Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd, 23 September 18581
Danville, Ill., Sept. 23, 1858.Hon. N. B. Judd:My Dear Sir:
We had a fine and altogether satisfactory meeting here yesterday.2 Your friends here wish a German speaker, before the election.3 Can’t you send one? Address Dr. W. Fithian, and set a time sufficiently distant to give full notice. I am behind in general news; and this is a bad point to get any.4 Still I believe we have got the gentleman, unless they overcome us by fraudulent voting. We must be especially prepared for this. It must be taken into anxious consideration at once. How can it be done? Men imported from other states and men not naturalized can be fought out; but if they should string out the qualified Irish voters of Chicago (for instance) into a doubtful district, having them to swear to an actual residence when they offer to vote, how can we prevent it? Is “Long John” at hand His genius should be employed on this question. Tell him so for me. I do not mean by this that the rest of us are to dismiss the question. It is a great danger, and we must all attend to it.5
Yours as ever,A. Lincoln.

1This letter is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but the original in his hand has not been located. Roy P. Basler, editor of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, presumably saw the original and copied it, but that copy is not extant.
Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3:202.

2Lincoln delivered a public address in Danville, Illinois, on September 22.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 2 September 1858, 3:1; 27 September 1858, 2:3.

3This is a reference to the elections of 1858, which included Illinois’s local elections as well as the 1858 Federal Election. In the latter, Lincoln was running as the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for election to the U.S. Senate. He sought to unseat Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458.

4At the time of this letter, Lincoln had been away from his home in Springfield, Illinois, since the beginning of the second week in September. Both he and Douglas traveled the state throughout the summer and fall of 1858, delivering public speeches in support of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly in their respective parties, as well as for the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Both men devoted significant time and effort to the local elections for members of the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate because, at the time, members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, September 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarMonth&year=1858&month=9; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:458; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392, 394.

5Lincoln and Judd exchanged at least nine other letters related to the campaign of 1858.
Lincoln was known to be popular among German-Americans, and the Republican Party took full advantage of German-American members of the party during the election of 1858. Carl C. Schurz, for example, was a prominent German-American speaker for the Republicans during the 1858 campaign. However, there is no evidence that either Schurz or another German-American Republican delivered speeches in Danville, specifically, or Vermilion County, Illinois, more broadly.

In the end, in Illinois’s local elections of 1858, 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. There were widespread reports of Democratic voting fraud in the state elections, including—just as Lincoln worried above—that Irishmen from other districts were transported along railroad lines for the express purpose of casting fraudulent votes in swing districts.

Despite his loss in the senatorial race, through the campaign—and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates—Lincoln made a name for himself within the national Republican Party as a true statesman.
Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln; Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln; Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Abraham Lincoln to Norman B. Judd; Norman B. Judd to Abraham Lincoln; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:511, 534, 546; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 414; Warren Independent (IL), 29 October 1858, 2:3, 5; Daily Islander and Argus (Rock Island, IL), 2 November 1858, 2:5; Alton Daily Courier (IL), 15 November 1858, 2:2; William A. Grimshaw to Abraham Lincoln.