Chapter 13 The Campaign of 1844 - Abraham Lincoln Vol.1

CHAPTER XIII
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1844
 In the letter to Stuart which we have quoted, Lincoln announced his intention to form a partnership with Judge Logan, which was soon carried out. His connection with Stuart was formally dissolved in April, 1841, and one with Logan formed which continued for four years. It may almost be said that Lincoln's practice as a lawyer begins from this time. Stuart, though even then giving promise of the distinction at which he arrived in his profession later in life, was at that period so entirely devoted to politics that the business of the office was altogether a secondary matter to him; and Lincoln, although no longer in his first youth, being then thirty-two years of age, had not yet formed those habits of close application which are indispensable to permanent success at the bar. He was not behind the greater part of his contemporaries in this respect. Among all the lawyers of the circuit who were then, or who afterwards became, eminent practitioners, [Footnote: They were Dan Stone, Jesse B. Thomas, Cyrus Walker, Schuyler Strong, Albert T. Bledsoe, George Forquer, Samuel H. Treat, Ninian W. Edwards, Josiah Lamborn, John J. Hardin, Edward D. Baker, and others.] there were few indeed who in those days applied themselves with any degree of persistency to the close study of legal principles. One of these few was Stephen T. Logan. He was more or less a politician, as were all his compeers at the bar, but he was always more a lawyer than anything else. He had that love for his profession which it jealously exacts as a condition of succeeding. He possessed few books, and it used to be said of him long afterwards that he carried his library in his hat. But the books which he had he never ceased to read and ponder, and we heard him say when he was sixty years old, that once every year since he came of age he had read "Blackstone's Commentaries" through. He had that old-fashioned, lawyer-like morality which was keenly intolerant of any laxity or slovenliness of mind or character. His former partner had been Edward D. Baker, but this brilliant and mercurial spirit was not congenial to Logan; Baker's carelessness in money matters was Intolerable to him, and he was glad to escape from an associate so gifted and so exasperating. [Footnote: Logan's office was, in fact, a nursery of statesmen. Three of his partners, William L. May, Baker, and Lincoln, left him in rapid succession to go to Congress, and finally the contagion gained the head of the firm, and the judge was himself the candidate of his party, when it was no longer able to elect one. After he had retired from practice, the office, under his son-in-law and successor, Milton Hay, retained its prestige for cradling public men. John M. Palmer and Shelby M. Cullom left it to be Governors of the State, and the latter to be a Congressman and Senator.]
Needing some one, however, to assist him in his practice, which was then considerable, he invited Lincoln into partnership. He had, as we have seen, formed a favorable opinion of the young Kentuckian the first time they had met. In his subsequent acquaintance with him he had come to recognize and respect his abilities, his unpretending common sense, and his innate integrity. The partnership continued about four years, but the benefit Lincoln derived from it lasted all his life. The example of Judge Logan's thrift, order, and severity of morals; his straightforward devotion to his profession; his close and careful study of his cases, together with the larger and more important range of practice to which Lincoln was introduced by this new association, confirmed all those salutary tendencies by which he had been led into the profession, and corrected those less desirable ones which he shared with most of the lawyers about him. He began for the first time to study his cases with energy and patience; to resist the tendency, almost universal at that day, to supply with florid rhetoric the attorney's deficiency in law; in short, to educate, discipline, and train the enormous faculty, hitherto latent in him, for close and severe intellectual labor. Logan, who had expected that Lincoln's chief value to him would be as a talking advocate before juries, was surprised and pleased to find his new partner rapidly becoming a lawyer. "He would study out his case and make about as much of it as anybody," said Logan, many years afterwards. "His ambition as a lawyer increased; he grew constantly. By close study of each case, as it came up, he got to be quite a formidable lawyer." The character of the man is in these words. He had vast concerns intrusted to him in the course of his life, and disposed of them one at a time as they were presented. At the end of four years the partnership was dissolved. Judge Logan took his son David--afterwards a well-known politician and lawyer of Oregon--into his office, and Lincoln opened one of his own, into which he soon invited a young, bright, and enthusiastic man named William Henry Herndon, who remained his partner as long as Lincoln lived.
The old partners continued close and intimate friends. They practiced at the same bar for twenty years, often as associates, and often as adversaries, but always with relations of mutual confidence and regard. They had the unusual honor, while they were still comparatively young men, of seeing their names indissolubly associated in the map of their State as a memorial to future ages of their friendship and their fame, in the county of Logan, of which the city of Lincoln is the county-seat.
They both prospered, each in his way. Logan rapidly gained a great reputation and accumulated an ample fortune. Lincoln, while he did not become rich, always earned a respectable livelihood, and never knew the care of poverty or debt from that time forward, His wife and he suited their style of living to their means, and were equally removed from luxury and privation. They went to live, immediately after their marriage, at a boarding-house [Footnote: This house is still standing, opposite St, Paul's church.] called "The Globe," which was "very well kept by a widow lady of the name of Beck," and there their first child was born, who was one day to be Secretary of War and Minister to England, and for whom was reserved the strange experience of standing by the death-bed of two assassinated Presidents. Lincoln afterwards built a comfortable house of wood on the corner of Eighth and Jackson streets, where he lived until he removed to the White House.
