and he was reelected in 1836, 1838, and 1840. Political alignments were in

a state of flux during his first two candidacies, but as the WHIG and

DEMOCRATIC parties began to take form, he followed his political idol,

Henry Clay, and John T. Stuart, a Springfield lawyer and friend, into the

Whig ranks. Twice Lincoln was his party's candidate for speaker, and when

defeated, he served as its floor leader.

His greatest achievement in the legislature, where he was a consistent

supporter of conservative business interests, was to bring about the

removal of the state capital from Vandalia to Springfield, by means of

adroit logrolling. When certain resolutions denouncing antislavery

agitation were passed by the house, Lincoln and a colleague, Dan Stone,

defined their position by a written declaration that slavery was "founded

on both injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition

doctrines tends rather to increase than abate its evils." An internal

improvement project that Lincoln promoted in the legislature turned out to

be impractical and almost bankrupted the state. On national issues Lincoln

favored the United States Bank and opposed the presidential policies of

Andrew JACKSON and Martin VAN BUREN.

Law Practice

His friend Stuart had encouraged him to study law, and he obtained a

license on Sept. 9, 1836. By this time New Salem was in decline and would

soon be a ghost town. It has since been restored as a state park. On April

15, 1837, Lincoln moved to Springfield to become Stuart's partner. His

conscientious efforts to pay off his debts had earned him the nickname

"Honest Abe," but he was so poor that he arrived in Springfield on a

borrowed horse with all his personal property in his saddlebags.

With the courts in Springfield in session only a few weeks during the year,

lawyers were obliged to travel the circuit in order to make a living. Every

year, in spring and autumn, Lincoln followed the judge from county to

county over the 12,000 square miles (31,000 sq km) of the Eighth Circuit.

In 1841 he and Stuart disolved their firm, and Lincoln formed a new

partnership with Stephen T. Logan, who taught him the value of careful

preparation and clear, succinct reasoning as opposed to mere cleverness and

oratory. This partnership was in turn dissolved in 1844, when Lincoln took

young William H. Herndon, later to be his biographer, as a partner.

Marriage

Meanwhile, on Nov. 4, 1842, after a somewhat tumultuous courtship,

Lincoln had married Mary Todd. Brought up in Lexington, Ky., she was a high-

spirited, quick-tempered girl of excellent education and cultural

background. Notwithstanding her vanity, ambition, and unstable temperament

and Lincoln's careless ways and alternating moods of hilarity and

dejection, the marriage turned out to be generally happy. Of their four

children, only Robert Todd Lincoln, born on Aug. 1, 1843, lived to

maturity. Edward Baker, who was born on March 10, 1846, died on Feb. 1,

1850; William Wallace, born Dec. 21, 1850, died on Feb. 20, 1862; and

Thomas ("Tad"), born April 4, 1853, died on July 15, 1871.

Though Mrs. Lincoln was by no means such a shrew as has been asserted, she

was difficult to live with. Lincoln responded to her impulsive and

imprudent behavior with tireless patience, forbearance, and forgiveness.

Borne down by grief and illness after her husband's death, Mrs. Lincoln

became so unbalanced at one time that her son Robert had her committed to

an institution.

Congressman

Having attained a position of leadership in state politics and worked

strenuously for the Whig ticket in the presidential election of 1840,

Lincoln aspired to go to CONGRESS. But two other prominent young Whigs of

his district, Edward D. Baker of Springfield and John J. Hardin of

Jacksonville, also coveted this distinction. So Lincoln stepped aside

temporarily, first for Hardin, then for Baker, under a sort of

understanding that they would "take a turn about." When Lincoln's turn came

in 1846, however, Hardin wished to serve again, and Lincoln was obliged to

maneuver skillfully to obtain the nomination. His district was so

predominantly Whig that this amounted to election, and he won handily over

his Democratic opponent.

Lincoln worked conscientiously as a freshman congressman, but was unable to

gain distinction. Both from conviction and party expediency, he went along

with the Whig leaders in blaming the Polk administration for bringing on

war with Mexico, though he always voted for appropriations to sustain it.

His opposition to the war was unpopular in his district, however. When the

annexations of territory from Mexico brought up the question of the status

of slavery in the new lands, Lincoln voted for the Wilmot Proviso and other

measures designed to confine the institution to the states where it already

existed.

