Abraham Lincoln to Richard Thorne, 13 November 18561
Springfield, Nov. 13. 1856R. Thorne, Esq [Esquire]My dear Sir:It is now fully settled that Bissell & our State ticket are elected by 6000 or 7000 majority–2 Buchanan gets the state by a majority not quite so large–3
Some little expense bills are on me; and I have concluded to draw on you for $20.
now4, which is still ten dollars within the authority you kindly gave me–5
Your much obliged friendA. Lincoln62The Illinois Republican state ticket in the election of 1856 consisted of William H. Bissell for governor, John Wood for lieutenant governor, Ozias M. Hatch for secretary of state, Jesse K. Dubois for auditor of public accounts, James Miller for treasurer, and William H. Powell, Sr. for superintendent of public instruction. The entire ticket won their races in the
election on November 4, 1856, with Bissell winning by a margin of 4,729 votes, Wood
by 4,287, Hatch by 8,928, Dubois by 3,204, Miller by 20,982, and Powell by 3,007.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 25 September 1856, 2:1; 5 November 1856, 3:1; 20 November 1856, 2:2,
3:4-6.
3In the 1856 presidential race, Democratic candidate James Buchanan won 105,528 votes in Illinois, or 44.1 percent of votes cast in the state. Republican
John C. Fremont placed second in the state with 96,278 votes or 40.2 percent, and American Party candidate Millard Fillmore finished third with 37,531 votes or 15.7 percent. Buchanan won the election, garnering
45.3 percent of the vote nationally.
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 135-37;
Michael J. Dubin, United States Presidential Elections, 1788-1860: The Official Results by County and
State (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002), 135.
4Roy P. Basler, editor of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, rendered this word as “more.”
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 2:382.
5These expenses may stem from Lincoln’s labors during the campaign of 1856. From July 1856 onwards, he gave over fifty speeches across Illinois in support of
Fremont’s presidential campaign and to rally the disparate elements of the emerging
Republican Party.
Harry E. Pratt, The Personal Finances of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, IL: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1943), 104; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:425-33.
Copy of Autograph Letter Signed, 1 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Association Files, Lincoln Collection, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum (Springfield, IL).