L: Lane through Lowe

See below for annotated biographies of anti-slavery Whigs. Source: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.

LANE, Henry Smith, 1811-1881, U.S. Senator. Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery. He was a Whig member of the state House of Representatives (1838-39) and took an active part in the campaign of 1840. Elected to the twenty-sixth federal House of Representatives to fill a vacancy caused by resignation and reelected to the next Congress, he served from August 3, 1840, to March 3, 1843. Early in his life, he recognized that slavery was out of harmony with the spirit of the age, but he opposed the methods of the active abolitionists. However, when the Republican party was founded upon the principle of opposition to slavery in the territories, he became one of its leaders in Indiana. He presided over the national convention of 1856.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, p. 607; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, p. 574).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 5, Pt. 2, p. 574:

LANE, HENRY SMITH (February 24, 1811 June 18, 1881), representative and senator from Indiana, was born on a farm near Sharpsburg, Bath County, Kentucky, the son of James H. Lane, a colonel of militia and Indian fighter. He studied law and was admitted to the bar, in 1832, at Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. In 1834 he moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he practised his profession until he became a banker there, in 1854, with his father-in-law, Isaac C. Elston: He was a Whig member of the state House of Representatives (1838-39) and took an active part in the campaign of 1840. Elected to the twenty-sixth federal House of Representatives to fill a vacancy caused by resignation and reelected to the next Congress, he served from August 3, 1840, to March 3, 1843. When Tyler succeeded Harrison and vetoed bills to charter a new federal bank Lane, like most of his party, broke with the President and denounced him in bitter terms. He greatly admired Henry Clay and campaigned ardently for him in 1844; the defeat of his idol was one of the great disappointments of his life. Unlike many northern Whigs he strongly supported the Mexican War, raised a company of volunteers, became its captain, and subsequently rose to be major and then lieutenant-colonel of the 1st Indiana Regiment. He went to Mexico but was mainly engaged in guarding supply trains and in garrison duty, and he did not participate in any battles. After his return home he again ran for Congress but was defeated by one of the leading Indiana Democrats, Joseph E. McDonald.

Early in his life, he recognized that slavery was out of harmony with the spirit of the age, but he opposed the methods of the active abolitionists. However, when the Republican party was founded upon the principle of opposition to slavery in the territories, he became one of its leaders in Indiana. He presided over the national convention of 1856 and made an impassioned speech that gave him a national reputation. In 1859, holding that the election of Bright and Fitch in 1857 had been irregular, the Republicans and "Americans" or old Whigs, who now controlled both houses of the state legislature, chose Lane and Monroe McCarty for the United States Senate, but they were not allowed to take the seats because the Democratic majority in that body supported Bright and Fitch. In the Republican National Convention of 1860 he energetically opposed the candidacy of Seward and played a large part in bringing about Lincoln's nomination. He was nominated for governor by the Indiana Republicans, with Oliver P. Morton as the candidate for lieutenant-governor. The two campaigned vigorously and were elected. Two days after his inauguration, in accordance with a previous understanding, he was elected United States senator and resigned the governorship in favor of Morton. In the Senate he was a member of the committee on military affairs and of the committee on pensions, of which latter he became chairman. He gave zealous support to the Union cause and, later, to the congressional plan of reconstruction, but he originated few measures and rarely spoke at any length, his talents "being better suited to the hustings than to a legislative body" (Woolen, post, p. 124). His influence was, however, much greater than the record of his activities in the Congressional Globe indicates.

He declined to be a candidate for reelection and upon the expiration of his term in 1867 returned to Crawfordsville to take up again his banking interests. In 1869 he became special Indian commissioner and, in 1872, served as commissioner for the improvement of the Mississippi River. He was a delegate to the Republican national conventions of 1868 and 1872 and for many years a trustee of Asbury College (now De Pauw University). He was fond of telling how in the days of attending court in Fountain County before the war, he approached a group that included Abraham Lincoln. "Here," said Lincoln, "comes an uglier man than I am." As a stump speaker he had few equals, but his oratory was of the impassioned type, and he was not a logical speaker nor a good debater. Unlike his fellow partisan, Oliver P. Morton, he made few enemies, being popular even with most of his political opponents. He was twice married, first, to Pamelia Bledsoe Jameson of Kentucky, who died in 1842, and, second, on February II, 1845, to Jonna Elston, of Crawfordsville, a sister of the wife of Lew Wallace [q.v.].

[Files of the Congressional Joint Committee on Printing; Encycl. of Biography of Indiana, ed. by G. I. Reed, volume I (1895); A Biographical History of Eminent and Self-Made Men of the State of Indiana (1880), volume I; W. W. Woolen, Biographical and Historical Sketches of Early Indiana (1883); Indianapolis Journal, June 20, 1881; Indianapolis News, April 6, 1914, August 8, 1914.] P.L.H.

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 607:

LANE, Henry Smith, senator, born in Montgomery county, Kentucky, 24 February, 1811; died in Crawfordsville, Ind., 11 June, 1881, worked on a farm and attended school at intervals till he was sixteen years old. He began the study of law at eighteen, was admitted to the bar at twenty-one, and, removing to Indiana, practised his profession till 1854. He was in the legislature in 1837, and the next year was elected to congress as a Republican, serving till 1843. The defeat of Henry Clay for the presidency retired Mr. Lane from political life for sixteen years. At the first National Republican convention he made so effective a speech that, in June, 1856, he was elected permanent president of that body, and for several years he led the Republican party in the state. The election of 1858 gave the Republicans the majority of both houses of the Indiana legislature. In 1859, with the aid of the “Americans,” they elected Mr. Lane to the U. S. senate, hoping to annul the informal election of 1858 that gave the seat to Jesse D. Bright. The case was referred to the congressional committee on elections, which reported in favor of the validity of the former election, and sustained Mr. Bright, Mr. Lane became governor of Indiana in 1860, and in February of that year was elected to the U. S. senate, serving till 1867. He retired from politics at the end of his term, and, except as Indian peace-commissioner under General Grant, undertook no regular public service. He was a delegate to the loyalists' convention in 1866, to the Chicago national Republican convention in 1868, and to that of Cincinnati in 1876. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume III, pp. 607.



LARIMER, William, politician, born in Westmoreland County. Pennsylvania. 24 October, 1809; died near Leavenworth, Kansas, 16 May, 1875. He took an active part in the antislavery movement, assisted in the organization of the Liberty Party, and supported James G. Birney for president in 1840. After that he acted with the Whigs and was a political leader in Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Nebraska, was a zealous Republican.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 618:

LARIMER, William, politician, born in Westmoreland County. Pennsylvania. 24 October, 1809; died near Leavenworth, Kansas, 16 May, 1875. He moved to Pittsburg in 1834, and became a banker and merchant, treasurer of the Ohio and Pennsylvania, and afterward president of the Pittsburg and Connellsville, Railroad. He took an active part in the antislavery movement, assisted in the organization of the Liberty Party, and supported James G. Birney for president in 1840. After that he acted with the Whigs and was a political leader in Pennsylvania. In 1855 he went to Nebraska, was a zealous Republican, and served in the territorial legislature in 1856. He moved to Kansas in 1858, but in October of that year led a party of gold-seekers to the Pike's Peak Country. He built the first house in Denver, Colonel, and was U. S. commissioner and judge of probate. In the beginning of the Civil War he raised a regiment of volunteers in Colorado and was commissioned colonel, but resigned and returned to Kansas, where he re-entered the army as a captain of cavalry in 1863. He served in Kansas, Indian Territory, and Arkansas, and was mustered out in August. 1865. The remainder of his life was passed on a farm in the vicinity of Leavenworth. In 1872 he earnestly supported his friend Horace Greeley for the presidency. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 618.



LAWRENCE, Abbott



LAWRENCE, Amos Adams, 1814-1886, merchant, philanthropist, anti-slavery activist. Principal manager and treasurer of the Kansas Emigrant Aid Society. Worked to keep Kansas a free state. Lawrence, Kansas, was named in his honor.

(Lawrence, William, Life of Amos A. Adams, with Extracts from his Diary and Correspondence, 1888; Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 639; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 47)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, p. 639:

LAURENCE, Amos Adams, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 31 July, 1814; died in Nahant, Massachusetts, 22 August, 1886, was graduated at Harvard in 1835, entered mercantile life, invested capital in cotton-manufactories, and became president or director of many banks and industrial corporations in Massachusetts; also an officer in numerous charitable institutions. In 1853-'4 he associated himself with Eli Thayer and others in the colonization of Kansas and its development into a free state, and was the treasurer and principal manager of the Emigrant aid association, which sent out parties of settlers from New England during the Kansas struggle. He was twice nominated by the Whigs and Unionists for governor of Massachusetts. In the beginning of the Civil War he aided in recruiting the 2d Massachusetts Cavalry Regiment. He built Lawrence hall, the Episcopal theological school in Cambridge, and was its treasurer for many years. In 1857-'60 he was treasurer of Harvard College, and in 1880 was chosen an overseer. The town of Lawrence, Kansas, and Lawrence University, at Appleton, Wisconsin, were named in his honor. A “Memoir” of him has been prepared by his son William (Boston, 1888). [Appleton’s 1892]

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 47-48:

LAWRENCE, AMOS ADAMS (July 31, 1814-August 22, 1886); merchant and philanthropist, was the second son of Amos Lawrence [q.v.], a leading Boston merchant and philanthropist, and Sarah (Richards) Lawrence. He was educated at Franklin Academy, North Andover, and at Harvard College, where he graduated in 1835. Entering business for himself, after graduating from college, as a commission merchant, he formed a partnership in 1843 with Robert M. Mason, under the firm name of Mason & Lawrence. Mason ceased after a few years to be active in the firm and Lawrence continued to be the principal partner for forty years. The firm was very successful, holding the selling agency for several important textile mills and eventually acquiring the selling agency for the Pacific Mills at Lawrence, which for many years was the largest plant of its kind in the United States. Lawrence also engaged independently in manufacturing textiles, his principal venture being the Ipswich Mills, which he acquired in 1860 for the manufacture of cotton hosiery and other knit goods. This was then a new industry in the United States. Although for many years he operated the mill at a, loss, he ultimately succeeded in making it profitable and established the industry on a sound basis, becoming the largest manufacturer of knit goods in the country. He took an active part in promoting the interests of the textile industry, being for many years an ardent advocate of a protective tariff and in later life serving as president of the American Association of Knit Goods Manufacturers and also of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers and Planters.

His father's philanthropic activities naturally brought the son many opportunities for charitable work. While still a young man he became a trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital and took a great interest in the hospital and in the McLean Asylum for the Insane. He became interested also in the colonization of free negroes in Africa. With increasing years he became more and more interested in education. He establish ed Lawrence University, named after him, in Appleton, Wisconsin, in connection with a large real-estate speculation, in which he became a reluctant partner, and another college at Lawrence, Kansas, which afterward was taken over by the state and became the nucleus of the state university. He served for several years as treasurer of Harvard College, and for many years as treasurer of the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge. He was a generous benefactor of both institutions.

His most distinguished public service was that which he rendered in connection with the New England Emigrant Aid Company, of which he was treasurer. This company was founded in 1854 by Eli Thayer of Worcester, Massachusetts, an ardent but impecunious anti-slavery man, for the purpose of excluding slavery from the territory of Kansas by colonizing it with freemen. Thayer's scheme was to organize a company on a strictly business basis, which would finance settlers and by their success earn profits for the stockholders. A charter was secured and funds raised by the sale of stock. Lawrence had no faith in the Emigrant Aid Company as a business venture, never regarding it in any other light than as a patriotic and charitable enterprise, and seems to have sold the stock on that basis. (See Samuel A. Johnson, "The Genesis of the New England Emigrant Aid Society," in the New England Quarterly, January 1930.) To his zeal, aptitude, and business efficiency the success of the enterprise must be largely ascribed. After victory was in sight for the free state forces, he withdrew from the management of the company, though retaining his interest in the university at Lawrence and in other public institutions in Kansas.

