Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Summary of Speech at Princeton, Illinois, 4 July 18561

After the company had secured their refreshments, and had walked around and enjoyed themselves for near an hour, the chairman 2 again called the meeting to order and introduced to them Hon. A. Lincoln, of Springfield, who then proceeded to address the assembled multitude. Mr. Lincoln commenced back at the formation of the American government, and made a hasty review of our history, glancing at all the most important features in our legislation. He spoke in the first place of that Declaration made to the world, by our Fore Fathers, “That all men are born free and equal,”3 and from that time he moved on down to the famous ordinance of 1787, the ordinance that was passed and under which Virginia, (if our memory serves us aright) granted the five states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, to the general government, and in that vast territory, slavery and involuntary servitude, except for crime was forever prohibited.—4 He then came to speak of the Missouri Compromise, and on this point he dwelt at full length, as the repeal of this act is the measure that is now causing so much excitement throughout our country. He said the people had lived in comparative peace and quiet, with only an occasional brush. During Gen. Jackson’s administration, the Calhoun Nullifying doctrine sprang up, but Gen. Jackson, with that decision of character that ever characterized him, put an end to it. Then again in 1845, when Texas knocked at the door and requested admission there sprang up another excitement on the slavery question. That finally passed off until the excitement in regard to the territories of Washington and Utah, came up which was the cause of the passage of the Compromise measures of 1850. It then run on until I854, when Douglas, in announcing his bill for the organization of the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, recommended Congress to repeal the Missouri Compromise, which move raised such an excitement around the White House and throughout the counrty as never before was heard of in this Union. Mr. Lincoln took his seat amid loud and enthusiastic cheers.5

1The Independent of Tiskilwa, Illinois, which claimed to be politically independent, published this summary of Abraham Lincoln’s speech as part of a longer, unsigned description of the Fourth of July celebration in Princeton, Illinois. No other account of Lincoln’s speech has been located.
According to the Independent, the meeting attracted a large crowd, which the newspaper estimated to be in the range of 8,000 to 10,000 spectators. The portion of the article preceding this excerpt additionally summarizes speeches by Burton C. Cook and Joseph Knox.

Although the Independent did not specify the political leanings of this gathering, a brief article on the meeting in the Illinois State Journal described it as a meeting in support of John C. Fremont and William H. Bissell, the Republican candidates for U.S. president and governor of Illinois in the election of 1856. From July 1856 onwards Lincoln gave over fifty speeches across Illinois in support of Fremont and to rally the disparate elements of the emerging Republican Party. See the 1856 Federal Election.
Independent (Tiskilwa, IL), 11 July 1856, 2:1-2; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 335; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 11 July 1856, 2:1; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:425-33.

2At the commencement of the proceedings, Solomon A. Paddock was called to the chair.
Independent (Tiskilwa, IL), 11 July 1856, 2:1.

3The sentiment that “all men are created equal” is included in the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776.
Julian P. Boyd et al, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:429.

4This summary conflates the Land Ordinance of 1784 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. As a member of the Confederation Congress in 1784, Thomas Jefferson drafted a deed of conveyance by which Virginia ceded the land it had claimed northwest of the Ohio River. Following the Confederation Congress’s acceptance of Virginia’s cession, it passed the Land Ordinance of 1784 to codify how this and similar territorial cessions would be organized and governed. Jefferson’s draft of the ordinance included the condition that after 1800 slavery would be outlawed in these territories except as punishment for crimes, but this provision was removed by amendment during congressional debate.
The Land Ordinance of 1784 was ultimately succeeded by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance organized the Northwest Territory, which included the land of what would become the states listed here, along with a portion of the future state of Minnesota. Among the ordinance’s provisions for governing the Northwest Territory was a clause prohibiting slavery in the territory and in any states that might arise from it except as a punishment for crime.
Julian P. Boyd et al, eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), 6:576-80, 581, 608, 611-12; Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 64.

5Following this account of Lincoln’s speech, the Independent summarized speeches by Owen Lovejoy and George W. Stipp. The Daily Illinois State Journal also listed Ebenezer Peck as a speaker at the meeting.
Independent (Tiskilwa, IL), 11 July 1856, 2:2-3; Daily Illinois State Journal(Springfield), 11 July 1856, 2:1.