs of the places whence they came, was gradually but surely falling into disfavor. Mr. Douglas served only one session, and then became Register of the Land Office at Springfield. The next year he was nominated for Congress in the Peoria District, under the convention system, and in the same year Col. Stephenson was nominated for Governor in the same way. The Whigs were soon compelled to adopt the device which they saw marshalling the Democrats in a state of complete discipline; whilst they themselves were disorganized by a host of volunteer candidates and the operations of innumerable cliques and factions. At first "it was considered a Yankee contrivance," intended to abridge the liberties of the people; but the Whig "people" were as fond of victory, offices, and power as their enemies were, and in due time they took very kindly to this effectual means of gaining them. A speech of Ebenezer Peck of Chicago, "before a great meeting of the lobby, during the special session of 1835-6 at Vandalia," being a production of special ingenuity and power, is supposed to have contributed largely to the introduction of the convention system into the middle and southern parts of the State. Mr. Peck was then a fervent Democrat, whom the Whigs delighted to malign as a Canadian monarchist; but in after times he was the fast and able friend of their great leader, Abraham Lincoln.

One of the first and worst effects of the stricter organization of parties in Illinois, as well as in other States, was the strong diversion of public attention from State to Federal affairs. Individual candidates were no longer required to "show their hands:" they accepted "platforms" when they accepted nominations; and without a nomination it was mere quixotism to stand at all. District, State, and national conventions, acting and re-acting upon one another, produced a concert of sentiment and conduct which overlaid local issues, and repressed independent proceedings. This improved party machinery supplied the readiest and most effective means of distributing the rapidly-increasing patronage of the Federal Executive; and those who did not wish to be cut off from its enjoyment could do no less than re-affirm with becoming fervor, in their local assemblages, the latest deliverance of the faith by the central authority. The promoters of heresies and schisms, the blind leaders who misled a county or a State convention, and seduced it into the declaration of principles of its own, had their seats contested in the next general council of the party, were solemnly sat upon, condemned, "delivered over to Satan to be buffeted," and cast out of the household of faith, to wander in the wilderness and to live upon husks. It was like a feeble African bishop imputing heresy to the Christian world, with Rome at its head. A man like Mr. Lincoln, who earnestly "desired place and distinction as a politician," labored without hope while his party affinities remained the subject of a reasonable doubt. He must be "a whole-hog man" or nothing, a Whig or a Democrat. Mr. Lincoln chose his company with commendable decision, and wasted no tender regrets upon his "nominal" Democratic friends. For White against Harrison, in November, 1836, he led the Whigs into action when the Legislature met in December; and when the hard-cider campaign of 1840 commenced, with its endless meetings and processions, its coon-skins and log-cabins, its intrigue, trickery, and fun, his musical voice rose loudest above the din for "Old Tippecanoe;" and no man did better service, or enjoyed those memorable scenes more, than he who was to be the beneficiary of a similar revival in 1860.

When this legislature met in the winter of 1836-7, the bank and internal-improvement infatuation had taken full possession of a majority of the people, as well as of the politicians. To be sure, "Old Hickory" had given a temporary check to the wild speculations in Western land by the specie circular, about the close of his administration, whereby gold and silver were made "land-office money;" and the Government declined to exchange any more of the public domain for the depreciated paper of rotten and explosive banks. Millions of notes loaned by the banks on insufficient security or no security at all were by this timely measure turned back into the banks, or converted to the uses of a more legitimate and less dangerous business. But, even if the specie circular had not been repealed, it would probably have proved impotent against the evils it was designed to prevent, after the passage of the Act distributing among the States the surplus (or supposed surplus) revenues of the Federal Government.

The last dollar of the old debt was paid in 1833. There were from time to time large unexpended and unappropriated balances in the treasury. What should be done with them? There was no sub-treasury as yet, and questions concerning the mere safe-keeping of these moneys excited the most tremendous political contests. The United States Bank had always had the use of the cash in the treasury in the form of deposits; but the bank abused its trust,—used its enormous power over the currency and exchanges of the country to achieve political results in its own interest, and, by its manifold sins and iniquities, compelled Gen. Jackson to remove the deposits. Ultimately the bank took shelter in Pennsylvania, where it began a new fraudulent life under a surreptitious clause tacked to the end of a road law on its passage through the General Assembly. In due time the "beast," as Col. Benton loved to call it, died in its chosen lair a shameful and ignominious death, cheating the public with a show of solvency to the end, and leaving a fine array of bill-holders and depositors to mourn one of the most remarkable delusions of modern times.

