A. Lincoln A Biography

Chapter 6
Without Contemplating Consequences 1837–42

IF YOU WOULD WIN A MAN TO YOUR CAUSE, FIRST CONVINCE HIM THAT YOU ARE HIS SINCERE FRIEND.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Temperance address, Springfield, Illinois, February 22, 1842

ON THE MORNING OF APRIL 15, 1837, ABRAHAM LINCOLN SADDLED a borrowed horse, packed all his possessions into two saddlebags, and rode twenty miles into Springfield. He dismounted in front of Abner Ellis’s general store at 103 South Fifth Street, one of the buildings that crowded the west side of Springfield’s town square. Lincoln had worked for Ellis for a short time in his New Salem store. He entered the Springfield store, put his saddlebags on the counter, and inquired of a young clerk about a mattress, blankets, sheets, and pillow for a single bed. Joshua F. Speed, a blue-eyed, slender man who was actually one of the proprietors, walked about the store with Lincoln as he looked at bedding supplies and noted the costs.
They had never met, but Speed knew a good deal about Lincoln, who had already made a name for himself as an Illinois politician. Speed had been present the previous July when Lincoln, running for a second term in the state legislature, had participated in a candidates’ debate. Speed may have also read the April 15, 1837, Sangamo Journal, which announced that “J. T. Stuart and A. Lincoln, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, will practice, conjointly, in the Courts of this Judicial Circuit. Office No. 4, Hoffman’s Row, upstairs.”
As Lincoln and Speed returned to the front counter with the goods, Speed took his pencil and slate and calculated the costs of the bedding to be seventeen dollars.
Lincoln responded, “It is probably cheap enough; but I want to say that cheap as it is I have not the money to pay. But if you will credit me until Christmas, and my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then.” After a long pause, he continued, “If I fail in that I will probably never be able to pay you at all.”
Speed was struck by the sadness of the man before him. “I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my life.” He liked the broad-shouldered young lawyer and offered a solution. “The contraction of so small a debt, seems to affect you so deeply, I think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end, without incurring any debt.” Speed suggested, “I have a very large room, and a very large double-bed in it; which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you choose.”
“Where is your room?” Lincoln inquired.
“Upstairs.” Speed directed Lincoln to the stairs that led to the second floor above the store. Silently, Lincoln picked up his saddlebags and proceeded up the stairs.
In a few minutes Lincoln came back down with a different countenance. He declared, “Well Speed I’m moved.”
THE SPRINGFIELD TO WHICH Lincoln arrived in the spring of 1837 was an unprepossessing town of twelve or thirteen hundred inhabitants. Less than twenty years old, it was first settled by trappers and traders in 1818 and had become the seat of Sangamon County in 1821. Local boosters called the county, which was half the size of Rhode Island, “the Empire County” because of its great expanse and natural wealth.
Most of the citizens of Springfield lived in small frame houses. A few impressive two-story brick residences stood out, even as a number of log cabins remained from pioneer times. In the center of town stood a two-story brick courthouse, with small buildings—mostly stores—lining the square around it. On July 4, 1837, two and a half months after his arrival, Lincoln witnessed the laying of the cornerstone at the new Greek Revival state capitol building. He heard an eloquent dedication address by lawyer and politician Edward Dickinson Baker.
An 1836 census revealed that there were nineteen dry goods stores in Springfield, six retail grocery stores, two clothing stores, two shoe stores, and four hotels. Among the craftsmen were tinsmiths, tailors, hatters, shoemakers, carpenters, blacksmiths, and one barber. The young town boasted eighteen doctors and eleven lawyers who served a wide territory embracing a number of counties.
The town’s wide streets were not paved. In the wintertime men and women might sink into mud, while in the summer passing carriages and wagons raised billows of dust. Cows, hogs, and chickens meandered through the streets contesting for the right of way. “Hog nuisance” was one of Springfield’s greatest irritants. Hog holes greeted residents on nearly every street. The porkers roamed everywhere and citizens debated whether the hogs’ filth or constant grunting was the greater annoyance.
