Seward soon found the land-developing business more engaging than law. The six young clerks he hired quickly became a surrogate domestic circle, though he a.s.sured Frances in his nightly letters that he missed her and his children terribly. Once more he reiterated how he yearned for the day when they would read aloud to each other by the fire. He had just finished and enjoyed three of Scott"s Waverley novels, but "there are a thousand things in them, as in Shakespeare, that one may enjoy more and much longer if one has somebody to converse with while dwelling upon them." His children pined for him and the vibrant life his presence brought to the household. More than a half century later, his son Fred "so vividly remembered" one particular evening when his father read aloud from the works of Scott and Burns that he realized "it must have been a rare event."
Life in Westfield, meanwhile, settled into a pleasant routine. So long as Seward kept intact the image of his happy home in Auburn, he could fully immerse himself in new adventure elsewhere. His serenity was shattered when his little girl contracted smallpox and died in January 1837. Returning home for three weeks, he begged Frances, who had plunged into depression, to come back with him to Westfield. She refused to leave her two boys and "did not think it would be quite right to take them both from their Grandpa."
Back in Westfield, Seward wrote anxiously to Frances that the "lightness that was in all my heart when I thought of you and your sanctuary, and those who surrounded you there, was the main const.i.tuent of my cheerfulness." But now "I imagine you sitting alone, drooping, desponding, and unhappy; and, when I think of you in this condition, I cannot resist the sorrow that swells within me. If I could be with you, to lure you away to more active pursuits, to varied study, or more cheerful thoughts, I might save you for yourself, for your children, for myself."
The following summer, Frances was finally persuaded to join him in Westfield. In an exultant letter to Weed, Seward expressed his contentment. "Well, I am here for once, enjoying the reality of dreams," he wrote. "I read much, I ride some, and stroll more along the lake-sh.o.r.e. My wife and children are enjoying a measure of health which enables them to partic.i.p.ate in these pleasures." He lacked but one thing to complete his happiness: "If you were here," he told Weed, "we would enjoy pleasures that would have seduced Cicero and his philosophic friends from Tusculum."
While Frances enjoyed her summer, she was unable to share her husband"s great contentment. Returning to Auburn in September, she told Harriet Weed she had "found Westfield a very pleasant little village...but it was not my home and you can very well understand that I am more happy to be here-There is a sort of satisfaction, melancholy it is, in being once more in the room where my darling babe lived and died-in looking over her little wardrobe-in talking with those who missed and loved her."
By the fall of 1837, an economic slump had spread westward to Chautauqua County. This "panic" of 1837 brought widespread misery in its wake-bankrupt businesses, high unemployment, a run on banks, plummeting real estate values, escalating poverty. "I am almost in despair," Seward wrote home. "I have to dismiss three clerks; they all seem near to me as children, and are almost as helpless."
Once again, fortune smiled upon Seward in uncanny fashion. Because Democrats were blamed for the depression, the shrinking economy enlarged his party"s political prospects. In the elections that fall, the Whigs swept the state. "There is such a buzz of "glorious Whig victories" ringing in my ears," Seward wrote Weed, "that I hardly have time to think." Replying from Albany, where he was back in control, Weed was jubilant. "I have been two days endeavoring to s.n.a.t.c.h a moment for communion with you, to whom my heart always turns in joy or grief.... It is a great triumph-an overwhelming revolution. May that Providence which has given us deliverance, give us also wisdom to turn our power into healthful channels."
In the months that followed, Seward and Weed worked together to broaden the Whig Party beyond its base of merchants, industrialists, and prosperous farmers. Hoping to appeal to the ma.s.ses of workingmen, who had generally voted Democratic since Andrew Jackson"s day, Weed raised money for a new partisan weekly. Horace Greeley was chosen editor for the fledgling journal. The slight, rumpled-looking, nearsighted young Greeley occupied a garret in New York where he had edited a small magazine called The New Yorker. The new partisan weekly became an instant success, eventually evolving into the powerful New York Tribune. For nearly a quarter of a century, Weed, Seward, and Greeley collaborated to build support first for the Whigs and, later on, for the Republicans. For much of that time, the three were like brothers. If they often quarreled among themselves, they presented a united front to the world.