Withdrawn, or rather withheld (for they were never withdrawn), from the Bank of the United States, the revenues of the Federal Government were deposited as fast as they accrued in specie-paying State banks. They were paid in the notes of the thousand banks, good, bad, and indifferent, whose promises to pay constituted the paper currency of the day. It was this money which the Whigs, aided by Democratic recusants, proposed to give away to the States. They passed an Act requiring it to be deposited with the States,—ostensibly as a safe and convenient method of keeping it; but nobody believed that it would ever be called for, or paid if it was. It was simply an extraordinary largess; and pending the very embarrassment caused by itself, when the government had not a dollar wherewith to pay even a pension, and the temporary expedient was an issue of treasury notes against the better judgment of the party in power, the possibility of withdrawing these deposits was never taken into the account. The Act went into effect on the 1st of January, 1837, and was one of the immediate causes of the suspension and disasters of that year. "The condition of our deposit banks was desperate,—wholly inadequate to the slightest pressure on their vaults in the ordinary course of business, much less that of meeting the daily government drafts and the approaching deposit of near forty millions with the States." Nevertheless, the deposits began at the rate of ten millions to the quarter. The deposit banks "blew up;" and all the others, including that of the United States, closed their doors to customers and bill-holders, which gave them more time to hold public meetings, imputing the distress of the country to the hard-money policy of Jackson and Van Buren, and agitating for the re-charter of Mr. Biddle's profligate concern as the only remedy human ingenuity could devise.

It was in the month previous to the first deposit with the States,—about the time when Gov. Ford says, "lands and town-lots were the only articles of export" from Illinois; when the counters of Western land-offices were piled high with illusory bank-notes in exchange for public lands, and when it was believed that the West was now at last about to bound forward in a career of unexampled prosperity, under the forcing process of public improvements by the States, with the aid and countenance of the Federal Government,—that Mr. Lincoln went up to attend the first session of the new Legislature at Vandalia. He was big with projects: his real public service was just now about to begin. In the previous Legislature he had been silent, observant, studious. He had improved the opportunity so well, that of all men in this new body, of equal age in the service, he was the smartest parliamentarian and the cunningest "log-roller." He was fully determined to identify himself conspicuously with the "liberal" legislation in contemplation, and dreamed of a fame very different from that which he actually obtained as an antislavery leader. It was about this time that he told his friend, Mr. Speed, that he aimed at the great distinction of being called "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois."

Meetings with a view to this sort of legislation had been held in all, or nearly all, the counties in the State during the preceding summer and fall. Hard-money, strict-construction, no-monopoly, anti-progressive Democrats were in a sad minority. In truth, there was little division of parties about these matters which were deemed so essential to the prosperity of a new State. There was Mr. Lincoln, and there was Mr. Douglas, in perfect unison as to the grand object to be accomplished, but mortally jealous as to which should take the lead in accomplishing it. A few days before the Legislature assembled, "a mass convention" of the people of Sangamon County "instructed" their members "to vote for a general system of internal improvements." The House of Representatives organized in the morning; and in the evening its hall was surrendered to a convention of delegates from all parts of the State, which "devised and recommended to the Legislature a system of internal improvements, the chief feature of which was, that it should be commensurate with the wants of the people." This result was arrived at after two days of debate, with "Col. Thomas Mather, of the State Bank, as president."

Mr. Lincoln served on the Committee on Finance, and was a most laborious member, instant in season and out of season, for the great measures of the Whig party. It was to his individual exertion that the Whigs were indebted in no small degree for the complete success of their favorite schemes at this session. A railroad from Galena to the mouth of the Ohio was provided for; another from Alton to Shawneetown; another from Alton to Mount Carmel; another from Alton to the eastern boundary of the State towards Terre Haute; another from Quincy by way of Springfield to the Wabash; another from Bloomington to Pekin; another from Peoria to Warsaw,—in all about thirteen hundred miles. But in this comprehensive "system," "commensurate with the wants of the people," the rivers were not to be overlooked; and accordingly the Kaskaskia, the Illinois, the Great Wabash, the Little Wabash, and the Rock rivers were to be duly improved. To set these little matters in motion, a loan of eight millions of dollars was authorized; and, to complete the canal from Chicago to Peru, another loan of four millions of dollars was voted at the same session,—two hundred thousand dollars being given as a gratuity to those counties which seemed to have no special interest in any of the foregoing projects. Work on all these roads was to commence, not only at the same time, but at both ends of each road, and at all the river-crossings. There were as yet no surveys of any route, no estimates, no reports of engineers, or even unprofessional viewers. "Progress" was not to wait on trifles; capitalists were supposed to be lying in wait to catch these precious bonds; the money would be raised in a twinkling, and being applied with all the skill of "a hundred De Witt Clintons,"—a class of gentlemen at that time extremely numerous and obtrusive,—the loan would build the railroads, the railroads would build cities, cities would create farms, foreign capital would rush to so inviting a field, the lands would be taken up with marvellous celerity, and the "land-tax" going into a sinking fund, that, with some tolls and certain sly speculations to be made by the State, would pay principal and interest of the debt without ever a cent of taxation upon the people. In short, everybody was to be enriched, while the munificence of the State in selling its credit and spending the proceeds would make its empty coffers overflow with ready money. It was a dark stroke of statesmanship, a mysterious device in finance, which, whether from being misunderstood, or from being mismanaged, bore from the beginning fruits the very reverse of those it had promised.

A Board of Canal Commissioners was already in existence; but now were established, as necessary parts of the new "system," a Board of Fund Commissioners and a Board of Commissioners of Public Works.