When the Illinois legislature voted to make Springfield the new state capital in February 1837, the city began to hum with energy and excitement. Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamo Journal, wrote of the town’s new prospects. “The owner of real estate sees his property rapidly en hancing in value; the merchant anticipates a large accession to our population and a corresponding additional sale for his goods; the mechanic already has more contracts offered him for building and improvement than he can execute; the farmer anticipates, in the growth of a large and important town, a market for the varied products of his farm.” Springfield’s citizens, including Abraham Lincoln, believed the new capital’s best days lay ahead.
IN THE SPRING OF 1837 Lincoln received his license as a lawyer. Although a fine achievement for a young man with no family connections and little formal education, this accomplishment brought with it its own kind of terror. True, he had won his way in politics, but central Illinois was filled with outstanding lawyers. It was one thing to receive a license to practice; it was quite another to be able to make a living. How could a young lawyer like Lincoln, with no capital, open an office and obtain clients?
Lincoln’s first turn of good fortune occurred when John Todd Stuart told him he needed a new law partner. Any young lawyer would have jumped at the opportunity to become the junior partner of one of Springfield’s most successful lawyers. Stuart had had plenty of opportunity to observe Lincoln in the Illinois legislature. In the spring of 1837, he invited Lincoln to join his practice.
Lincoln felt privileged to settle in to Stuart’s law office on the second floor in Hoffman’s Row at 109 North Fifth Street. The office was not ostentatious; it was furnished only with a couch, table, chair, bench, and what passed for a bookcase.
Lincoln became a junior partner with Stuart just as the national financial crash of 1837, brought on by unbounded speculation and cheap credit, wreaked havoc across Illinois. Thousands of people lost their jobs and homes. As a legislator, Lincoln had been a leading advocate of internal improvements; as a new lawyer, he sought to collect what was due on uncompleted contracts for projects suddenly halted.
The firm of Stuart and Lincoln pleaded cases of libel, trespass, and assault. Lincoln’s early cases included collecting for damages to a cooking stove; reclaiming a debt of three dollars for a hog; arguing for the quality of superfine flour; representing the owner of a boat loaded with corn that had been obstructed by fishermen in the Sangamon River; and pleading the authenticity of numerous land titles.
After little more than a year as a lawyer, Lincoln participated in his first criminal case. On the evening of March 7, 1838, Jacob Early, a physician and Methodist preacher, sat before the fireplace in the Spottswood’s Hotel in Springfield reading the Sangamo Journal. The register of the U.S. Land Office in Galena, Henry B. Truett, entered the room and promptly accused Early of writing a set of resolutions at a recent Democratic convention in Peoria that criticized him and called for his removal from office. Surprised, Early wanted to know who had made this charge. Truett, enraged, began calling Early a “damned coward.” Early, feeling threatened, tried to protect himself with a chair. Truett drew a pistol from his coat and, as the two men moved about the room, was able to get off a clear shot and hit Early. Truett ran from the hotel. Early died three days later.
Truett was indicted for murder on March 14, 1838. He retained one of Springfield’s most senior lawyers, Stephen Logan, as lead counsel—along with Lincoln, Stuart, Edward D. Baker, and Cyrus Walker—to defend him. Stephen Douglas was appointed to represent the people as prosecuting attorney. The case involved two prominent Democratic politicians, and passions were running high. Lincoln, who would become the master of delaying tactics, helped get the trial adjourned from July to October to help dissipate both passion and prejudice.
The trial began on Monday, October 8, 1838, in the Sangamon Circuit Court located directly below Stuart and Lincoln’s office. The lawyers for both sides examined 215 prospective jurors before settling on a final twelve. All of the evidence seemed to point to the guilt of the defendant. Early had even given a dying declaration in which he accused Truett. Prosecutors pointed out that Truett had entered the hotel armed and had fled after the incident.
The novice lawyer Lincoln was entrusted with the closing argument. The defense maintained that Truett had a right to demand whether Early was the author of the Peoria resolution that had so wounded his character. Furthermore, Early had a deadly weapon—a chair—with which he intended to strike Truett. Stephen Logan characterized Lincoln’s appeal to the jury as “a short but strong and sensible speech.” At the close of Friday, October 12, 1838, Judge Jesse B. Thomas, Jr., gave instructions to the jury, who retired to Stuart and Lincoln’s office above the courtroom to deliberate.
