Nathan M. Knapp to Abraham Lincoln, 21 June 18581
21st June 1858A. Lincoln Esq[Esquire]:Dr[Dear] Sir:I wish to make a suggestion. There are in our county over 100. Catholic Irish votes. as yet they are not set.2 But we cannot get them. The strong hold of Catholicism is in the Slave States.3 Despotism suits the spirit of Catholicism better than Freedom.4 Taney is a Catholic, and the Southern “State equality” doctrine, as elucidated by the “Dred Scott” dictum, they will be ready to endorse.5 They like also to be on the side of the Powers that be. Again the rank and file
vote according to the crook of the Priest’s finger. There is a large Catholic vote
in this State and it will go as a unit. Now the priest of Springfield officiates at Jacksonville & Winchester.6 Cannot a spring be touched somewhere that will commit the priests to Buchanan in this state & pr[per] consequence the rank & file?7 It should be done early. I know it can be done.
Yours trulyN M KnappP.S. The Fillmore men are falling in beautifully with us. My Resolutions are getting them here. I wish
you would look them over.8<Page 2>
[Envelope]
WINCHESTER ILL.
JUN[JUNE] 22Honl A. LincolnSpringfieldIllinois9
JUN[JUNE] 22Honl A. LincolnSpringfieldIllinois9
2Abraham Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate in 1858. In the summer and fall of 1858, he crisscrossed Illinois delivering speeches
and campaigning on behalf of Republican candidates for the Illinois General Assembly. At this time the Illinois General Assembly elected the state’s representatives in
the U.S. Senate, thus the outcome of races for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate were of importance to Lincoln’s campaign. Ultimately, the Democrats retained control
of the Illinois General Assembly and reelected Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent, to the U.S. Senate. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-85; Allen C. Guelzo,
“Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392.
3The number of Catholics in the United States grew dramatically between 1830 and 1860,
largely due to the influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and other countries. The American South initially had more Catholic dioceses than
the northern states. By 1850, however, Catholic dioceses in the North outnumbered
their southern counterparts.
J. F. Regis Canevin, “Loss and Gain in the Catholic Church in the United States (1899-1916),”
The Catholic Historical Review 2 (January 1917), 380-81, 382; Jay P. Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 58; Maura Jane Farrelly, “Catholicism
in the Early South,” Journal of Southern Religion 14 (2012), paras. 2-5.
4As Catholicism grew in the antebellum United States, so too did anti-Catholic sentiment.
Anti foreign, anti-Catholic nativism was the cultural response to the large influx
of Catholic immigrants. Nativist sentiments were commonplace among many Protestants in the 1850s, leading to the formation of the American Party as a political force. Protestant and nativist propagandists sought to discredit
Catholics by linking Catholicism with slavery--claiming both depended on blind adherence
to authority and reverence for hierarchy. Whigs and Republicans often shared and espoused such bigotry. Irish Catholics, often the
subject of such condemnation, naturally gravitated as a result to the Democratic Party.
Jay P. Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension, 56-58; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), 208.
5The American Catholic community, in actuality, was divided over the decision in Scott v. Sandford.
Patrick W. Carey, “Political Atheism: “Dred Scott”, Roger Brooke Taney, and Orestes
A. Brownson,” The Catholic Historical Review 88 (April 2002), 207-29.
6It is unclear to whom Knapp was referring here. James Fitzgibbon, pastor of the Catholic church in Springfield at least as early as 1858, is one possibility.
Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 13 October 1858, 3:3.
7Douglas’s criticism of President James Buchanan’s support for the Lecompton Constitution caused a rift in the Democratic Party. Consequently, some Buchanan supporters opposed
Douglas’s senatorial campaign. One group went so far as to hold a separate Democratic
state convention which nominated Sidney Breese for Senate. Knapp likely sought to exploit this split in the party.
Douglas’s second wife, Adele, was a Catholic, and two of his sons were being educated at a Jesuit school in Washington, DC. The Republican State Central Committee sought to exploit Douglas’s connection to Catholicism and the Democratic Party’s
dependence on Irish Catholic votes to enhance Lincoln’s electoral chances. Republican
stump speakers raised the specter of a “Celtic invasion” of Illinois electoral districts,
suggesting that Irish Americans building the Illinois Central Railroad would commit voter fraud on Douglas’s behalf, to convince old Whigs to vote for Lincoln
candidates to the General Assembly. The Republicans also sought to divide Irish American
and German Americans in hopes of getting votes in the larger German American community.
These tactics proved ineffective as Douglas was able to label Republicans as enemies
of all immigrants and Catholics, not just Irish American laborers.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:553-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political
Landscape of 1858,” 394-96; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, 207-11; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 676.
8Members of the American Party, often referred to colloquially as "Fillmore Men" because
the national party backed Millard Fillmore in the presidential election of 1856, were an important source of votes for both Democrats and Republicans in the state
and federal elections of 1858, and both sides worked to garner their support.
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), 123-29; Tyler Anbinder, Nativism & Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings & the Politics of the 1850s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 246-78.
Autograph Letter Signed, 2 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).