Despite Lawrence's hostility to slavery and his strenuous efforts to keep the "peculiar institution" from spreading onto free soil, he was a conservative in politics. Brought up as a Whig, he never joined the. Free Soilers and was opposed to the radical Republican party in the campaigns of 1856 and 1860. In 1856 he was nominated for the governorship of Massachusetts on the Fillmore ticket, but declined. Two years later he accepted a similar nomination and was defeated. In 1860 he was the candidate of the Constitutional Union party and ran unsuccessfully on the ticket with Bell and Everett. After the secession of South Carolina he continued to work for the maintenance of the union by peaceful means and joined Everett and Robert C. Winthrop in a trip to Washington to support the Crittenden compromise. When war broke out, he gave the Lincoln administration unwavering support to the end. He took the lead in raising a regiment of mounted troops, the 2nd Massachusetts Cavalry, but the condition of his health prevented him from taking personal command.

Like his father, Lawrence was more interested in religion than in politics. The Unitarianism which his father and uncles adopted in place of their ancestral Puritanism on moving into the city from the country failed to satisfy the religious needs of the next generation of Lawrences, and several of them became members of the Episcopal Church. Amos Adams Laurence was one of these and in 1842 he was confirmed at St. Paul's, together with his wife and his brother. It was his strong religious feeling rather than his politics which made him an admirer of John Brown. Brown's forceful methods he never fully approved and the raid on Harpers Ferry he condemned as the act of a lawless fanatic. The rifles which had once belonged to the Emigrant Aid Company and which were used on Brown's raid were not so used with Lawrence's consent, but Lawrence did give money to Brown and he contributed toward the purchase of the farm at North Elba for Brown's family and toward the employment of counsel at his trial after the raid on Harpers Ferry. He foresaw that Brown would be lauded by the Abolitionists as a martyr and predicted that his death would hasten the end of slavery. Lawrence died suddenly, of heart disease, in August 1886. He had married, March 31, 1842, Sarah Elizabeth Appleton, daughter of William Appleton, a leading Boston merchant. She, together with six of their seven children, survived him.

[There is an excellent biography, Life of Amos A. Lawrence with Extracts from His Diary and Correspondence (1888), by Lawrence's son, Wm. Lawrence. Additional material of much interest will be found in the same author's Memories of a Happy Life (1926). An obituary appeared in the Boston Transcript, August 23, 1886.]



LINCOLN, Abraham, 1809-1865, 16th President of the United States (1861-1865), opponent of slavery. U.S. Congressman. Being a Clay Whig in a Democratic body, he belonged to the minority; but he became Whig floor leader and directed the fortunes of his party in the lower house, receiving in several sessions the full party vote for the speakership. On national issues, which were necessarily of concern to him as a prominent party worker, he acted as a regular Whig. Opposed extension of slavery. As president issued Emancipation Proclamation January 1, 1863, freeing slaves in southern states. By the end of the Civil War, more than four million slaves were liberated from bondage.

(Basler, Ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, New Jersey, Rutgers University, 1953, 9 Vols.; Dumond, 1961, pp. 224-225, 356; Miers, E. S., Lincoln Day by Day – A Chronology, Vols. 1-3; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 65, 66, 140, 241-243, 275, 368-370, 385, 690-691; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 715-727; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 6, Pt. 1, p. 242; National Archives and Records Administration [NARA], College Park, Maryland; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 13, p. 662)

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 715-727:

LINCOLN, Abraham, sixteenth president of the United States, born in Hardin County, Kentucky, 12 Feb., 1809; died in Washington, D. C., 15 April, 1865 […] he devoted himself with the greatest earnestness and industry to the study of law. He was appointed postmaster of New Salem in 1833, an office which he held for three years. The emoluments of the place were very slight, but it gave him opportunities for reading. At the same time he was appointed deputy to John Calhoun, the county surveyor, and, his modest wants being supplied by these two functions, he gave his remaining leisure unreservedly to the study of law and politics. He was a candidate for the legislature in August, 1834, and was elected this time at the head of the list. He was re-elected in 1836, 1838, and 1840, after which he declined further election. After entering the legislature, he did not return to New Salem, but, having by this time attained some proficiency in the law, he moved to Springfield, where he went into partnership with John T. Stuart, whose acquaintance he had begun in the Black Hawk war and continued at Vandalia. He took rank from the first among the leading members of the legislature. He was instrumental in having the state capital moved from Vandalia to Springfield, and during his eight years of service his ability, industry, and weight of character gained him such standing among his associates that in his last two terms he was the candidate of his party for the speakership of the House of Representatives. In 1846 he was elected to Congress, his opponent being the Reverend Peter Cartwright. The most important congressional measure with which his name was associated during his single term of service was a scheme for the emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, which in the prevailing temper of the time was refused consideration by Congress. He was not a candidate for re-election, but for the first and only time in his life he applied for an executive appointment, the commissionership of the general land-office. The place was given to another man, but President Taylor's administration offered Mr. Lincoln the governorship of the territory of Oregon, which he declined. Mr. Lincoln had by this time become the most influential exponent of the principles of the Whig Party in Illinois, and his services were in request in every campaign. After his return from Congress he devoted himself with great assiduity and success to the practice of law, and speedily gained a commanding position at the bar. As he says himself, he was losing his interest in politics when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused him again. The profound agitation of the question of slavery, which in 1854 followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, awakened all the energies of Lincoln's nature. He regarded this act, in which Senator Douglas was the most prominent agent of the reactionary party, as a gross breach of faith, and began at once a series of earnest political discussions which immediately placed him at the head of the party that, not only in Illinois but throughout the west, was speedily formed to protest against and oppose the throwing open of the territories to the encroachments of slavery. The legislature elected in Illinois in the heat of this discussion contained a majority of members opposed to the policy of Douglas. The duty of selecting a senator in place of General Shields, whose term was closing, devolved upon this legislature, and Mr. Lincoln was the unanimous choice of the Whig members. But they did not command a clear majority of the legislature. There were four members of Democratic antecedents who, while they were ardently opposed to the extension of slavery, were not willing to cast their votes for a Whig candidate, and adhered tenaciously through several ballots to Lyman Trumbull, a Democrat of their own way of thinking. Lincoln, fearing that this dissension among the anti-slavery men might result in the election of a supporter of Douglas, urged his friends to go over in a body to the support of Trumbull, and his influence was sufficient to accomplish this result. Trumbull was elected, and for many years served the Republican cause in the senate with ability and zeal.

As soon as the Republican Party became fully organized in the nation, embracing in its ranks the anti-slavery members of the old Whig and Democratic parties, Mr. Lincoln, by general consent, took his place at the head of the party in Illinois; and when, in 1858, Senator Douglas sought a re-election to the senate, the Republicans with one voice selected Mr. Lincoln as his antagonist. He had already made several speeches of remarkable eloquence and power against the pro-slavery reaction of which the Nebraska bill was the significant beginning, and when Mr. Douglas returned to Illinois to begin his canvass for the senate, he was challenged by Mr. Lincoln to a series of joint discussions. The challenge was accepted, and the most remarkable oratorical combat the state has ever witnessed took place between them during the summer. Mr. Douglas defended his thesis of non-intervention with slavery in the territories (the doctrine known as “popular sovereignty,” and derided as “squatter sovereignty”) with remarkable adroitness and energy. The ground that Mr. Lincoln took was higher and bolder than had yet been assumed by any American statesman of his time. In the brief and sententious speech in which he accepted the championship of his party, before the Republican Convention of 16 June, 1858, he uttered the following pregnant and prophetic words: “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 that it will cease to be divided. It will become all the 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 until it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, north as well as south.” This bold utterance excited the fears of his timid friends, and laid him open to the hackneyed and conventional attacks of the supporters of slavery; but throughout the contest, while he did not for an instant lower this lofty tone of opposition to slavery and hope of its extinction, he refused to be crowded by the fears of his friends or the denunciations of his enemies away from the strictly constitutional ground upon which his opposition was made. The debates between him and Senator Douglas aroused extraordinary interest throughout the state and the country. The men were perhaps equally matched in oratorical ability and adroitness in debate, but Lincoln's superiority in moral insight, and especially in farseeing political sagacity, soon became apparent. The most important and significant of the debates was that which took place at Freeport. Mr. Douglas had previously asked Mr. Lincoln a series of questions intended to embarrass him, which Lincoln without the slightest reserve answered by a categorical yes or no. At Freeport, Lincoln, taking his turn, inquired of Douglas whether the people of a territory could in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. By his reply, intimating that slavery might be excluded by unfriendly territorial legislation, Douglas gained a momentary advantage in the anti-slavery region in which he spoke, but dealt a fatal blow to his popularity in the south; the result of which was seen two years afterward at the Charleston Convention. The ground assumed by Senator Douglas was, in fact, utterly untenable, and Lincoln showed this in one of his terse sentences. “Judge Douglas holds,” he said, “that a thing may lawfully be driven away from a place where it has a lawful right to go.”

This debate established the reputation of Mr. Lincoln as one of the leading orators of the Republican Party of the Union, and a speech that he delivered at Cooper Institute, in New York, on 27 Feb., 1860, in which he showed that the unbroken record of the founders of the republic was in favor of the restriction of slavery and against its extension, widened and confirmed his reputation; so that when the Republican Convention came together in Chicago in May, 1860, he was nominated for the presidency on the third ballot, over William H. Seward, who was his principal competitor. The Democratic Convention, which met in Charleston, South Carolina, broke up after numerous fruitless ballotings, and divided into two sections. The southern half, unable to trust Mr. Douglas with the interests of slavery after his Freeport speech, first adjourned to Richmond, but again joined the other half at Baltimore, where a second disruption took place, after which the southern half nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and the northern portion nominated Mr. Douglas. John Bell, of Tennessee, was nominated by the so-called Constitutional Union Party. Lincoln, therefore, supported by the entire anti-slavery sentiment of the north, gained an easy victory over the three other parties. The election took place on 6 Nov., and when the electoral college cast their votes Lincoln was found to have 180, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. The popular vote stood: for Lincoln 1,866,462; for Douglas, 1,375,157; for Breckinridge, 847,953; for Bell, 590,631. […] Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. III, pp. 715-727.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 242-259:

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM (February 12, 1809-April 15, 1865), sixteenth president of the United States, was, to use his own words, born "in the most humble walks of life" (Works, I, 8). His birthplace was a log-cabin about three miles south of Hodgen's mill on what was known as the "Sinking Spring Farm" in Hardin (now Larue) County, Kentucky. Lincoln himself could trace his line no farther back than to certain ancestors in Berks County, Pennsylvania, whom he vaguely described as Quakers; but research has disclosed a lineage reaching back to Samuel Lincoln who came from Hingham, England, and settled in Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1637. On the Lincoln side the descent was as follows: Samuel Lincoln (died 1690); Mordecai Lincoln of Hingham and Scituate, Massachusetts (died 1727); Mordecai Lincoln of Berks County, Pennsylvania (died 1736); John Lincoln of Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Rockingham County, Virginia (died 1788); Abraham Lincoln of Rockingham County, Virginia, and later of Kentucky; Thomas Lincoln, father of the President. The merging of the Lincolns with the migratory streams of pioneer America is illustrated by the progeny of John Lincoln mentioned above "Virginia John" as he was called. Of his five sons, whose names were reminiscent of ancient Israel, Jacob alone remained in Virginia, while Abraham, Isaac, John, and Thomas removed to Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, or Ohio. Abraham Lincoln, grandfather of the President, emigrated from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Green River, Lincoln County, Kentucky, about 1782; but was killed about 1786 by Indians while opening a farm in the forest (Beveridge, post, I, II, note 2).