On Saturday morning, before a packed court, the jury announced their verdict: not guilty. People rushed to congratulate Lincoln for his closing argument. The Springfield community understood the verdict within the context of frontier society; juries were willing to convict an assassin but not a person caught up in a passionate conflict with another. Lincoln received the large fee of $250 for the case. More important, Lincoln’s fame grew as people lauded him as a capable lawyer adept at persuading juries.
AS THE JUNIOR PARTNER AT THE OFFICE on Hoffman’s Row in Springfield, Lincoln prepared the legal pleadings and briefs. From the first he was a fine draftsman, writing in a neat hand. When comparing Lincoln’s legal writing to that of his peers, one is struck by his absence of corrections. Whether writing a declaration or plea, by the time Lincoln put pen to paper he knew what to say and how to say it. Despite what must have been his anxiety at his new challenge, a calm confidence was evident in his fine writing.
Lincoln could be flexible with his spelling in an era when the art of orthography was not as exact as it would become in later years. He wrote “colateral” and “colatteral” for collateral, and varied his spelling between “prossecution” and “prosecutor.” Compared to his contemporaries, however, his spelling was mostly free of peculiarities.
Stuart gave Lincoln the task of keeping the financial records for the firm. One has only to look at the fee book to see that Lincoln was not always adept at this assignment. There are long intervals between entries, and the entries themselves are sometimes quite casual; for example, “I have received five dollars from Deed of Macon, five from Lewis Keeling, five from Andrew Finley, one-half of which belongs to Stuart and has not been entered on the books.”
John Todd Stuart decided to make a second run for a seat in Congress within a year of inviting Lincoln to become a partner. He had run in 1836 and lost to Democrat William L. May. His Democratic opponent in 1838 would be Stephen Douglas. The contest between Stuart and Douglas epitomized a campaign on the frontier. The candidates often traveled together, ate meals together, and now and again “slept in the same bed.” Stuart and Douglas “debated the issues of the election from the same platform” across the expansive Third Congressional District, which made up one-half of the state’s territory. The election took place in August, but it was not until September 1, 1838, that Stuart was declared the winner over Douglas by 36 votes out of 36,495 total.
After Stuart left for Washington in November 1839, Lincoln wrote in their fee book, “Commencement of Lincoln’s administration 1839 Nov 2.” Lincoln would now miss Stuart’s mentoring, yet with his absence, he gained the opportunity to plead a wider variety of cases. In doing so, he was forced to fill in the gaps of his theoretical knowledge. Even more important, he had to stand alone, in small village courtrooms, and before the district court and the Illinois Supreme Court, both of which met in Springfield. During this time, Lincoln seldom sought the advice of other lawyers. He learned early on in law, as in politics, to trust his own counsel.
Lincoln and Stuart’s caseload had increased when they decided to expand the territory they would serve. When Lincoln first joined the firm in 1837, both he and Stuart traveled what was then the First Judicial Circuit. In 1839, the legislature divided the state into nine judicial circuits, each circuit presided over by one of nine supreme court judges. Samuel H. Treat served as judge of the new Eighth Judicial Circuit, which included fifteen counties. With Stuart away in Congress, it fell to Lincoln to travel the new circuit, which he did twice a year.
Lincoln journeyed by horseback in the early spring on mud-covered roads and across swollen streams. Bridges were in short supply. The roads usually ran right through the middle of the prairies. There would be stretches where the lawyers could travel nearly all day without meeting anyone. Nearly everyone on the circuit had a latch-string hung on their homes for hospitality for traveling lawyers.
James C. Conkling, Lincoln’s Springfield neighbor and a fellow lawyer, described those early days of traveling the circuit. The hotel accommodations were meager. “The rooms were generally crowded with jurors, witnesses, parties litigant” and lawyers. The fortunate slept in beds, sometimes two or three together, but frequently the occupants slept on the floor. The coming of the circuit court to these small towns became the center of a community celebration. Farmers and people from adjoining villages flocked to town “not merely to attend court, but to witness a horse-race, or a circus, or some theatrical performance, which were generally the side-shows of a Circuit Court in those primitive places.”


Anna Hyatt Huntington’s sculpture Life on the Circuit depicts Lincoln as a young lawyer on horseback, studying as he traveled across the Eighth Judicial Circuit in central Illinois.

