Abraham Lincoln to Ward H. Lamon, 11 June 18581
Springfield, June 11th 1858W. H. Lamon, Esq[Esquire]My dear Sir:Yours of the 9th written at Joliet is just received– Two or three days ago I learned that McLean had appointed delegates in favor of Lovejoy, and thenceforward I have considered his re-nomination a fixed fact.2 My opinion— if my opinion is of any consequence in this case, in which it is no business of
mine to interfere— remains unchanged that running an independent candidate against
Lovejoy, will not do—3 that it will result in nothing but disaster all round– In the first place whoever
so runs will be beaten, and will be spotted for life; in the second place, while the
race is in progress, he will be under the strongest temtation to trade with the democrats, and to favor the election of certain of their friends to the Legislature; thirdly, I shall be held responsible for it, and Republican members of the Legislature, who are partial to Lovejoy, will,
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for that, oppose me;4 and lastly it will ^in the end^ lose us the District altogether– There is no safe way but a convention; and if, in
that convention upon a common platform, which all are willing to stand upon, one who
has been known as an abolitionist, but who is now occupying none but common ground, can get the majority of the votes
upon to which all look for an election, there is no safe way but to submit mit5As to the inclination of some Republicans to favor Douglas, that is one of the chances I have to run, and
which I intend to run with patience–6
Yours as everA. Lincoln.8<Page 3>
SPRINGFIELD Ill.[Illinois]JUN[June] 12 1858W. H. Lamon, EsqBloomingtonIllinois.
2Ward H. Lamon’s letter to Lincoln of June 9, 1858 conveyed the results of the recent Republican county conventions
of McLean and LaSalle counties, held respectively on June 5 in Bloomington and on June 9 in Ottawa. These two counties were among those in the Third Congressional District of Illinois, where Owen Lovejoy was up for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives in the election of 1858. Some of the more conservative Republicans of the district, Lamon among them, sought
to replace Lovejoy, whom they labeled an abolitionist.
In May of 1858 the Republican central committee of the district instructed their constituent
counties to select delegates to attend a convention to be held in Joliet on June 30,
1858, at which the district Republicans would nominate their congressional candidate.
Both the McLean County and the La Salle County Republican conventions endorsed Lovejoy
for renomination. Following Lovejoy’s victory at the conventions in these two counties,
his nomination seemed likely, based on his expected strong performance at the conventions
of the counties in the northern and central part of the Third Congressional District.
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 10, 11,
142; Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 189-98; The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 20 May 1858, 2:1; The Weekly Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 9 June 1858, 2:1, 2; The Ottawa Weekly Republican (IL), 22 May 1858, 2:2, 3; 12 June 1858, 2:2, 4.
3Lincoln had warned Lovejoy as early as March 1858 to be wary of the possibility of Democrats recruiting
a Republican to oppose Lovejoy in his bid for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Attempts from conservative Republicans and Democrats to either replace Lovejoy as
the Republican candidate or challenge him with an independent opponent continued to
be a concern throughout the campaign of 1858.
Abraham Smith to Abraham Lincoln; Stephen G. Paddock and John H. Bryant to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Smith to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln to Charles H. Ray; Abraham Lincoln to the Editors, Chicago Tribune; David Davis to Abraham Lincoln; James W. Somers to Abraham Lincoln; Henry C. Whitney to Abraham Lincoln and William H. Herndon; Abraham Lincoln to Burton C. Cook; Joseph O. Glover to Abraham Lincoln; Owen Lovejoy to Abraham Lincoln.
4Shortly after the date of this letter, Lincoln was nominated on June 16 at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention to run against incumbent Stephen A. Douglas to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. At this time the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate, thus the outcome of races
for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate and the allegiances of General Assembly members were of significance to Lincoln’s
U.S. Senate hopes.
Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 394; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-58; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:5.
5Owen Lovejoy was unanimously nominated for reelection at the Republican convention
of the Third Illinois Congressional District in Joliet on June 30. The convention
also passed a series of resolutions, among which were an affirmation of the 1856 Republican Party platform, an endorsement of the nominations and platform of the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention,
and a celebration of Lincoln’s unanimous selection as Illinois Republican candidate
for the U.S. Senate in 1858. Lovejoy won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives
in 1858 with 57.7 percent of the vote, defeating Douglas Democrat George W. Armstrong who garnered 38.8 percent and Buchanan Democrat David Le Roy who received 3.4 percent.
The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 2 July 1858, 2:1-3; 9 October 1858, 2:2; Howard W. Allen and Vincent
A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990, 11, 142.
6In his letter to which this is a response, Lamon had informed Lincoln of a rumor that two abolitionists
who had been delegates to the LaSalle County Republican convention had announced their
support for Stephen A. Douglas’ reelection to the U.S. Senate. Douglas had criticized
the Lecompton Constitution and President James Buchanan’s support of it in December 1857, causing a rift in the Democratic Party. Some Republicans were excited by Douglas’ repudiation of the Lecompton Constitution
to the extent that they considered supporting him in the election of 1858. Although
Douglas later denied it, he courted Republican support—meeting in person with prominent
Republicans and hinting in correspondence to Republicans that he was finished with
the Democratic Party. In Lincoln’s view, Douglas disagreed with the Buchanan administration
over whether the Lecompton Constitution accurately represented the will of Kansans,
but did not repudiate the overall goal of admitting Kansas as a slave state.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:445-50.
7Lincoln was in attendance at the U.S. Circuit Court for the Southern District of Illinois in Springfield. The summer term of the court had commenced on June 7, 1858 and Lincoln had cases
before the court through July 7.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 7 June 1858, 3:1; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 7 June 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-06-07; 11 June 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-06-11; 7 July 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-07-07.
Autograph Letter Signed, 3 page(s), Huntington Library (San Marino, CA).