Abraham Lincoln to George W. Shaw, 27 July 18561
Springfield, July 27. 1856Geo. W. Shaw, Esq[Esquire]My dear Sir:Your letter of the 23rd is received–2 I have promised to be at Mount-Morris, in Ogle Co, on the 16th of of Augt[August] & on the 18th & 19th at other places in that vicinity— so that I could not be at Pekin on the 20th3 Send over and get Judge Kellogg, who, I understand, is to be, or already is, your candidate for Congress– He will do it up quite as well as I could–4
Show this to Judge Bush; and beg him to consider it an answer to his letter as well as yours–5
Yours trulyA. Lincoln–<Page 2>
1Abraham Lincoln wrote and signed this letter.
Roy P. Basler, editor of The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, incorrectly dated this letter July 27, 1854. The content of the letter, including
Lincoln’s discussion of canvassing throughout Illinois on behalf of the Republican Party in advance of the 1856 Federal Election, confirms that Lincoln wrote this letter in 1856, not 1854. Basler did not review
the original letter; he created his annotations using a facsimile.
Roy P. Basler and Christian O. Basler, eds., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 11:8-9; Michael Burlingame,
Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:426.
3Lincoln arrived in Polo, Illinois in Ogle County on August 15, 1856, traveled to Oregon, Illinois to speak the next day, returned to Polo, and arrived home in Springfield, Illinois
on August 18. He remained in Springfield until at least August 21, but, by August
26, he was traveling again—this time to speak in Chicago, Illinois.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 15 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-15, 16 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-16; 17 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-17; 18 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-18; 19 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-19; 21 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-21; 26 August 1856, http://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1856-08-26.
4In 1856, William Kellogg ran for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as the Republican Party’s candidate in Illinois’ Fourth Congressional District. Democrat James W. Davidson was his opponent.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 11 August 1856, 3:1; Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 10.
5John M. Bush’s letter to Lincoln has not been located.
There is no evidence that Kellogg delivered a public address in Pekin, Illinois on
August 20, 1856.
Voters in Illinois’ Fourth Congressional District sent Kellogg to the U.S. House of
Representatives, awarding him 51.1 percent of the vote to Davidson’s 45.7 percent.
Within Tazewell County, however, voters gave Davidson a healthy majority, awarding him 52.5 percent of
the county’s vote to Kellogg’s 42 percent.
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990, 10, 140.
Autograph Letter Signed, 2 page(s), Meisei University (Tokyo, Japan).