Lincoln's Campaign Biographies

2. Constructing the Ideal Candidate: Campaign Biographies and Image Making

23 c h a p t e r t w o Constructing the Ideal Candidate: Campaign Biogr aphies and Image Making Jesse W. Fell, a lawyer and politician from Bloomington, Illinois, had by 1858 known Abraham Lincoln for more than twenty years. Like his friend Lincoln, Fell originally was a Whig in the Henry Clay mold before joining the Republican Party in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska firestorm. Impressed with Lincoln’s performance in the 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Fell was convinced, as were a growing number of Illinois Republicans, that the tall Springfield lawyer’s future was on the national political stage. “Seriously, Lincoln,” Fell informed his fellow Republican, “Your discussion with Judge Douglas has demonstrated your ability and your devotion to freedom; you have no embarrassing record; you have sprung from the humble walks of life, sharing in its toils and trials; and if only we can get these facts sufficiently before the people, depend on it, there is a chance for you.” Fell, willing to assist in disseminating the Lincoln story, asked his friend for an autobiographical narrative . After initially turning down Fell’s request, Lincoln eventually complied a year later, sending a brief sketch of 606 words, explaining that “There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me.”1 Lincoln made it clear to Fell that the sketch “must not appear to have been written by myself,” an understandable request by a politician wanting to convey an appearance of disinterest in popularity 24 | Constructing the Ideal Candidate and in seeking office. He also asked Fell that if anything “be made” of the autobiography, “I wish it to be modest, and not go beyond the materials. If it were thought necessary to incorporate any thing from any of my speeches, I suppose there would be no objection.” This request was ignored, for if there was anything “to be made” of Lincoln’s scanty, unadorned, and uninspired sketch, it would require some degree of embellishment on Fell’s part. Fell, a native Pennsylvanian who understood the importance of that state in the upcoming presidential election, sent Lincoln’s autobiographical piece on to his friend Joseph J. Lewis, a Republican activist in West Chester, Pennsylvania , so that the latter could circulate the Lincoln story among the party faithful. Lewis rewrote and enhanced Lincoln’s sparse sketch in order to make it appealing, especially to his fellow Pennsylvanians . Nearly three thousand words in length, Lewis’s biography of Lincoln was published in the Chester County Times on February 11, 1860, subsequently reprinted in other Republican newspapers, and served as the basis of the first biographical accounts of Lincoln after he won the Republican nomination for president in Chicago in May of that year.2 Lewis’s account touted Lincoln as a superb debater and orator, a successful lawyer whose courtroom arguments “were masterpieces of logical reasoning,” a strong advocate of a protective tariff, and as one of the “first to join in the formation of the Republican party.” While Lincoln would not have disputed any of these statements, he did not include them in his sketch. In fact, he ended his autobiographical sketch in 1854, with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, passing over his recent political activities, including his famous debates with Douglas because they were “pretty well known.” What is notable about both Lincoln’s and Lewis’s versions is the absence of key elements of the Lincoln image that would be crafted and promoted by the Republican Party and by commercial publishers in the 1860 presidential campaign. Lewis’s biography first appeared several months before the Illinois Republican convention, which gave birth to the rail-splitter image that was merged with Lincoln’s reputation for honesty.3 After receiving the Republican nomination for president, Lincoln composed a longer autobiographical account Constructing the Ideal Candidate | 25 that reflected not only his enhanced political stature but a political landscape that had changed dramatically since he sent Fell his brief autobiography more than a year before. As will be shown in the next chapter, Lincoln’s second autobiographical account also would be embellished by others, but this time it would be molded into a carefully crafted image that conformed to a formula established by presidential campaign biographies published over the previous thirty-six years. Emerging from the Republican convention as his party’s nominee for president...