Franklin Blades to Abraham Lincoln, 26 August 18581
Middleport Ills. Aug. 26th 1858Hon Abraham LincolnEsteemed SirI take the liberty to address you, in behalf of the Republicans of this State, County, with a request that you do us the favor to come to our county (Iroquois) sometime during the Campaign and give us a Speech.2 Douglas is to be at Kankakee on the 25thof next month3 and I learn from a gentleman of that place that you have been written to know if you could follow him a day or two after.4 It was thought here that in case you could accept the Kankakee invitation you might
be able to spend a day with us in Iroquois
We want to have something of a demonstration here during the fall. Lovejoy our candidate for Congress has promised to be with us at such time as we may indicate, and if we could also
prom-
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ise that you would be in attendance there is no doubt but that we could get together
a fine meeting
Middleport, is the county seat and is situated some fifteen miles from the Ills– Cen– R Road It is near the center of the county
If, however, you cannot find it possible to come to Middleport the next best point
in the County is Onarga on the Ills-[Illinois] Central Road. You could get a large audience at that point. Onarga is 30 miles south
of Kankakee.
It is somewhat uncertain how Iroquois will go this fall; but we think with proper
effort the county can be carried by a handsome majority for the Republican ticket5
Permit me, honored Sir, as an humble member of the Republican party, upon the strong
hold you have upon the affections of the Republican people
Here, as elsewhere, your name is getting up an enthusiasm
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which bodes well of success. The misrepresentations—to use almost too mild a term—of
which your position has been the subject at the hands of Douglas is having the effect
to drive all shaky Republicans in bitterness away from him thus doing the cause good here. I know many
Republicans—I know them personaly—who once had a great deal of sympathy for him so far as his resistance to the Lecompton
suicide is concerned; but who now see him to be the arrant demagogue he is.6 You may not deem it the best way to compliment yourself by thus speaking thus harshly of your opponent; but I choose to speak my mind of him
Hoping that you will honor me with an early reply7
I am respectfuly yoursFrank. Blades<Page 4>
[Envelope]
MIDDLEPORT ILL[ILLINOIS]
AUG[AUGUST] 27Hon. Abraham LincolnSpringfieldIlls
AUG[AUGUST] 27Hon. Abraham LincolnSpringfieldIlls
1Franklin Blades wrote and signed this letter. He also wrote Abraham Lincoln’s name
and address on the envelope shown in the fourth image.
2Throughout the summer and fall of 1858, Lincoln traveled the state, delivering public addresses in support of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly. At the time, he was the Illinois Republican Party’s candidate to replace Democratic incumbent Stephen A. Douglas in the U.S. Senate. Both Lincoln and Douglas were highly attuned to the state legislative races in 1858
because 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 U.S. Senate race. 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, 394.
3Douglas delivered a speech in Kankakee, Illinois, on September 25.
Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 6 September 1858, 2:1; Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 28 September 1858, 2:3.
5Douglas spoke in Onarga, Illinois, the same day he spoke in Kankakee (September 25).
Owen Lovejoy, Republican candidate for reelection in the Third Illinois Congressional
District, spoke in Kankakee on Thursday, September 30.
In early September, William Bross forwarded Lincoln a letter from a friend in Onarga asking Bross to convince Lincoln to speak in Onarga or elsewhere
in Iroquois County.
Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 28 September 1858, 2:3-4; Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 10.
6This is a reference to the controversy surrounding the Lecompton Constitution. In December 1857, Douglas publicly condemned the constitution, causing a major schism
in the Democratic Party. Many Republicans admired Douglas’s repudiation of the Lecompton
Constitution, and of President James Buchanan for supporting the constitution. For a time, Douglas attempted to take advantage
of this admiration by courting political support from Republicans.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:445-48.
7No response from Lincoln has been located.
There is no evidence that Lincoln delivered a public address in either Kankakee or
anywhere in Iroquois County between August and October 1858.
In Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Lovejoy won reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives as the representative for the Third Congressional District. He won 57.7 percent of
the vote, compared to pro-Douglas Democratic candidate George W. Armstrong’s 38.8 percent, and pro-Buchanan Democratic candidate David Le Roy’s 3.4 percent.
In the local elections as a whole, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in
the state. Iroquois County and Kankakee County were both in the Sixth Illinois Senate
District and Forty-Fifth Illinois House District. Incumbent Republican Gavion D. A. Parks held over in the Sixth Illinois Senate District, and voters in these Forty-Fifth
House District elected and Republicans Hiram Norton, Alonzo W. Mack, and J. M. Hood to the Illinois House. Parks, Norton, Mack, and Hood each cast their
ballots for Lincoln in the contest for the U.S. Senate. Nevertheless, because pro-Douglas
Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly, 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.
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990, 11; The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 9 October 1858, 2:2; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219-20, 222; The Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 November 1858, 2:4; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30; Illinois House Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 32; 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). .