Lincoln shone not only by day in court, but also in the evening around the fireplace in a local hotel or tavern. While on the circuit, the lawyers had plenty of time for conversation, cards, music, and playing practical jokes on one another. Lincoln “seemed to possess an inexhaustible fund” of stories and anecdotes. “No one could relate a story without reminding him of one of a similar character.” In these sessions, Lincoln also became known for his laughter, taking pleasure in his own humor as well as that of others. There was something about “the heartiness of his own enjoyment” that drew others to him.
Life on the circuit combined politics and law. In traveling the huge Eighth Judicial Circuit, Lincoln was building a name for himself that would translate into votes. The fall term often took place in the midst of political campaigns. Lawyer politicians moved directly from the courthouse to the town square for political debate. As Lincoln learned to practice law inside numerous small-town courtrooms, he came to know and be known by farmers and merchants by staying in their homes and trading in their stores. He also sowed friendships and alliances with other lawyer politicians that he would harvest in future years.
IN SPRINGFIELD, his friendship with Joshua Fry Speed, the store clerk, continued to grow. At twenty-two, Speed was five years younger than Lincoln. He was a fellow Kentuckian, but their backgrounds were very different. Named after his mother’s father, Speed was born into a wealthy family on a large estate called “Farmington,” five miles southeast of Louisville. His father, John Speed, was a plantation proprietor who owned more than seventy slaves. Young Joshua had attended private schools to prepare him for a professional career. After working for several years in a store in Louisville, he moved to Springfield in 1835. Both young men sought their own identity by leaving their fathers and their fathers’ vocations and making fresh starts in a new city.
Speed realized quickly that Lincoln, despite his position in the Illinois legislature, was “almost without friends” in Springfield. Lincoln considered attending a church in Springfield, but remarked, “I’ve never been to church yet, nor probably shall not be soon. I stay away because I am conscious I should not know how to behave myself.” Lincoln, shy in ordinary social relationships, was grateful to Speed for becoming a conduit to new acquaintances. That first winter, Lincoln began to break through some of his social inhibitions. Eight or ten men—“choice spirits”—would gather “by a big wood fire” in Speed’s general store to talk, laugh, debate, and carry on a running conversation about many topics. They came night after night “because they were sure to find Lincoln” and his stories and wit. Speed observed the paradox of seeing this reserved man at the center of attention. “Mr. Lincoln was a social man, though he did not seek company; it sought him.” After talking politics and sharing stories around the fire, when the others left, Lincoln and Speed would talk for hours into the night.
A SOCIETY ORIENTED AROUND the spoken word rewarded those who learned its ways. In his constant drive for self-improvement, Lincoln sought out opportunities to enhance his speaking ability. In January 1838, he accepted an invitation to speak to the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield. The Lyceum began in 1835, and by Lincoln’s arrival in 1837 occupied a leading cultural place in the community.
On a wintry Saturday evening, the twenty-eight-year-old Lincoln stood to address the Lyceum meeting at the Second Presbyterian Church on “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.” He began by offering praise to the founders of the republic. He evoked the inheritance passed down to his generation. The young Lincoln, still learning the art of rhetoric, often used more words than necessary, thus, “We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.” If the major melody in his address was honor to the founders, a contrapuntal theme was the role of Lincoln’s generation, just now coming into their maturity, in shaping the nation’s future. Their task was much more limited, Lincoln concluded; “’tis ours only, to transmit these” values “to the latest generation.”
Underneath Lincoln’s towering language we hear a lament. A half century after the election of George Washington as the nation’s first president, Lincoln had become convinced that the epic labor of putting together the country had already been consummated. Instead of builders, Lincoln and his generation were conferred the lesser role of transmitters, or custodians.
He did acknowledge his generation’s commission to protect the nation’s hard-won freedom. Lincoln, always attentive to his social context, spoke of the threat of a “mobocratic spirit” seen in an outbreak of mob violence that had “pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana.” The immediate occasion of the address may have been the murder two and a half months earlier of Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister and editor killed defending his abolitionist newspaper in Alton, Illinois, across the river from St. Louis. Lincoln, in embracing the Whig Party in the 1830s, believed that a departure from tradition and order had taken place on the watch of the Democratic Jacksonian administrations.