In the summer of 1838, Weed believed the time was right for Seward"s second bid to become governor. At the Whig convention that September, "the Dictator" was everywhere, persuading one delegate after another that Seward was the strongest possible choice to top the ticket. To bolster his case, he distributed statistics from the 1834 gubernatorial race showing that, despite the Whigs" loss, Seward had claimed more votes than all the other Whig candidates. Weed"s magic worked: his protege received the nomination on the fourth ballot. "Well, Seward, we are again embarked upon a "sea of difficulties," and must go earnestly to work." In fact, most of the work was left to Weed, since it was thought improper in those days for candidates to stump on their own. And Weed did his job well. When the votes were counted, the thirty-seven-year-old Seward was the overwhelming victor.
Seward was thrilled to be back in the thick of things. "G.o.d bless Thurlow Weed!" he exulted. "I owe this result to him." Within a week of the election, however, Seward"s nerve began to fail. "It is a fearful post I have coveted," he confided to his mentor. "I shudder at my own temerity, and have lost confidence in my ability to manage my own private affairs." Frances, pregnant with their third son, Will, had suffered weeks of illness and was nervous about the move to Albany. Confessing that he did not "know how to keep a house alone," he wondered if he could instead take up rooms at the Eagle Tavern.
Weed arrived in Auburn and immediately took charge. He secured a mansion with a full-time staff for the governor to rent, and convinced Frances to join her husband. The yellow brick house, Seward"s son Fred recalled, "was in all respects well adapted for an official residence." Set on four acres, it contained a suite of parlors, a ballroom, a s.p.a.cious dining room, and a library in one wing, with a suite of family rooms in another. While Seward combed through books on history and philosophy, preparing what proved to be a brilliant inaugural message to the legislature, Weed stocked the residence with wine and food, chose Seward"s inaugural outfit, and met with hundreds of office seekers, eventually selecting every member of the governor"s cabinet. Seward believed "it was [his] duty to receive, not make a cabinet."
During the transition period, Seward"s impulsive remarks often aggravated the ever-cautious Weed. "Your letter admonishes me to a habit of caution that I cannot conveniently adopt," Seward replied. "I love to write what I think and feel as it comes up." Nonetheless, Seward generally deferred to Weed, recognizing a superior strategic prudence and experience. "I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures," he told Weed, no doubt provoking the approval of his proud mentor. "There were never two men in politics who worked together or understood each other better," Weed wrote years later in his memoir. "Neither controlled the other.... One did not always lead, and the other follow. They were friends, in the best, the rarest, and highest sense."
In later years, Seward told the story of a carriage ride he took from Albany shortly after his election. He had struck up a lively conversation with the coachman, who eventually asked him who he was. When Seward replied that he was governor of New York, the coachman laughed in disbelief. Seward said they had only to consult the proprietor of the next tavern along the road to confirm the truth. When they reached the tavern, Seward went in and asked, "Am I the Governor of the State of New York or not?" The man did not hesitate. "No, certainly not!" "Who is, then?" queried Seward. "Why...Thurlow Weed!" the man replied.
The youthful governor"s inaugural address on New Year"s Day, 1839, laid out an ambitious agenda: a vast expansion of the public school system (including better schools for the black population), the promotion of ca.n.a.ls and railways, the creation of a more humane system for the treatment of the insane, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt. His vision of an ever-expanding economy, built on free labor, widespread public education, and technological progress, offered a categorical rejection of the economic and cultural malaise he had witnessed on his Southern trip in 1835.
"Our race is ordained to reach, on this continent, a higher standard of social perfection than it has ever yet attained; and that hence will proceed the spirit which shall renovate the world," he proclaimed to the New York legislature in the year of his election. If the energy, ingenuity, and ambitions of Northern free labor were "sustained by a wise and magnanimous policy on our part," Seward promised, "our state, within twenty years, will have no desert places-her commercial ascendancy will fear no rivalry, and a hundred cities will enable her to renew the boast of ancient Crete."