Neither his marriage nor his new professional interests, however, put an end to his participation in politics. Even that period of gloom and depression of which we have spoken, and which has been so much exaggerated by the chroniclers and the gossip of Springfield, could not have interrupted for any length of time his activity as a member of the Legislature. Only for a few days was he absent from his place in the House. On the 19th of January, 1841, John J. Hardin apologized for the delay in some committee business, alleging Mr. Lincoln's indisposition as an excuse. On the 23d the letter to Stuart was written; but on the 26th Lincoln had so far recovered his self- possession as to resume his place in the House and the leadership of his party. The journals of the next month show his constant activity and prominence in the routine business of the Legislature until it adjourned. In August, Stuart was reflected to Congress. Lincoln made his visit to Kentucky with speed, and returned to find himself generally talked of for Governor of the State. This idea did not commend itself to the judgment of himself or his friends, and accordingly we find in the "Sangamo Journal" one of those semi- official announcements so much in vogue in early Western politics, which, while disclaiming any direct inspiration from Mr. Lincoln, expressed the gratitude of his friends for the movement in his favor, but declined the nomination. "His talents and services endear him to the Whig party; but we do not believe he desires the nomination. He has already made great sacrifices in maintaining his party principles, and before his political friends ask him to make additional sacrifices, the subject should be well considered. The office of Governor, which would of necessity interfere with the practice of his profession, would poorly compensate him for the loss of four of the best years of his life."
He served this year as a member of the Whig Central Committee, and bore a prominent part in the movement set on foot at that time to check intemperance in the use of spirits. It was a movement in the name and memory of "Washington," and the orators of the cause made effective rhetorical use of its august associations. A passage from the close of a speech made by Lincoln on February 22, 1842, shows the fervor and feeling of the hour: "Washington is the mightiest name of earth--long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation. On that name no eulogy is expected. It cannot be. To add brightness to the sun or glory to the name of Washington is alike impossible. Let none attempt it. In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on."
A mass meeting of the Whigs of the district was held at Springfield on the 1st of March, 1843, for the purpose of organizing the party for the elections of the year. On this occasion Lincoln was the most prominent figure. He called the meeting to order, stated its object, and drew up the platform of principles, which embraced the orthodox Whig tenets of a protective tariff, national bank, the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, and, finally, the tardy conversion of the party to the convention system, which had been forced upon them by the example of the Democrats, who had shown them that victory could not be organized without it. Lincoln was also chairman of the committee which was charged with the address to the people, and a paragraph from this document is worth quoting, as showing the use which he made at that early day of a pregnant text which was hereafter to figure in a far more momentous connection, and exercise a powerful influence upon his career. Exhorting the Whigs to harmony, he says: "That union is strength is a truth that has been known, illustrated, and declared in various ways and forms in all ages of the world. That great fabulist and philosopher, Aesop, illustrated it by his fable of the bundle of sticks; and He whose wisdom surpasses that of all philosophers has declared that 'a house divided against itself cannot stand.'" He calls to mind the victory of 1840, the overwhelming majority gained by the Whigs that year, their ill success since, and the necessity of unity and concord that the party may make its entire strength felt.
Lincoln was at this time a candidate for the Whig nomination to Congress; but he was confronted by formidable competition. The adjoining county of Morgan was warmly devoted to one of its own citizens, John J. Hardin, a man of an unusually gallant and chivalrous strain of character; and several other counties, for reasons not worth considering, were pledged to support any one whom Morgan County presented. If Lincoln had carried Sangamon County, his strength was so great in Menard and Mason, where he was personally known, that he could have been easily nominated. But Edward D. Baker had long coveted a seat in Congress, and went into the contest against Lincoln with many points in his favor. He was of about the same age, but had resided longer in the district, had a larger personal acquaintance, and was a much readier and more pleasing speaker. In fact, there are few men who have ever lived in this country with more of the peculiar temperament of the orator than Edward Dickinson Baker, It is related of him that on one occasion when the circumstances called for a policy of reserve, he was urged by his friends to go out upon a balcony and address an impromptu audience, which was calling for him. "No," he replied, mistrusting his own fluency; "if I go out there, I will make a better speech than I want to." He was hardly capable of the severe study and care by which great parliamentary speakers are trained; but before a popular audience, and on all occasions where brilliant and effective improvisation was called for, he was almost unequaled. His funeral oration over the dead body of Senator Broderick in California, his thrilling and inspiriting appeal in Union Square, New York, at the great meeting of April, 1861, and his reply to Breckinridge in the Senate delivered upon the impulse of the moment, conceived as he listened to the Kentuckian's peroration, leaning against the doorway of the Chamber in full uniform, booted and spurred, as he had ridden into Washington from the camp, are among the most remarkable specimens of absolutely unstudied and thrilling eloquence which our annals contain. He was also a man of extremely prepossessing appearance. Born in England of poor yet educated parents, and brought as a child to this country, his good looks and brightness had early attracted the attention of prominent gentlemen in Illinois, especially of Governor Edwards, who had made much of him and assisted him to a good education. He had met with considerable success as a lawyer, though he always relied rather upon his eloquence than his law, and there were few juries which could resist the force and fury of his speech, and not many lawyers could keep their equanimity in the face of his witty persiflage and savage sarcasm. When to all this is added a genuine love of every species of combat, physical and moral, we may understand the name Charles Sumner--paraphrasing a well-known epigram--applied to him in the Senate, after his heroic death at Ball's Bluff, "the Prince Rupert of battle and debate."