Lincoln predicted that the danger to “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions” would not come from “some transatlantic military giant,” but rather from foes and forces that “must spring up amongst us.” In words that would be remembered, Lincoln declared, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
ONE MONTH LATER, on February 24, 1838, Lincoln announced his intention to run for a third term in the Illinois legislature. His championing of internal improvements, followed by the disastrous economic recession of 1837, did not seem to dampen his reelection prospects. By now he had won the trust of an ever-widening part of the public. On August 6, Lincoln received the highest vote total of sixteen candidates.
On a cold Friday morning, November 30, 1838, Lincoln boarded the stage to take his seat in the Eleventh General Assembly, the last to be held in Vandalia. As an indication of how far and fast he had traveled, the Whigs nominated Lincoln for Speaker of the lower house of the legislature. As the candidate of the minority party, Lincoln was defeated on the fourth ballot in a close vote: 43 to 38.
At the beginning of the session, legislators talked incessantly about the status of the internal improvements legislation and program. John J. Hardin of Morgan County brought a resolution calling for an investigation of internal improvements, which he and others called disdainfully the “grand system.” In the course of the ensuing debate, Lincoln reaffirmed that “his own course was identified with the system.” He was not about to back away now. “We have gone too far to recede, even if we were disposed to do so.” Reporting for the Finance Committee on January 17, 1839, he acknowledged the problems in a seriously weakened economy, but remained adamant. “We are now so far advanced in a general system of internal improvements that, if we would, we cannot retreat from it, without disgrace and great loss.” After discussing the purchase of still more public lands as part of the program of internal improvements, Lincoln declared, “The conclusion then is, that we must advance.”
Behind Lincoln’s specific proposals for building roads and canals lay his ardent belief in the promise of Illinois. “Illinois surpasses every other spot of equal extent upon the face of the globe, in fertility of soil, and in the proportionable amount of the same which is sufficiently level for actual cultivation.” At twenty-nine, Lincoln was living proof that in Illinois a young man could begin with nothing and through hard work rise to statewide influence.
The session adjourned on March 4, 1839. As Lincoln prepared to leave Vandalia, he could look back on a record of solid accomplishment, especially in championing transportation as the best means to promote growth throughout the state. From December 1834 through March 1839, he had spent nearly an entire year, forty-four weeks total, in Vandalia. He had arrived largely unknown; he left with a growing reputation for political intelligence, judgment, and honesty.
DURING THE BREAK between legislative sessions, Lincoln joined his fellow Whigs in a series of debates with Democrats in a prelude to the 1840 political campaigns. Stephen Douglas, still regarded as a leader of the Democratic Party despite his congressional defeat, began the debates by defending President Van Buren’s plan for a subtreasury system, a new way to solve the old problem of a national bank.
The national bank had been a contentious issue throughout President Jackson’s two terms. First proposed by Alexander Hamilton, the Bank of the United States had been chartered in 1791 during the presidency of George Washington as a vehicle to bring order and accountability to banking and currency in the new nation. Charged by its foes with being unconstitutional, the bank was dissolved just twenty years later, in 1811. Faced with financial hardship from the War of 1812, the United States chartered a Second Bank of the United States in 1816. The second bank acted to control notes issued by state banks and private speculative banks.
In 1832, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster passed a bill in Congress to recharter the second bank, even though the charter was not due until 1836. The Whigs wanted to force Jackson’s hand in the upcoming presidential election. Sure enough, Jackson vetoed the bill, criticizing the bank for being an enclave of the rich and powerful and in violation of the Constitution, against states’ rights, and subversive of the rights of the people. Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, pressed ahead to set up an independent treasury, which was called a “subtreasury.”
The Whigs were robust proponents of a national bank. Lincoln closed the debate with an intelligent attack on the subtreasury, the centerpiece of a Democratic plan for an independent treasury system. He supported the Whig political belief in the role of government to promote economic growth and development, and the national bank fit well within this philosophy.
The next evening, Lincoln spoke again, but this time his remarks did not hit the target. “Mr. L. of Wednesday night was not the L. of Tuesday.” Reporting on the debates, the Illinois State Register, a Democratic newspaper in Springfield, accused Lincoln of “clownishness” in his manner and speaking style, which the newspaper advised him to correct. Lincoln, upset with himself, knew he had not done his best. His fellow legislator Joseph Gillespie commented, “He was conscious of his failure and I never saw any man so much distressed.” After this, Lincoln was looking for an opportunity to redeem himself.
