Hawkins Taylor to Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 18581
Keokuk Oct 3d 58My Dear LincolnI with many other of your Old Illinois friends feel great anxiety in your Success in the great Struggle now going on between
Slavery and freedom not only in the State of Illinois but in the whole Union. Of all
the enemies of Freedom probably none has done so much harm as the Greatest of Demagogues—
Douglass2 To him and him alone are we indebted for the Kansas firebrand The late Compromises had Settled all former troubles And they had been brot about by such men as Webster & Clay such as we will not have soon again And by these compromises
<Page 2>
evry inch of Territory held by the U.S. was either dedicated to freedom or Slavery3 all were Satisfied. No, not all Douglass Wanted to be President4 he was living in a free State he was a Western man he was a "Little Giant" he felt Secure in the Northern & Western Democracy. he expected the Missouri restriction against the extension of Slavery. excepting by that means to Secure the South, he
failed so far as the Presidency was concerned but he Succeeded in arraying the South
in favour of the extinction of Slavery and now he is trying to get the North to Submit to the
New demands of Slavery. Will he Succeed God forbid. It appears that as the canvass
progresses he ^(Douglass)^ discovered that he has attempted
<Page 3>
more than he contracted for after having fully endorsed the Dred Scott decission he now attempts in a shocking manner to Nullify that decission by one of his characterized dodges but I must confess this last ^dodge^ are to be the most Silly one that he has made.5 There is no use of Police regulations if the Dred Scott Decission is law to establish Slavery in the Territory Does not the President appoint the Governor The Judges, the Marshal every Post Master,
Mail agents &C &C[etc. etc.]. Now Suppose that the Territorial legislature was to pass laws against Slavery does not evry one know that the Governor would veto them. Does not evry one Know that such Judges as Lecompt & Cato would pronounce them unconstitutional & void, does not evry one Know that the Judges makes their own Clerks and does not evry one Know that the Clerk Makes out the list of U.S. Grand Jurors & Pettit Jurors and if any of these Jurors do6 not attend their places are filled
<Page 4>
by the Marshal and does not evry one Know that these Jurors will all be proslavery men And ready and willing to do
the bidding of their masters and put through any one who may in the least interfere
with Slavery ^in the Territories^ Douglass knows this and so do his Southern Masters
I rejoice that you have so fully sustained the confidence of your friends in this
contest. Judge Douglass told a friend ^(his brother Judge Granger) ^ before he left Washington for the Canvass in Illinois that he would rather meet ^& canvass with^ any other two ^men^ in Illinois than "Abe Lincoln" and I have no doubt that he would more be willing
to Swap you off for any Six that could be named7 I expect to See and hear you at Quincy Illinois8
Yours trulyHawkins Taylor,Hon A. LincolnSpringfieldIll<Page 5>
[Envelope]
2Lincoln was the Republican candidate from Illinois for the U.S. Senate. 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 campaigned extensively in Illinois
in the summer and fall of 1858, delivering speeches and campaigning on behalf of Republican
candidates for the General Assembly. He and his opponent, Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, the incumbent, both focused their campaign efforts on the former Whig stronghold of central Illinois, where the state legislative races were the closest.
In local elections, Republicans gained a majority of the votes, but Pro-Douglas Democrats
retained control of the General Assembly, and Douglas won re-election. See 1858 Illinois Republican Convention; 1858 Federal Election.
Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:457-61, 476-77, 513-14,
546-47; 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, 414-16.
3Taylor references the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, supported by Douglas, overturned the Missouri Compromise, which had excluded slavery
north of the 36º 30' latitude, and established that the question would be determined
by popular sovereignty, or the right of the voters to determine whether or not slavery
would exist in these areas. As the Kansas Territory inched toward statehood, the issue of whether or not slavery would be legal in Kansas
became a polarizing debate. Prior to 1854, popular sovereignty had the potential
to block the extension of slavery in a politically benign way; Douglas's new use of
the doctrine discredited it in the eyes of possible antislavery supporters. It also
set off a firestorm of violence as outsiders tried to exert their influence. Slaveholders
in Missouri were particularly active in these efforts, and Missourians crossed the border into
Kansas to vote in Kansas elections and commit acts of intimidation and violence. See
Bleeding Kansas.
David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 155-76; 199-224; “An Act to Authorize the People
of the Missouri Territory to Form a Constitution and State Government, and for the
Admission of such State into the Union on an Equal Footing with the Original States,
and to Prohibit Slavery in Certain Territories,” 6 March 1820, Statutes at Large of the United States 3 (1846):548.
4Douglas stood as a Democratic candidate for president in 1852 and 1856 but failed to secure the party nomination either time. See 1852 Democratic National Convention; 1856 Democratic National Convention.
Yanek Mieczkowski, The Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections
(New York: Routledge, 2001), 47.
5Douglas, unlike Lincoln and the Republicans, supported the decision in the Dred Scott
case, which effectively barred any current or future emancipated slave from the right
of United States citizenship and solidified the right of American citizens to transport
their property wherever they wished—including taking an enslaved individual into a
free state—without feared loss of that property. Douglas’s support for the Scott decision
essentially invalidated his well established advocacy of the concept of popular sovereignty,
which he argued allowed territorial and state governments to either allow or prohibit
slavery as they saw fit. Lincoln’s main concern with popular sovereignty had been
its power to “allow the people of a Territory to have Slavery if they want to, but
does not allow them not to have it if they do not want it.” The Scott decision proved
Lincoln’s assertion, to which he remarked, “as I understand the Dred Scott decision,
if any one man wants slaves, all the rest have no way of keeping that one man from
holding them.”
Douglas’s “last dodge” was what came to be known as the Freeport Doctrine. In response
to Lincoln’s question, submitted at the second Lincoln-Douglas Debate at Freeport, Illinois, on August 27, 1858, whether people of a territory could, in
light of the Dred Scott decision, exclude slavery from its limits prior to becoming
a state, Douglas answered yes, claiming the citizens could exclude slavery by local
legislation. “Slavery cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere,” Douglas famously retorted,
“ unless it is supported by local police regulations, furnishing remedies and means
of enforcing the right to hold slaves.” Douglas’s “dodge” resolved the inconsistency
between popular sovereignty and the Dred Scott decision, satisfying his Illinois supporters
and assuring his re-election to the Senate, but denting his changes in the American
South in the presidential election of 1860.
Carl Brent Swisher, "Dred Scott Case," Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1940), 2:167-68; 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; Paul M. Angle, “Freeport Doctrine,” Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), 3:109.
7In considering Lincoln’s invitation to a series of debates, Douglas was hesitant;
Douglas told Joseph O. Glover that as a well-known politician, he had little to gain and everything to lose while
Lincoln, a relative unknown, had everything to gain and little to lose. Douglas also
fretted over Lincoln’s ability, calling him “the ablest man the Republicans have
got.”
Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Abraham Lincoln to Stephen A. Douglas; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 1:484.
8The sixth installment of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, held in Quincy, Illinois, took
place on October 13.
The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 13 October 1858, https://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1858-10-13; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Quincy, Illinois; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Quincy, Illinois; Sixth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas, at Quincy, Illinois.
Autograph Letter Signed, 5 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).