Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Summary of Speech at Monmouth, Illinois, 11 October 18581

Mr. Lincoln lifted himself up and was about to reply, when Philo Reed, a very modest, unassuming young man, told him to sit down and wait till the glee band had a chance to spread themselves—which they did to the delight of the Republicans.2 Mr. Lincoln then proceeded. About the first hour of his speech was taken up with little sharps on Douglas, calculated to tickle the fancy of the Republicans. He referred to the speech made by Douglas last week, in which he was charged with being the attorney of the Illinois Central Railroad, at the time the charter was granted, to make a good bargain for the company against the State—and as having induced the legislature to change the per centage from fifteen to seven per cent. He didn’t deny the charge that he was then or is now the attorney of the railroad, or that he is to-day receiving a big fee from that company as their attorney.3 He referred to the bargain between himself and Trumbull to Abolitionize the old line Whigs and Democrats, and said it was none of Douglas’ business how he and Trumbull “managed their own domestic concerns.”4 He referred to the Mexican war, while he was in congress giving aid and comfort to the enemy, and against his own country, pronouncing it unholy, unconstitutional, God abhorred, and not begun on the right “spot.”5—This portion of his speech he made as clear as mud. He then harped on the resolutions read at Ottawa by Douglas as a forgery because they were not adopted on the right “spot,” but never once said a word about the revolutionary heresies they contained.6 He harped over the conspiracy entered, into by Douglas and the Supreme Court,7 the submission clause in the Toombs bill,8 &c[etc], &c, all of which have been [nailed?] and clinched as lies by Douglas time and again. His whole speech was a personal attack on Douglas and Democrats. He dodged the issues before the people, and failed entirely to discuss the principles dividing the two parties. It was not marked by the “abilities of a Statesman, or the dignity of a would be Senator,” and was coldly received by the small crowd present.9

1This is a summary of a speech given in Monmouth, Illinois, was published in the Monmouth Review on October 15, 1858. It starts near the bottom of the second column on the second page and continues into the third column. The Chicago Daily Press and Tribune published a shorter summary of Lincoln’s speech.

2Abram V. T. Gilbert delivered a speech before the Monmouth Republican Glee Club delivered an original song. The Chicago Daily Press and Tribune’s summary had Reed introducing Lincoln after the music. It was common to have several preliminary speeches and performances before a main speaker at political rallies during campaigns in the 1850s. In this case, the content of Gilbert’s speech and Reed’s introduction have not been located.
Lincoln was in Monmouth leading up to the state and federal elections of 1858. Lincoln was running against Stephen A. Douglas, the Democratic incumbent, in the 1858 Federal Election as the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. He traveled heavily during the summer and fall of 1858, crisscrossing Illinois delivering speeches and campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates for federal and state office. In addition to his individual engagements, Lincoln debated Douglas at seven locations around the state. At the time, the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate; thus the outcome of the races for the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate was highly relevant to the Lincoln’s candidacy. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 394; George Fort Milton, "Lincoln-Douglas Debates," Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 4:155-56.

3Douglas accused Lincoln of favoring the corporate interests of the Illinois Central Railroad over the interests of the people during a speech on October 2, 1858 at Pekin, Illinois. The Illinois Central Railroad was unpopular among many in Illinois due to its foreclosing on 4,000 mortgages and its attempts to gain tax exempt status with the State of Illinois. Douglas stated that in the 1840s he had advocated for a higher tax rate on the railroad than what the General Assembly enacted, and that it was Lincoln’s faction that got a lower rate for the Illinois Central Railroad. He told the audience that he had convinced the U.S. Senate to provide land grants to the State of Illinois to be used for rail development instead of giving the grants to the railroad companies, and that the U.S. House of Representatives, of which Lincoln was a member, had defeated the legislation. Douglas also accused Lincoln of being a political tool of the Illinois Central Railroad, referencing a case where Lincoln received $5,000 to represent the railroad. Lincoln did represent the railroad on several cases and received $5000 for a case against McLean County. In that case, the railroad paid Lincoln $200 and he sued the company for the remaining $4,800. Lincoln denied these claims against him in this speech and in a speech at Pekin on October 5.
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 215-16; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:528-29; Illinois Central RR v. McLean County, Illinois & Parke, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009, https://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=136867; Lincoln v. Illinois Central RR, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, https://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=136777; Summary of Speech at Pekin, Illinois; Summary of Speech at Pekin, Illinois.

4Douglas made this accusation at the first Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858, and continued to level it throughout the campaign.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 21 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-21&r; 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; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Quincy, Illinois; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Quincy, Illinois; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Quincy, Illinois

5Democratic surrogates of Douglas accused Lincoln while in the U.S. House of Representatives of denying the U.S. military supplies during the Mexican War, a claim that Lincoln denied throughout the campaign. Lincoln first sat in Congress in December 1847, after much of the major fighting in Mexico had ended. As a Whig, Lincoln was critical of the Mexican War as well as of President James K. Polk’s role in instigating the conflict, writing a list of resolutions to investigate the exact spot of the first shots to determine the validity of the American declaration of war. Although Lincoln opposed the war and questioned its constitutionality during his time in the U.S. House of Representatives, he nevertheless always voted for supplies for U.S. troops serving in the field. Douglas refrained from this avenue of attack on Lincoln, stating on September 20, 1858, ”The fact was this. Lincoln did not vote against any supplies, for they had been voted before and sent out before Lincoln got to Congress.”
Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., 59, 95, 320 (1848); The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, December 1847, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarMonth&year=1847&month=12; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996 (Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 135; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:265-68; ‘‘Spot'' Resolutions in the United States House of Representatives; ‘‘Spot'' Resolutions in the United States House of Representatives; ‘‘Spot'' Resolutions in the United States House of Representatives; Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico; Speech in United States House of Representatives: The War with Mexico; Mark E. Neely, Jr., Lincoln and the Triumph of the Nation: Constitutional Conflict in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 33.

