Horace White to Abraham Lincoln, 25 October 18541
Springfield,
Oct, 25, 1854,Mr Lincoln:Dear Sir:In regard to your visit to Chicago concerning which Mr Wilson wrote to you,2 I am authorized
to state that it is the farthest from our ^the^ wishes and intent intentions of our people to deprive Mr Yates of
your assistance in case he should need it.3
To come at the point at once; (I don't know whether Mr Wilson wrote to you about it or
not) the Whigs are bound to elect a U.S. Senator in place of Shields. 4
Chicago has five votes in the Legislature and
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influences a great many more in Northern Illinois. Part of our R Representatives in the next Assembly will be Whigs, part
Free-Soilers & part Anti-Nebraska Democrats. These Democrats might bolt at the nomination of a Whig for the Senate. It would
be unprecedented if they didn't. The idea is to have you go to Chicago and make a
speech. You will have a crowd of from eight to ten
or fifteen thousand and the result will be that the people will demand of their Representatives
to elect a Whig Senator. What might be
doubtful otherwise will thus be rendered certain. The time t necessary for
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this coup
d' etat would not be more than three days at the most.
Of course it is all at your discretion.5
Very respectfully,Horace White.Chicago "Journal"Hon A. Lincoln
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[Envelope]
[ docketing
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Oct 25 54[1854]
2Richard L. Wilson wrote Abraham Lincoln a letter on October 20, inviting him to deliver a speech in Chicago on the subject of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act.
3Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its effective repeal of the Missouri Compromise reawakened Lincoln’s passion for politics, and he threw himself into the congressional election campaign in the fall of 1854, crisscrossing Illinois to deliver speeches against the Kansas-Nebraska
Act and in support of anti-Nebraska candidates such as Richard Yates, a Whig. Yates
was seeking reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives as Illinois’ Sixth Congressional District representative. The Democrats nominated
Thomas L. Harris as his opponent. Harris would defeat Yates by 200 votes, garnering 50.5 percent
of the vote to Yates’ 49.5 percent.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 167-73; Autobiography of Abraham Lincoln Written for John L. Scripps; Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 10, 134
.
4James Shields, a Democrat, was up for reelection as one of the state’s representatives
in the U.S. Senate.
Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996
(Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 1817; William H. Randolph to Abraham Lincoln.
5Lincoln’s reply, if he wrote one, has not been located. He delivered a speech in Chicago against the Kansas-Nebraska Act on October 27, 1854, which White covered
in positive terms in his newspaper, the Chicago Journal .
As White references above, the members of the Illinois General Assembly were responsible
for electing the state’s U.S. senators; therefore, the composition of the state legislature
was critical to the outcome of the senatorial race. Three days after the election,
but before the outcome was known, Lincoln began quietly seeking support for a seat
in the U.S. Senate, writing confidentially to political allies and friends.
In Illinois’ Second Congressional District, which included Chicago and other parts
of Northern Illinois, James H. Woodworth, a Free-Soil Democrat running as a Republican, won the seat, defeating Democrat John B. Turner, Whig Robert S. Blackwell, and anti-Nebraska Democrat Edward L. Mayo with 53.1 percent of the vote. This was a shift from the election of 1852, in which Democrat John Wentworth won the Second Congressional District with 46.7 percent of the total vote, compared
to Whig Cyrus Aldrich’s 39.9 percent and Free Soil candidate James H. Collins’ 13.3 percent. In the state as a whole in 1854, Republicans won 52 percent of the
vote compared to Democratic candidates’ 43 percent. Illinois voters sent an anti-Nebraska
majority to the Illinois General Assembly.
Lincoln had allowed himself to become a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly (albeit unwillingly at first). As the election campaign reached its climax, Lincoln’s
name began to circulate as a possible nominee to supplant Shields as U.S. Senator.
Lincoln won a seat in the General Assembly, but in late-November 1854, Lincoln declined
to serve in order to run for the U.S. Senate. Per article three, section seven of
the 1848 Illinois Constitution, state legislators were ineligible for election to the U.S. Senate. Ultimately, Lincoln
did not win election to the U.S. Senate; the Illinois General Assembly selected anti-Nebraska
Democrat Lyman Trumbull instead. See the 1854 Federal Election. Stung and disappointed by his loss, Lincoln made no politically-oriented speeches
or public statements for an entire year after his defeat and reinvested his energies
in his law practice.
Abraham Lincoln to Hugh Lamaster; Abraham Lincoln to Joseph Gillespie; Abraham Lincoln to Horace W. Fay; William H. Randolph to Abraham Lincoln; Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990, 9-10, 134-35; Arthur Charles Cole, The Era of the Civil War 1848-1870, vol. 3 of The Centennial History of Illinois (Springfield, IL: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), 129-30; 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), 114; David Hebert Donald, Lincoln, 185; Abraham Lincoln to Noah W. Matheny; Ill. Const. of 1848, art. III, § 7; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:392, 397, 401-2; Illinois Daily Journal (Springfield), 10 November 1854, 2:5.
Autograph Letter Signed, 4 page(s),
Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).