Lincoln Unbound (28 page)

81 hoopla and revelry: On the hoopla and revelry of the Harrison campaign: Holt,
American Whig
, 106-­07, and Wilson's
Voice
, 212-­13. On the petty violence of politics: Burlingame,
A Life
,
95, 139-­42. On Lincoln's “skinnings”: Wilson's
Voice
, 206-­09, and Burlingame,
A Life
, 156. On the near-­duel with Shields: Wilson's
Voice
, 265-­81 and Burlingame's
A Life
, 191-­94.

81 “such a jollification”: Thomas D. Logan, “Lincoln, the Early Temperance Reformer,”
The
Standard
newspaper, February 6, 1909.

85 hired French chefs: Holt's
American Whig
, 107, and Howe's
Hath Wrought
, 575, and Burlingame's
A Life
, 149-­55, detail the assault on Van Buren.

C
HAPTER 3

87 fought desperately: Burlingame's
A Life
, 138, 162, has the background to this episode. The Democratic newspaper's ridicule of Lincoln is in Boritt's
American Dream
, 55.

90 “the optimism of Western Civilization”: Boritt,
American Dream
, 71.

90 “to use it as he will”: For the economic thought of Carey and Wayland, I rely on Heather Cox Richardson's
The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 19-­23, Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 107-­08, Boritt's
American Dream
, 123-­24, and Eric Foner's
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of Republican Party before the Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 36-­39.

91 “The importance of property”: Boritt,
American Dream
, 124.

92 “The next Sunday morning”: Olivier Frayssé, trans. Sylvia Neely,
Lincoln, Land, and Labor, 1809-­60
(Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 8.

92 a frustrated engineer: Burlingame,
A Life
,
Vol. 2
,
292-­93.

94 “grand moral struggle”: Howe,
Political Culture
,
69.

94 wholly inappropriate in the frontier context: On Thomas Lincoln's trouble with land titles, there are details in Thomas Crump's
Abraham Lincoln's World
:
How Riverboats, Railroads, and Republicans Transformed America
(New York: Continuum, 2009), 13. Also, in Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 29, Frayssé's
Land, and Labor
, 10-­19, and Burlingame's
A Life
, 20.

96 new links of transportation: The national debate over infrastructure in this period is catalogued in Adam J. White's “Infrastructure and American History,”
The New Atlantis
35 (Spring 2012), 3-­31. It is also discussed in Charles Sellers's
The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-­1846
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 77, and Howe's
Hath Wrought
,
357-­60.

97 loomed large in his early life: On Lincoln's early difficulties with transportation, I rely on Foner's
Fiery
, 36, Neely's
Best Hope
,
Frayssé's
Land, and Labor
, and Burlingame's
A Life
, 128 and 325-­27.

97 chartering private transportation companies: John H. Krenkel, ­
Illinois Internal Improvements: 1818-­1848
(Cedar Rapids, IA: The Torch Press, 1958), 61. This book provided helpful background on the Illinois infrastructure debate.

98 “the great depot and warehouse”: I draw on Sellers's
Market Revolution
, 42-­43, and Taylor's
Transportation
, 32-­49, for facts and figures about the Erie Canal. Boritt's
American Dream
, 7, recounts the impact on Illinois.

99 Passed in early 1837: For the course of the System, I draw on ­Krenkel's
Illinois Internal Improvements
, 75, 146-­55, 200-­16, Boritt's
American Dream
, 8, 26-­31, Burlingame's
A Life
, 92-­146, and Donald's
Lincoln
, 61-­62.

103 the legislature created a state: George William Dowrie,
The Development of Banking in Illinois, 1817-­1863
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1913). This book is an exhaustive account of banking in Illinois in this period. I also rely on Boritt's
American Dream
, 15-­21, 60. Louis M. Hacker,
The Triumph of American Capitalism
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1940), 334, discusses the state of currency in the country overall. So do John Steele Gordon's
Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power
(New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 184, and Richardson's
Greatest
, 67. Howe's
Hath Wrought
, 394, 506-­07, describes Jackson and Van Buren policies. Burlingame's
A Life
has the story of the sale of the horse.

106 disregarding the interests of ­people: Howe's
Hath Wrought
, 274, 395, 408, has the larger political context of the tariff debate.

108 His work as a lawyer: Dirck's
Lawyer
,
37-­49, Donald's
Lincoln
, 70, 145-­47, Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 147-­48, and Burlingame's
A Life
, 332-­33, all have colorful details on Lincoln as a lawyer. Henry Clay Whitney,
Life on the Circuit with Lincoln
, (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1892), 178, had the ripped pants story. I drew on the searchable database of Lincoln's legal work, http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org, for the early, inconsequential cases and also for the section on the railroad cases that follows.

110 a key advocate for the railroads: For Lincoln and the railroads: Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 167-­72, Burlingame's
A Life
, 336-­37, Donald's
Lincoln
, 155-­57, and Crump's
World
, 34, 81. Charles Leroy Brown's “­Abraham Lincoln and the Illinois Central Railroad, 1857-­1860,”
Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
36:2 (June 1943), 121-­63, tells the tale of the rise of the Illinois Central.

113 “with stock-­jobbers”: Neely,
Last Best Hope
, 10.

113 “lawyers and bankers”: Guelzo's “Abraham Lincoln or the Progressives.”

114 his
Junius Tracts
: Calvin Colton,
The Junius Tract
s (New York: Greeley & McElrath, 1844), 104-­05, 111.

116 “within the reach”: Louis Hartz, “Government-­Business Relations,”
Economic Change in the Civil War Era
, eds. David T. Gilchrist & David Lewis (Greenville, DE: Eleutherian Mills-­Hagley Foundation, 1965), 84.