The Illinois legislature convened in Springfield for the first time on December 9, 1839. With the construction of the new capitol only in the beginning stages, the House met at the Second Presbyterian Church. Springfield, now swelling to nearly three thousand residents, proudly offered hospitality to the arriving legislators.
On the evening of December 26, 1839, after careful preparation, Lincoln offered a speech on the subtreasury. Though he usually spoke with few or no notes, he came prepared with full documentation for an extended address. Clearly disappointed by the small post-Christmas audience, he began by telling the few in attendance that he found it “peculiarly embarrassing” to be put in this situation. He let his pique show as he complained that the reason for the low turnout must be “the greater interest the community feel in the Speakers who addressed them then [referring to Stephen Douglas] than they do in him who is to do so now.” Lincoln declared, “This circumstance casts a damp upon my spirits, which I am sure I shall be unable to overcome during the evening.”
In a highly partisan speech, Lincoln criticized the Democratic plan to establish a subtreasury that would collect, hold, and disburse revenues. He complained that the new banking system would decrease the quantity of money in circulation. He spent much of the speech arguing that the subtreasury would be a less secure depository of public money.
But it was his conclusion that attracted widespread attention. Shifting away from the careful, technical descriptions of monetary matters, Lincoln articulated the underlying issues at stake. “Many free countries have lost their liberty; and ours may lose hers.” Lincoln then launched into an attack against his opponents.
I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption, in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing, while on its bosom are riding like demons on waves of Hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course.
After portraying his opponents’ evil intentions in romantic—even apocalyptic—language, Lincoln responded to their challenge in a growing crescendo of strongly evocative words. He started out simply and directly. “Broken to it, I, too may be; bow to it I never will.” If his opponents rode the “waves of Hell,” Lincoln staked out his own position under the “Almighty Architect” and “before High Heaven.” Lincoln, who was always careful of both his words and actions as a politician, declared he was determined to act “without contemplating consequences.”
Having made his political stand with a use of the personal pronoun “I” twelve times in the last sentence, he suddenly switched to “we,” as if to rally those in his hearing to the cause: “We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country’s freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, torture, in death, WE NEVER faultered in defending.”
In his conclusion, the thirty-year-old Lincoln exposed the moral core of his national economic vision. Rejecting the charge that Whigs were the party of privilege, he laid at the feet of his Democratic opponents his indictment of their economic and political corruption. Lincoln’s continual use of “I,” his long complex sentences, and his use of dramatic contrasts between hell and heaven reflected the spirit of a self-confident if sometimes verbose young legislator. His speech, reprinted widely in the 1840 political campaigns, became a rallying cry. Lincoln portrayed in dramatic moral imagery how the Whigs, contenders but never victors, viewed the stakes in the upcoming presidential election.
The House adjourned on February 3, 1840. On February 10, two days before his thirty-first birthday, Lincoln was praised at an all-day Whig “Festival” in Peoria for “fearlessly and eloquently exposing the iniquities of the subtreasury scheme” in his address six weeks earlier. Lincoln was riding a crest of political popularity.
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WITH THE LEGISLATURE ADJOURNED, Lincoln entered into a presidential campaign for the first time. Andrew Jackson, elected in 1828, had served two terms and then handpicked his successor, Vice President Van Buren. The combination of the economic panic of 1837 and Van Buren’s effete manner compared to his predecessor eroded the electorate’s confidence in Van Buren after his first term. At their first national convention in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in December 1839, the Whigs turned away from party stalwarts Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and nominated William Henry Harrison, a graying hero of the battle of Tippecanoe in the War of 1812.
Lincoln did not attend the convention but threw himself into the presidential campaign, taking a lead in organizing the Whigs in Illinois. Setting aside his earlier fears that an enlarged party machinery could be ripe for manipulation by party elders, in January 1840, he became a coauthor of a circular that would “appoint one person in each county as county captain,” with the precinct captain and section captain “to perform promptly all the duties assigned him.” The Whigs, put on the defensive by the organizational structures of their Democratic opponents, were determined to tighten their own organization. “Our intention is to organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls in the coming presidential election.”