Thomas Lincoln (1718-1851) was large, powerful, and compactly built. According to his distinguished son, he was "a wandering laboring-boy," and "grew up literally without education" (Works, VI, 25), and in mature life was barely able to write his name. Born in Rockingham County, Virginia, he went with his father to Lincoln County, Kentucky, roved about for some. years, married and settled in Elizabethtown, Hardin County, after which he pursued the occupations of carpenter and farmer, changing his residence frequently, making nothing of his poorly chosen farms, avoiding contacts with "society" in town, and bequeathing little besides life itself to his son. Thomas' first wife, Nancy Hanks, was the mother of Abraham. According to the best available authority, she was the natural child of Lucy Hanks; and her paternity is unknown, the date of her birth being a matter of conjecture. Some years after the birth of Nancy, Lucy Hanks married Henry Sparrow in Mercer County, Kentucky; and Nancy was reared by her aunt, Betsy Hanks (Mrs. Thomas Sparrow). Though many tender eulogies of Lincoln's mother have been written, there is little reliable evidence concerning her. She seems to have been superior to the general Hanks level in intellectual vigor, and was described as spiritually inclined, affectionate, amiable, cool, and heroic (Herndon and Weik, post, I, 10). Whatever her natural endowments, she was "absolutely illiterate" (Beveridge, I, 16) and was throughout life identified with lowly people. Her marriage to Thomas Lincoln occurred on June 12, 1806, the backwoods ceremony being performed in the cabin of a friend in Washington County, Kentucky, by Jesse Head, a Methodist parson. On the Hanks side the ancestry of Lincoln is beclouded in a maze of misinformation; and much of the data presented by earlier biographers on this subject must be rejected, including unreliable accounts of a mythical Nancy Shipley Hanks, sometimes erroneously mentioned as Lincoln's maternal grandmother, and of various alleged Hankses whose real name was Hawks. According to W. E. Barton (Lineage of Lincoln, pp. 186, 210), the parents of Lincoln's grandmother, Lucy, were Joseph and Ann (Lee) Hanks of Hampshire County, Virginia, and Nelson County, Kentucky; and one finds Hankses in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries living on the Rappahannock as close neighbors of various Lees with whom at times they intermarried. It is only by conjecture as to several links, however, that Barton argues a connection between Lincoln's line and that of Robert E. Lee (Ibid., pp. 208-n).

Without following all the migrations of "Thomas the unstable," it may be noted that during the years of Abraham's early boyhood the family lived in a picturesque spot on Knob Creek about eight miles from his birthplace-a spot of natural beauty, of peace and grandeur, in a region of rocky cliffs, noble trees, and clear streams. Throughout life Lincoln carried fresh recollections of his Kentucky home-of the backwoods school where he was taught to read, write, and "cipher to the rule of three," of fishing and hunting adventures, of boyish escapades, of the old stone house on Nolin Creek where the young people gathered for dances, and of the mill to which as a child he carried the family grit. When the boy was seven the family was again on the move, this time for the Indiana woods. With their sorry stock of household goods they "packed through" to the Ohio River, ferried across, and followed a newly blazed trail to the home in the brush which Thomas had selected. This home, in which the Lincolns were at first but squatters, was located in the Pigeon Creek neighborhood in what is now Spencer County, Indiana. The first winter they had not even a cabin -merely a rude shelter of poles, brush, and leaves enclosed on three sides and called a "half-faced camp." Their cabin, when Thomas got round to building it, had at first neither floor, door, nor window; and the family fare was a matter of game animals, honey, birds, nuts, and wild fruit. The family of Thomas and Nancy Lincoln, with their two children, Sarah and Abraham, was soon joined by Nancy's foster parents, Betsy and Thomas Sparrow, with the colorful Dennis Hanks, who was as essential a part of this backwoods picture as "that Darne Little half-face camp," as Dennis called it, which the Sparrows used after the Lincolns had discarded it. Tragedy soon descended upon Pigeon Creek. Thomas Sparrow and Betsy his wife were stricken with what the settlers called the "milk sick," and were laid away in coffins fashioned by Thomas Lincoln. To these and other sufferers Nancy Lincoln had generously ministered. She soon fell ill, lingered without medical help for a week, and died (October 1818) with words of pious. admonition for her children. In life and death her brief story was that of the American pioneer woman.

Thomas Lincoln soon found another wife in Sarah (Bush) Johnston of Elizabethtown, Kentucky; widow of Daniel Johnston, who came with her three children to the Indiana cabin; and with the addition in 1823 of John Hanks there were nine persons in this narrow abode. The household equipment was now improved; and the stepmother became an important factor in the boy's rearing. From the Weik manuscripts-memories of Lincoln's early associates recorded after many years-we may reconstruct, through Beveridge's pages, a fairly definite picture of Lincoln as an easy-going backwoods youth who did his stint of hard labor on the homestead, performed odd jobs for neighbors, shunned the vociferous camp-meetings of the time, avoided membership in the church, and used his leisure for self-improvement by the reading of a few good books. The Bible, Robinson Crusoe, Pilgrim's Progress, Aesop's Fables, William Grimshaw's History of the United States, the Kentucky Preceptor, Weems's Life of Washington, and various other biographies and books of verse were. the principal works known to have been used by Lincoln at this period. As to formal schooling, there was, very little. While living in the Knob Creek home in Kentucky, Abraham and his sister Sarah had attended country schools for some weeks; now in Indiana he sat for brief periods under several schoolmasters (Andrew Crawford, Azel W. Dorsey, and William Sweeney by name) to whose log schools he had to walk long distances; but, in all, his attendance at school did not exceed one year. Out of school his vigor for reading and study was probably less a matter of ambition than of healthy intellectual interest. It was his stepmother who told the familiar story of his ciphering on boards which he shaved off with a drawing-knife to prepare for fresh efforts. His readiness to walk many miles for books is well attested, as is also his fondness for speech-making and for mimicking the preachers and orators who penetrated to the rough creekside. He somehow grew up without the frontier vices, avoiding liquor and being wholly free from dissoluteness and profanity. Though avoiding girls, he was uncommonly sociable; and the nearby country store at Gentryville held for him an unfailing fascination. The river attracted him powerfully and entered largely into hi~ early life. He earned a few dollars by rowing passengers from the shore to passing steamers; and in. the year 1828 he made the trip from Gentry's landing on the Ohio to New Orleans. Though stirred with the ambition to become "a steamboat man," he returned to the monotony of Pigeon Creek, where his father had a claim upon his labor. As the boy emerged from his teens he was tall, powerful, muscular, ungainly, tender toward animals, a recounter of robust stories, mighty with the axe, and not without a certain latent poetry in his nature. His relations with his father seem not to have been happy, and he welcomed the day when he could shift for himself.

In the year of Abraham's coming of age (1830) the Lincolns were again on the move. Having sold his Indiana holdings, Thomas set out with his family to Macon County, Illinois, whither John Hanks had preceded them. With ox-drawn wagons they trekked through forest and prairie, crossed the Wabash, and settled on the Sangamon River not far from Decatur. At first Abraham remained with the family, helping to build the new cabin, splitting fence rails, planting corn, and assisting in the rough tasks of the following winter. In the service of one Denton Offutt he assisted in building and navigating a flatboat from a point on the Sangamon River near Springfield to New Orleans; but the story that "the iron entered his soul" on seeing the New Orleans slave auction, and that he vowed if he ever had a chance to "hit that thing" he would "hit it hard," is untrustworthy (Beveridge, 1, to 7). Returning from the southern mart on a steamer, Lincoln, then only a drifter, selected as his home the village of New Salem, about twenty miles northwest of Springfield a remote hamlet set high on a bluff overlooking the Sangamon.

Here he spent six picturesque and formative years (1831-37), working in the store of Denton Offutt till it "petered out"; managing a mill; conducting a store with W. F. Berry, who died leaving a heavy debt ($1,100) all of which Lincoln finally paid; splitting rails and doing odd jobs to earn a scant living; acting as village postmaster; traversing the county as deputy surveyor; and all the while reading law, studying grammar, widening his acquaintance; following the trends of national politics, and laying the foundations for a wide personal influence. It was during this period that he served in the Black Hawk War, being unanimously elected captain by the men of his company. Another gauge to measure his stature is the devotion of the "Clary Grove Boys"-stalwart rowdies to whom hero worship was as natural as swearing, drinking, and fighting. This tribute to Lincoln's manhood, which came in spite of his freedom from the vices of the gang, seems to have been in part a recognition of his prowess in competitive sport, especially wrestling, and in part a pure matter of personal attachment.

In 1834 Lincoln was chosen to the state legislature; and he served during four successive terms (1834-41), first at Vandalia, the old capital, and later at Springfield. It was a frontier legislature, but its party maneuvers were spirited, and it offered Lincoln his first political training. Being a Clay Whig in a Democratic body, he belonged to the minority; but he became Whig floor leader and directed the fortunes of his party in the lower house, receiving in several sessions the full party vote for the speakership. On national issues, which were necessarily of concern to him as a prominent party worker, he acted as a regular Whig, supporting the Bank of the United States, opposing the leading measures of Jackson and Van Buren, and attacking the independent treasury. He studiously avoided association with abolitionists, but he did not want this attitude construed as positive support of slavery. Consequently, when the legislature in 1837 passed resolutions severely condemning abolition societies, Lincoln and his colleague Dan Stone from Sangamon County entered a protest, asserting 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" (Works, I, 52).

In 1837 Lincoln left New Salem, which was soon thereafter abandoned, later to be rebuilt as a memorial to him, and made his home in Springfield. So poor was he at this time that his surveying instruments had been attached to pay a debt; he rode into town on a borrowed horse carrying his possessions in two saddle-bags, and was glad to make arrangements with friends for free lodging and board. He was now a practising lawyer, having been licensed as an attorney September 9, 1836; and he formed a partnership with J. T. Stuart, a man of influential family, able in the law, and prominent in Whig circles. While in New Salem, Lincoln had paid court to Ann Rutledge whose father kept the rude inn where he boarded. Though the girl's attractions and tragic death have inspired an extravagant amount of sentimental fiction, actual evidence on the matter is scant. She was engaged to a man named John McNamar, but his long absence suggested desertion. Her engagement to Lincoln seems to have been conditional upon honorable release from her absent lover. That Ann preferred Lincoln in case her lover should return and renew his suit seems doubtful; and on both sides there were reasons for deferring marriage. With matters in this unsettled state, Ann died of "brain fever," August 25, 1835. Lincoln's proposal to Mary Owens, whom he met through the kindness of her sister at New Salem, need not be treated here; nor is there room to analyze the confused testimony that surrounds his troubled courtship of Mary Todd.

Herndon's sensational story of Lincoln's failure to appear at his wedding, said to have been set for January 1, 1841, has produced a mass of contradictory discussion. In the best treatment of the subject (Sandburg and Angle, Mary Lincoln, Wife and Widow, 1932, pp. 40-60, 174-185, 330), the conclusion is reached that there was no defaulting bridegroom at a wedding, but that some violent emotional disturbance did occur; indeed, no one can read Lincoln's correspondence of the period without being impressed with his excessive morbidity. After a series of breaks and reconciliations, complicated by Mary's rumored flirtations with other men, the disturbed lovers were finally brought together; and they were married in some haste on November 4, 1842. As to the degree of happiness that attended their married life it is equally difficult to reach a fully rounded conclusion (see Lincoln, Mary Todd). On Lincoln's side there was indifference to domestic niceties and a certain untidiness and lack of dignity that grated upon the sensibilities of a proudly reared woman; on the other hand, the domestic atmosphere was not improved by Mary's bursts of temper. Their first son, Robert Todd [q.v.], was born August 1, 1843; he alone grew to manhood. The other children were: Edward Baker (March, 1846-February 1, 1850), William Wallace (December 21, 1850-February 20, 1862), and Thomas or "Tad" (April 4, 1853-July 15, 1871).

