America's Greatest 19th Century Presidents (21 page)

Lincoln lost the race, and his dreams of becoming a great Senator, in the model of Henry Clay, evaporated.  Privately, he was devastated.  His political career seemed over.  In reality, it was approaching its apex.

Lincoln the Republican

Shortly after losing his Senate race, Abraham Lincoln began to congregate in Republican circles.  Though he wasn't ready to make the move a year earlier, developments had forced him to reassess.   Republicans throughout the North had gone through great pains to patch together a coalition of Whigs, “Know-Nothings” and Free Soilers.  Having achieved success, the Republicans were on the verge of becoming the new majority party in the North.

Lincoln didn't just become a Republican: he became a remarkably influential one.  At the Party's first national convention, the Illinois delegation nominated Lincoln for the Vice Presidency.  He didn't win, but nonetheless received 110 votes before the convention decided on William Dayton of Ohio.  Lincoln was pleased with himself.  He denied suggestions that he was eying a Congressional seat, though everyone knew he still held hopes for a seat in the U.S. Senate.

The Republican nominee, John Fremont, ultimately lost the Presidential election of 1856 to the Democrat James Buchanan, but the Party came in second, a remarkable showing for a brand new political party. While this undoubtedly pleased Lincoln in 1856, it would have ramifications at the beginning of the Civil War, with Fremont currying his political reputation into an important military office in the Western theater and nearly causing disaster in neutral Missouri by issuing an order emancipating that state’s slaves, which threatened to drive that state into the Confederacy.

Just two years later, amid yet another controversy – the Supreme Court's
Dred Scott
decision – the Illinois Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for the U.S. Senate.  In his acceptance speech, Lincoln warned the nation that “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave, 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.”  In his now-famous “House Divided” speech, Lincoln set the stage for a campaign against a formidable opponent – the Little Giant himself.

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

The most famous debates in history were held over 150 years ago, and despite their fame, no official transcripts were ever taken. Throughout the Fall of 1858, Lincoln and Stephen Douglas participated in seven three-hour debates throughout Illinois.  This unprecedented method of campaigning drew national attention, one that is still often idealized even today among those who feel politics is too bitterly partisan. 

The main theme of the debates was the topic being discussed across the nation: slavery and, specifically, its expansion into the unorganized territories.  In substance, Lincoln argued stances very similar to those he uttered in his Peoria speech.  He lamented the expansion of slavery but insisted that states where slavery already existed were entitled to maintain the institution there.  Lincoln also argued forcefully against popular sovereignty, which he thought threatened to expand slavery across the entire nation. 

Douglas's strategy was to label Lincoln a radical “Black Republican.”  Douglas' position on slavery was that, if it were reduced to an essentially local issue through popular sovereignty, it would no longer divide the nation as it had in recent decades.  While he morally opposed slavery, he also pragmatically thought it could not thrive in the Western territory because the land there was inhospitable to slave labor anyway.

His most damning charge against Lincoln, however, was that the Republican candidate advocated the social and legal equality of the races.  Douglas wanted to deny citizenship to all African-Americans, which the Supreme Court had ruled in the
Dred Scott
case.  In his rebuttal, Lincoln offered one of his most quotable moments: “I protest against the counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must necessarily want her for a wife.  I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone.”

Portrait of Dred Scott

The apex of the debate came when Lincoln brought up the issue of the
Dred Scott
decision.  In his argument, Lincoln raised the contradiction between the decision and Douglas' concept of popular sovereignty. 
Dred Scott
had decided that Congress could do nothing to limit slavery in a territory.  Lincoln, then, thought popular sovereignty left voters with no decision: how could they effectively limit slavery in a territory if Congress didn't have the authority to do so?  Douglas replied that local voters could defund methods of protecting slave property within a territory, which would essentially, though not legally, eliminate slavery. 

Douglas' reply became known as the Freeport Doctrine, and it damaged his national popularity significantly.  Southerners were hoping he would defend the nationalization of slavery, but he didn't.  Northerners hoped for a more effective, legal, way of restricting slavery from a territory.  Douglas was pinned somewhere in the middle.  His chances of winning the Presidency in 1860 – a topic of much discussion in 1858 – were badly reduced. 

Regardless, though, Douglas won the 1858 Senate election, making Lincoln a loser in a race yet again. But this time was different.  Lincoln had gained national stature because of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and now he was poised for something big.