Lincoln set out on a whirlwind speaking campaign on behalf of Harrison and other Whig candidates in the spring. He spoke at Whig rallies in Carlinville, Alton, and Belleville. He debated Stephen Douglas and other Democrats in Tremont. Many Whig campaigners, sensing that the campaign of 1840 could bring them their first presidential victory, spoke about war-hero Harrison and avoided speaking about the issues. Lincoln, on the other hand, spoke astutely about economic problems. He extolled the Second Bank of the United States, both its “constitutionality” and “utility,” and attacked “the hideous deformity and injurious effects” of the subtreasury. The Quincy Whig wrote of his speech at Decatur that the opposition forces “have not been able to start a man that can hold a candle to him in political debate.”
On August 3, 1840, the day of the state elections, Sangamon County elected five Whigs to the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. Lincoln voted for four Whigs but, not willing to vote for himself, cast his final vote for a Democrat. He won election to a fourth term, receiving the lowest number of Whig votes, although 578 more than the leading Democrat.


Abraham Lincoln threw himself into the 1840 presidential campaign to elect Whig candidate William Henry Harrison, hero of the battle of Tippecanoe in the War of 1812, as depicted on this campaign ribbon.

On August 18, 1840, Lincoln started from Springfield on a campaign trip to the southern part of the state. Traveling through steamy weather punctuated by thunderstorms, Lincoln met with Whig leaders in county-seat towns. Along the route he spoke in Waterloo, debated John A. McClernand about the state bank, and continued on to Carmi, Mount Carmel, Shawneetown, Marshall, and Casey. At Equality, Lincoln was “listened to with so much patience that the Whigs were in extacies.”
Lincoln did not simply speak for Harrison, but against Van Buren. The Sangamo Journal reported that Lincoln, speaking at Tremont, “re viewed the political course of Mr. Van Buren, and especially his votes in the New York Convention in allowing Free Negroes the right of suffrage.”
Lincoln, new to national politics, more than once became antagonistic—if not angry—with adversaries in the campaign. On a summer afternoon, Jesse Thomas, a young Democratic lawyer and politician, criticized Lincoln while speaking in a political debate in the Sangamon County Court. Not present when Thomas began his speech but alerted by friends, Lincoln came quickly. He came angry. He asked for the platform to reply, and then proceeded to assail Thomas. His attack quickly moved beyond the content of Thomas’s remarks. “He imitated Thomas in gesture and voice, at times caricaturing his walk and the very motion of his body.” The crowd began to yell and cheer. Lincoln, emboldened by the crowd’s response, continued his ridicule until Thomas, humiliated and reduced to tears, fled the platform.
The story quickly became known in Springfield as “the skinning of Thomas.” The incident would stay in the public memory for years. Lincoln was mortified. Sometime later he found Thomas and offered an apology. The young Lincoln, the man who prized reasonableness, struggled to control his emotions when he felt he was wronged.
In November, the 1840 presidential election drew an astounding 80.2 percent of eligible voters to the polls, up from 57.8 percent in 1836. American political democracy was surging.
For Lincoln, who had worked so hard in the election campaign, the results were bittersweet. Harrison became the first Whig to win the presidency, but he failed to carry Illinois, losing to Van Buren 47,433 to 45,576. The 1840 presidential election represented a coming-of-age in national politics for the thirty-one-year-old Lincoln. His leadership as a party organizer as well as his thoughtful campaign speeches brought him to the forefront of the Whig Party in Illinois.
THE ELECTION OF JOHN TODD STUART to a second term in Congress prompted the senior and junior partner to dissolve their law practice. In four years, the firm had taken on at least seven hundred cases. Stuart had served as Lincoln’s first mentor, but when he moved to Washington in 1839, Lincoln lost the benefit of his tutelage.
Lincoln entered immediately into partnership with Stephen T. Logan, the most esteemed jurist in Springfield. Logan, of Scotch-Irish lineage, was small and stern in appearance, with a wrinkled face and an enormous head of red hair. Logan’s plain, bedraggled dress and shrill, unappealing voice masked an impressive legal mind. On the bench, Logan was known both for the impartiality of his courtroom demeanor and his penchant for whittling; he always kept a stack of white pine shingles near at hand.
