Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

To this, he received a reply that this supporter had, in fact, nominated Hardin for governor. The tactful response deserves attention: "Let me assure you that if there is anything in my letter indicating an opinion that the nomination for governor, which I supposed to have been made in the Pekin paper, was operating or could operate against me, such was not my meaning. Now that I know that nomination was made by you, I say that it may do me good, while I do not see that it can do me harm. But, while the subject is in agitation, should any of the papers in the district nominate the same man for Congress, that would do me harm; and it was that which I wished to guard against. Let me assure you that I do not for a moment suppose that what you have done is ill-judged, or that anything that you shall do will be."[207]

"I should be pleased," he wrote another friend, "if I could concur with you in the hope that my name would be the only one presented to the convention; but I cannot. Hardin is a man of desperate energy and perseverance, and one that never backs out; and I fear, to think otherwise is to be deceived in the character of our adversary. I would rejoice to be spared the labor of a contest; but 'being in', I shall go it thoroughly, and to the bottom." He then admonished his friend not to relax any of his vigilance.[208]

He was sensitive to the shifting changes of the campaign. "Nathan Dresser is here," he wrote a friend, "and speaks as though the contest between Hardin and me is to be doubtful in Menard County.—I know he is candid and this alarms me some—I asked him to tell me the names of the men that were going strong for Hardin; he said Morris was about as strong as any—Now, tell me, is Morris going it openly? You remember you wrote me, that he would be neutral. Nathan also said that some man he could not remember had said lately that Menard County was going to decide the contest and that that made the contest very doubtful. Do you know who that was?

"Don't fail to write me instantly on receiving telling me all—particularly the names of those who are going strong against me."[209]

The splendid generalship of Lincoln, his telling blows gradually disposed of the gallant Hardin, who gracefully declined to be longer considered as a candidate. Through the inspiration of Lincoln, with equal gallantry, there promptly appeared in the leading Whig journal, a statement superbly designed to soothe the dignity of his late antagonist: "We have had, and now have, no doubt that he (Hardin) has been, and now is, a great favorite with the Whigs of the district. He states, in substance, that there was never any understanding on his part that his name was not to be presented in the canvasses of 1844 and 1846. This, we believe, is strictly true. Still, the doings of the Pekin Convention did seem to point that way; and the general's voluntary declination as to the canvass of 1844 was by many construed into an acquiescence on his part. These things had led many of his most devoted friends to not expect him to be a candidate at this time. Add to this the relation that Mr. Lincoln bears, and has borne, to the party, and it is not strange that many of those who are as strongly devoted to Gen. Hardin as they are to Mr. Lincoln should prefer the latter at this time. We do not entertain a doubt, that, if we could reverse the positions of the two men, that a very large portion of those who now have supported Mr. Lincoln most warmly would have supported Gen. Hardin quite as warmly."[210]

He was a thorough politician. He attended to details himself. Like a general on the battlefield, he kept his reserve forces well in hand. He would rather minimize his own strength than mistake the power of opposing forces. He never lost a victory through misplaced confidence. Though he looked darkly at a contest, this rather increased than abated his activity. From policy as well as inclination he did not engage in the crimination of his adversaries. He had a marvelous capacity of personally commanding the conduct of men.

Out of their ranks, the Democrats called the famed preacher—Peter Cartwright, as their standard bearer in this Congressional contest. Until he was sixteen years old, he was a slave to the common vices of his day. His dramatic conversion during the revival of 1801 preluded the marvelous career of a man who unflinchingly, for sixty years, "breasted the storm and suffered the hardships" of his calling in forest and prairie. His heroic treatment of Jackson shows the man. "Just then," Cartwright says, "I felt some one pull my coat in the stand, and turning my head, my fastidious preacher, whispering a little loud, said: 'General Jackson has come in: General Jackson has come in.' I felt a flash of indignation run all over me like an electric shock and facing about to my congregation, and purposely speaking out audibly, I said, 'Who is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn him as quick as he would a Guinea negro!'"[211]

The reasons that prompted Cartwright to follow the trail from Kentucky to Illinois are of historical importance. "First, I would get entirely clear of the evil of slavery. Second, I could raise my children to work where work was not considered a degradation. Third, I believed I could better my temporal circumstances, and procure lands for my children as they grew up. And fourth, I could carry the gospel to destitute souls that had, by their removal into some new country, been deprived of the means of grace."[212] The South poorly reckoned the cost to her, of the institution that drove into exile such master spirits, who enriched the states of their adoption.

Hating human bondage, still he was no friend of abolitionism. He declared that it riveted the chains of slavery tighter; blocked the way to reasonable emancipation; threw fire brands into legislative halls; that millions were expended every year in angry debates and that laws for the good of the people were neglected; talents and money thrown away; that prejudice, strife, and wrath, and every evil passion stirred up until the integrity of the Union was in imminent danger, and that not one poor slave was set free; not one dollar expended to colonize them and send them home happy and free; that through unchristian, excited prejudices mobs were fast becoming the order of the day.