Mrs. Abraham Lincoln: A Study of Her Personality and Her Influence on Lincoln

10. The Help and Harm of Politics

CHAPTER TEN The Help and Harm of Politics He that leadeth i1zto captivity shall go into captivity; he t/~at killet/~ with the sword must be killed with the sword. - REVELATION xiii, 10 It were good, therefore, that 11tt!1t itt tlMir itmo'llatiom would follow the example of time itself, which i11deed innovatetl? greatly, but quietly and by degrees scarcely to be perceived. - FRANCIS BACON CHAPTER TEN The Help and Harm of Politics POLITICS WERE THE LADDER ON WHICH MRS. LINCOLN climbed to the summit of her ambition, and they were one of the agencies that precipitated her downfall. Lincoln 's politics, and the relation of his wife to them, are a theme worthy of more space than can be given here. The only aspects considered at any length are the effects on Mrs. Lincoln of certain political battles. Elizabeth Norris 1 gives several illustrations of Mary Todd's Whig partisanship in her youth. When she went to Springfield, she merely transferred herself from one political atmosphere into another. When Abraham Lincoln married into the influential Todd family in Springfield, his friends thought he had strengthened himself politically. Superficially considered, this did not prove to be correct. In the early forties he wrote some of his friends in New Salem that, while the people in Sangamon County had rejected him, he was happy in thinking that those who had known him longest and best - the people of New Salem and Menard County-were loyal to him. This was written twelve years after he had arrived in New Salem. Twelve years later still, he was to learn that his old section had deserted him politically, never to return - not even when he needed them so badly in r862 and r864.2 1 Bibliography, Nos, 7'2 and 73. 2 The facts as to the results of the several elections in Illinois in which Lincoln 251 POI,ITICS • • # ... .,.""., .. - - , . Considered more carefully, this charge of aristocracy which cut Abraham Lincoln so deeply as we know because he wrote of it more than once - was of service to him politically . It meant that his old Democratic and southern Illinois affiliations were breaking. Had these persisted, he would never have been President; as they dissolved, he made new ties and found new supporters in the north end of the state. These were the foundations on which his political fortune after 1856 was built. Lincoln's political experiences between 1842 and 1860 tried his mettle continuously. A man with less wisdom, shrewdness, and patience would have been eliminated very early. In the first half of the period he won but one contest , and that only by an agreement between a group of three men, that each would have a try at one term in Congress . It is true that his other contests were hopeless because he was running as a Whig in a state that always voted the Democratic ticket. Neither his successes nor his failures had particular significance for either him or his wife. In the second decade of the Springfield period Lincoln continued to lose his political battles, the state being still consistently Democratic. The great event of supreme political importance to him was the death of the Whig party and his transfer to the Republican party. Mrs. Lincoln was a better Whig, with more Whig background , than her husband. Her Lexington connections of one kind and another helped to convert him from a Whig on Illinois issues to a nationally minded Whig. In this period her political acumen prevented her husband from making two tactical mistakes of great moment. More than one biographer, basing his opinion on the events of this period, has said that Mrs. Lincoln had more political wisdom, forehad a political and personal interest were found in the following sources: T. C. Pease (Bibliography, No. 146); A. C. Cole (Bibliography, No. 43); the Daily News Almanac ; the New York Tribune Almanac. These sources supply some facts that are not matters of general information. My conclusions are based on these facts. 252 ELECTIONS, I856 TO I864 sight, and intuitive ~nowledge of men than her husband. She is credited by William H. Townsend with having contributed indirectly to most of Lincoln's interest in and knowledge of slavery, at any rate. Mrs. Lincoln went with her husband into the Republican party whole-heartedly and without reservation. Dr...