In the years 1847-49 Lincoln served one term in Congress, where he had the distinction of being the only Whig from Illinois. His election with more than 1,500 majority over the doughty backwoods preacher, Peter Cartwright, was a significant personal triumph, for Cartwright was himself a man of great popularity. In his undistinguished career as congressman the matters most worthy of comment are those which pertain to the Mexican War and to slavery. Lincoln had not opposed the war while campaigning as a candidate; but when his party sought political advantage by denouncing the conflict as a Democratic war unjustly begun by Polk, Lincoln joined aggressively in this party attack. He voted (January 3, 1848) that the war was "unnecessarily begun": and on December 22, 1847, he introduced his "spot resolutions" (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, 1 Session, p. 64), which were so worded as to imply that the "spot" on which had occurred the shedding of American blood, which Polk had interpreted as Mexican aggression, was in fact an unoffending settlement of Mexican people, outside American jurisdiction, against which an American force had been unnecessarily sent contrary to General Taylor's advice. On January 12, 1848, he made a striking speech on his resolutions-a Whig speech in which he subjected the President's evidence to cold analysis, accused him of befogging the issue, and questioned the purposes of the administration as to the duration of the war and the terms of peace (Ibid., pp. 154-56). In this speech Lincoln made a declaration which hardly comported with his later declarations against Southern secession; for he asserted the right of "any people," or of "a majority of any portion of such people," to "shake off the existing government, and form a new one" (Works, I, 338- 39). Though Lincoln had voted to grant supplies to sustain the war, and though his antiwar speech made but slight impression generally, he had deeply offended the people of his state. His attitude was denounced in Illinois as unpatriotic; he was described as a "second Benedict Arnold," and was accused of having plead the cause of the enemy (Beveridge, I, 432). On various occasions Lincoln voted for the Wilmot proviso; and on January 10, 1849, he read a proposal to abolish slavery in the national capital (Congressional Globe, 30 Congress, 2 Session, p. 212). It is characteristic of his conservatism that he proposed such abolition only in case three conditions should be met: emancipation was to be gradual; compensation was to be made to slaveholders; and the proposed act was not to go into force unless approved by the citizens of the District at a special election. Lincoln did not move among the great in Washington, nor did he rise above the obscurity of the average congress man. He amused a small circle by his camaraderie and droll stories, but the more brilliant social life of the capital was closed to him. Vigorous anti-slavery men were not his associates, but he formed a real friendship with Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia. Party affairs took much of his energy. He spent weary hours addressing documents to voters; wrote numerous letters; served as the Illinois member of the Whig national committee; delivered a rollicking speech against Cass which was essentially a campaign document (July 27, 1848, Works, II, 59-88); and participated in the Whig convention at Philadelphia in 1848, laboring hard for the inexperienced Zachary Taylor and against his former hero, Henry Clay. In the campaign of 1848 his services on the stump were not eagerly sought, least of all in Illinois; but he visited Massachusetts, speaking at Worcester, Chelsea, Dedham, Cambridge, Lowell, and Boston. One misses in these speeches the resonant tone of Lincoln's later declarations. Antislavery as he was at heart, he counseled against voting for the Free-Soil candidate, Van Buren, since such action would help to elect Cass. Though the Whigs were nationally successful in this election, Lincoln had the humiliation of seeing his party lo se his own district, where the defeat of S. T. Logan for Congress might be interpreted as a repudiation of Lincoln's record by his neighbors. With a sense of futility he bade goodbye to Washington; and, while the thunders of the mid-century slavery crisis were shaking the country, he renounced politics, returned to the obscurity of Springfield, and sadly resumed his law practice.

As a lawyer Lincoln rose to front rank in his own state. He was associated with capable partners-at first John Todd Stuart, then Stephen T. Logan, and finally William H. Herndon. His practice was important and extensive in the state supreme court and also in the federal courts. After Illinois was divided into two federal judicial districts, Lincoln attended the sessions of the United States courts in Chicago with increasing frequency. In his circuit practice,' where cases ha d to be quickly whipped into shape, he was not more than ordinarily successful; but in the higher courts, where careful study served to bring into play the sureness of his matured judgments, his record was outstanding (Paul M. Angle, in Lincoln Centennial Association Papers, 1928, esp. pp. 38-41). It is true that Lincoln is chiefly remembered as a luminous figure among the circuit-riding lawyers who traveled the judicial circuit presided over by Judge David Davis. He thoroughly enjoyed this picturesque life, jogging over the prairies in his rickety buggy, meeting the country folk on their own level, and joining the happy migratory life of judge and attorneys as they lodged two in a bed and eight in a room, swapped stories, and made the taverns resound with hilarity. During court week the lawyers were in demand for political speeches, and Lincoln's popularity was enhanced by his aptness on these occasions. It was here that his humor and story telling showed at their best; and to the stories themselves must be added the wizardry of Lincoln's quaint manner and the charm of his smile. Some of the specific cases of this circuit-riding phase have received undue emphasis, such as the Wright case in which Lincoln represented the widow of a Revolutionary soldier and recovered an exorbitant fee which a grasping pension agent had charged, and that of "Duff" Armstrong whom Lincoln successfully defended on a murder charge, making use of an almanac to refute testimony as to moonlight on the night of the murder. The human interest of these smaller cases has served to obscure the really important litigation with which Lincoln was connected. His services were enlisted in determining such important matters as the right of a county to tax the Illinois Central Railroad (17 Illinois, 291-99), the right to bridge a navigable stream (the Effie Afton case, Beveridge, I, 598-605), and the protection of the McCormick Reaper Company against infringement of its patents (Ibid., I, 575-83). In this McCormick case, which was tried before a federal court at Cincinnati, Lincoln suppressed his feelings when snubbed by eastern attorneys; and later as president he appointed one of the se lawyers, Stanton, to his cabinet. A study of his whole legal career shows that he was more than a country lawyer; and to those factors which gave him fair success in the rural county seats his common sense, his shrewdness, his effectiveness before a jury, his strong invective, and his reputation for honesty-one must add further qualities that mark the outstanding attorney: a searching thoroughness of investigation (Beveridge, I, 573-74), a familiarity with pertinent judicial doctrines, and a knack of so stating a legal question as to brush away its technicalities and get at the core of the controversy. There are instances of his declining to receive excessive fees, refusing questionable cases, and even withdrawing from a case on discovering during the trial that his client's cause was unjust. In fragmentary notes for a law lecture he stated his conception of professional standards (Works, II, 140-43). A successful lawyer, he said, must stress diligence, attend promptly to the preparation of documents, and cultivate extemporaneous speaking as the "lawyer's avenue to the public." He should discourage litigation and choose honesty above professional success "Work, work, work," he said, "is the main thing" (Ibid., VI, 59).

The Lincoln of the prairies was a man of marked individuality. Standing six feet four, with uncommon length of arms and legs, his figure loomed in any crowd, while the rugged face bespoke a pioneer origin and an early life of toil and poverty. In a head not over large each feature was rough and prominent. In contrast to the round, full-cheeked Douglas, Lincoln's face showed deep hollows and heavy shadows. The craggy brow, tousled hair, drooping eyelids, melancholy gray eyes, large nose and chin, heavy lips, and sunken, wrinkled cheeks produced an effect not easily forgotten. A wide variety of qualities is revealed in his portraits, which give the impression of a character whose depth is not readily sounded-a personality in which conflicting hereditary strains were peculiarly blended. Those who have described him from life dwell upon the contrast between the seeming listlessness of the face in repose and the warmth of the countenance when animated with conversation or public speech. The trappings of the man intensified the effect of crudeness. In a day of grandiloquent male adornment Lincoln's habiliments departed as far from the Godey fashion plate as did his mid-western speech from the sophisticated accent of the East. The battered stovepipe hat stuffed with papers, the rusty ill-fitting coat, the ready-made trousers too short for the legs, the unpolished boots, the soiled stock at the neck, the circular cloak in winter or linen duster in summer, the bulging umbrella and hard-used carpet-bag, gave an entirely unpremeditated effect of oddity, the man's appearance being apparently of no more concern to him than the food which he seemed to eat without tasting.

Few men could match Lincoln as a stump-speaker. Beginning with apparent diffidence he gained composure and assurance as he proceeded, speaking with freedom, naturalness, and convincing power. In impassioned periods the gaunt figure, despite the sunken chest, became "splendid and imposing" (Herndon and Weik, II, 77); and in the directness of his intense passages the tall form seemed to gain in height. His mind had that tenacity and steadfastness of logic that goes with slowness in forming conclusions. There is a clarity and compactness in his writings which is in pleasing contrast to the verbosity so common in his day. Never descending to triteness or banality, his papers show careful composition and abound in epigrams and pithy phrases. This power of written and spoken utterance must be reckoned high among his qualities as a statesman. His political philosophy revealed a democratic liberalism closely resembling the creed of Thomas Jefferson. Anglo-Saxon principles of civil liberty were fund a mental in his thinking (A. C. Cole, in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, October 1926-January 1927, pp. 102-14); he advocated the broadening of political rights, even favoring woman suffrage far ahead of his time; and the leveling doctrines of the Declaration of Independence became a kind of religion with him. Laborers and the less favored classes generally found in him an earnest champion. Though never identifying himself with any ecclesiastical denomination, he was not lacking in the religious sense; and in his public papers he expressed with sincerity the spiritual aspirations of his people.

In the agitation that swept the country with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise Lincoln emerged from political inactivity and launched upon the larger career which occupied the coming years. From 1854 on there appeared a new tone in his speeches, a notable earnestness combined with adroitness in narrowing the contest to one phase of the slavery question, thus making it a suitable party issue. In a speech at Springfield, October 4, 1854, repeated at Peoria on October 16 (Works, II, 190-262), Lincoln answered Douglas, who had spoken in the same hall the previous day. His reasoned appeals to the Declaration of Independence, his sarcasm, his searching questions, and his shrewdness in avoiding pitfalls, indicated that he had now struck his stride as a leader. Still calling himself a Whig, though events were drawing him toward the new Republican party, he worked hard for the senatorship from Illinois in 1855; but, after successive ballots in the legislature indicated his dwindling strength, he aided the cause of the Anti-Nebraska fusionists against the Democrats by throwing his support to Trumbull.

The next year Lincoln became definitely identified with the new party; and at the Republican state convention at Bloomington he delivered, on May 29, 1856, what some have called his greatest speech (Works, II, 308 note). In a time of high excitement over the Kansas struggle, when radicals were trying to capture the Republican party, Lincoln's task was to make a fighting speech which would have enough boldness to inspire the crusading abolitionists and yet so define the issue as to keep the support of moderates. Herndon exhausted his adjectives in describing the speech and declared that on that occasion his partner was seven feet tall. Lincoln soon became active in the new party, attending every meeting he could reach, speaking frequently, managing the details of party machinery, and carrying on an extensive correspondence with voters. He was now the leading Republican as he had been the leading Whig of Illinois. At the time of Fremont's nomination for the presidency at Philadelphia in 1856 he received 110 votes for the vice-presidential nomination; and in this way his name was widely advertised in the North. He campaigned for Fremont in this election, though McLean had been his choice; but he had only partial success in winning Whig support for the Republican cause.

