Lincoln, the Politician

by T. Aaron Levy

Lincoln's main assignment in congressional committee work was on Post-office and Post-roads. He plodded through the detail duties with industry. There was no more earnest worker in the ranks of Congress. On an important occasion, Lincoln stood by the Democratic Postmaster General, and opposed the policy of the Whig members of the Committee. He worked out a painstaking plan for certain postmasters receiving subscriptions for newspapers and periodicals. He declared it to be in accordance with republican institutions, which could be best sustained by the diffusion of knowledge and the due encouragement of a universal, national spirit of inquiry and discussion of public events through the medium of the public press.[233]

Lincoln prepared himself thoroughly in the logic of protection to American industries. He advanced considerably in a serious understanding of its fundamental importance. Not satisfied with old and common contention, he sounded the depths of discussion, by his quaint and original method.

He had intense sympathy for the toiler. He deemed a wise and just distribution of wealth a national duty. He pronounced that rather than production the deeper object of government. "And inasmuch," he said, "as most good things are produced by labor, it follows that all such things of right belong to those whose labor has produced them. But it has so happened, in all ages of the world, that some have labored, and others have without labor enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits. That is wrong, and should not continue. To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a worthy object of any good government."[234]

He was in advance of the thought of his day in insisting that all transportation, commerce, distribution, not essential, was a heavy pensioner upon industry, depriving it of a large proportion of its just fruits. He advocated the remedy of driving useless toil and idleness out of existence. He announced that all work done directly or indirectly in carrying articles to the place of consumption, which could have been produced in sufficient abundance, with as little effort at the place of consumption as at the place they were carried from, was useless labor.[235] These fragments show the intellectual power of a growing man of fine sympathies, the sound conviction of a benefactor of his kind.

That Lincoln rapidly adapted himself to the ways of Congress appears from the variety of the subjects he discussed. Few of the new comers were more in evidence. His speech on internal improvements reveal the secret of his power. He sought no name to sanction his opinions, he used his own illustrations and reached his conclusions unaided. He attacked the opinions of those high in power and station. President Polk maintained that the burden of improvements would be general while the benefits would be local, thus involving a pernicious inequality. The reply of Lincoln is a sign of his political wisdom. He argued that inequality was never to be embraced for its own sake; but that if every good thing was to be discarded which might be inseparably connected with some degree of inequality, then all government would have to be discarded. The Capitol, he continued, was built at the public expense, but still it was of some peculiar local advantage, and to make sure of all inequality Congress would have to hold its sessions, as the loafer lodged, "in spots about." He added that there were few stronger cases in this world of "burden to the many and benefit to the few," of "inequality," than the Presidency itself; that an honest laborer dug coal at about seventy cents a day, while the President dug abstractions at about Seventy Dollars a day, and the coal was clearly worth more than the abstractions. He declared that the true rule, in determining whether to embrace or reject anything, was not whether it had any evil in it, but whether it had more of evil than of good; that almost everything, especially of government policy, was an inseparable compound of the two; so that the best judgment of the preponderance between them was continually demanded.[236]

A great national party witnessed only the malign consequences of the internal improvement policy. To avoid its abuse, they practically advocated its abatement. Seeing only the danger of extravagance, the Democratic party was not free to contemplate prudent expenditures. Lincoln with his keen sight presented a solution indicative of statesmanship. His plan permitted the States working in a smaller sphere of activity in local improvements to cross paths and to work together in larger national matters under the guidance of sober and restrained general legislation, based on statistical information.

The keen, shrewd instinct of the politician in Lincoln shows through his strenuous advocacy of General Taylor as the Whig candidate for the Presidency. He was in the van in fighting opposition in Illinois to the silent soldier and untried statesman. In April he wrote his friend Washburne to let nothing discourage or baffle him, but, in spite of every difficulty, to send a good Taylor delegate from his circuit, and to make Baker, who was a good hand to raise a breeze, to help about it.[237] On the same day he admonished another associate in his inimitable manner. "I know our good friend Browning is a great admirer of Mr. Clay, and I therefore fear he is favoring his nomination. If he is, ask him to discard feeling, and try if he can possibly, as a matter of judgment, count the votes necessary to elect him.

"In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor; but we cannot elect him without a nomination. Therefore, don't fail to send a delegate."[238]

His admiration for Clay was subdued in his zeal for political success. He would not do honor to the statesman as an idle tribute so he would put him aside and call to the leadership of the Whig party a man whose strength was largely in the uncertainty of his views, in silence not in known sincerity. He saw its cause could triumph with Taylor; that the extension of the slave power was more likely to come from the northern non-slave-holding Cass than from the southern slave-holding Taylor. To still further confound the jumble, the Whig convention avoided annunciation of distinctive principles, and even dared to vote down an affirmance of the Wilmot Proviso.[239] After the selection of "Old Rough," with Stephens, Toombs and Preston, he continued an aggressive interest in his candidacy.[240] He again pleaded with his friends for support from his State.

"By many, and often, it has been said they would not abide the nomination of Taylor; but since the deed has been done, they are fast falling in, and in my opinion we shall have a most overwhelming glorious triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us—Barburners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Locofocos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in nothing else, in showing which way the wind blows. Some of the sanguine men have set down all the states as certain for Taylor but Illinois, and it as doubtful. Cannot something be done even in Illinois? Taylor's nomination takes the Locos on the blind side. It turns the war thunder against them. The war is now to them the gallows of Haman, which they built for us, and upon which they are doomed to be hanged themselves."[241]