Joseph Gillespie to Abraham Lincoln, 18 July 18581
Edwardsville 18th July 1858A Lincoln Esqr[Esquire]Yours is recd[received] in which you speak of the claims of the Douglass as to this Senatorial district2 So far as appearances at present indicate they are correct They will carry off at least one half of the American party if not more3 Billings Sloss John John Prickett Job and a great number of other prominent men in the American party will go Douglass with might and main I am inclined to think that part is opposition to me although those men & myself
are on good terms but many of them think I have had the place long enough which is
a very natural feeling and is what I spoke of when in Springfield4 Some of the men who have been heretofore my most devoted friends and who I know
care nothing for Douglass and who have expressed the greatest abhorrence of his political principles are
yours trulyJ. Gillespie<Page 2>
advocating his claims as I think to reach [me?] without directly manifesting the grounds of their action The German Republican vote here will not do to count upon They will go to the polls with the intention of voting their ticket but will be
cheated or their views changed so that in my opinion more than half of them will not
cast their votes in the way they expect to do when they leave home5 We have no active men among the Germans in the Republican ranks outside of Highland6 I think S Buckmaster will be selected to run for the Senate If he is I could not beat him7 If Davis is the man I could beat him in this Co in spite of party several hundred votes8 Sloss & Billings are complete disorganizers Potent in that line I will watch the course of events very closely. We must make no selections untill after they have chosen their men A good deal will depend
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their choice There is but little hope from the division in the Democratic ranks9 The administration in this section of the County are warm for Douglass About Alton I hear are not My own impression is that if we can select some good free soil Democrat in this District it would be better to run him I could and would do more for another than for myself But we shall see what we shall see This is confidential At all events whenever the campaign begins I shall take the stump and do all that
lies in my power10 I have all along feared Douglass with the American party in this part of the state Although in Bond they are all right & also in St Clair as I am informed11 I shall not make up my mind untill hereafter as to what is best to be done
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[Envelope]
EDWARDSVILLE Ill.[Illinois]
JUL[JULY] 20A Lincoln Esq[Esquire]SpringfieldIlls
JUL[JULY] 20A Lincoln Esq[Esquire]SpringfieldIlls
2Illinois Senate District Twenty-One included Bond, Madison, and Montgomery counties.
Allen C. Guelzo, "Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858," The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219.
3Lincoln was interested in the outcome of the elections in Madison, Bond, and Montgomery
counties because he was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. 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. He ran against, and lost to, Democrat
Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election
Former members of the American Party 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.
Tyler Anbinder, Nativism & Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings & the Politics of the 1850s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 246-78; 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; Allen C. Guelzo, "Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and
the Political Landscape of 1858," 392; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-85, 547, 557 .
4Gillespie had represented Madison County in the Illinois House in the Twelfth General
Assembly from 1840 to 1842 and in the Illinois Senate during the Fifteenth through
the Twentieth General Assembly sessions from 1846 to 1858.
Louis L. Emmerson, ed., Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1923-1924 (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1923), 673, 676-81.
5In the months following the election of 1858, there were no widespread accounts of
voter fraud or convictions blamed for Lincoln's defeat. However, during the campaign,
Douglas supporters attempted to win German votes by portraying Republicans as enemies
of all immigrants.
Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 211, 289.
6Lincoln visited Highland later in the campaign, speaking on September 11, 1858. He
was interested in experiencing the German town until Gillespie informed Lincoln that
he would be expected to join in beer drinking. In order to convince Lincoln —a teetotaler—
not to cancel his visit, Gillespie told the Germans in Highland that Lincoln had an
illness that forbid him from drinking alcohol.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 11 September 1858, https://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-09-11, Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, 211.
7Gillespie was correct in this prediction and those in the previous paragraph. Gillespie
lost the Illinois Senate seat in District Twenty-One to Democrat Samuel A. Buckmaster by 184 votes in the 1858 election. Buckmaster retained the seat until 1862 when he
became the speaker of the Illinois House. Henry W. Billings, Joseph H. Sloss, Zephaniah H. Job, and other former Americans gravitated to the Democratic Party. Job and Sloss won
seats as Democrats in the Illinois House. Buckmaster, Job, and Sloss all voted for
Douglas for U.S. Senate in the 1858 Federal Election.
Louis L. Emmerson, ed., Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1923-1924 , 682-84; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30; William T. Norton, ed., Centennial History of Madison County, Illinois, and Its People, 1812 to 1912 (Chicago: Lewis, 1912), 1:81; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America, 255.
8It is not certain who Gillespie is referencing here. He could be referring to James M. Davis of Montgomery County, a former Whig turned Democrat who won a seat in the Illinois
House in 1858. Davis also favored Douglas in the race for U.S. Senate.
Louis L. Emmerson, ed., Blue Book of the State of Illinois, 1923-1924, 682; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A.,
30; John M. Palmer,
ed., The Bench and Bar of Illinois: Historical and Reminiscent (Chicago: Lewis, 1899), 2:968.
9Gillespie is referencing the conflict within the Democratic Party over the Lecompton Constitution. During the agitation over whether to admit Kansas as a free or slave state, pro-slavery Kansans held a constitutional convention in
Lecompton from September 7 to November 8, 1857, drafting a constitution guaranteeing slaveholders
already in the territory their property rights and leaving the decision whether to
allow new slaves into the territory to voters in a referendum. Voters could vote
for the “constitution with slavery” or the “constitution without slavery,” but were
not offered the opportunity to accept or reject the constitution as a whole. On December
21, 1857, Kansans voting in the referendum on the Lecompton Constitution—free state
Kansans abstained from participating—cast 6,226 votes for Lecompton with slavery and
569 for it without slavery amid charges of voter fraud. On January 4, 1858, however,
Kansans voting in elections called by the anti-slavery legislature—pro-slavery Kansans
abstained from participating—overwhelmingly rejected the Lecompton Constitution.
Despite opposition in Kansas and considerable backlash from Republicans and the anti-slavery
faction in the Democratic Party, President James Buchanan supported the Lecompton Constitution, urging that Kansas be admitted into the Union
under the its terms. Douglas opposed it, however, bringing him into conflict with
Buchanan. Buchanan warned Douglas that he faced political reprisals if he opposed
the administration, but Douglas defied the president, arguing in a speech before
the U.S. Senate that the Lecompton Constitution did not reflect the will of the actual
inhabitants of Kansas, citing the December 21, 1857 vote that allowed voters to vote
for the constitution but not against it. The Senate approved the Lecompton Constitution,
but Republicans, Democratic allies of Douglas, and others, with Douglas as floor leader
of the opposition, defeated it in the U.S. House of Representatives. See Bleeding Kansas.
David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis: America Before the Civil War 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 307, 315-16, 318, 320, 325; Wendell H. Stephenson,
“Lecompton Constitution,” Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 4:130-31; Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 195 (1858).
10Gillespie spoke in Montgomery County on September 28, 1858, and made several speeches
in Madison County in October.
The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 29 September 1858, 4:2; Alton Daily Courier (IL), 11 October 1858, 2:4; 15 October 1858, 2:2; 26 October 1858, 2:7.
11Bond County voters elected Charles Hoiles, a Democrat
to the Illinois House. St. Clair County sent Republicans to the Illinois House.
Daily State Illinois Journal (Springfield), 13 November 1858, 2:3.
Autograph Letter Signed, 4 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).