Successfully seeking the Republican senatorial nomination in 1858, Lincoln delivered a carefully prepared speech on June 16 before the state Republican convention at Springfield. "A house divided against itself cannot stand," said he. "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" (Works, III, 2). In this speech, as elsewhere, Lincoln denounced the Dred Scott decision of 1857 as part of a pro-slavery conspiracy which, unless thwarted, would one day legalize slavery even in the free states. In the campaign with Douglas for the senatorship, Lincoln at first trailed his opponent, speaking at Chicago on July 10 just after his antagonist had spoken at the same place, and repeating the performance at Bloomington and elsewhere. On July 24, 1858, he challenged Douglas [q.v.] to a series of debates; and the acceptance of the challenge gave Lincoln the advantage of being matched against the outstanding leader of the Democratic party. Beginning at Ottawa, August 21, reaching an early climax at Freeport, August 27, and closing at Alton on October 15, the seven "joint debates" were but the most striking incident of a long duel between Lincoln and Douglas. It was indeed a memorable contest. The emotion of cheering crowds, the clack and rattle of western campaigning, the sporting spectacle of contestants facing each other in successive forensic rounds, the physical disparity between the candidates, the contrast between Douglas' private railroad car and the crowded coach or freight caboose in which Lincoln, not without an eye to political effect, lumbered into town to be fetched to his lodging in a hay-wagon-these features lent a picturesque interest to a contest in which the importance of the stakes far exceeded the realization of participants or spectators. Each candidate showed respect for the other, and the discussions were conducted on a high plane, albeit with a deadly earnestness. In the speeches there were few elements that were new. Lincoln shrewdly capitalized the growing split in the Democratic ranks; he denounced Douglas' indifference as to the right or wrong of slavery; and he used with telling effect the inconsistency between "popular sovereignty" and the doctrine of the Dred Scott decision, both of which Douglas favored. At Freeport, by a question as to whether the people of a territory could exclude slavery, he forced Douglas to compromise himself as presidential candidate in 1860 by taking a position which offended the South, though gaining votes for the senatorial contest in Illinois.

Once and again in the debates Lincoln disavowed abolitionist doctrines and stressed the conservative note. He did not advocate the unconditional repeal of fugitive-slave laws nor oppose the admission of states in which slavery might be established by constitutions honestly adopted. Negro citizenship did not receive his indorsement, nor did he urge political or social equality for the races. His advocacy of abolition in the District of Columbia was again qualified by those safeguarding conditions which he had previously proposed as congressman. With the politician's eye for vote-getting and for uniting the incongruous elements of his nascent party, he avoided the language of the anti-slavery crusader and narrowed the issue to the clear-cut doctrine of freedom in the territories. The effectiveness of his campaign was shown in the election returns. His party carried districts containing a larger population than those carried by the Democrats, but inequitable apportionment gave Douglas a majority in the legislature, insuring his election. The contest lifted Lincoln into national prominence; and in 1859 he made many speeches in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kansas, impressing his ideas upon the people of important doubtful states.

His name was now being mentioned for the presidency, and it was as a presidential possibility that he delivered on February 27, 1860, his Cooper Institute speech in New York (Works, V, 293-328). This was a notable formulation of the issues on which the new party could do battle. Exclusion of slavery from the territories as the doctrine of the fathers was the key note of the address, which was delivered in Lincoln's best style and with a dignity in keeping with the occasion. Decrying the efforts to discredit the Republican party by identifying it with the radicalism of John Brown or the abusiveness of Helper's Impending Crisis, he spoke for an attitude of understanding and friendliness toward the Southern people. He urged his party to "yield to them if ... we possibly can," doing "nothing through passion and ill temper"; and he denounced efforts to destroy the Union.

Lincoln was named in state convention as the choice of Illinois Republicans for the presidency; and a combination of factors led to his success in the national convention at Chicago. Seward was considered too radical and was injured by the powerful opposition of Greeley. Other candidates had weak points; Bates could not carry the Germans; Chase could not muster his own state. The moderate element was growing in the new party, and in certain "battle-ground states", Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, which had supported Buchanan in 1856-it was vitally important to nominate a conservative candidate. Lincoln had steadily counseled moderation; he had avoided connection with the Know-Nothings, had pleased the Germans by his opposition to measures directed against foreigners, and had made himself highly acceptable as a second choice in case Seward could not be named. In short, Lincoln was so free from radicalism, so careful to avoid offense, and yet withal so skilful in inspiring enthusiasts that he proved to be precisely the type of candidate to which a convention turns after the luminous stars of the pre-convention canvass have proved unavailable. The atmosphere of the wigwam at Chicago was favorable to the "rail splitter," opposition within the state having been skilfully sidetracked. O. H. Browning, for instance, who favored Bates because of his strength with the old Whigs, was a member of the Illinois delegation pledged to Lincoln; and he labored loyally for him at the convention. David Davis, in charge of the Lincoln forces at Chicago, worked tirelessly and did his part well, though his bargaining in cabinet positions was contrary to Lincoln's instructions. With 465 delegates present and 233 necessary to a choice, the first ballot stood: Seward 173 1/2, Lincoln 102, Cameron 50 1/2, Chase 49, Bates 48, the rest scattered. On the second ballot Cameron's name was withdrawn to Lincoln's advantage, Seward receiving 184 1/2 votes, Lincoln 181, Chase 42 1/2, Bates 35. On the third ballot the change of four Ohio votes during the count precipitated a stampede to Lincoln, who became the convention's choice amid scenes of wild excitement.

In the fury of the ensuing campaign, with the Democratic party split between North and South and disunion threatened in case of Republican success, Lincoln remained quietly at Springfield. He conferred with leaders, received delegations, wrote letters, and prepared a short autobiography for campaign purposes; but he avoided political speeches. While the people of the South were expecting the worst from him, he did but little to reassure them. In the election of November 6, 1860, he was chosen president by pluralities in enough states to give him a considerable electoral majority; but as regards the whole popular vote he was a minority president. There were ten Southern states in which not a single popular vote had been cast for him; and, strangely enough, his own county in Illinois voted against him. Lincoln carried every Northern free state except New Jersey. His vote in New England was nearly three times that of Douglas; elsewhere in the East his vote stood to that of Douglas as 7 to 4; in the Western states the contest was closer, the ratio being 8 to 7. Lincoln's total in the popular vote was 1,866,452 as compared to 1,376,957 for Douglas, 849,781 for Breckinridge, and 588,- 879 for Bell (Edward Stanwood, A History of the Presidency, 1924, I, 297). The electoral vote stood: Lincoln 180, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, Douglas 12. In the critical interval between his election and his inauguration Lincoln continued his policy of silence, making no speeches and avoiding public statements as to his policy. While events were moving rapidly in the lower South and disunion was consummated by the formation of a Southern Confederacy without hindrance from Washington, the President-Elect, though never doubting that the government possessed the authority to maintain itself, remained passive and quiet at Springfield. Matters of patronage, cabinet making, the preparation of his inaugural address, conferences, and correspondence occupied his attention. He found time for a trip to Coles County where he visited his aged stepmother, directing that the grave of his father be suitably marked, and for one to Chicago to meet Hannibal Hamlin, November 21-26, 1860. To the measures of compromise proposed in Congress he gave scant encouragement. The Crittenden proposal to avert disunion was shattered by Lincoln's inflexible refusal to countenance the territorial extension of slavery. He requested General Scott to be ready to "hold or retake" the forts in the South as the case might require; and he did little to allay Southern fears as to his policy. He assured John A. Gilmer of North Carolina (December 15, 1860, Works, VI, 81) that he would not discriminate against the South in appointments and that the only substantial difference between the Southern people and himself was in the matter of slavery extension. To another Southerner, Samuel Haycraft, he wrote that the "good people of the South" would find in him "no cause to complain" (November 13, 1860, Ibid., VI, 69-70). These and other similar letters, however, were confidential, and the pacific nature of his intentions was not appreciated. The pliable Seward, during these clays, was more prominent as Republican spokesman than the President-Elect. A survey of the Southern press in this crisis shows a division of sentiment between those who recognized Lincoln's election as legal and would await an "overt act" before embarking upon disunion and those who asserted that abolition had swept the North and that the "cause of the South" had no future except by separation. (See D. L. Dumond, Southern Editorials on Secession, 1931, esp. pp. 221-223, 304-06; see also A. C. Cole in American Historical Review, July 1931, pp. 740- 67.) It was not long before the men who held the latter view seized the reins in the lower South; and fast-moving events made theirs the controlling policy for the South in general. (Much light is thrown on Lincoln as president-elect by the colorful letters of Henry Villard to the New York Herald, November 1860 to February 1861). In the matter of cabinet making the inclusion of Seward, Chase, and Bates was a recognition of rivals, while Wells was chosen as a New Englander and a former Democrat who had turned Republican. Lincoln had wished to include some representative of the South (as distinguished from the border states) and had approached John A. Gilmer of North Carolina on this subject, but his efforts to this end proved unsuccessful. Bargains in the nominating convention were kept by the appointment of Caleb B. Smith of Indiana and Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania.

On February 11, 1861, with words of restrained emotion, Lincoln left Springfield for Washington. His speeches en route did little to reassure the skeptical East, but they made it clear that the government would resist secession. The effect of these speeches in the South was distinctly unfavorable (D. L. Dumond, The Secession Movement, 1931, pp. 258-60). Newspapers carried full accounts of the journey, and unfortunate publicity was given to trivial incidents, as when Lincoln, whose chin was now marred by a new-grown beard, publicly kissed a little girl for whom he inquired as his train stopped at her town, and explained that the facial adornment had been assumed at her request. His secret night ride to Washington, occasioned by detective reports of assassination plots, was a humiliation to his friends and a subject of ridicule by his opponents. In a conciliatory inaugural address Lincoln again disclaimed any intention to interfere with slavery in the states, counseled observance of all federal laws (not accepting the Fugitive-slave Law), and plead earnestly for the preservation of the Union, which he declared to be perpetual (Works, VI, 169-85). Denouncing secession as anarchy he announced that the national power would be used to ''hold, occupy, and possess" (he did not say "repossess") federal "property and places." Declaring that "physically speaking, we cannot separate," he a sked his countrymen "one and all" to "think calmly," pledging that the government would not assail them, and closed with a poetic reminder of those "mystic chords of memory" which he hoped would yet "swell the chorus of the Union.''

