The Democrats gave Mr. Lincoln a singular competitor—the famous Methodist preacher, Peter Cartwright. It was not the first time they had met in the field of politics. When Lincoln ran for the Legislature on his return from the. Black Hawk war, in 1832, one of the successful candidates of that year was this indefatigable circuit-rider. He was now over sixty years of age, in the height of his popularity, and in all respects an adversary not to be despised. His career as a preacher began at the beginning of the century and continued for seventy years. He was the son of one of the pioneers of the West, and grew up in the rudest regions of the border land between Tennessee and Kentucky. He represents himself, with the usual inverted pride of a class-leader, as having been a wild, vicious youth; but the catalogue of his crimes embraces nothing less venial than card-playing, horse-racing, and dancing, and it is hard to see what different amusements could have been found in southern Kentucky in 1801.
This course of dissipation did not continue long, as he was "converted and united with the Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church" in June of that year, when only sixteen years old, and immediately developed such zeal and power in exhortation that less than a year later he was licensed to "exercise his gifts as an exhorter so long as his practice is agreeable to the gospel." He became a deacon at twenty-one, an elder at twenty-three, a presiding elder at twenty-seven, and from that time his life is the history of his church in the West for sixty years. He died in 1872, eighty-seven years of age, having baptized twelve thousand persons and preached fifteen thousand sermons. He was, and will always remain, the type of the backwoods preacher. Even in his lifetime the simple story of his life became so overgrown with a net-work of fable that there is little resemblance between the simple, courageous, prejudiced itinerant of his "Autobiography" and the fighting, brawling, half-civilized, Protestant Friar Tuck of bar-room newspaper legend.
It is true that he did not always discard the weapons of the flesh in his combats with the ungodly, and he felt more than once compelled to leave the pulpit to do carnal execution upon the disturbers of the peace of the sanctuary; but two or three incidents of this sort in three-quarters of a century do not turn a parson into a pugilist. He was a fluent, self-confident speaker, who, after the habit of his time, addressed his discourses more to the emotions than to the reason of his hearers. His system of future rewards and punishments was of the most simple and concrete character, and formed the staple of his sermons. He had no patience with the refinements and reticences of modern theology, and in his later years observed with scorn and sorrow the progress of education and scholarly training in his own communion. After listening one day to a prayer from a young minister which shone more by its correctness than its unction, he could not refrain from saying, "Brother—, three prayers like that would freeze hell over!"— a consummation which did not commend itself to him as desirable. He often visited the cities of the Atlantic coast, but saw little in them to admire. His chief pleasure on his return was to sit in a circle of his friends and pour out the phials of his sarcasm upon all the refinements of life that he had witnessed in New York or Philadelphia, which he believed, or affected to believe, were tenanted by a species of beings altogether inferior to the manhood that filled the cabins of Kentucky and Illinois. An apocryphal story of one of these visits was often told of him, which pleased him so that he never contradicted it: that becoming bewildered in the vastness of a New York hotel, he procured a hatchet, and in pioneer fashion "blazed" his way along the mahogany staircases and painted corridors from the office to his room. With all his eccentricities, he was a devout man, conscientious and brave. He lived in domestic peace and honor all his days, and dying, he and his wife, whom he had married almost in childhood, left a posterity of 129 direct descendants to mourn them. [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (1) relocated to chapter end.]
With all his devotion to the cause of his church, Peter Cartwright was an ardent Jackson politician, with probably a larger acquaintance throughout the district than any other man in it, and with a personal following which, beginning with his own children and grandchildren and extending through every precinct, made it no holiday task to defeat him in a popular contest. But Lincoln and his friends went energetically into the canvass, and before it closed he was able to foresee a certain victory.
An incident is related to show how accurately Lincoln could calculate political results in advance—a faculty which remained with him all his life. A friend, who was a Democrat, had come to him early in the canvass and had told him he wanted to see him elected, but did not like to vote against his party; still he would vote for him, if the contest was to be so close that every vote was needed. A short time before the election Lincoln said to him: "I have got the preacher, and I don't want your vote."