Looking once more to broaden the appeal of the Whig Party, Seward advocated measures to attract the Irish and German Catholic immigrants who formed the backbone of the state Democratic Party. He called on his fellow Americans to welcome them with "all the sympathy which their misfortunes at home, their condition as strangers here, and their devotion to liberty, ought to excite." He argued that America owed all the benefits of citizenship to these new arrivals, who helped power the engine of Northern expansion. In particular, he proposed to reform the school system, where the virulently anti-Catholic curriculum frightened immigrants away, dooming vast numbers to illiteracy, poverty, and vice. To get these children off the streets and provide them with opportunities to advance, Seward hoped to divert some part of the public school funds to support parochial schools where children could receive instruction from members of their own faith.
Seward"s school proposal provoked a violent reaction among nativist Protestants. They accused him of plotting "to overthrow republican inst.i.tutions" by undoing the separation of church and state. Handbills charged that Seward was "in league with the Pope" and schemed to throw Protestant children into the hands of priests. In the end, the legislature pa.s.sed a compromise plan that simply expanded the public school system. But the nativists, whose strength would grow dramatically in the decades ahead, never forgave Seward. Indeed, their opposition would eventually prove a fatal stumbling block to Seward"s hopes for the presidential nomination in 1860.
If Seward"s progressive policies on education and immigration made him an influential and controversial figure in New York State, his defiant stand against slavery in the "Virginia Case" brought him into national prominence in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In September 1839, a vessel sailing from Norfolk, Virginia, to New York was found to have carried a fugitive slave. The slave was returned to his master in Virginia in compliance with Article IV, Section 2, of the U.S. Const.i.tution that persons held to service or labor in one state escaping into another should be delivered up to the owner. When Virginia also demanded the arrest and surrender of three free black seamen who had allegedly conspired to hide the slave on the vessel, the New York governor refused.
In a statement that brought condemnation throughout the South, Seward argued that the seamen were charged with a crime that New York State did not recognize: people were not property, and therefore no crime had been committed. On the contrary, "the universal sentiment of civilized nations" considered helping a slave escape from bondage "not only innocent, but humane and praiseworthy."
As controversy over the fate of the three sailors was prolonged, the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a series of retaliatory measures to damage the commerce of New York, calling upon other Southern states to pa.s.s resolutions denouncing Seward and the state of New York for "intermeddling" with their time-honored "domestic inst.i.tutions." Democratic periodicals in the North warned that the governor"s stance would compromise highly profitable New York trade connections with Virginia and other slave states. Seward was branded "a bigoted New England fanatic." This only emboldened Seward"s resolve to press the issue. He spurred the Whig-dominated state legislature to pa.s.s a series of antislavery laws affirming the rights of black citizens against seizure by Southern agents, guaranteeing a trial by jury for any person so apprehended, and prohibiting New York police officers and jails from involvement in the apprehension of fugitive slaves.
Such divisive incidents-the "new irritation" foreseen by Jefferson in 1820-widened the schism between North and South. Though few slaves actually escaped to the North each year-an estimated one or two hundred out of the millions held in bondage-the issue exacerbated rancor on both sides. In the North, William Lloyd Garrison"s newspaper, the Liberator, called for immediate emanc.i.p.ation and racial equality, denouncing slavery as sinful and inhumane, advocating "all actions, even in defiance of the Const.i.tution," to bring an end to "The Empire of Satan." Such scathing criticisms moved Southern leaders to equally fierce defenses. They proclaimed slavery a "positive good" rather than a mere necessity, of immense benefit to whites and blacks alike. As discord between North and South escalated, many Northerners turned against the abolitionists. Fear that the movement would destroy the Union incited attacks on abolitionist printers in the North and West. Presses were burned, editors threatened with death should their campaign persist.
In 1840, Seward was reelected governor, but by a significantly smaller margin. His dwindling support was blamed on the parochial school controversy, the protracted fight with Virginia, and a waning enthusiasm for social reform. Horace Greeley editorialized that Seward would "henceforth be honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life." Nonetheless, Seward decided not to run a third time: "All that can now be worthy of my ambition," he explained to a friend, "is to leave the State better for my having been here, and to ent.i.tle myself to a favorable judgment in its history."