6During the first debate between Lincoln and Douglas in Ottawa, Douglas read resolutions from what he claimed was the Republican Party’s first convention in Springfield in October 1854. He claimed Lincoln helped draft the resolutions and that they constituted proof that Lincoln was a radical abolitionist. In reality, the resolutions he read aloud were from an 1854 Illinois Anti-Nebraska convention that was held in Aurora, Illinois, in October 1854, and Lincoln was neither involved in their drafting nor did he attend the convention. The convention was organized by and composed of delegates who were much more radical in their politics with regard to slavery than anti-slavery moderates such as Lincoln. Nevertheless, the convention’s delegates elected Lincoln, in absentia, to a twelve-member state central committee—something Douglas and other Democrats seized upon as further proof of Lincoln’s radical abolitionism.
Lincoln did not catch Douglas’s misrepresentation of the radical Aurora platform for the more moderate Springfield platform during the Ottawa debate and therefore did not correct Douglas at the time, aside from noting that he had not helped create the platform that Douglas read aloud. During later debates, however, he confronted Douglas on the issue. Douglas eventually claimed that his mistake was an honest one, even though he made the same misrepresentation in an 1856 speech in the U.S. Senate (which Lyman Trumbull took him to task for at the time). Douglas elided personal responsibility for these false claims through the fall of 1858.
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; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:388, 490-92, 503, 507, 513, 531-33; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 216; A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 21 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-21, 27 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-27.

7During the first debate, Lincoln accused Douglas being part of a conspiracy to expand slavery into a national institution. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford exemplified this conspiracy. “In the first place, what is necessary to make the institution national?” Lincoln intoned at Ottawa. “Not war. There is no danger that the people of Kentucky will shoulder their muskets and with a young nigger stuck on every bayonet march into Illinois and force them upon us. There is no danger of our going over there and making war upon them. Then what is necessary for the nationalization of slavery? It is simply the next Dred Scott decision. It is merely for the Supreme Court to decide that no State under the Constitution can exclude it, just as they have already decided that under the Constitution neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature can do it.”
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.

8One of Lincoln’s arguments in the fourth debate with Douglas at Charleston on September 18, 1858 was that Douglas was only in favor of popular sovereignly when it favored pro-slavery policies. He referenced the removal of a clause in the Toombs Bill that would require the people of the Kansas Territory to vote on the ratification of the state constitution upon admission to the Union, which would have almost certainly led to Kansas joining the Union as a free state.
On June 23, 1856, Robert A. Toombs announced his intention of introducing a bill that would supposedly quell the escalating political violence in Kansas. The so-called Toombs Bill sought to resolve issues in the Kansas Territory by formulating a process for bringing the territory into the union as a new state. The bill proposed taking a census of the Kansas Territory’s inhabitants, empowering President Franklin Pierce to appoint five commissioners to ensure that voting integrity existed in the territory, and authorizing white men over twenty-one years of age residing in the territory to elect a convention to form a state government.

On July 2, the Senate brought the bill up to a vote and a debate on the bill ensued, during which Trumbull and others proposed multiple amendments. Douglas participated in this debate. Trumbull argued that because Toombs’s bill stipulated that the Kansas Territory’s voters be, in effect, re-registered under federal supervision, that the bill was asserting the right of the U.S. Congress to regulate and govern the territories and would therefore nullify laws which the Kansas Territorial Legislature had passed related to the management of its own elections. The Kansas-Nebraska Act did not specify that the U.S. Congress reserved the right to assert its authority over the territories’ elections. Although the Senate voted to amend the Toombs bill so that the Kansas Territory’s elections were merely postponed rather than forbidden until the “complete execution” of the act, Trumbull argued that the bill exposed Douglas and the Democrats’s hypocrisy on the concept of popular sovereignty. Trumbull proposed an amendment with language explicitly declaring “all the acts and proceedings” of the Kansas Territorial Legislature “null and void” as well as an amendment making it clear that the Kansas Territorial Legislature held the right “at any time to exclude slavery . . . or to recognize and regulate it therein.” The Senate rejected both of these amendments.

Toombs’s bill passed the Senate, which had a Democratic majority, on July 2, but ultimately failed in the U.S. House of Representatives, in which Republicans held a majority.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 18 September 1858, http://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-09-18; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois; S. 356. 34th Cong. 1st sess. (1856); Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., 1439 (1856); Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 778-79, 796-99 (1856); “An Act to Organize the Territories of Kansas and Nebraska,” 30 May 1854, Statutes at Large of the United States 10 (1855):277-290; Ulrich Bonnell Phillips, The Life of Robert Toombs (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 126, 128; David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 215.

9In the state’s local elections as a whole, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the General Assembly and Douglas ultimately won reelection to the U.S. Senate. 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.
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 187, 237, 245; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” 414-16; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 516, 532, 566, 948, 951; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:493, 510, 538, 556-57; Stephen Hansen and Paul Nygard, “Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-Nothings, and the Democratic Party in Illinois, 1854-1858,” Illinois Historical Journal 87 (Summer 1994), 123.