Disillusionment with Politics

In the campaign of 1848, Lincoln labored strenuously for the

nomination and election of Gen. Zachary TAYLOR. He served on the Whig

National Committee, attended the national convention at Philadelphia, and

made campaign speeches. With the Whig national ticket victorious, he hoped

to share with Baker the control of federal patronage in his home state. The

juiciest plum that had been promised to Illinois was the position of

commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington. After trying vainly

to reconcile two rival candidates for this office, Lincoln tried to obtain

it for himself. But he had little influence with the new administration.

The most that it would offer him was the governorship or secretaryship of

the Oregon Territory. Neither job appealed to him, and he returned to

Springfield thoroughly disheartened.

Never one to repine, however, Lincoln now devoted himself to becoming a

better lawyer and a more enlightened man. Pitching into his law books with

greater zest, he also resumed his study of Shakespeare and mastered the

first six books of Euclid as a mental discipline. At the same time, he

renewed acquaintances and won new friends around the circuit. Law practice

was changing as the country developed, especially with the advent of

railroads and the growth of corporations. Lincoln, conscientiously keeping

pace, became one of the state's outstanding lawyers, with a steadily

increasing practice, not only on the circuit but also in the state supreme

court and the federal courts. Regular travel to Chicago to attend court

sessions became part of his routine when Illinois was divided into two

federal districts.

Outwardly, however, Lincoln remained unchanged in his simple, somewhat

rustic ways. Six feet four inches (1.9 meters) tall, weighing about 180

pounds (82 kg), ungainly, slightly stooped, with a seamed and rugged

countenance and unruly hair, he wore a shabby old top hat, an ill-fitting

frock coat and pantaloons, and unblacked boots. His genial manner and fund

of stories won him a host of friends. Yet, notwithstanding his friendly

ways, he had a certain natural dignity that discouraged familiarity and

commanded respect.

Return to Politics

Lincoln took only a perfunctory part in the presidential campaign of

1852, and was rapidly losing interest in politics. Two years later,

however, an event occurred that roused him, he declared, as never before.

The status of slavery in the national territories, which had been virtually

settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, now

came to the fore. In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, whom Lincoln had known as a

young lawyer and legislator and who was now a Democratic leader in the U.

S. SENATE, brought about the repeal of a crucial section of the Missouri

Compromise that had prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of

the line of 36degrees 30&;. Douglas substituted for it a provision that the

people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska could admit or exclude

slavery as they chose.

The congressional campaign of 1854 found Lincoln back onthe stump in behalf

of the antislavery cause, speaking with a new authority gained from self-

imposed intellectual discipline. Henceforth, he was a different Lincoln--

ambitious, as before, but purged of partisan pettiness and moved instead by

moral earnestness.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act so disrupted old party lines that when the Illinois

legislature met to elect a U.S. senator to succeed Douglas' colleague,

James Shields, it was evident that the Anti-Nebraska group drawn from both

parties had the votes to win, if the antislavery Whigs and antislavery

Democrats could united on a candidate. However, the Whigs backed Lincoln,

and the Democrats supported Lyman Trumbull. though Lincoln commanded far

more strength than Trumbull, the latter's supporters were resolved never to

desert him for a Whig. As their stubbornness threatened to result in the

election of a proslavery Democrat, Lincoln instructed his own backers to

vote for Trumbull, thus assuring the latter's election.

Campaigns of 1856 and 1858

With old party lines sundered, the antislavery factions in the North

gradually coalesced to form a new party, which took the name REPUBLICAN.

Lincoln stayed aloof at the beginning, fearing that it would be dominated

by the radical rather than the moderate antislavery element. Also, he hoped

for a resurgence of the Whig party, in which he had attained a position of

state leadership. But as the presidential campaign of 1856 approached, he

cast his lot with the new party. In the national convention, which

nominated John C. Frйmont for president, Lincoln received 110 ballots for

the VICE-PRESIDENTIAL nomination, which went eventually to William L.

Dayton of New Jersey. Though Lincoln had favored Justice John McLean, he

worked faithfully for Frйmont, who showed surprising strength,

notwithstanding his defeat by the Democratic candidate, James BUCHANAN.