Throughout the dispute with the state of Virginia, and every other controversy that threatened Seward"s highly successful tenure, Weed had proved a staunch ally and friend, answering critics in the legislature, publishing editorials in the Albany Evening Journal, ever sustaining Seward"s spirits. "What am I to deserve such friendship and affection?" Seward asked him in 1842 as his second term drew to its close. "Without your aid how hopeless would have been my prospect of reaching the elevation from which I am descending. How could I have sustained myself there...how could I have secured the joyous reflections of this hour, what would have been my prospect of future life, but for the confidence I so undenyingly reposed on your affection?"
Returning to Auburn, Seward resumed his law practice, concentrating now on lucrative patent cases. He found that his fight with Virginia had endeared him to antislavery men throughout the North. Members of the new Liberty Party bandied about his name in their search for a presidential candidate in 1844. Organized in 1840, the Liberty Party was born of frustration with the failure of either major party to deal head-on with slavery. The abrogation of slavery was their primary goal. Though flattered by the attention, Seward could not yet conceive of leaving the Whig Party.
Meanwhile, he continued to speak out on behalf of black citizens. In March 1846, a terrifying ma.s.sacre took place in Seward"s hometown. A twenty-three-year-old black man named William Freeman, recently released from prison after serving five years for a crime it was later determined he did not commit, entered the home of John Van Nest, a wealthy farmer and friend of Seward"s. Armed with two knives, he killed Van Nest, his pregnant wife, their small child, and Mrs. Van Nest"s mother. When he was caught within hours, Freeman immediately confessed. He exhibited no remorse and laughed uncontrollably as he spoke. The sheriff hauled him away, barely reaching the jail ahead of an enraged mob intent upon lynching him. "I trust in the mercy of G.o.d that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door," Frances Seward told her husband, who was in Albany at the time. "Fortunately, the law triumphed."
Frances recognized at once an "incomprehensible" aspect to the entire affair, and she was correct. Investigation revealed a history of insanity in Freeman"s family. Moreover, Freeman had suffered a series of floggings in jail that had left him deaf and deranged. When the trial opened, no lawyer was willing to take Freeman"s case. The citizens of Auburn had threatened violence against any member of the bar who dared to defend the cold-blooded murderer. When the court asked, "Will anyone defend this man?" a "death-like stillness pervaded the crowded room," until Seward rose, his voice strong with emotion, and said, "May it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death!"
Seward"s friends and family, including Thurlow Weed and Judge Miller, roundly criticized Seward for his decision. Only Frances stood proudly by her husband during the outburst that followed, a.s.suring her sister that "he will do what is right. He will not close his eyes and know that a great wrong is perpetrated." To her son Gus she noted that "there are few men in America who would have sacrificed so much for the cause of humanity-he has his reward in a quiet conscience and a peaceful mind." Though her house and children were her entire world, she never flinched when retaliation against Seward"s decision threatened her family. She remained steadfast throughout. Then in her early forties, she was a handsome woman, despite the hard, drawn look imparted by ill health. Over the years she had grown intellectually with her husband, sharing his pa.s.sion for reading, his reformer"s spirit, and his deep hatred of slavery. Defying her father and her neighbors, she sat in the courtroom each day, her quiet bearing lending strength to her husband.
Seward spent weeks investigating the case, interviewing Freeman"s family, and summoning five doctors who testified to the prisoner"s extreme state of mental illness. In his summation, he pleaded with the jury not to be influenced by the color of the accused man"s skin. "He is still your brother, and mine.... Hold him then to be a man." Seward continued, "I am not the prisoner"s lawyer...I am the lawyer for society, for mankind, shocked beyond the power of expression, at the scene I have witnessed here of trying a maniac as a malefactor." He argued that Freeman"s conduct was "unexplainable on any principle of sanity," and begged the jury not to seek the death sentence. Commit him to an asylum for the term of his natural life, Seward urged: "there is not a white man or white woman who would not have been dismissed long since from the perils of such a prosecution."
There was never any doubt that the local jury would return a guilty verdict. "In due time, gentlemen of the jury," Seward concluded, "when I shall have paid the debt of nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned! But, perhaps years hence, when the pa.s.sion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have pa.s.sed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them a humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, "He was Faithful!"" More than a century afterward, visitors to Seward"s grave at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn would find those very words engraved on his tombstone.
