James Churchman to Abraham Lincoln, 2 December 18581
Nevada Decr 2nd/58Hon Abm LincolnDear SirGod Speed you in your race for U.S. Senatorship.2 I have from the first watched the events in the contest with intense interest, and
daily & nightly prayers for success of the cause. We Reps are in the minority here for the snorting rampant, Bowie Knife poker playing chivalry,
rule california.3
I send enclosed a few of the seed of our Big Trees (Washingtonia Gigantea) 4These seed came from a tree 28 feet diameter and standing 296 feet high– I think they
will grow in your State in light soil. They are of rapid growth. If your soil and climate will suit them
they will grow 8 to 10 feet from the seed the first year.5 Plant them on the day that you are elected Senator as I hope and trust you will be.6
Yours TrulyJames Churchman<Page 2>
Big tree seed8
2Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas had debated at seven Illinois towns as candidates for the U.S. Senate in 1858. Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican Party, was challenging Douglas, the Democratic incumbent. Republicans had won the popular vote in the state elections in November
1858 but pro-Douglas Democrats retained control of the Illinois General Assembly, which elected U.S. senators in those days, allowing Douglas to retain his seat.
See 1858 Federal Election; 1858 Illinois Republican Convention.
Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 3 November 1858, 2:1; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:458-60, 492-540, 556-57;
Allen C. Guelzo, “Houses Divided: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Political Landscape of
1858,” The Journal of American History 94 (September 2007), 392-94, 414-16; George Fort Milton, "Lincoln-Douglas Debates,"
Dictionary of American History, rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), 4:155-56.
3The Democratic Party dominated politics in California in the 1850s. Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan carried the state in the presidential elections of 1852 and 1856, respectively, and Democrats won election to all the seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in the decade.
The “Chivalry” is a reference to the pro-slavery wing of the California Democratic
Party. Made up of former southerners and slaveholders who coalesced around William M. Gwin, the pro-slavery wing was know as the Chivalry after the aristocratic way of life
favored by its adherents. The Chivalry controlled the California State Assembly and state politics for most of the 1850s. Opposing this wing was the Tammany or Free-Soil
wing, which included David C. Broderick and other northerners who opposed slavery. Conflict between these factions overshadowed
politics in the state.
John L. Moore, Jon P. Preimesberger, and David R. Tarr, eds., Congressional Quarterly’s Guide to U.S. Elections, 4th ed. (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2001), 1:651, 652; 2:878, 881, 884, 887; Alan
Taylor, American Civil Wars: A Continental History 1850-1873 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2024), 94; John F. Marszalek, Commander of all Lincoln’s Armies: A Life of General Henry W. Halleck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 100; Sacramento Daily Union (CA), 10 September 1857, 2:2; Los Angeles Star (CA), 8 November 1856, 2:1-5; 17 September 1859, 2:1-4.
4Based on the location of Nevada City, California, in the Sierra Nevada, these seeds are most likely Giant Redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum). These trees
can live to be thousands of years old, grow to be over 370 feet tall, and have a twenty-two
foot diameter base. Trees as young as twenty years old have grown to be over fifty
feet tall.
National Park Service Division of Publications, Redwood: A Guide to Redwood National and State Parks California (Washington DC: U. S. Department of the Interior, 1997), 27-33.
5Redwood trees cannot grow in Illinois, as they grow at altitudes between 5,000 and 7,000 feet. The highest point in Illinois
is Charles Mound, with an altitude of 1,226 feet above sea level.
National Park Service Division of Publications Redwood: A Guide to Redwood National and State Parks California, 30; A. H. Worthen, Economical Geology of Illinois, (Springfield: H. W. Rokker, 1882), 142.
Autograph Letter Signed, 2 page(s), Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress (Washington, DC).