In March 1830 his father emigrated to Macon county, Illinois (near the present Decatur), and soon afterward removed to Coles county. Being now twenty-one years of age, Abraham hired himself to Denton Offutt, a migratory trader and storekeeper then of Sangamon county, and he helped Offutt to build a flatboat and float it down the Sangamon, Illinois and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. In 1831 Offutt made him clerk of his country store at New Salem, a small and unsuccessful settlement in Menard county; this gave him moments of leisure to devote to self-education. He borrowed a grammar and other books, sought explanations from the village schoolmaster and began to read law. In this frontier community law and politics claimed a large proportion of the stronger and the more ambitious men; the law early appealed to Lincoln and his general popularity encouraged him as early as 1832 to enter politics. In this year Offutt failed and Lincoln was thus left without employment. He became a candidate for the Illinois House of Representatives; and on the 9th of March 1832 issued an address “To the people of Sangamon county” which betokens talent and education far beyond mere ability to “read, write and cipher,” though in its preparation he seems to have had the help of a friend. Before the election the Black Hawk Indian War broke out; Lincoln volunteered in one of the Sangamon county companies on the 21st of April and was elected captain by the members of the company. It is said that the oath of allegiance was administered to Lincoln at this time by Lieut. Jefferson Davis. The company, a part of the 4th Illinois, was mustered out after the five weeks’ service for which it volunteered, and Lincoln re-enlisted as a private on the 29th of May, and was finally mustered out on the 16th of June by Lieut. Robert Anderson, who in 1861 commanded the Union troops at Fort Sumter. As captain Lincoln was twice in disgrace, once for firing a pistol near camp and again because nearly his entire company was intoxicated. He was in no battle, and always spoke lightly of his military record. He was defeated in his campaign for the legislature in 1832, partly because of his unpopular adherence to Clay and the American system, but in his own election precinct, he received nearly all the votes cast. With a friend, William Berry, he then bought a small country store, which soon failed chiefly because of the drunken habits of Berry and because Lincoln preferred to read and to tell stories—he early gained local celebrity as a story-teller—rather than sell; about this time he got hold of a set of Blackstone. In the spring of 1833 the store’s stock was sold to satisfy its creditors, and Lincoln assumed the firm’s debts, which he did not fully pay off for fifteen years. In May 1833, local friendship, disregarding politics, procured his appointment as postmaster of New Salem, but this paid him very little, and in the same year the county surveyor of Sangamon county opportunely offered to make him one of his deputies. He hastily qualified himself by study, and entered upon the practical duties of surveying farm lines, roads and town sites. “This,” to use his own words, “procured bread, and kept body and soul together.”
In 1834 Lincoln was elected (second of four successful candidates, with only 14 fewer votes than the first) a member of the Illinois House of Representatives, to which he was re-elected in 1836, 1838 and 1840, serving until 1842. In his announcement of his candidacy in 1836 he promised to vote for Hugh L. White of Tennessee (a vigorous opponent of Andrew Jackson in Tennessee politics) for president, and said: “I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females)”—a sentiment frequently quoted to prove Lincoln a believer in woman’s suffrage. In this election he led the poll in Sangamon county. In the legislature, like the other representatives of that county, who were called the “Long Nine,” because of their stature, he worked for internal improvements, for which lavish appropriations were made, and for the division of Sangamon county and the choice of Springfield as the state capital, instead of Vandalia. He and his party colleagues followed Stephen A. Douglas in adopting the convention system, to which Lincoln had been strongly opposed. In 1837 with one other representative from Sangamon county, named Dan Stone, he protested against a series of resolutions, adopted by the Illinois General Assembly, expressing disapproval of the formation of abolition societies and asserting, among other things, that “the right of property in slaves is sacred to the slave holding states under the Federal Constitution”; and Lincoln and Stone put out a paper in which they expressed their belief “that the institution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils,” “that the Congress of the United States has no power under the Constitution to interfere with the institution of slavery in the different states,” “that the Congress of the United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of the District.” Lincoln was very popular among his fellow legislators, and in 1838 and in 1840 he received the complimentary vote of his minority colleagues for the speakership of the state House of Representatives. In 1842 he declined a renomination to the state legislature and attempted unsuccessfully to secure a nomination to Congress. In the same year he became interested in the Washingtonian temperance movement.