While Seward endured the hostility of his hometown, his defense of Freeman became famous throughout the country. His stirring summation was printed in dozens of newspapers and reprinted in pamphlet form for still wider distribution. Salmon Chase, himself a leading proponent of the black man"s cause, conceded to his abolitionist friend Lewis Tappan that he esteemed Seward as "one of the very first public men of our country. Who but himself would have done what he did for that poor wretch Freeman?" His willingness to represent Freeman, Chase continued, "considering his own personal position & the circ.u.mstances, was magnanimous in the highest degree."
So in the mid-1840s, as Seward settled back into private life in Auburn, his optimism about the future remained intact. He had established a national reputation based upon principle and a vision of national progress. He trusted that when his progressive principles once more gained favor with the ma.s.ses, he would return to public life.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN, like Seward and Bates, was drawn to politics in his early years. At the age of twenty-three, after only six months in New Salem, Illinois, he decided to run for the state legislature from Sangamon County. While it must have seemed next to impossible that a new settler who had just arrived in town with no family connections and little formal education could compete for office, his belief in himself and awareness of his superior intellectual abilities proved to be powerful motivators. Both his ambition and his uncertainty are manifest in the March 1832 statement formally announcing his candidacy on an essentially Whig platform that called for internal improvements, public education, and laws against usury: "Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition," he wrote. "I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed."
Lincoln already possessed the lifelong dream he would restate many times in the years that followed-the desire to prove himself worthy, to be held in great regard, to win the veneration and respect of his fellow citizens. "I am young and unknown to many of you," he continued. "I was born and have ever remained in the most humble walks of life. I have no wealthy or popular relations to recommend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the independent voters of this county, and if elected they will have conferred a favor upon me, for which I shall be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep me in the background, I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." At the same time he made it clear that this try would not be his last, telling voters that only after being defeated "some 5 or 6 times" would he feel disgraced and "never to try it again."
His campaign was interrupted when he joined the militia to fight against the Sac and Fox Indians in what became known as the Black Hawk War. Mustered out after three months, he returned home shortly before the election. Not surprisingly, when the votes were tallied, the little-known Lincoln had lost the election. Despite his defeat, he took pride that in his own small town of New Salem, where he "made friends everywhere he went," he had received 277 of the 300 votes cast. This astonishing level of support was attributed to his good nature and the remarkable gift for telling stories that had made him a favorite of the men who gathered each night in the general store to share opinions and gossip. "This was the only time," Lincoln later a.s.serted, that he "was ever beaten on a direct vote of the people." Two years later, he ran for the seat a second time. By then he had widened his set of acquaintances beyond New Salem and won easily, capturing the first of four successive terms in the state legislature. Until he joined the new Republican Party, Lincoln would remain a steadfast Whig-as were Seward, Bates, and, for a brief moment, Chase.
Lincoln"s four successful campaigns for the legislature were conducted across a spa.r.s.ely populated frontier county the size of Rhode Island. Young Lincoln was "always the centre of the circle where ever he was," wrote Robert Wilson, a political colleague. "His Stories...were fresh and Sparkling. never tinctured with malevolence." Though his face, in repose, revealed nothing "marked or Striking," when animated by a story, "Several wrinkles would diverge from the inner corners of his eyes, and extend down and diagonally across his nose, his eyes would Sparkle, all terminating in an unrestrained Laugh in which every one present willing or unwilling were compelled to take part." This rapid illumination of Lincoln"s features in conversation would be observed by countless others throughout his entire life, drawing many into his...o...b..t.
During the campaigns, candidates journeyed on horseback across "entirely unoccupied" prairies, speaking at country stores and small villages. "The Speaking would begin in the forenoon," Wilson recalled, "the candidates Speaking alternately until all who could Speak had his turn, generally consuming the whole afternoon." Nor were the contests limited to speeches on public issues. At Mr. Kyle"s store, west of Springfield, a group of Democrats made a wager. ""See here Lincoln, if you can throw this Cannon ball further than we Can, We"ll vote for you." Lincoln picked up the large Cannon ball-felt it-swung it around-and around and said, "Well, boys if thats all I have to do I"ll get your votes."" He then proceeded to swing the cannonball "four or Six feet further than any one Could throw it."
