Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Summary of Speech at Monticello, Illinois, 29 July 18581

Lincoln proceeded on his way to Monticello, some of us bearing him company, the Judge returning on his proper route. A meeting was at once organized to hear him speak. He mounted in the court house square and thence spoke for about half an hour. He would not speak then, he would, however, read the correspondence with the Judge, together with the reply he was going to send the Judge, all of which he did.2 Then he went on to answer the Judge; he commenced his Springfield speech, and thereupon he asserted that he did not desire negro equality in all things, he only wanted that the words of the Declaration of Independence should be applied, to wit: “That all men are created free and equal,” which latter remark, taken in connection with the two closing paragraphs of his Chicago speech, according to my understanding, gave the lie direct to his first assertion.3 He then very abruptly came to a close by remarking that he would bring his friend Judge Trumbull to answer Mr. Douglas.4

1The Sunday Morning Republican of St. Louis, Missouri published this summary of remarks by Abraham Lincoln as part of a longer description of Piatt County, the election campaign of 1858 in that location, and a speech given by Stephen A. Douglas earlier in the day on July 29, 1858 in Monticello, written to the newspaper by an author who signed themselves “B. B.” No manuscript version of Lincoln’s remarks has been located.
Lincoln had recently been nominated at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention to run against incumbent Democrat 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 were of importance to Lincoln’s campaign. Lincoln and Douglas both focused their efforts in the 1858 election campaign on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest.

Lincoln had been at home in Springfield the night prior to this speech, left Piatt County by train late in the evening on July 29 following his speech, and was back in Springfield on July 30.
Sunday Morning Republican (St. Louis, MO), 1 August 1858, 2:4; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-58, 476-77; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-94, 400-401; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 28 July 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-07-28; 29 July 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-07-29; 30 July 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-07-30.

2Preceding this published summary of Lincoln’s speech, the Sunday Morning Republican described Douglas and Lincoln meeting between Monticello and the railroad depot on July 29, as Douglas left the town having finished his speech, and Lincoln arrived to give his. On July 24, Lincoln had written to invite Douglas to a series of debates. Douglas responded to Lincoln on the same day to discuss the proposal and suggested locations for what would ultimately be the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Several Illinois newspapers, including the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune and the Illinois State Journal, published Lincoln’s invitation and Douglas’s answer, which Lincoln read aloud here. As described in the Sunday Morning Republican, when Lincoln and Douglas met on the road outside Monticello prior to this speech, Lincoln had his reply, mentioned here, prepared and offered to give it to Douglas, provided that the latter would wait for Lincoln to check the accuracy of his personal copy of the letter against the original text first. Douglas declined to wait and requested that Lincoln forward the original when he was satisfied that his retained copy was accurately transcribed. In the course of their negotiations by correspondence, the two men set locations for the debates and Lincoln promised to no longer appear or speak at any more of Douglas’ “exclusive meetings” on the campaign trail, an early campaign strategy of his which was criticized by both Republicans and Democrats, and which was of particular irritation to Douglas.
Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Stephen A. Douglas to Abraham Lincoln; Stephen A. Douglas to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Sunday Morning Republican (St. Louis, MO), 1 August 1858, 2:4; Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 28 July 1858, 1:2, Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 29 July 1858, 2:2; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:483-85; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 404-8; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 662.

3In the unexcerpted portion of this Sunday Morning Republican article on the electoral campaign in Piatt County, author “B. B.” summarized Douglas’ July 29, 1858 speech in Monticello as expounding forcefully on the argument that Lincoln desired full citizenship for black Americans, and that he was “in favor of negro equality under the law with the hope that he would elevate him to equality, socially, with the white man.”
In a speech made in Springfield on July 17, 1858, Lincoln had previously responded to charges by Douglas that he advocated for racial equality by stating that he did not believe that people of different races were equal in all respects, but that white and black people were equally entitled to the rights guaranteed in the United States Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776. Specifically, he argued that black people, although in his view inferior in color to white people, were included in the Declaration’s statement that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In published reports of his July 10, 1858 speech in Chicago, in the final two paragraphs Lincoln called for an end to arguing over the relative inferiority of any men or race, and advocated unity and a recommitment to the principle that all men are created equal.
Sunday Morning Republican (St. Louis, MO), 1 August 1858, 2:4; Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Report of Speech at Springfield, Illinois; Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), 1:429; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois; Report of Speech at Chicago, Illinois.

4During the campaign of 1858, Illinois Republican U.S. Senator Lyman Trumbull spoke widely in Illinois and Indiana in favor of Lincoln and the Republican ticket and against Douglas. Lincoln’s schedule of campaign appearances was published beginning in August of 1858, and initially stated that Trumbull was expected to accompany him to most events. When Trumbull’s campaign schedule was ultimately published alongside Lincoln’s, no joint appearances by the two were listed. Lincoln returned to Monticello for another campaign speech on September 6, 1858, apparently without Trumbull, whose published campaign schedule spanned September and October 1858 and listed no appearances in Monticello.
Following this excerpted summary of Lincoln’s speech, author “B. B.” described Lincoln’s supporters as looking glum after his oration, and claimed Lincoln himself “plainly showed his mortification of his own failure.” “B. B.” went on to incorrectly predict a Democratic victory in Piatt County in the election of 1858. Piatt County was in the Sixteenth Illinois Senate District, where Democrat Joel S. Post held over in 1858. The county was a part of the Thirty-Sixth Illinois House of Representatives district, where Republican Daniel Stickel won election in 1858, defeating Douglas Democrat candidate William N. Coler, and Buchanan Democrat candidate William Prather by several hundred votes.
Ralph J. Roske, His Own Counsel: The Life and Times of Lyman Trumbull (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 1979), 47-51; Daily Illinois State Journal (IL), 6 August 1858, 2:1; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 6 September 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-09-06; Alton Daily Courier (IL), 2 September 1858, 2:1; Sunday Morning Republican (St. Louis, MO), 1 August 1858, 2:4; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219, 220, 222; Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 5 November 1858, 1:3; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 3 November 1858, 2:2; The Central Transcript (Clinton, IL), 28 October 1858, 2:3; Weekly Central Transcript (Clinton, IL), 12 November 1858, 1:2.