In 1846 he was elected a member of the National House of Representatives by a majority of 1511 over his Democratic opponent, Peter Cartwright, the Methodist preacher. Lincoln was the only Whig member of Congress elected in Illinois in 1846. In the House of Representatives on the 22nd of December 1847 he introduced the “Spot Resolutions,” which quoted statements in the president’s messages of the 11th of May 1846 and the 7th and 8th of December that Mexican troops had invaded the territory of the United States, and asked the president to tell the precise “spot” of invasion; he made a speech on these resolutions in the House on the 12th of January 1848. His attitude toward the war and especially his vote for George Ashmun’s amendment to the supply bill at this session, declaring that the Mexican War was “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced by the President,” greatly displeased his constituents. He later introduced a bill regarding slavery in the District of Columbia, which (in accordance with his statement of 1837) was to be submitted to the vote of the District for approval, and which provided for compensated emancipation, forbade the bringing of slaves into the District of Columbia, except by government officials from slave states, and the selling of slaves away from the District, and arranged for the emancipation after a period of apprenticeship of all slave children born after the 1st of January 1850. While he was in Congress he voted repeatedly for the principle of the Wilmot Proviso. At the close of his term in 1848 he declined an appointment as governor of the newly organized Territory of Oregon and for a time worked, without success, for an appointment as Commissioner of the General Land Office. During the presidential campaign he made speeches in Illinois, and in Massachusetts he spoke before the Whig State Convention at Worcester on the 12th of September, and in the next ten days at Lowell, Dedham, Roxbury, Chelsea, Cambridge and Boston. He had become an eloquent and influential public speaker, and in 1840 and 1844 was a candidate on the Whig ticket for presidential elector.
In 1834 his political friend and colleague John Todd Stuart (1807-1885), a lawyer in full practice, had urged him to fit himself for the bar, and had lent him text-books; and Lincoln, working diligently, was admitted to the bar in September 1836. In April 1837 he quitted New Salem, and removed to Springfield, which was the county-seat and was soon to become the capital of the state, to begin practice in a partnership with Stuart, which was terminated in April 1841; from that time until September 1843 he was junior partner to Stephen Trigg Logan (1800-1880), and from 1843 until his death he was senior partner of William Henry Herndon (1818-1891). Between 1849 and 1854 he took little part in politics, devoted himself to the law and became one of the leaders of the Illinois bar. His small fees—he once charged $3.50 for collecting an account of nearly $600.00—his frequent refusals to take cases which he did not think right and his attempts to prevent unnecessary litigation have become proverbial. Judge David Davis, who knew Lincoln on the Illinois circuit and whom Lincoln made in October 1862 an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, said that he was “great both at nisi prius and before an appellate tribunal.” He was an excellent cross-examiner, whose candid friendliness of manner often succeeded in eliciting important testimony from unwilling witnesses. Among Lincoln’s most famous cases were: one (Bailey v. Cromwell, 4 Ill. 71; frequently cited) before the Illinois Supreme Court in July 1841 in which he argued against the validity of a note in payment for a negro girl, adducing the Ordinance of 1787 and other authorities; a case (tried in Chicago in September 1857) for the Rock Island railway, sued for damages by the owners of a steamboat sunk after collision with a railway bridge, a trial in which Lincoln brought to the service of his client a surveyor’s knowledge of mathematics and a riverman’s acquaintance with currents and channels, and argued that crossing a stream by bridge was as truly a common right as navigating it by boat, thus contributing to the success of Chicago and railway commerce in the contest against St Louis and river transportation; the defence (at Beardstown in May 1858) on the charge of murder of William (“Duff”) Armstrong, son of one of Lincoln’s New Salem friends, whom Lincoln freed by controverting with the help of an almanac the testimony of a crucial witness that between 10 and 11 o’clock at night he had seen by moonlight the defendant strike the murderous blow—this dramatic incident is described in Edward Eggleston’s novel, The Graysons; and the defence on the charge of murder (committed in August 1859) of “Peachy” Harrison, a grandson of Peter Cartwright, whose testimony was used with great effect.