Inexperienced as he was in the management of great affairs, untrained in executive function s requiring vigorous action, the new President found himself borne down by a cruel pressure of miscellaneous duties, overwhelmed by a horde of office seekers, and embarrassed by unfamiliar social exactions, while through it all the Sumter crisis, involving the momentous issue of civil war, was pressing for a solution. With the eyes of the nation on the fort at Charleston as a test of the new administration, with Major Anderson reporting that in a few weeks the garrison must surrender unless provisioned, and with informal negotiations in progress between Union leaders and Southern commissioners concerning the relation of the Washington government to the Confederacy, events were pushing the new executive to a decision. Meanwhile his very position as leader was at stake. Seward had begun by supposing that he would be premier, and had fatuously proposed a startling program of foreign aggression as a means of reuniting the country. Lincoln's answer to his secretary left no doubt as to who was president, but his words left no sting. If a certain thing must be done, said he simply, "I must do it" (Works, VI, 237). As to Sumter, Lincoln took advice but made his own decision, not, however, without a certain laxness in his control of the situation which unfortunately gave Southern leaders the impression of bad faith; for Seward, without Lincoln's authority, had made virtual promises which the administration could not keep. Lincoln asked his cabinet to submit written advice as to provisioning Sumter. Only two members, Chase hesitatingly and Blair emphatically, favored it. Seward, Cameron, Welles, Smith, and Bates counseled evacuation, though some of the secretaries later changed their positions. Having already committed himself to the general policy of holding federal property, and feeling that evacuation would be tantamount to surrender, Lincoln ultimately decided to provision the fort. Yet Seward assured the Confederate commissioners that the fort would be evacuated; and Lincoln himself was willing to evacuate it if by this means the secession of Virginia could be averted. "A State for a fort," he is reported to have said, "is no bad business (Annual Report of th e American Historical Association for the Year 1915, 1917, p. 2rr). Late in March he sent Ward H. Lamon [q.v.] to Charleston, primarily to investigate and report; but Lamon unfortunately gave Anderson, Beauregard, and Governor Pickens the impression that the garrison would be withdrawn (War of the Rebellion: Official Records, series I, volume I, 1880, pp. 222, 230, 237, 294). In all this there was considerable muddling, though without bad faith on Lincoln's part; and the confusion was increased by a bungling of orders due to Seward's interference with arrangements made by Lincoln and Well es, as a result of which the Sumter expedition was crippled by the detachment of the powerful Powhatan. The pacific attitude of the President was manifest in the purpose of the expedition (to convey food to the garrison and to land reënforcements only in case of attack), and also in the care which he took to notify the governor of South Carolina of his action, thus removing the element of hostile surprise. Diverse interpretations have been placed upon Lincoln's action, and the whole subject has occasioned a flood of controversy. There are many threads to the story; and to the perplexities of conflicting evidence must be added the difficulties of reading thoughts and assessing motives in a field where violent misunderstandings were inevitable. Under the onslaught of opposing forces, with the border states and upper South on the brink of secession and the war clouds gathering, Lincoln himself seems to have vacillated, to have pondered evacuation, meanwhile testing its possible consequences and even giving hints that such a course was under consideration without committing himself to it (a process to which statesmen must often resort), and in the end to have concluded that, in view of the uncertainty of compensating benefits accruing to the cause of union, the fort should not be surrendered. As the exhaustion of supplies made some change inevitable, the closest approximation to the preservation of the status quo was what Lincoln decided to do-to feed the garrison without aggressively strengthening it.

When the war came, Lincoln met the issue with a series of purely executive measures, for Congress was not convened until July 1861. He treated the conflict as a huge "insurrection"; and before Congress, on July 13, 1861, recognized a state of war, he had summoned the militia, proclaimed a blockade, expanded the regular army beyond the legal limit, suspended the habeas corpus privilege, directed governmental expenditures in advance of congressional appropriation, and in cooperation with his cabinet and the state governments had launched a multifold series of military measures. In a masterly message to Congress on July 4, 1861, he explained his Sumter policy, recounted the steps that led to war, stated the issue as between separation and union, commented on the world significance of the struggle, and appealed for ratification of previous acts as well as for future cooperation (Works, VI, 297-325). This legislative ratification of the president's irregular acts was soon given (United States Statutes at Large, XII, 326); and the Supreme Court added its sanction by deciding in the Prize Cases (67 U. S., 635-99), though not without vigorous dissent, that executive proclamations were adequate for the inauguration of maritime war.

As the war progressed, Lincoln extended his executive powers until, man of peace that he was, he was called a dictator. In dealing with disloyal activities-a serious problem because of pro-Southern activity in the North-he urged no special laws against treason, he but slightly used such laws as existed, and he had no system of nation-wide prosecutions; but, under his suspension of the habeas corpus privilege, thousands of persons were arrested on suspicion, after which, usually without trial, they were kept in prison for a time and then released. In this his purpose was precautionary and preventive, not punitive or vindictive. When confronted with anti-war or anti-administration agitation in speech or press, Lincoln usually showed toleration; and throughout the war "Copperhead" meetings were common and opposition newspapers persisted in their attacks upon the President and his party. The case of C. L. Vallandigham [q. v.], arrested for an anti-war speech of May 1, 1863, by order of General Burnside, was a familiar theme of denunciation by Lincoln's opponents; but the facts show leniency and tact in him rather than severity. He and all the cabinet regretted the arrest; and when a military commission condemned the agitator to imprisonment during the war, Lincoln commuted the sentence to banishment within the Confederate lines. Later, when Vallandigham escaped from the South and conducted a violent agitation in Ohio, Lincoln left him unmolested. There were, it is true, instances of newspaper suppression, as in the case of the Chicago Times in June 1863 (in which case Burnside's suspension order was promptly revoked); but in general Lincoln advised military restraint and counseled the suppression of assemblies or newspapers only when they were working "palpable injury" to the military (Works, IX, 148).

Looking broadly at his administration, one is impressed with the many difficulties that beset Lincoln's path. He had a rival for the presidency (Chase) in his cabinet. Within his own party the "Jacobins," a group which seemed at times a cabal of congressional leaders but which became the dominant element, tried his patience with their radicalism, their defiant opposition, and their interference in the conduct of the war. Abolition demands required his utmost tact; for the outcries of such men as Wendell Phillips reached at times an almost hysterical pitch. Always he had the activities of anti-war leaders to deal with. Though bringing Democrats within his cabinet and appointing many of them to civil and military positions, he was unable to carry through his "all parties program"; and he found it necessary to function as leader of one party, the Republican or "Union" party. Scheming men imposed on his generosity and a constant stream of people clamored at his doors. He had the defeatists to deal with-men who demanded peace first and union afterward; while he had the equally hard problem of keeping the Union cause clear of abuse, so that victory, when achieved, would not itself become a curse. The maladjustment of governmental activities, state and federal, military and civil, made his tasks needlessly hard; while the profiteering, plunder, and graft that came in the wake of war wounded his honest soul. A group of senators, partisans of Chase [q.v.], descended upon him in December 1862, demanding the removal of Seward and threatening to take important matters of policy out of his hands. Though inwardly suffering bitter distress (Diary of O. H. Browning, I, 601), Lincoln received the intriguing senators with calm, rode the storm by shrewd steering, kept both Seward and Chase in his cabinet, silenced his critics, and reassured the public. Often he faced a hostile and meddling Congress, and at times he seemed almost deserted. Favoring a war policy with as little of vengeance as possible, always remembering that the people of the South were to be respected, he encountered the opposition of the vindictive element which ultimately seized the Republican party and overthrew his policy in reconstruction days. It is in his reaction to these difficult circumstances that we find the measure of Lincoln's qualities as president: his unaffected kindness, his poise, his humor, his largeness of soul, his fairness toward opponents, his refusal to get angry, his steadiness, his ability to maintain that well-tempered morale which is so indispensable in a desperate war. There was also the notable trait of selflessness; for if Lincoln suffered when his pride was pierced, such was the temper of his self-control (which must not be misunderstood as mere humility) that no outward reaction of irascibility, peevishness, or ungenerous conduct resulted.

In his cabinet Lincoln found an ill-assorted group. Welles inwardly denounced Seward; Bates distrusted Stanton, Seward, and Chase; Stanton and Seward were uncongenial; and Chase, though never actually disloyal to Lincoln, was a constant source of discord. Yet Lincoln, lax as he was in administrative methods, maintained an attitude of cooperation in his official family. Such changes as occurred in his cabinet were of a sort to strengthen the President's position, the vigorous Stanton displacing the incompetent Cameron, Chase being shrewdly kept in the cabinet until after the renomination of Lincoln when he gave way to the more pliable Fessenden, Speed and Dennison serving as acceptable substitutes for Bates and Blair.

In the military phases of his task Lincoln was sorely beset. Governmental organization for war purposes was ill suited to the emergency and seemed at times formless. Some of the state governors embarrassed him by over-activity that trenched upon the duties of the secretary of war; others caused trouble by sheer recalcitrancy. Military efficiency was subordinated to personal ambition; there was a superfluity of political generals; and there was confusion and experimentation in the central control of the army. Troops when brought into the field were often unreliable; "some of the brigadier-generals," wrote Halleck (Works of Lincoln, VII, 77), were "entirely ignorant of their duties and unfit for any command." The war machine suffered from an ill-advised system of conscription, from undue state control of military matters, from widespread desertion and "bounty jumping," and from harmful newspaper activity, which betrayed military secrets, discredited the government, defamed generals, fomented antagonism among officers, and weakened the morale of soldier and citizen. Congressional interference was evident in the Committee on the Conduct of the War (W. W. Pierson, in American Historical Review, April 1918, pp. 550-76), which investigated Union disasters, held protracted conferences with the President, and considered themselves "a sort of Aulic Council clothed with authority to supervise the plans of commanders in the field, to make military suggestions, and to dictate military appointments" (Ibid., p. 566, citing W. H. Hurlbert, General McClellan and the Conduct of the War, 1864, p. 160). That Lincoln listened patiently to the committee and yet never permitted them to take the wheel from his hand, is evidence at once of his tact and his shrewdness.

With his burning sense of the issues at stake and his pathetic eagerness for one battle to end it all, Lincoln was subjected to repeated humiliation in the defeat of Union arms. His reaction to defeat is illustrated in his memorandum of July 23, 1861, following the first Bull Run, in which he outlined a comprehensive plan for pushing the blockade, drilling the forces, discharging "three-months men" who would not reenlist, bringing forward new volunteer units, protecting Washington against attack, and formulating a joint forward movement in the West (Works, VI, 331-32). The pressure of military duties upon Lincoln was more than any president of a republic should bear. He pored over books on strategy; scanned the military map; prepared orders for the army; gave counsel concerning such details as the acquisition of horses and the price of guns; outlined plans of campaign, not forgetting, however, the hazard of binding a distant commander to specific lines and operations; directed the allocation of supplies; attended war councils; and devoted constant attention to military appointments. He assumed a special degree of military responsibility at the time of McClellan's illness in January 1862; and he had to make those repeated calls for troops which intensified the depression of the country. In his experimentation with men he expressed a whimsical wish for a "school of events"-mimic situations in which men might be tried (F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 225); and he even contemplated taking the field himself (Diary of O. H. Browning, I, 52,3).

Kindness and forbearance, mingled at times with fatherly admonition, characterized his attitude toward his generals. When Fremont issued impossible orders in the West without consulting the President, Lincoln sent him a word of "caution, and not of censure," directed that certain orders be "modified," sent Blair from his cabinet for a friendly conference, and finally removed the General only when his insubordinate conduct left no alternative. Lincoln's search for a winning general is a painful story. McClellan snubbed him, differed with him as to plans, wrote complaining letters, and fell short in the business of fighting. Lincoln ignored the snubs with the remark that it were better "not to be making points of ... personal dignity" (Letters of John Hay and Extracts from Diary, I, 53); and on the retirement of Scott in--November 1861 he made McClellan general-in-chief of all the armies. The President's plans, beset as he was by boards, senators, councils, military "experts," and clamoring editors, proved hopelessly at variance with McClellan's performance. In January 1862 the perplexed President issued a peremptory "war order" directing a "general movement of all the land and naval forces of the United States against the insurgent forces" for February 22 (Works, VII, 89). This order was ignored, and Lincoln acquiesced in McClellan's oblique movement against Richmond via the peninsula. At the outset of the peninsular campaign, however, Lincoln relieved McClellan of supreme command; and he modified the latter's plan for the concentration of Union forces against Richmond by retaining McDowell's corps near Washington, while he also decreased McClellan's importance by reorganizing the army under corps commanders. McClellan's ineffectiveness caused Lincoln to put Pope in command of a separate Army of Virginia; but on Pope's failure at the second battle of Bull Run the President dropped him and ordered a reconsolidation of forces under McClellan, who was thus given a new opportunity. Then came McClellan's failure to pursue Lee after Antietam, upon which Lincoln finally removed him from command. The failure of McClellan's successors-of Burnside at Fredericksburg and Hooker at Chancellorsville- added to Lincoln's perplexity and tended to discredit his ability in military matters; while Meade's success at Gettysburg was marred by another failure to pursue and crush Lee's army, and even under Grant, whom Lincoln brought to the East in 1864, there were months of sanguinary fighting with hope deferred. Lincoln's blunders in military matters, which are not to be denied, were largely attributable to political pressure or to unsatisfactory human material, and were partly offset by constructive factors such as his guarding of Washington, his attention to the western phases of the war, and his final support of Grant in the face of bitter criticism.

