Samuel C. Frey to Abraham Lincoln, 3 September 18581
Canton Stark Co. Ohio 3d Sep. 1858Hon Abraham LincolnDear SirI am a stranger to you, but being an ardent Republican and alive to the principles and the work you are engaged in,2 I deem it my duty to inform you of a conversation I had this morning with the Hon.
B. F. Leiter M. C.[Member of Congress] for the 18th Ohio District.
Mr Leiter informs me that he had within a few days recievd reliable information from New-York City that Mr Douglass Douglas was backed up by the N.Y. Tammany Society, and if Necessary Tammany would expend a million of dollars in Illinois in order to carry Douglass election. Mr Leiter says further, that, If Douglas is
elected, that the Tammany programme is, that he shall be the nominee of the Charleston Convention.3 Mr Leiter is a man who is a pretty good politician, and is pretty well posted. he
was a democrat up to 1854, but left the party on account of the Kansas Nebraska movement and is now heartily with us. I give you these facts to be made use of as
you may judge best, to be forewarned, is to be forearmed. I will add that your neighbor
John Calhoun is my Brother in law, but I have no sympathy with him in politics.4 After the 20th of next month my residence will be
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Springfield Clark Co. O. and my business will be to assist in the Editorial department of the Springfield Republic newspaper.
We (Republicans) of Ohio are watching Illinois with the greatest anxiety, and hope
you may be successful in the great battle you are waging, but an immense labour is before you.5 If the information I had from Mr Leiter is true, your voters are to be bought up
and corrupted, all kinds of appliances which money can procure, are to be arrayed
against you as doubtless was the case in St Louis to defeat Mr Blair6
Wishing God SpeedI am Sir
Yours &c &c[etc. etc.]S. C. Frey7
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[Envelope]
CANTON O.[OHIO]
SEP[SEPTEMBER] 3 1858Hon. Abraham LincolnSpringfieldIllinois
SEP[SEPTEMBER] 3 1858Hon. Abraham LincolnSpringfieldIllinois
2The work that Abraham Lincoln was engaged in was campaigning for Republican candidates
in Illinois and on behalf of his own candidacy for the U.S. Senate, having been nominated at the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention to challenge incumbent Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas in the election of 1858. 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. Lincoln and Douglas both campaigned extensively
and focused their campaign efforts on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest.
Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-99, 400-401; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-58, 476-77.
3During a visit to New York City in July 1858, Douglas reportedly met with supporters
of his from the Tammany Society. In September, the Chicago Tribune alleged that Douglas had recently sent an emissary to the Tammany Society to plead
for assistance with his reelection campaign, and had received a promise of $50,000
to help fund his campaign. The following month it was reported that New York politician
Fernando Wood, a longtime Tammany supporter who was in the process of organizing rival New York
Democratic organization Mozart Hall, had given Douglas $52,000 for his campaign,
backed by mortgages on the latter’s Chicago property. Wood hoped that the Democratic Party would nominate a southerner for president
in the election of 1860, and he offered support in 1858 to both Douglas and rival presidential aspirant Daniel S. Dickinson, apparently with the goal that a deadlocked Democratic National Convention in 1860 that would result in such a nomination. Douglas reputedly received a total
of $100,000 in loans from New York allies in the lead up to the election of 1858.
Chicago Daily Press and Tribune (IL), 7 July 1858, 2:3; 10 September 1858, 1:2; 15 September 1858, 2:1; The Belvidere Standard (IL), 19 October 1858, 2:5; Jerome Mushkat, Fernando Wood: A Political Biography (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1990), 83-87; Robert W. Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 620.
4Samuel C. Frey was married to Susan C. Calhoun, who was the sister of John Calhoun.
John Calhoun, a Democrat and ally of Douglas, served as president of the Kansas convention that drafted the Lecompton Constitution, although he opposed the pro-slavery clause of the constitution.
Northern Alabama Historical and Biographical
(Birmingham, AL: Smith & De Land, 1888), 335-36; John Carroll Power and S. A. Power,
History of the Early Settlers of Sangamon County, Illinois
(Springfield, IL: Edwin A. Wilson, 1876), 168; The Press and Tribune (Chicago, IL), 18 October 1859, 1:1.
5Republicans won a majority of the votes cast in local elections in Illinois in 1858,
but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly. The final
vote tally gave Democrats a majority of forty to thirty-five in the Illinois House
of Representatives and a majority of fourteen to eleven in the Illinois Senate. Thus,
when the General Assembly voted in January, 1859, Douglas defeated Lincoln and won
reelection to the U.S. Senate. Despite his loss, Lincoln gained national recognition
as well as standing within the Republican Party through the campaign and in particular
through his participation in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates.
Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858,” 414-16; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:556-57; Illinois Senate Journal. 1859. 21st G. A., 30.
6Francis P. Blair, Jr., running for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Free Democrat, was defeated by Democrat J. Richard Barret in the First Congressional District of Missouri in an election held August 2, 1858. The initial tally of votes found 7,057 votes
for Barret and 6,631 voted for Blair. Stories of voting irregularities and voter intimidation
circulated in the press. Blair contested the election, alleging that fraud had occurred,
and the revised vote was found in his favor. Barret held the seat from March 4, 1859
through June 8, 1860. On the latter date, the U.S. House of Representatives concluded
their investigation into the disputed election and narrowly voted to seat Blair in
Barret’s place. Blair took the seat, but resigned on June 25 and announced his intention
to take his case to the voters of his district. Thus on August 6, 1860, Blair and
Barret ran against each other in two races: a special election to fill the vacant
seat in the Thirty-Sixth Congress for the remainder of the term, and the regular election
to represent the First Congressional District in the Thirty-Seventh Congress. Barret
won the special election by a margin of 144 votes and finished out the term, serving
from December 3, 1860 through March 3, 1861, but Blair won the full term in the Thirty-seventh
Congress.
Daily Missouri Democrat (St. Louis), 1 August 1858, 2:1; Sunday Morning Republican (St. Louis), 1 August 1858, 2:1; Michael J. Dubin, United States Congressional Elections, 1788-1997: The Official Results of the Elections
of the 1st through 105th Congresses (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1998), 182, 185, 186, 187; William E. Parrish, Frank Blair: Lincoln’s Conservative (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 73-74, 83, 86; Biographical Directory of the American Congress 1774-1996
(Alexandria, VA: CQ Staff Directories, 1997), 622-23, 669.
Autograph Letter Signed, 3 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).