George H. Woodruff to Abraham Lincoln, 2 September 18581
Joliet Sept 2nd 1858Hon Abram LincolnDr[Dear] SirI enclose to you a resolution which shews for itself.2 Mr Douglass is great on quoting old antislavery resolutions as the republican platform–3 Here is a democratic one— on which I think you can frame another interrogatory for him.4
They had their big meeting here yesterday, a [lame?] affair, & I assure you that Mr D lost ground by his effort.5 I know that he has converted some democrats to Republicans. It was a rehash of his ottawa speech but more of the blackguard6 ingredient.
Yours trulyGeo. H. Woodruff<Page 2>
I suppose our club secty[secretary] has written to you in relation to an appointment here.7 We will get up a rousing meeting. We shall not waste money in gun-powder— but in
getting the people out. Mr Lovejoy made a fine reply to the Artful dodger
last night to a fine & appreciative audience.8Chn[Chairman] Republican ClubAs9 soon as you can fix a time to come here let us know.10
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[Envelope]
JOLIET Ill[Illinois].
SEP[SEPTEMBER] 3Hon. Abram LincolnParisEdgar Co.
SEP[SEPTEMBER] 3Hon. Abram LincolnParisEdgar Co.
1George H. Woodruff wrote and signed this letter. He also wrote Abraham Lincoln’s name
and address on the envelope shown in the fifth image.
3Woodruff is discussing Stephen A. Douglas’s arguments and actions during the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Douglas was running for reelection to the U.S. Senate in the 1858 Federal Election as the Illinois Democratic Party’s candidate. Lincoln was running against Douglas as the Illinois
Republican Party’s candidate. See the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
By the time of this letter, Lincoln and Douglas had already debated one another twice—in
Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21 and in Freeport, Illinois, on August 27. During the Ottawa debate, Douglas claimed that Lincoln had helped
draft an anti-slavery Republican Party platform at a meeting in Springfield, Illinois, in October of 1854. Douglas offered the debate audience quotes from what was actually
a much more radical platform passed at a Republican meeting in Aurora, Illinois the same year.
Lincoln did not catch Douglas’s misrepresentation of the radical Aurora platform for
the more moderate Springfield platform during the Ottawa debate and therefore did
not correct Douglas at the time, aside from noting that he had not helped create the
platform that Douglas read aloud. During later debates, however, he confronted Douglas
on the issue. Douglas eventually claimed that his mistake was an honest one, even
though he made the same misrepresentation in an 1856 speech in the U.S. Senate (which
Lyman Trumbull took him to task for at the time). Douglas elided personal responsibility for these
false claims through the fall of 1858.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:388, 458, 490-92, 503, 507,
513, 531-33; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 216; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 21 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-21, 27 August 1858, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-08-27; 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; Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 23 August 1858, 1:1-2.
4During the debate in Ottawa, Douglas challenged Lincoln to answer a series of questions.
In Freeport, Lincoln responded to those questions and, in turn, posed a series of
“interrogatories” of his own to Douglas. During the third debate, in Jonesboro, Illinois, Lincoln indeed posed another interrogatory to Douglas, but one suggested by Trumbull
rather than any apparently resulting from this letter from Woodruff.
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; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Second Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Freeport, Illinois; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:514; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois; Third Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Jonesboro, Illinois.
5Douglas delivered a speech in Joliet, Illinois, on August 31. Both he and Lincoln
traveled throughout Illinois during the summer and fall of 1858, delivering speeches
on behalf of candidates for the Illinois General Assembly. At the time, members of the General Assembly voted for and elected the state’s representatives
in the U.S. Senate; therefore, the races for the Illinois House of Representatives and Illinois Senate were critical to the outcome of the race for the U.S. Senate.
Daily Illinois State Register (Springfield), 2 August 1858, 2:1; Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas,
and the Political Landscape of 1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-94.
6A blackguard is someone regarded as a scoundrel, or a disreputable person who utilizes
course speech and manners.
John S. Farmer, ed., Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1890), 1:212.
7No correspondence from anyone claiming to be secretary of the Republican Party Club
in either Joliet, Illinois, or Will County, Illinois, has been located for all of 1858. However, Jesse O. Norton of Joliet wrote Lincoln the same day as Woodruff, asking Lincoln to deliver a public address in Joliet
in September. Although it is unclear if Norton was secretary for the same Republican
Club that Woodruff chaired, Norton was a Republican and served as one of Will County’s
delegates to the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 17 June 1858, 2:4.
8Owen Lovejoy spoke to a crowd in Joliet reported to number over 1,000 people. Delegates
to the Republican Party’s Third Illinois Congressional District convention on June
30 had unanimously nominated Lovejoy for reelection to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The Daily Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 2 July 1858, 2:1-3; Edward Magdol, “Owen Lovejoy’s Role in the
1858 Campaign,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 51 (Winter 1958), 415.
10There is no record of Lincoln visiting Joliet or the surrounding vicinity during the
campaign.
In Illinois’s local elections of 1858, Gavion D. A. Parks, a Republican, held over in the Illinois Senate for the Sixth District, which included
DuPage, Kendall, Iroquois, and Kankakee counties in addition to Will County. In Illinois House District Forty-Five, which
included Will, DuPage, Iroquois, and Kankakee counties, three Republicans took their
seats after the election: Hiram Norton, Alonzo W. Mack, and J. M. Hood.
Lovejoy eventually won reelection in 1858 with 57.7 percent of the vote, defeating
Douglas Democrat George W. Armstrong, who garnered 38.8 percent, and Buchanan Democrat David Le Roy, who received 3.4 percent.
In the state elections as a whole, Republicans won a majority of all votes cast in
the state. Parks, Norton, Mack, and Hood each cast their ballots for Lincoln for U.S.
senator. But because pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General
Assembly, Douglas ultimately won reelection to the U.S. Senate. Through the campaign,
however, and in particular through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,
Lincoln gained notoriety as well as respect within the national Republican Party.
Howard W. Allen and Vincent A. Lacey, eds., Illinois Elections, 1818-1990 (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 11, 142;
John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 219-222; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 5 November 1858, 3:2; The Weekly Chicago Times (IL), 18 November 1858, 2:7; Illinois House Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 32; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30; 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, 5 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC). .