Before they became partners, Lincoln and Logan had gone head-to-head three times in the Illinois Supreme Court, and the younger Lincoln had won all three court verdicts. Lincoln was idealistic but raw, ready to be seasoned by Judge Logan. The senior partner instructed Lincoln in the discipline of preparation. Stuart, who was more or less absent in their four-year partnership, had pretty much left Lincoln to his own patterns of preparedness. Logan did not allow any spontaneous or slapdash approaches to serious legal matters.
Logan reread Blackstone every year. He believed that success was a by-product of hard and consistent work. He taught Lincoln that he should know his adversary’s case as well as his own so that he was never surprised by the argument of an opponent. He impressed upon Lincoln that it was crucial to understand both the logic and the passion of those who stood on the other side of the courtroom.
EVEN AFTER LIVING for five years in Springfield, Lincoln did not join societies, organizations, or churches. He enjoyed his time alone, when he could read without interruption. Although comfortable in political meetings, he remained uncomfortable in ordinary social gatherings.
He did, however, speak at the meetings of various voluntary societies, especially temperance societies. The American Temperance Society established a Springfield branch in 1832. It was one of thousands of societies springing up in which members took a pledge of total abstinence. On George Washington’s birthday, February 22, 1842, Lincoln gave the oration at the first large gathering of the Springfield branch of a new national temperance movement. The Washingtonians, named for the first president, had been founded in Baltimore in 1840. Whereas the American Temperance Union worked through religious organizations, the Washingtonians was a secular organization that appealed directly to the drunkard, seeking to portray him not as a sinner, but as a man to respect.
Lincoln began his address by recognizing that the temperance “cause,” although at work for several decades, was “just now, being crowned with a degree of success, hitherto unparalleled.” He then offered an astute and withering critique of the temperance movement’s founding ideas before offering his analysis of the way forward. The problem lay with both leaders and tactics. The earliest champions had been “Preachers, Lawyers, and hired agents,” but he faulted all three for their “want of approachability.” Lincoln asserted that these first leaders lacked sympathy with the very persons they tried to help. He believed there was “too much denunciation against the dram sellers and dram drinkers.” Rather than “the thundering tones of anathema and denunciation,” Lincoln counseled “the accents of entreaty and persuasion.” He spoke out of his own social morality when he told his audience, “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.”
Although ostensibly about temperance, this speech revealed Lincoln’s larger understanding of human nature. He argued that if you approach a man and “mark him as one to be shunned and despised … he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and heart.” Lincoln set up a contrast between old and new reformers. To the old reformers, “all habitual drunkards were utterly incorrigible, and therefore, must be turned adrift, and damned without remedy.” Lincoln found this approach “repugnant to humanity, so uncharitable, so coldblooded and feelingless.”
A problem arising within the new Washingtonian movement was the place and attitude of those who had never been drunkards. “But,” say some, “we are no drunkards; and we shall not acknowledge ourselves such by joining a reformed drunkard’s society, whatever our influence might be.” Lincoln’s answer to a secular temperance group critical of the earlier religious reform efforts was, paradoxically, to invoke the central analogy of the Christian narrative. “Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and, as such, to die an ignominious death for their sakes, surely they will not refuse submission to the infinitely lesser condescension … of a large, erring, and unfortunate class of their own fellow creatures.” Despite Lincoln’s use of the analogy of Christ’s death on the cross, his criticism of earlier religious temperance reformers ended up antagonizing some religious leaders in Springfield.
THE INVITATION TO SPEAK to the Washingtonians in 1842 was one more sign of how far Lincoln had come in his professional and public life in his five years in Springfield. He had now been elected to the Illinois legislature four times. He enjoyed a partnership with one of the most eminent lawyers in Illinois. His distinctive speaking abilities brought him numerous invitations to speak on behalf of Whig candidates and to a variety of reform organizations.
If Lincoln was finding his professional footing in Springfield during these years, privately he often felt awkward and unsure of himself. He was proving himself in his public life with men, but could he find a woman with whom to share his private life?


This first photograph of twenty-eight-year-old Mary Lincoln reveals her style and taste. She wears a silk dress with a large pin and ruffles visible at her wrists. In contrast to the photographs of most other women of the time, she exhibits a feminine sensuality.