Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

PROGRESS OF THE CAMPAIGN.
LINCOLN AT AUGUSTA AND MACOMB.
(Correspondence of the Press and Tribune.)1
Macomb, McDonough County, Aug. 25, 1858.
To-night Lincoln addressed the Court House full of people in Macomb.2 His remarks were addressed to the Old Clay Whigs, and to some extent he covered the same ground as in his Augusta speech this afternoon. But he was less formal, and his speech was more like an earnest conversation with his Old Whig friends.3 The effect produced was excellent, and all went away satisfied and convinced that the Douglasite gabble about the Abolition and Amalgamation principles of the Republican party, was all lies and slander, intended to deceive and humbug the people.4 On next Saturday evening a Lincoln Club will be formed in Macomb.5 This town will give a very large majority for the Lincoln ticket this fall, and we expect to carry the county.6

1This summary of Abraham Lincoln’s speech appeared in the August 28, 1858 edition of the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune.
Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 28 August 1858, 1:2.

2Lincoln delivered a public address in Macomb, Illinois, as part of his campaign efforts in the summer and fall of 1858 on behalf of Republican candidates for the Illinois General Assembly. He and other prominent members of the Illinois Republican Party were canvassing the state delivering speeches to bolster the prospects of Republican candidates for the Illinois Senate and Illinois House of Representatives. This was in part because, at the time, Lincoln was the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate to replace Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas in the U.S. Senate and members of the Illinois General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate. Douglas also crisscrossed the state on a similar speaking tour during the same period. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458, 556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394.

3Lincoln spoke in Augusta, Illinois, earlier in the day on August 25.
Former members of the Whig Party were an important source of votes for both the Republican and Democratic parties in the local elections of 1858, and both Lincoln and Douglas worked hard to win their support.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 25 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-25; Summary of Speech at Augusta, Illinois; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 400-401.

4Throughout the campaign of 1858 Douglas played upon his audiences’ racism, frequently asserting that Lincoln and other Republicans were abolitionists who desired political equality of the races and interracial marriage. He also attacked Lincoln and other Republicans’ criticism of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford, arguing that any criticism of the court’s decision was evidence of a desire for the “amalgamation” of the races. Lincoln countered such attacks repeatedly throughout the campaign, including during the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate just four days prior to his Macomb speech, asserting that although he believed that the Declaration of Independence applied to all men—not just white men—he did not favor full social and political equality between the races, nor did he intend to abolish slavery.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:439-41, 501, 506, 510-11; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois; First Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois.

5Members of the Republican Party had organized clubs to socialize, organize, and provide support for candidates since the party’s inception. Sometimes the clubs were new, and sometimes they emerged from existing clubs that were originally organized for the Whig Party or the American Party. Some of these Republican clubs called themselves Lincoln clubs; others were simply local Republican Party clubs. For an example of a Lincoln club that was active during the campaign of 1858, see the Lincoln Republican Club of McLean County.
Robert F. Engs and Randall M. Miller, eds., The Birth of the Grand Old Party: The Republicans’ First Generation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 55-56.

6McDonough County was in Illinois’s Tenth Senate District and Thirty-Second House District. In the state’s local elections of 1858, district voters reelected Democrat William C. Goudy to the Illinois Senate and elected Democrat William Berry to the Illinois House of Representatives. In the local elections as a whole, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly and Douglas ultimately won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Goudy and Berry both cast their ballots for Douglas. Through the campaign, however, and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Lincoln gained recognition as well as standing within the national Republican Party.
John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219-22; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 November 1858, 2:4; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30; Illinois House Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 32; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 414.