If Baker had relied upon his own unquestionable merits he would have been reasonably sure of succeeding in a community so well acquainted with him as Sangamon County. But to make assurance doubly sure his friends resorted to tactics which Lincoln, the most magnanimous and placable of men, thought rather unfair. Baker and his wife belonged to that numerous and powerful sect which has several times played an important part in Western politics--the Disciples. They all supported him energetically, and used as arguments against Lincoln that his wife was a Presbyterian, that most of her family were Episcopalians, that Lincoln himself belonged to no church, and that he had been suspected of deism, and, finally, that he was the candidate of the aristocracy. This last charge so amazed Lincoln that he was unable to frame any satisfactory answer to it. The memory of his flat-boating days, of his illiterate youth, even of his deer-skin breeches shrunken by rain and exposure, appeared to have no power against this unexpected and baleful charge. When the county convention met, the delegates to the district convention were instructed to cast the vote of Sangamon for Baker. It showed the confidence of the convention in the imperturbable good-nature of the defeated candidate that they elected him a delegate to the Congressional convention charged with the cause of his successful rival. In a letter to Speed, he humorously refers to his situation as that of a rejected suitor who is asked to act as groomsman at the wedding of his sweetheart.
It soon became evident that Baker could not get strength enough outside of the county to nominate him. Lincoln in a letter to Speed, written in May, said: "In relation to our Congress matter here, you were right in supposing I would support the nominee. Neither Baker nor I, however, is the man, but Hardin, so far as I can judge from present appearances. We shall have no split or trouble about the matter; all will be harmony." A few days later this prediction was realized. The convention met at Pekin, and nominated Hardin with all the customary symptoms of spontaneous enthusiasm. He was elected in August, [Footnote: The opposing candidate was James A. McDougall, who was afterwards, as Senator from California, one of the most remarkable and eccentric figures in Washington life.] after a short but active canvass, in which Lincoln bore his part as usual. Hardin took his seat in December. The next year the time of holding elections was changed, and always afterwards the candidates were elected the year before vacancies were to occur. In May, 1844, therefore, Baker attained the desire of his heart by being nominated, and in August he was elected, defeating John Calhoun, while Lincoln had the laborious and honorable post of Presidential Elector.
[Illustration:   BRIG.-GEN. JAMES SHIELDS.]
It was not the first nor the last time that he acted in this capacity. The place had become his by a sort of prescription. His persuasive and convincing oratory was thought so useful to his party that every four years he was sent, in the character of electoral canvasser, to the remotest regions of the State to talk to the people in their own dialect, with their own habits of thought and feeling, in favor of the Whig candidate. The office had its especial charm for him; if beaten, as generally happened, the defeat had no personal significance; if elected, the functions of the place were discharged in one day, and the office passed from existence. But there was something more than the orator and the partisan concerned in this campaign of 1844. The whole heart of the man was enlisted in it--for the candidate was the beloved and idolized leader of the Whigs, Henry Clay. It is probable that we shall never see again in this country another such instance of the personal devotion of a party to its chieftain as that which was shown by the long and wonderful career of Mr. Clay. He became prominent in the politics of Kentucky near the close of the last century at twenty-three years of age. He was elected first to the Senate at twenty-nine. He died a Senator at seventy-five, and for the greater part of that long interval he was the most considerable personal influence in American politics. As Senator, Representative, Speaker of the House, and diplomatist, he filled the public eye for half a century, and although he twice peremptorily retired from office, and although he was the mark of the most furious partisan hatred all his days, neither his own weariness nor the malice of his enemies could ever keep him for any length of time from that commanding position for which his temperament and his nature designed him. He was beloved, respected, and served by his adherents with a single-hearted allegiance which seems impossible to the more complex life of a later generation. In 1844, it is true, he was no longer young, and his power may be said to have been on the decline. But there were circumstances connected with this his last candidacy which excited his faithful followers to a peculiar intensity of devotion. He had been, as many thought, unjustly passed over in 1840, and General Harrison, a man of greatly inferior capacity, had been preferred to him on the grounds of prudence and expediency, after three days of balloting had shown that the eloquent Kentuckian had more friends and more enemies than any other man in the republic. He had seemed to regain all his popularity by the prompt and frank support which he gave to the candidacy of Harrison; and after the President's death and the treachery of Tyler had turned the victory of the Whigs into dust and ashes, the entire party came back to Clay with passionate affection and confidence, to lead them in the desperate battle which perhaps no man could have won.