When he moved to Springfield in 1837, Lincoln began to attract the circle of friends and admirers who would play a decisive role in his political ascent. While he worked during the day to build his law practice, evenings would find him in the center of Springfield"s young men, gathered around a fire in Speed"s store to read newspapers, gossip, and engage in philosophical debates. "They came there," Speed recalled, "because they were sure to find Lincoln," who never failed to entertain with his remarkable stories. "It was a sort of social club," Speed observed. Whigs and Democrats alike gathered to discuss the events of the day. Among the members of this "club" were three future U.S. senators: Stephen Douglas, who would become Lincoln"s princ.i.p.al rival; Edward Baker, who would introduce him at his first inaugural and become one of the first casualties of the Civil War; and Orville Browning, who would a.s.sist his fight for the presidential nomination.
Throughout his eight years in the state legislature, Lincoln proved an extraordinarily shrewd gra.s.sroots politician, working to enlist voter support in the precincts for his party"s candidates. While Seward could concentrate on giving voice to the party platform, relying on Weed to build poll lists and carry voters to the polls, Lincoln engaged in every aspect of the political process, from the most visionary to the most mundane. His experience taught him what every party boss has understood through the ages: the practical machinery of the party organization-the distribution of ballots, the checklists, the rounding up of voters-was as crucial as the broad ideology laid out in the platform. The same intimate involvement in campaign organization that he displayed in these early years would characterize all of Lincoln"s future campaigns.
His 1840 campaign plan divided the party organization into three levels of command. The county captain was "to procure from the poll-books a separate list for each Precinct" of everyone who had previously voted the Whig slate. The list would then be divided by each precinct captain "into Sections of ten who reside most convenient to each other." The captain of each section would then be responsible to "see each man of his Section face to face, and procure his pledge...[to] vote as early on the day as possible."
That same year, Lincoln and four Whig colleagues, including Joshua Speed, published a circular directed at the presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison. "Our intention is to organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls." To this end, the publication outlined a plan whereby each county would be divided into small districts, each responsible for making "a perfect list" of all their voters, designating which names were likely from past behavior to vote with the Whigs and which were doubtful. Committees in each district would then "keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence." These committees were to submit monthly progress reports to the central state committee, ensuring an accurate survey of voters in each county before election day. Party workers could then be dispatched to round up the right voters and get them to the polls to support the Whig Party. In setting forth his campaign plan, as meticulously structured as any modern effort to "get out the vote," Lincoln did not neglect the necessity of fund-raising, asking each county to send "fifty or one hundred dollars" to subscribe to a newspaper "devoted exclusively to the great cause in which we are engaged."
LINCOLN LIKENED his politics to an "old womans dance"-"Short & Sweet." He stood for three simple ideas: a national bank, a protective tariff, and a system for internal improvements. A state legislator could do little to promote a national bank or raise tariffs, but internal improvements, which then usually meant the improvement of roads, rivers, harbors, and railways, were largely a local matter. Many Whigs, Seward and Bates among them, spoke of improving waterways, but Lincoln had actually worked on a flatboat to bring meat and grain down the Mississippi to New Orleans; he had a flatboatman"s knowledge of the hazards posed by debris and logs while navigating the Sangamon River. Nor would he ever forget the thrill of receiving his first dollar for transporting two gentlemen on his flatboat from the riverbank to their steamer, which was anch.o.r.ed "in the middle of the river." The experience of earning two half dollars in a single day made the world seem "wider and fairer," giving him confidence in the future.
Lincoln knew firsthand the deprivations, the marginal livelihood of the subsistence farmer unable to bring produce to market without dependable roads. He had been paid the meager wages of the hired hand. Primitive roads, clogged waterways, lack of rail connections, inadequate schools-such were not merely issues to Lincoln, but hurdles he had worked all his life to overcome in order to earn an ampler share of freedom. These "improvements" to the infrastructure would enable thousands of farming families to emerge from the kind of poverty in which the Lincoln family had been trapped, and would permit new cities and towns to flourish.