From law, however, Lincoln was soon drawn irresistibly back into politics. The slavery question, in one form or another, had become the great overshadowing issue in national, and even in state politics; the abolition movement, begun in earnest by W. L. Garrison in 1831, had stirred the conscience of the North, and had had its influence even upon many who strongly deprecated its extreme radicalism; the Compromise of 1850 had failed to silence sectional controversy, and the Fugitive Slave Law, which was one of the compromise measures, had throughout the North been bitterly assailed and to a considerable extent had been nullified by state legislation; and finally in 1854 the slavery agitation was fomented by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise and gave legislative sanction to the principle of “popular sovereignty”—the principle that the inhabitants of each Territory as well as of each state were to be left free to decide for themselves whether or not slavery was to be permitted therein. In enacting this measure Congress had been dominated largely by one man—Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois—then probably the most powerful figure in national politics. Lincoln had early put himself on record as opposed to slavery, but he was never technically an abolitionist; he allied himself rather with those who believed that slavery should be fought within the Constitution, that, though it could not be constitutionally interfered with in individual states, it should be excluded from territory over which the national government had jurisdiction. In this, as in other things, he was eminently clear-sighted and practical. Already he had shown his capacity as a forcible and able debater; aroused to new activity upon the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, which he regarded as a gross breach of political faith, he now entered upon public discussion with an earnestness and force that by common consent gave him leadership in Illinois of the opposition, which in 1854 elected a majority of the legislature; and it gradually became clear that he was the only man who could be opposed in debate to the powerful and adroit Douglas. He was elected to the state House of Representatives, from which he immediately resigned to become a candidate for United States senator from Illinois, to succeed James Shields, a Democrat; but five opposition members, of Democratic antecedents, refused to vote for Lincoln (on the second ballot he received 47 votes—50 being necessary to elect) and he turned the votes which he controlled over to Lyman Trumbull, who was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and thus secured the defeat of Joel Aldrich Matteson (1808-1883), who favoured this act and who on the eighth ballot had received 47 votes to 35 for Trumbull and 15 for Lincoln. The various anti-Nebraska elements came together, in Illinois as elsewhere, to form a new party at a time when the old parties were disintegrating; and in 1856 the Republican party was formally organized in the state. Lincoln before the state convention at Bloomington of “all opponents of anti-Nebraska legislation” (the first Republican state convention in Illinois) made on the 29th of May a notable address known as the “Lost Speech.” The National Convention of the Republican Party in 1856 cast 110 votes for Lincoln as its vice-presidential candidate on the ticket with Fremont, and he was on the Republican electoral ticket of this year, and made effective campaign speeches in the interest of the new party. The campaign in the state resulted substantially in a drawn battle, the Democrats gaining a majority in the state for president, while the Republicans elected the governor and state officers. In 1858 the term of Douglas in the United States Senate was expiring, and he sought re-election. On the 16th of June 1858 by unanimous resolution of the Republican state convention Lincoln was declared “the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illinois for the United States Senate as the successor of Stephen A. Douglas,” who was the choice of his own party to succeed himself. Lincoln, addressing the convention which nominated him, gave expression to the following bold prophecy:—
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new—North as well as South.”
In this speech, delivered in the state House of Representatives, Lincoln charged Pierce, Buchanan, Taney and Douglas with conspiracy to secure the Dred Scott decision. Yielding to the wish of his party friends, on the 24th of July, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a joint public discussion.[3] The antagonists met in debate at seven designated places in the state. The first meeting was at Ottawa, La Salle County, about 90 m. south-west of Chicago, on the 21st of August. At Freeport, on the Wisconsin boundary, on the 27th of August, Lincoln answered questions put to him by Douglas, and by his questions forced Douglas to “betray the South” by his enunciation of the “Freeport heresy,” that, no matter what the character of Congressional legislation or the Supreme Court’s decision “slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regulations.” This adroit attempt to reconcile the principle of popular sovereignty with the Dred Scott decision, though it undoubtedly helped Douglas in the immediate fight for the senatorship, necessarily alienated his Southern supporters and assured his defeat, as Lincoln foresaw it must, in the presidential campaign of 1860. The other debates were: at Jonesboro, in the southern part of the state, on the 15th of September; at Charleston, 150 m. N.E. of Jonesboro, on the 18th of September; and, in the western part of the state, at Galesburg (Oct. 7), Quincy (Oct. 13) and Alton (Oct. 15). In these debates Douglas, the champion of his party, was over-matched in clearness and force of reasoning, and lacked the great moral earnestness of his opponent; but he dexterously extricated himself time and again from difficult argumentative positions, and retained sufficient support to win the immediate prize. At the November election the Republican vote was 126,084, the Douglas Democratic vote was 121,940 and the Lecompton (or Buchanan) Democratic vote was 5091; but the Democrats, through a favourable apportionment of representative districts, secured a majority of the legislature (Senate: 14 Democrats, 11 Republicans; House: 40 Democrats, 35 Republicans), which re-elected Douglas. Lincoln’s speeches in this campaign won him a national fame. In 1859 he made two speeches in Ohio—one at Columbus on the 16th of September criticising Douglas’s paper in the September Harper’s Magazine, and one at Cincinnati on the 17th of September, which was addressed to Kentuckians,—and he spent a few days in Kansas, speaking in Elwood, Troy, Doniphan, Atchison and Leavenworth, in the first week of December. On the 27th of February 1860 in Cooper Union, New York City, he made a speech (much the same as that delivered in Elwood, Kansas, on the 1st of December) which made him known favourably to the leaders of the Republican party in the East and which was a careful historical study criticising the statement of Douglas in one of his speeches in Ohio that “our fathers when they framed the government under which we live understood this question [slavery] just as well and even better than we do now,” and Douglas’s contention that “the fathers” made the country (and intended that it should remain) part slave. Lincoln pointed out that the majority of the members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 opposed slavery and that they did not think that Congress had no power to control slavery in the Territories. He spoke at Concord, Manchester, Exeter and Dover in New Hampshire, at Hartford (5th March), New Haven (6th March), Woonsocket (8th March) and Norwich (9th March). The Illinois State Convention of the Republican party, held at Decatur on the 9th and 10th of May 1860, amid great enthusiasm declared Abraham Lincoln its first choice for the presidential nomination, and instructed the delegation to the National Convention to cast the vote of the state as a unit for him.
