Schuyler Colfax to Abraham Lincoln, 25 August 18581
Oxford, Ind, Aug 25, 1858.My dear Sir,I have been absent from my home at South Bend nearly a month canvassing my District & speaking every day;2 but have not been an inattentive spectator of the great contest in your State.3 Every where's the deepest interest is felt in it; & having just read in the Ch. Press & Tribune the report of your encounter with Douglas at Ottawa, in which you so signally triumphed, pardon me for dropping a suggestion or two.4
1. In regard to the Dred Scott decision, on which you & Douglas have an issue,5 I find a quotation from Jackson's Veto Message July 10. 1832,6 in a speech made Mch[March] 31. 1858 by Hon E P. Walton of Vt, which seems very apropos. It is as follows;
"The opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the Judges, & on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not therefore be permitted to control Congress or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."7
As this is a clincher, it might be well to verify it by comparison with the Message
itself, which I believe can be found in ^E.^ Walker's "Statesman's Manual,"8 a work which Editors obtained a few years ago for advertising it.
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In the Convention which framed the National Constitution, Mr Madison said (5 Elliots Debates 337) "If it be a fundamental principle of free government
that the legislative, executive & judicial powers should be separately exercised, it is equally so that they be independently exercised."9
Slavery is to go there; Congress cannot prevent.
Slavery is to stay there until state organization, neither Congress nor the people can prevent.
Slavery cannot be excluded, even by the State organization (see Buchanan's message)10 without compensation.11
3. One point which I find tells in all my speeches is, that our whole History proves
that Slavery goes wherever it is not prohibited. There were 13 States at the outset;
32 now. Not one of the whole 19 of New States has come in as as Free State, except where Slavery has been expressly prohibited by local or territorial laws. California, which is the only State which has come in Free, & which was not protected by Congressional
prohibition, had the Mexican anti Slavery law to protect her.12
Pardon me for these volunteered suggestions, prompted by deep interest in your success;
& believe me, in haste13
Yours very trulySchuyler Colfax<Page 3>
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2At the time of this letter, Colfax was running for reelection as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives, as the representative of Indiana’s Ninth Congressional District.
St. Joseph Valley Register (South Bend, IN), 27 May 1858, 2:2; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996
(Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 156, 845.
3Colfax is referring to Illinois’s local elections of 1858 and their impact on the 1858 Federal Election. Abraham Lincoln was the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate for the U.S. Senate. He was running against Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas. At the time, members
of the Illinois General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives in the U.S. Senate; therefore the
outcome of the races for the Illinois House of Representatives and the Illinois Senate were critical to the race for the senate seat. See 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), 392-94.
4Lincoln and Douglas debated one another for the first time in Ottawa, Illinois, on
August 21. See the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The Chicago Daily Press and Tribune provided extensive coverage of the debate in its August 23 issue, including nearly
verbatim accounts of each candidate’s remarks.
Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 23 August 1858, 1:1-9, 4:1.
5Lincoln and Douglas both addressed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford throughout the 1858 campaign, including during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. They
fundamentally disagreed on the implications of the court’s decision. Lincoln argued
that the Dred Scott decision was a dangerous and deliberate step by pro-slavery forces
toward the nationalization of slavery. Douglas claimed that Lincoln and other Republicans
objected to the court’s decision primarily because they believed African Americans
were entitled to the full rights of citizenship under the U.S. Constitution.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 210, 223; 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.
6President Andrew Jackson vetoed the United States National Bank’s renewal charter on July 10, 1832, and gave his rationale for the veto in a written
message. Members of the U.S. Senate read Jackson’s veto message aloud in the Senate
chamber that day.
U.S. Senate Journal. 1832. 22nd Cong., 1st sess., 439, 446.
7Eliakim P. Walton quoted this passage from President Jackson’s 1832 veto message during
his March 31, 1858 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives. He used the quote
to emphasize his assertion that the U.S. Supreme Court was encroaching upon the other
branches of government, although Walton was discussing the Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford rather than Congress’s decision with regard to the U.S. National Bank, as Jackson
had been.
Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 331, 333 (1858).
8Colfax references The Statesman’s Manual, a collection of the addresses and messages of U.S. presidents. President Jackson’s
1832 veto message appears in the second volume of the collection.
Edwin Williams, The Statesman’s Manual (New York: Edward Walker, 1853), 2:767-780.
9This statement James Madison made at the 1787 U.S. Constitutional Convention appears
on page 337 of volume five of Jonathan Elliot’s collection, Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution.
Jonathan Elliot, ed., Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, in the Convention Held at Philadelphia,
in 1787 (Washington, DC: Jonathan Elliot, 1845), 5:337.
10This is a reference to President James Buchanan’s February 2, 1858 message to Congress.
Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., 533-35 (1858).
11Colfax is paraphrasing some of Walton’s central arguments regarding the U.S. Supreme
Court’s decision in Scott v. Sandford, which Walton made in his March 31, 1858 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives.
For the full implications of the decision, see Scott v. Sandford.
Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 1st Sess., Appendix, 334 (1858).
12The “new states” Colfax references are those admitted to the Union after the original
thirteen states. Of the nineteen “new states,” the following were admitted as slave
states: Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), Louisiana (1812), Mississippi (1817), Alabama (1819), Missouri (1821), Arkansas (1836), Florida (1845) and Texas (1845).
Of the nineteen “new states,” the following were admitted as free states: Vermont
(1791), Ohio (1803), Indiana (1816), Illinois (1818), Maine (1820), Michigan (1837), Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), California (1850), and Minnesota (1858).
The “Mexican anti Slavery law” Colfax mentions is almost certainly a reference to
a law Mexico passed in October 1829 abolishing slavery in the country. Mexico had previously issued
emancipation proclamations, and several Mexican states had also banned slavery prior
to the 1829 national law.
Eric Biber, “The Price of Admission: Causes, Effects, and Patterns of Conditions Imposed
on States Entering the Union,” The American Journal of Legal History 46 (April 2004), 129-131, 200-208; Jonathan Earle, “The Political Origins of the
Civil War,” OAH Magazine of History 25 (April 2011), 9-10; Peter Hinks and John McKivigan, eds., Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006), 2:417.
13If Lincoln replied to this letter, his response has not been located.
In the elections of 1858, Indiana’s voters reelected Colfax to the U.S. House of Representatives.
In Illinois’s local elections, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in the
state, but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly
and Douglas 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 and respect within the national Republican Party.
Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996, 845; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life 1:556-57; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape
of 1858,” 414.
Autograph Letter Signed, 4 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC). .