With Senator Douglas running for reelection in 1858, Lincoln was recognized

in Illinois as the strongest man to oppose him. Endorsed by Republican

meetings all over the state and by the Republican State Convention, he

opened his campaign with the famous declaration: "`A house divided against

itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently

half slave and half free." Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven

joint debates, and these became the most spectacular feature of the

campaign. Douglas refused to take a position on the rightfulness or

wrongfulness of slavery, and offered his "popular sovereignty" doctrine as

the solution of the problem. Lincoln, on the other hand, insisted that

slavery was primarily a moral issue and offered as his solution a return to

the principles of the Founding Fathers, which tolerated slavery where it

existed but looked to its ultimate extinction by preventing its spread. The

Republicans polled the larger number of votes in the election, but an

outdated apportionment of seats in the legislature permitted Douglas to win

the senatorship.

Election of 1860

Friends began to urge Lincoln to run for president. He held back, but

did extend his range of speechmaking beyond Illinois. on Feb. 27, 1860, at

Cooper Union, in New York City, he delivered an address on the need for

restricting slavery that put him in the forefront of Republican leadership.

The enthusiasm evoked by this speech and others overcame Lincoln's

reluctance. On May 9 and 10, the Illinois Republican convention, meeting in

Decatur, instructed the state's delegates to the national convention to

vote as a unit for him.

When that convention met in Chicago on May 16, Lincoln's chances were

better than was generally supposed. William H. Seward, the acknowledged

party leader, and other aspirants all had political liabilities of some

sort. As Lincoln's managers maneuvered behind the scenes, more and more

delegates lined up behind the "Illinois Rail Splitter." Seward led on the

first ballot, but on the third ballot Lincoln obtained the required

majority.

A split in the Democratic party, which resulted in the nomination of

Douglas by one faction and of John C. Breckinridge by the other, made

Lincoln's ELECTION a certainty. Lincoln polled 1,865,593 votes to Douglas'

1,382,713, and Breckinridge's 848,356. John Bell, candidate of the

Constitutional Union party, polled 592,906. The ELECTORAL vote was Lincoln,

180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas, 12.

Presidency

On Feb. 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield to take up his duties as

president. Before him lay, as he recognized, "a task ... greater than that

which rested upon [George] Washington." The seven states of the lower South

had seceded from the Union, and Southern delegates meeting in Montgomery,

Ala., had formed a new, separate government. Before Lincoln reached the

national capital, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the

Confederate States of America. The four states of the upper South teetered

on the brink of secession, and disunion sentiment was rampant in the border

states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.

When Lincoln reached Washington on February 23, he found the national

government incapable of meeting the crisis. President James Buchanan

deplored secession but could not check it, and Congress fruitlessly debated

compromise. The national treasury was near bankruptcy; the civil service

was riddled with secessionists; and the miniscule armed forces were being

weakened by defection of officers to the South.

It was not immediately evident that Lincoln could avert the dissolution of

the United States. Few American presidents have assumed office under

greater handicaps. Warned of an attempt on his life being planned in

Baltimore, Lincoln had to enter the national capital surreptitiously,

arriving after a secret midnight journey from Harrisburg, Pa. Widely

publicized, the episode did little to inspire public confidence in the

government or to create an image of Lincoln as a dynamic leader. That so

many citizens could believe their new president a coward was evidence of a

more serious handicap under which Lincoln labored: he was virtually unknown

to the American people. Lincoln's record as an Illinois state legislator,

as a one-term member of the House of Representatives in the 1840's, and as

an unsuccessful senatorial candidate against Douglas was not one to inspire

confidence in his abilities. Even the leaders of the Republican party had

little acquaintance with the new President.

Almost at the outset, Lincoln demonstrated that he was a poor

administrator. Accustomed, as his law partner William H. Herndon said, to

filing legal papers in his top hat, Lincoln conducted the administration of

the national govern ment in the same fashion. Selecting for his cabinet

spokesmen of the diverse elements that constituted the Republican party, he

surrounded himself with men of such conflicting views that he could not

rely on them to work together. Cabinet sessions rarely dealt with serious

issues. Usually, Lincoln permitted cabinet officers free rein in running

their departments.

Страницы: 1, 2, 3