Chapter 4: The Election of 1860 and Secession

The Election of 1860

Throughout 1859, Illinois papers began to mention Lincoln as a Republican candidate for President.  Lincoln was humbled, though a bit dumbfounded.  He thought himself more suited for the Senate, where he could orate and discuss ideas, and moreover there were Republicans of much greater national prominence on the East coast, particularly William Seward.  Lacking any administrative experience, he wasn't sure he would enjoy being President.  Regardless, it was a great honor, and he quietly thought the idea over.

William Seward

Going into the Republican Convention in May of 1860, the Republicans were hopeful.  The Democratic Party, partly because of Stephen Douglas, was deeply divided over slavery, and it had broken into a Northern and Southern faction. By dividing their votes, they were likely handing over the presidency to a Republican Party that would barely win a plurality across the nation.  Sensing opportunity, the Republicans were careful in selecting their candidate.  Many delegates considered the frontrunner, William H. Seward, to be too radical.  With a divided electorate, there were fears that Seward's radicalism might lose the Midwest for the Republicans.

At the Convention, Seward's support maintained steady throughout the rounds of voting.  Lincoln polled a surprising second place on the first ballot.  He gradually picked up votes from other Midwestern candidates until he was selected as the Republican Party's Presidential nominee on the third ballot.  Hanibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated as the Vice Presidential nominee.

Lincoln had essentially been chosen for his moderate stance on slavery.  Unlike many other viable Republican contenders, Lincoln was less likely to alienate valuable “battleground” states like Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.  At the same time, the more staunchly abolitionist Northeast would have no better alternative.

Throughout the fall, the campaign broiled on.  As was customary, Lincoln did no active campaigning.  Presidential candidates in the mid-1800's did not campaign on their own behalf; surrogates did the work for them.  His supporters portrayed Lincoln as a man of great integrity from humble origins.  Opponents conjured up the image of a radical Black Republican.  Evidently, such language sold well in the South.  By mid-summer, talk of Southern secession if Lincoln were elected was commonplace.  Lincoln himself took none of this chatter seriously: he thought it to be nothing more than the usual political sensationalism.

Lincoln in 1860

Nevertheless, the election of 1860 was held under extraordinary circumstances, and the results were equally unprecedented.  Four candidates competed, and each of the candidates won some electoral votes.  While the Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln, the Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, the Southern Democrats chose John C. Breckinridge and the Constitutional Union Party selected John Bell of Tennessee as its nominee.  The Constitutional Union Party was compromised of former Know-Nothings and Whigs in the middle states of Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia who advocated compromise and unity on the issue of slavery. 

The race was so fractured that Lincoln only appeared on the ballot in five slave states: Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. In Virginia, Lincoln only won about 1% of the vote, and in all the other slave states where Lincoln was on the ballot he finished no better than third. Lincoln won only two counties out all 996 counties in the 15 slave states.

On election night, Lincoln and the Republicans won decisively in the Electoral College, with 180 of the 303 votes cast and 152 needed for a majority.  In the popular vote, however, Lincoln only garnered 39%, but came out nearly half a million votes ahead of his next nearest competitor, Stephen Douglas.  In the Electoral College, Douglas only won 12 votes with a single state – Missouri.  Lincoln swept the North, Breckinridge took the South, and Bell won most of the middle.  The results reflected the great regional divide: the nation was set for Civil War.

Secession

With Lincoln's election on November 6
^th
, 1860, the South was furious.  Someone they knew as a “Black Republican” was now set to be inaugurated as President in March. Hate mail streamed into Lincoln's office in Springfield.  Never before had a President-elect been received with such malignancy. With death threats hanging over the president-elect, Lincoln was famously hurried through Baltimore by rail into Washington D.C., partly in disguise, to avoid any potential plots. The press got wind of it and sensationalized the account, giving Lincoln a political black eye before he had even taken office.  But this, however, would prove to be a minor problem amid the troubles that lay ahead.

Throughout the fall and winter of 1860, Southern calls for secession became increasingly serious.  In a last-ditched effort to save the Union, Kentucky's Senator John Crittenden tried to assume the stateliness of his predecessor Henry Clay.  Crittenden, however, proved to be no Henry Clay: his proposal that a Constitutional Amendment reinstate the Missouri Compromise line and extend it to the Pacific failed.  President Buchanan supported the measure, but President-Elect Lincoln said he refused to allow the further expansion of slavery under any conditions.