Cautious in his dealings with Congress, Lincoln seldom seized the initiative in the framing of legislation. He went his own way by a remarkable assumption of executive authority; and on the few occasions when he sought to direct important legislation he was usually unsuccessful. The congressional election of 1862 was unfavorable to him; and elements out of sympathy with Lincoln were often dominant in Congress, which sought to curb the president's power of arrest, passed measures which he disapproved, and came to an impasse with him as to reconstruction. Though the reconstruction issue is a notable exception, Lincoln usually yielded when Congress enacted measures distasteful to him, as in the case of the West Virginia bill and the second confiscation act. Moderates were disappointed in this pliancy, which they described as "going over to the radicals"; yet the radicals themselves were far from capturing Lincoln, and at the time of his death in office an open break such as that which occurred --Under Johnson seemed probable.

Though the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation is the most memorable of Lincoln's acts, the stereotyped picture of the emancipator suddenly striking the shackles from millions of slaves by a stroke of the pen is unhistorical. Lincoln's policy touching slavery was a matter of slow development. Throughout the struggle he held that Congress did not have the power to abolish slavery in the South; and in keeping with his "border-state policy" he resisted for many months the clamors of abolitionists. When Union generals, notably Fremont in Missouri and Hunter in the lower South, attempted emancipation by military edict, Lincoln overruled them; and he said to a religious group: "I do not want to issue a document that . . . must . . . be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet" (Works, VIII, 30). Answering Greeley's antislavery appeal on August 22, 1862, he wrote, though with the proclamation already in his drawer, that his "paramount object" was to "save the Union," and was not "either to save or to destroy slavery" (Ibid., VIII, 16). It was found, however, that war over a vastly extended front with a slave-holding power forced the government either to take steps toward emancipation or to become both its own enemy and a promoter of slavery. By July 1862, therefore, Congress had, at least on paper, provided as much as the Emancipation Proclamation involved, by freeing slaves coming within Union military lines, emancipating slave-soldiers, and decreeing liberation generally as to all "rebel owned" slaves in the sweeping though ineffectual confiscation act of July 17, 1862. In addition, Congress had by this time prohibited slavery in the territories and in the District of Columbia.

Meanwhile, from Lincoln's pondering of the slavery problem there had emerged a plan of constructive statesmanship. Recognizing state authority in the premises, mindful of Southern property rights, and moved by the conviction that the North ought equitably to share the financial burden of emancipation, since it must share the guilt of slavery, Lincoln had urged Congress to launch a scheme of gradual emancipation by voluntary action of the states, with federal compensation to slave-holders. This plan, however, as well as the scheme of deportation and colonization in Africa, had broken down; and in July 1862 Lincoln reached the decision to issue his edict of liberation. By this time the increasing radicalism of the war mind, the indifference of the border states to his compensation scheme, and the realization that foreign sympathy could not be obtained for a government which "sought to put down the rebellion with the left hand, while supporting slavery with the right hand" (Chase Manuscripts, Library of Congress, volume LXII, no. 1989) had done their work. On July 22, 1862, Lincoln summoned his cabinet and read aloud the first draft of the Emancipation Proclamation.

His decision was now made; he was not asking advice "about the main matter." Rather he was announcing his course and taking counsel about incidental questions pertaining to its execution. Accepting Seward's suggestion that the measure would gain force if issued on the morrow of victory, he waited until Lee had been fought off at Antietam and gave out his preliminary proclamation on September 22, 1862 (Works, VIII, 36-41). In this edict he gave warning that on January 1, 1863, all slaves in rebellious districts would be made free; but the proclamation was far from an abolition document, for the President emphasized the restoration of the Union as the object of the war, and pledged further efforts to provide compensation to slaveholders. By common usage, the term "Emancipation Proclamation" applies to the edict of January 1, 1863, that of September 22, 1862, being but a warning. The Proclamation of January 1, 1863, contained no general declaration against slavery as an evil (Ibid., VIII, 161-64). The Union slave states were naturally not affected; and important districts of the South (the whole state of Tennessee as well as portions of Virginia and Louisiana) were excluded from the terms of. the proclamation. The most curious fact about the whole matter was that the proclamation applied only to regions under Confederate control; and Lincoln was denounced for freeing slaves only on paper in districts where his power could not extend. It is hard to put in a word the actual effect of the Proclamation. Preservation of slavery in non-rebellious districts was clearly implied; and if the Southern states had done all Lincoln asked in September 1862, thus obviating the necessity of the final proclamation, there was nothing in the preliminary document to prevent the war from ending with slavery still maintained. Yet the President's stroke at slavery did somehow change the character of the war; and its moral effect was great, albeit somewhat offset by the displeasure of those who opposed a "war to free the negroes." Military emancipation extended as the armies advanced in the South; but as to the legal potency of the Proclamation Lincoln himself had grave doubts. Effective liberation, in fact, came through state action in the border states and more notably through the anti-slavery amendment to the Constitution. Perhaps the chief importance of the Proclamation was in paving the way for these final measures. Lincoln's part in the whole matter was necessarily central. It was he who determined the time, circumstances, and manner of the proclamation; and it was his conviction that, had it been issued six months earlier, public sentiment would not have sustained it (F. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, p. 77).

In spite of serious complications with France and Great Britain, Lincoln gave little direct attention to foreign affairs. He brushed aside Seward's bellicose foreign program of April 1, 1861; and he materially, assisted in the preservation of peace by softening Seward's instructions of May 21, 1861, to Charles Francis Adams on the general question of Great Britain's attitude toward the war and by directing that Adam treat the whole dispatch as confidential. In the Trent affair the influence of Sumner, Seward, and Bright contributed powerfully toward peace with Great Britain, the threads being in Seward's hands; but Lincoln's moderation, though at first he seems to have supposed that Mason and Slidell ought not to be released (Frederic Bancroft, The Life of W. H. Seward, 1900, II, 234), was an important factor. His restraint in international dealings is shown by a "paper" which he prepared, advocating that the Trent case be arbitrated (Diary of O. H. Browning';1, 517). On such questions as the French proposal for mediation, French intervention in Mexico, and the protests against British aid in the building and equipment of Confederate warships, the course of the administration was successfully directed by Seward, to whom Lincoln wisely delegated foreign affairs with the minimum of presidential interference.

While preserving the dignity of his high position, Lincoln's manners as president were unconventional and his habits irregular. Often his meals, when carried upstairs, would be left untouched for hours. He took no regular exercise, his chief relaxation being found in the summer evenings at the Soldiers' Home. During the first week of the battle of the Wilderness, says Carpenter (Six Months at the White House, p. 30), he "scarcely slept at all"; and the black rings under his eyes bespoke the strain under which he labored. In his last year his friends all noted his mental weariness; as he expressed it, the remedy "seemed never to reach the tired spot" (Ibid., p. 217). Despite this strain there was always a readiness to shake hands with a casual visitor and to receive the humblest citizen or soldier. In reviewing the death penalty for desertion or sleeping on sentinel duty, he eagerly sought excuses for clemency; yet his mercy was not mere weakness, and at times he did confirm the death sentence. He read the newspapers but little, for news reached him through more direct channels. Day and night his familiar form was seen in the telegraph office of the War Department across from the White House. In humorous stories and the repetition of favorite literary passages he found mental relaxation. The poem "Oh Why Should the Spirit of Mortal Be Proud" had a peculiar fascination for him, and his familiarity with Shakespeare was often a matter of surprise. Laughter was an absolute need of his harassed mind and he habitually thought in terms of parable, his anecdotes usually having a backwoods flavor and a tang of the pioneer West. His enjoyment of rough jest is shown in his fondness for such humorists as Nasby and Artemus Ward; his matter-of-fact secretaries had to endure a chapter from Ward as a preface to his reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in cabinet meeting. The melancholy of the earlier Lincoln deepened under the pressure of war. Not alone did the nation's woes bear heavily upon him, but the death of his son Willie in February 1862, following nightly vigils at the bedside, added a personal bereavement which would have come nigh to prostration but for the pressure of public duties. Though a ready speech-maker, Lincoln as president made very few public addresses, the chief examples being his inaugurals, his Gettysburg address, and his last speech, April 11, 1865, which dealt with reconstruction (Works, XI, 84-92). In lieu of the "White House publicity" of later presidents, he made use of the art of correspondence. When answering criticism or appealing to the people, he would prepare a careful letter which, while addressed to an individual or delegation, would be intended for the nation's ear. When a meeting of citizens protested against the arrest of an agitator, Lincoln wrote an elaborate letter (to E. Corning and others, June 12, 1863) explaining his policy of arbitrary arrests and pointing out the inability of the courts to deal with rebellion. Referring to the death penalty for desertion he asked, "Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" (Works, VIII, 308). Writing to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, he raised the question whether Southern unionists should be "merely passengers ... to be carried snug and dry throughout the storm, and safely landed right side up" (Ibid., VII, 296). On finding it impossible to attend a meeting of "unconditional Union men," at Springfield, Illinois, he wrote an important letter to J. C. Conkling (Works, IX, 95- 102) in which he defended the Emancipation Proclamation as a measure for saving the Union. In this letter he paid tribute to the men of Antietam, Murfreesboro, and Gettysburg, not forgetting "Uncle Sam's web-feet," for whose noble work "at all the watery margins" he expressed deep thanks. Of like importance were his letter to Greeley on the slavery question (August 22, 1862), to Raymond of the Times regarding compensated emancipation, to Governor Seymour concerning the opposition of New York to the conscription law, and to Mrs. Bixby, whom he beautifully consoled for the loss of her sons in battle. On November 19, 1863, in dedicating a soldiers' cemetery at Gettysburg; Lincoln lifted the nation's thoughts from the hatreds and imminent horrors of war in a brief address which is recognized as his most famous speech (Works, IX, 209-10). In his few simple words of dedication the factor of enmity toward the South was notably lacking; and the prevailing note was Lincoln's central idea of the broad significance of the Civil War as a vindication of popular rule.