116 steadily vindicated in Illinois: I rely largely on Taylor's highly informative
Transportation Revolution
in this passage, 48-­55, 74-­75, 84-­85, 102-­03, and 158-­64.

118 the Northern “enemy”: Boritt,
American Dream
, 167.

119 They reliably fed factories: The data about the larger economic effects of the railroads is derived from Alfred D. Chandler Jr., “The Organization of Manufacturing and Transportation,”
Economic Change in the Civil War Era
, 137-­51.

119 “there is more poetry”: Gordon,
Empire
, 218.

119 “counter to the pre-­existing order of things”: Richard White,
Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), xxii.

119 farmers needed cash: Levine,
Half
, 55. Levine has a very good run-­down of these trends in his chapter “Each Person Works for Himself.”

120 Chicago exploded: On these epic changes: Crump's
World
, 74, Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 168, Chandler's
Economic Change in the Civil War Era
, 139, Foner's
Fiery
, 83, Taylor's
Transportation
, 9-­10, and Frayssé's
Land, and Labor
, 137.

121 “The West is agricultural”: Boritt,
American Dream
, 126.

121 must have had contempt: Ibid., 166.

121 “dividing line in point of time”: Foner,
Fiery
, 83, and Guelzo,
Redeemer,
47.

C
HAPTER 4

127 campaign strategy memo: Don E. Fehrenbacher,
Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s
(Palo Alto, CA.: Stanford University Press, 1962), 73. This is a trenchant and authoritative account of this phase of Lincoln's career, and I come back to it throughout this chapter.

129 “more natural advantages”: Roy Morris Jr.,
The Long Pursuit: ­Abraham Lincoln's Thirty Year Struggle with Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America
(New York: Harper­Collins, 2008), 12. This book is useful on Douglas, as is Allen C. Guelzo's
Lincoln and Douglas
:
The Debates that Defined America
(New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2008), which I come back to often in this chapter. I draw on their opening sections here.

134 main chance: I benefited from Lewis E. Lerhman's cogent discussion of all this in his valuable
Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point
(Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008), 73-­77. Also, I draw on David M. Potter's
The Impending Crisis: 1848-­1861
(New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 165-­66. It is an impressive political history of this period and I come back to it several times in this chapter.

135 would emerge ascendant: On the role of the Know-­Nothings, I draw on Robert William Fogel's
Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 374-­78. William E. Gienapp's
The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-­1856
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 360, notes how Republicans tapped into anti-­aristocratic sentiment.

136 a Southern phenomenon: For the figures on slavery in America, I rely on Levine's
Half
, 20–22, and Fogel's
Without Consent
, 29–30. James M. McPherson's
Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 17, and Foner's
Fiery
, 17, discuss the economic value of slaves. Nevins's
The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to Civil War, 1859–1861
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950), 59–60, 140–42, contrasts the South's stalwart defense of slavery with slavery's retreat elsewhere in the world. John McCar­dell's
The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism, 1830–1860
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1981), 231–36, 251–55, recounts the South's expansionist impulse.

137 to spread slavery: McCardell,
Southern Nation
,
231-­36 and 251-­55.

137 a somewhat attenuated one: The first chapter of Foner's
Fiery
, “ ‘I Am Naturally Anti-­Slavery': Young Abraham Lincoln and Slavery” has an excellent summation of Lincoln's early grappling with slavery and Frayssé's
Land, and Labor
, 4-­15, discusses his youth in this context.

139 Even after Kansas-­Nebraska: Lehrman's
Peoria
, 111-­12, discusses Lincoln's skepticism of the natural-­limits argument. Fogel's
Without Consent
, 401-­02, notes the political double-­edge of the non-­extension position.

139 became the focus of his public advocacy: Foner's
Fiery
,
64-­65, notes how Lincoln's advocacy kicked into a higher gear after Kansas-­Nebraska, and 97 recounts the rejection by some Southern thinkers of the Declaration. Douglas L. Wilson's
Lincoln before Washington: New Perspectives on the Illinois Years
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998) has an instructive chapter on “Lincoln's Declaration.” Merrill D. Peterson,
“This Grand Pertinacity”: Abraham Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence
(Fort Wayne, IN: The Lincoln Museum, 1991) is a useful essay. Guelzo's
Redeemer
, 4, is excellent on Lincoln and Jefferson.

144 “being all the workmanship”: John Locke,
Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration
(Stilwell, KS, Digireads.com, 2005), 73, 80.

145 “Free labor ideology”: Bradford William Short, “The Question of the Constitutional Case against Suicide: An Historiographical and Originalist Inquiry into the Degree to Which the Theory of the Inalienable Right to Life and Liberty is Enforced by the Thirteenth Amendment,”
Issues in Law & Medicine
, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2010): 91-­195.

145 “a dynamic, expanding capitalist society”: Foner,
Free Soil
,
11.

145 the development of pro­slavery: McCardell's
Southern Nation
, 50-­86, informs the discussion of Southern proslavery ideology in this paragraph and the ones following.

146 the rise of wage labor: Foner's
Free Soil
is the source of the material on the debate over wage labor and primarily its opening essay, “The Idea of Free Labor in Nineteenth-­Century America,” but also 66-­67.

149 Neither was quite right: The discussion of the economics of slavery is based on Fogel's
Without Consent
, 24–28, 64–88, 91–92. Also helpful are McCardell's
Southern Nation
, 91–127, Eugene Genovese's
The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South
(Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1961), 24–28, and Douglass C. North's
The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1961), 133.