The Republican national convention, which made “No Extension of Slavery” the essential part of the party platform, met at Chicago on the 16th of May 1860. At this time William H. Seward was the most conspicuous Republican in national politics, and Salmon P. Chase had long been in the fore-front of the political contest against slavery. Both had won greater national fame than had Lincoln, and, before the convention met, each hoped to be nominated for president. Chase, however, had little chance, and the contest was virtually between Seward and Lincoln, who by many was considered more “available,” because it was thought that he could (and Seward could not) secure the vote of certain doubtful states. Lincoln’s name was presented by Illinois and seconded by Indiana. At first Seward had the strongest support. On the first ballot Lincoln received only 102 votes to 173½ for Seward. On the second ballot Lincoln received 181 votes to Seward’s 184½. On the third ballot the 50½ votes formerly given to Simon Cameron[4] were given to Lincoln, who received 231½ votes to 180 for Seward, and without taking another ballot enough votes were changed to make Lincoln’s total 354 (233 being necessary for a choice) and the nomination was then made unanimous. Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was nominated for the vice-presidency. The convention was singularly tumultuous and noisy; large claques were hired by both Lincoln’s and Seward’s managers. During the campaign Lincoln remained in Springfield, making few speeches and writing practically no letters for publication. The campaign was unusually animated—only the Whig campaign for William Henry Harrison in 1840 is comparable to it: there were great torchlight processions of “wide-awake” clubs, which did “rail-fence,” or zigzag, marches, and carried rails in honour of their candidate, the “rail-splitter.” Lincoln was elected by a popular vote of 1,866,452 to 1,375,157 for Douglas, 847,953 for Breckinridge and 590,631 for Bell—as the combined vote of his opponents was so much greater than his own he was often called “the minority president”; the electoral vote was: Lincoln, 180; John C. Breckinridge, 72; John Bell, 39; Stephen A. Douglas, 12. On the 4th of March 1861 Lincoln was inaugurated as president. (For an account of his administration see [United States]: History.)
During the campaign radical leaders in the South frequently asserted that the success of the Republicans at the polls would mean that the rights of the slave-holding states under the Federal constitution, as interpreted by them, would no longer be respected by the North, and that, if Lincoln were elected, it would be the duty of these slave-holding states to secede from the Union. There was much opposition in these states to such a course, but the secessionists triumphed, and by the time President Lincoln was inaugurated, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas had formally withdrawn from the Union. A provisional government under the designation “The Confederate States of America,” with Jefferson Davis as president, was organized by the seceding states, which seized by force nearly all the forts, arsenals and public buildings within their limits. Great division of sentiment existed in the North, whether in this emergency acquiescence or coercion was the preferable policy. Lincoln’s inaugural address declared the Union perpetual and acts of secession void, and announced the determination of the government to defend its authority, and to hold forts and places yet in its possession. He disclaimed any intention to invade, subjugate or oppress the seceding states. “You can have no conflict,” he said, “without being yourselves the aggressors.” Fort Sumter, in Charleston harbour, had been besieged by the secessionists since January; and, it being now on the point of surrender through starvation, Lincoln sent the besiegers official notice on the 8th of April that a fleet was on its way to carry provisions to the fort, but that he would not attempt to reinforce it unless this effort were resisted. The Confederates, however, immediately ordered its reduction, and after a thirty-four hours’ bombardment the garrison capitulated on the 13th of April 1861. (For the military history of the war, see [American Civil War].)
With civil war thus provoked, Lincoln, on the 15th of April, by proclamation called 75,000 three months’ militia under arms, and on the 4th of May ordered the further enlistment of 64,748 soldiers and 18,000 seamen for three years’ service. He instituted by proclamation of the 19th of April a blockade of the Southern ports, took effective steps to extemporize a navy, convened Congress in special session (on the 4th of July), and asked for legislation and authority to make the war “short, sharp and decisive.” The country responded with enthusiasm to his summons and suggestions; and the South on its side was not less active.