Lincoln"s dedication to internal improvements and economic development was given strength, nourishment, and power, so the historian Gabor Boritt persuasively argues, by his pa.s.sionate commitment "to the ideal that all men should receive a full, good, and ever increasing reward for their labors so they might have the opportunity to rise in life." Economic development provided the basis, Lincoln said much later, that would allow every American "an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life." To Lincoln"s mind, the fundamental test of a democracy was its capacity to "elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all." A real democracy would be a meritocracy where those born in the lower ranks could rise as far as their natural talents and discipline might take them.
Young Lincoln"s great ambition in the 1830s, he told Joshua Speed, was to be the "DeWitt Clinton of Illinois." The pioneering New York governor had opened opportunities for all New Yorkers and left a permanent imprint on his state when he persuaded the legislature to support the Erie Ca.n.a.l project. In the Illinois legislature, Lincoln hoped to leave a similar imprint by way of an ambitious program of internal improvements.
During these same years, the young state legislator made his first public statement on slavery. The rise of abolitionism in the North and the actions of governors, such as Seward, who refused to fully respect fugitive slave provisions in the Const.i.tution, led legislatures in both South and North to pa.s.s resolutions that censured abolitionism and confirmed the const.i.tutional right to slavery. In conservative Illinois, populated by many citizens of Southern birth, the general a.s.sembly fell in line. By the lopsided vote of 776, the a.s.sembly resolved that "we highly disapprove of the formation of abolition societies," hold "sacred" the "right of property in slaves," and believe that "the General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia, against the consent of the citizens."
Lincoln was among the six dissenting voices. With one other colleague who had also voted against the resolution, he issued a formal protest. This protest did not endorse abolitionism, for Lincoln believed then, as later, that the Const.i.tution did not give Congress the power to interfere with slavery in the states where it was already established. Instead, resisting the tide of public opinion in Illinois, Lincoln proclaimed that "the inst.i.tution of slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy," and affirmed the const.i.tutional power of Congress to abolish slavery in areas under federal control, such as the District of Columbia, though he recommended "that that power ought not to be exercised unless at the request of the people of said District."
Lincoln always believed, he later said, that "if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and he could not remember when he did not "so think, and feel." Though he was born in the slave state of Kentucky, his parents had been antislavery. Their opposition had led them to change religious congregations, and eventually, they had moved to the free state of Indiana "partly on account of slavery." Decades later, in his short autobiography written for the 1860 presidential campaign, Lincoln would describe his protest in the Illinois legislature as one that "briefly defined his position on the slavery question; and so far as it goes, it was then the same that it is now."
In these early years, however, Lincoln paid the slavery issue less attention than Seward or Chase, believing that so long as slavery could be restricted to places where it already existed, it would gradually become extinct. He did not share Chase"s professional and personal aversion to slaveowners and did not hesitate to take whatever clients came his way. In the course of his practice, Lincoln defended both slaveowners and fugitive slaves. While he hated to see fugitive slaves hunted down, he publicly criticized the governor of Maine when he, like Seward, refused to give up two men who had aided a fugitive slave from Georgia. For Lincoln, the const.i.tutional requirements for the return of fugitive slaves could not be evaded.
Lincoln"s dreams of becoming the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois collapsed when a sustained recession hit the state in 1837. Public sentiment turned against the costly and still-unfinished internal improvements system. For months, Lincoln fervently defended the system against the rising tide of criticism, likening the abandonment of the ca.n.a.l to "stopping a skift in the middle of a river-if it was not going up, it would go down." Although his arguments fell on deaf ears, he refused to give ground, abiding by his father"s old maxim: "If you make a bad bargain, hug it the tighter." His unwillingness to abandon the policies he had championed became self-destructive stubbornness. By 1840, the fourth year of recession, the mood in the legislature was set against continuing these projects. With funds no longer forthcoming, the improvements system collapsed. The state bank was forced to liquidate. Land values fell precipitously, and new pioneers were deterred from emigrating to Illinois.
As a vocal proponent of the system that had aggravated the state"s fiscal catastrophe, Lincoln received a significant share of the blame. Though he managed to win a fourth term in 1840, he polled the least number of votes among the victorious candidates, his poorest showing since his first election. Belief in himself and his progressive agenda shaken, he resolved to retire from the legislature after his term was completed.