The election was held in August, and the Whig candidate's majority was very large—1511 in the district, where Clay's majority had been only 914, and where Taylor's, two years later, with all the glamour of victory about him, was ten less. Lincoln's majority in Sangamon County was 690, which, in view of the standing of his competitor, was the most remarkable proof which could be given of his personal popularity; [Transcriber's Note: Lengthy footnote (2) relocated to chapter end.] it was the highest majority ever given to any candidate in the county during the entire period of Whig ascendancy until Yates's triumphant campaign of 1852.
This large vote was all the more noteworthy because the Whigs were this year upon the unpopular side. The annexation of Texas was generally approved throughout the West, and those who opposed it were regarded as rather lacking in patriotism, even before actual hostilities began. But when General Taylor and General Ampudia confronted each other with hostile guns across the Rio Grande, and still more after the brilliant feat of arms by which the Americans opened the war on the plain of Palo Alto, it required a good deal of moral courage on the part of the candidates and voters alike to continue their attitude of disapproval of the policy of the Government, at the same time that they were shouting paeans over the exploits of our soldiers. They were assisted, it is true, by the fact that the leading Whigs of the State volunteered with the utmost alacrity and promptitude in the military service. On the 11th of May, Congress authorized the raising of fifty thousand volunteers, and as soon as the intelligence reached Illinois the daring and restless spirit of Hardin leaped forward to the fate which was awaiting him, and he instantly issued a call to his brigade of militia, in which he said: "The general has already enrolled himself as the first volunteer from Illinois under the requisition. He is going whenever ordered. Who will go with him? He confidently expects to be accompanied by many of his brigade." The quota assigned to Illinois was three regiments; these were quickly raised, [Footnote: The colonels were Hardin, Bissell, and Forman.] and an additional regiment offered by Baker was then accepted. The sons of the prominent Whigs enlisted as private soldiers; David Logan was a sergeant in Baker's regiment. A public meeting was held in Springfield on the 29th of May, at which Mr. Lincoln delivered what was considered a thrilling and effective speech on the condition of affairs, and the duty of citizens to stand by the flag of the nation until an honorable peace was secured.
It was thought probable, and would Have been altogether fitting, that either Colonel Hardin, Colonel Baker, or Colonel Bissell, all of them men of intelligence and distinction, should be appointed general of the Illinois Brigade, but the Polk Administration was not inclined to waste so important a place upon men who might thereafter have views of their own in public affairs. The coveted appointment was given to a man already loaded to a grotesque degree with political employment— Mr. Lincoln's old adversary, James Shields, He had left the position of Auditor of State to assume a seat on the Bench; retiring from this, he had just been appointed Commissioner of the General Land Office. He had no military experience, and so far as then known no capacity for the service; but his fervid partisanship commended him to Mr. Polk as a safe servant, and he received the commission, to the surprise and derision of the State. His bravery in action and his honorable wounds at Cerro Gordo and Chapultepec saved him from contempt and made his political fortune. He had received the recommendation of the Illinois Democrats in Congress, and it is altogether probable that he owed his appointment in great measure to the influence of Douglas, who desired to have as few Democratic statesmen as possible in Springfield that winter. A Senator was to be elected, and Shields had acquired such a habit of taking all the offices that fell vacant that it was only prudent to remove him as far as convenient from such a temptation. The election was held in December, and Douglas was promoted from the House of Representatives to that seat in the Senate which he held with such ability and distinction the rest of his life.
[Sidenote: December 28, 1841.]
The session of 1846-7 opened with the Sangamon district of Illinois unrepresented in Congress. Baker had gone with his regiment to Mexico, It did not have the good fortune to participate in any of the earlier actions of the campaign, and his fiery spirit chafed in the enforced idleness of camp and garrison. He seized an occasion which was offered him to go to Washington as bearer of dispatches, and while there he made one of those sudden and dramatic appearances in the Capitol which were so much in harmony with his tastes and his character. He went to his place on the floor, and there delivered a bright, interesting speech in his most attractive vein, calling attention to the needs of the army, disavowing on the part of the Whigs any responsibility for the war or its conduct, and adroitly claiming for them a full share of the credit for its prosecution.