The story of the campaign and election of 1864 has never been fully told. In an atmosphere of national depression and war-weariness, with prominent men denouncing the "imbecility" of the administration at Washington, with victory deferred after three years of terrible losses, with financial credit at low ebb, and with defeatists demanding peace on the ground that the war was a failure, the President faced the hazard of a popular election. Though the presidential boom of Salmon P. Chase [q.v.], to which Lincoln closed his ears, soon collapsed, Fremont accepted nomination from an anti-Lincoln group; and the Democrats ominously gathered their forces while at the same time postponing their nomination until August. Such Republicans as Greeley, H. W. Davis, Beecher, Bryant, Whitelaw Reid, and many others, were minded to drop Lincoln; but Republican managers set an early date for the party convention (June 7), Lincoln meanwhile keeping Chase in the cabinet, and there was little difficulty in obtaining the President's renomination when the convention met at Baltimore. The renomination was in fact unanimous; but in the months that followed, the military outlook became still gloomier; and when McClellan was nominated by the Democrats in August on a peace platform his strength seemed truly formidable. At this juncture a surprising movement developed-nothing less than an effort to supplant Lincoln with a "more vigorous leader" and force his withdrawal (New York Sun, June 30, 1889, p. 3). A plan was laid for a convention to meet at Cincinnati, Ohio, on September 28 "to concentrate the union strength on some one candidate, who commands the confidence of the country, even by a new nomination if necessary" (Ibid.). At this time Greeley wrote that Lincoln was "already beaten," and that only "and other ticket" could save the party from "utter overthrow." As late as August 25, H. W. Davis I, wrote: "My letters from Maryland say Lincoln can do nothing there, even where the Union party is most vigorous, and everybody is looking for a new candidate from somewhere." These extracts will serve to suggest the active opposition to Lincoln within his own party, which was due to such factors as the lack of Union success in battle, the conservatism of Lincoln, his leniency toward the South which ran counter to the radical plan of reconstruction, his call of July 18, 1864, for 500,000 volunteers, and the feeling that the President under Seward's ins fluence was an opportunist and compromiser s rather than a vigorous executive. The real strength of the anti-Lincoln movement is difficult to gauge because a favorable turn in the administration's fortunes occurred in September with the fall of Atlanta and Republican electoral successes in Vermont and Maine, after which, for the sake of party harmony, various anti-Lincon men such as Wade and Greeley gave him their support. With this turn of the tide the demand for Lincoln's withdrawal lost its point and the Cincinnati convention was never held. Efforts were put forth to include certain states of the Confederacy in the election, and the President carried Louisiana and Tennessee where reorganized "loyal" governments had been set up; but the votes of these states, being unnecessary, were not recognized by Congress in the electoral count. Thus only the Union states were counted; and all of them except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey gave Lincoln their electoral vote. This electoral sweep, together with Lincoln's popular majority of more than 400,000 over McClellan, gave the election somewhat the appearance of a Lincoln landslide; there were, however, powerful McClellan minorities in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania (H. M. Dudley, "The Election of 1864," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, March 1932.) In the event of McClellan's election Lincoln had resolved "to so cooperate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration." As his secretaries record, it was the President's intention to "talk matters over" with McClellan and say to him: "Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government, try to save the country." At the time when this patriotic resolve to cooperate with a victorious opponent was made (August 23, 1864), the President considered his own defeat "exceedingly probable" (Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, IX, 251- 52).

At his second inauguration, March 4, 1865, Lincoln made no effort to review the events of his administration, but delivered a brief address which, for loftiness of tone, ranks among his greatest state papers (Works, XI, 44-47). Breathing a spirit of friendliness toward the enemy, he refused to blame the South for the war, and counseled his countrymen to "judge not, that we be not judged." "With malice toward none; with charity for all," he concluded, "let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; ... to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace .... " There were few Northern leaders who manifested as fair an understanding of the Southern people as Lincoln (A. C. Cole, in Lincoln Centennial Association Papers, 1928, pp. 47-78); and he devoted careful thought and labor to the restoration of the Southern states to the Union. In his proclamation of December 8, 1863, he pardoned (with certain exceptions) those Confederates who would swear allegiance to the Union; and he vigorously promoted the organisation of "loyal" governments in the Southern states, requiring that they abolish slavery, and standing ready to welcome them into the Union though the loyal nucleus be no more than ten per cent. of the voters of 1860. When Congress, on July 2, 1864, passed the Wade-Davis Bill providing a severe plan that would hinder reconstruction, Lincoln applied the "pocket" veto, and announced his reasons in a "proclamation" of July 8 (Works, X, 152-54), upon which the authors of the bill, with an eye to the President's embarrassment in the campaign for reelection, severely attacked him in an address to the people known as the Wade-Davis manifesto. The details of Lincoln's further efforts toward reconstruction are too elaborate to be recounted here. His scheme was carried through to his own satisfaction in Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Virginia; but Congress never recognized any of these "Lincoln governments" of the South.

As to peace negotiations with the Confederacy, Lincoln insisted upon reunion and the abolition of slavery, but manifested a generous disposition on collateral issues. This was his attitude in connection with the peace efforts of Horace Greeley [q.v.] in 1864; and the same moderate attitude was manifested in connection with Blair's mission to Richmond (see Blair, Francis Preston, 1791-1876) and in the Hampton Roads Conference of February 1865. In this conference Lincoln, in company with Seward; conferred on board a warship with three Confederate commissioners (J. A. Campbell, A. H. Stephens, and R. M. T. Hunter); and accounts agree that, while the President again insisted upon reunion and emancipation, he showed willingness to use the pardoning power freely in the South, to allow self-government to the returning states, and even to recommend liberal compensation to slave-holders. On the fall of Richmond Lincoln visited the Confederate capital, where he walked the streets unmolested, and advised with Southern leaders, notably J. A. Campbell. He expressed a desire to permit the "rebel" legislature of Virginia to return and reorganize the state; but this purpose, as well as his other plans for the South, was defeated.

He gave the closest attention to the final military phase of the war, visiting the army and remaining with Grant at City Point from March 24 until April 9, except for his two-day visit to Richmond on the 4th and 5th. His return to Washington coincided with Lee's surrender, an event which gave added significance to the President's last speech, which was a statesmanlike paper read to a cheering crowd at the White House on the night of April 11. Returning to the subject of reconstruction, he appealed to a divided North to let the South come back to the Union. Casting theories aside, he said: "We all agree that the seceded States ... are out of their proper practical relation with the Union, and that the ... object of the government ... is to again get them into that proper practical relation" (Works, XI, 88). "Concede," he said, "that the new government of Louisiana is ... as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it" (Ibid., XI, 91). On the last day of Lincoln's life the subject of reconstruction was discussed at length in cabinet meeting; and a project was considered which resembled the plan later announced by President Johnson on May 29, 1865 (40 Congress, 1 Session, Report of Committees of the House of Representatives, no. 7, pp. 78-79). Again Lincoln expressed the wish that all vindictiveness be laid aside and that the Southern people be leniently treated (F. W. Seward, Reminiscences, 1916, p. 254). With opposition growing within his own party and threatening the ruin of his generous plans had he lived, he was removed by assassination, which silenced criticism and conferred the martyr's crown. At Ford's Theatre on the night of April 14, 1865, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth [q.v.]. After lying unconscious through the night he died the following morning. The state rites over, the funeral train moved west with frequent stops; and amid fulminations of vindictive oratory, with people and soldiers mourning their beloved Chief, the body was laid to rest at Springfield.

The early crystallization of the enduring Lincoln tradition was illustrated by Stanton's comment, "Now he belongs to the ages." That he was among the "consummate masters of statecraft" may be disputed, but such was the impression he left that this distinction has been accorded him. In the shortest list of American liberal leaders he takes eminent place: liberalism with him was no garment; it was of the fiber of his mind. His hold upon the affections of his own people has not been due merely to the fact that he, a backwoods lad, rose to the highest office in the land. It is doubtful whether any other leader of the North could have matched him in dramatizing the war to the popular mind, in shaping language to his purpose, in smoothing personal difficulties by a magnanimous touch or a tactful gesture, in avoiding domestic and international complications, in courageously persisting in the face of almost unendurable discouragements, in maintaining war morale while refusing to harbor personal malice against the South. Not inappropriately, he has become a symbol both of American democracy and the Union.



LORD, Otis Phillips, jurist, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 11 July, 1812; died in Salem, Massachusetts, 13 March, 1884. On the dissolution of the Whig Party, of which he had been a member, he was nominated for Congress in 1858.

Biography from Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 25-26:

LORD, Otis Phillips, jurist, born in Ipswich, Massachusetts, 11 July, 1812; died in Salem, Massachusetts, 13 March, 1884. He was graduated at Amherst in 1832, and at the Harvard law-school in 1836, subsequently settling in Ipswich and afterward in Salem, where he practised his profession. He was a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1847-54, serving in the latter year as speaker, was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1853, and from 1859 till 1875 an associate justice of the state superior court. On the dissolution of the Whig Party, of which he had been a member, he was nominated for Congress in 1858 by an independent convention, and was defeated then, and again in 1860, when he was the candidate of the Constitutional Union Party. During the Civil War he was pro-slavery in his politics, and in 1866 he published a series of articles opposing the 15th Constitutional Amendment, he was elevated to the supreme bench in 1875, and held office till his retirement in 1882. Amherst gave him the degree of LL. D., in 1869. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. IV, pp. 25-26.



LOWE, Ralph Phillips (November 27, 1805- December 22, 1883), governor and chief justice of Iowa.

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 6, Pt. 1, pp. 451-542:

LOWE, RALPH PHILLIPS (November 27, 1805- December 22, 1883), governor and chief justice of Iowa, was the son of Jacob Derrick and Martha (Per-Lee) Lowe, who conducted a tavern in Warren County, Ohio, where the boy early heard great issues discussed by Henry Clay and other distinguished guests. He worked on the farm and acquired enough preparation by 1825 to enter Miami University, from which he graduated in 1829. Estranged from his father on account of his refusal to farm, he made his way to Ashville, Alabama, where he taught school, read law, was admitted to the bar, and began to practise. After five years he returned to Ohio to open a law office in Dayton. In 1837 he married Phoebe Carleton and three years later removed to a farm near Bloomington, now Muscatine, Iowa. He quickly became active in public affairs and served in the constitutional convention of 1844. Defeated the following year as the Whig candidate for territorial delegate, he devoted himself to building up a successful practice, served as district attorney and, from 1852 to 1857, was judge of the first district. When, in 1858, he became the first governor under the constitution of 1857, he faced a serious situation. With no banking system of her own, Iowa was overrun with wildcat currency from neighboring states and was still experiencing the disastrous effects of the panic of 1857. She was deeply stirred, too, by the slavery issue. In cooperation with the able Seventh General Assembly, his administration put the new constitution into effect, established a banking system, enacted ample revenue laws, rescued the school lands and funds from fraud and waste, encouraged railway construction, created the state agricultural college, and placed the township and county government on a sounder basis. These measures together with good crops and good prices, in 1860, restored state prosperity. Yet when the time came for the nominating convention in June 1859 Samuel J. Kirkwood [q.v.] had so far established himself as the leader of the antislavery sentiment in Iowa that there was a general desire to make him the next governor. Lowe's record and character undoubtedly entitled him to a renomination, but he was not as popular as Kirkwood. His tolerance, gentleness, and dignity gave the appearance of weakness to what was, in reality, a sturdy, fearless character. In the interest of party harmony he reluctantly consented to go to the supreme bench while Kirkwood became governor.

He served on the bench until 1868, acting as chief justice in 1860 and from 1866-68. As a judge he was broad-minded, sympathetic, and intellectually honest. Being neither deeply read in the law nor thoroughly convinced of the efficacy of the law as a general rule of action he regarded equity as a higher law and rendered decisions that seemed to him just, even if not in strict accord with the technicalities of the law. When he left the bench he was interested in Iowa's "Five Per Cent Claim." He spent some years trying to collect about $800,000, in accordance with the agreement of the federal government to pay the states five per cent. of the proceeds of land sales in return for five years' exemption from state taxation on land sold by the government. In order to prosecute the claim more advantageously he moved to Washington, where he died without knowing that the Supreme Court had already decided against his suit. He was a member of the Presbyterian church and deeply interested in such phases of religious thought as the interpretation of Biblical prophecies and the question of the lost tribes of Israel. His faith in human beings continued to be strong throughout a varied and active life. A colleague wrote of him, that he "was a most credulous man, taking every man to be honest and true until convinced otherwise" (Annals of Iowa, October 189~p. 211).

[B. F. Shambaugh, History of the Constitutions of Iowa (1902); E. H. Stiles, Recollections and Sketches of Notable Lawyers and Public Men of Early Iowa (1916); Iowa Historical Record, October 1891; Annals of Iowa, October 1900; General Catalog of the Graduates and Former Students of Miami University (1910 ?); Iowa State Register, December 23, 1883; Washington Post, December 25, 1883.]

C.F.P.

Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.