Lincoln Revisited: New Insights from the Lincoln Forum

3. Lincoln, Douglas, and Popular Sovereignty: The Mormon Dimension

CHAPTER 3 Lincoln, Douglas, and Popular Sovereignty: The Mormon Dimension John Y. Simon The famed 1858 debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas centered on Douglas’s strident defense of popular sovereignty. Douglas defended the right of citizens of Kansas Territory to vote slavery ‘‘up or down’’ while Lincoln insisted that the Missouri Compromise of 1820 had already settled the issue. To Lincoln, popular sovereignty jeopardized the intent of the founders to place slavery ‘‘in the course of ultimate extinction.’’ Throughout the debates, Lincoln refrained from mentioning Utah Territory, where settlers employed popular sovereignty to maintain a theocracy despised by others. Yet, on the Mormon issue, Douglas was especially vulnerable. In the previous year, President James Buchanan had sent an expedition of 2,500 men to enforce federal authority in Utah. This army established a permanent base some thirty miles from Salt Lake City. Founded in upstate New York in 1830, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, popularly called the Mormons by themselves and others, had established a center at Kirtland, Ohio, and later moved to locations in western Missouri. Founded by Joseph 46 John Y. Simon Smith through revelation, the Mormons followed his leadership in all matters religious and secular. An alien presence everywhere, the Mormons clashed with their neighbors. Governor Lilburn Boggs of Missouri finally declared that the Mormons ‘‘must be treated as enemies and must be exterminated or driven from the state, . . .’’1 In 1839, the Mormons began to settle in Hancock County, Illinois, where they started to erect a capital city at Nauvoo. Illinois Whigs and Democrats courted Mormon votes. Douglas , a young, ambitious Democrat, proved most successful. He had come to Illinois at the age of twenty and, after a brief stint as schoolmaster, had embraced law and politics. Elected to the state legislature in 1836, he joined young Lincoln, then in his second term, and ran for Congress in 1837, losing by only a few votes to Lincoln’s law partner John T. Stuart. Elected in 1840 as Illinois secretary of state, he left that office almost immediately to accept an appointment to the Illinois Supreme Court. His circuit included Hancock County.2 Douglas had already courted the political favor of the Mormons, despite their distaste for Democrats. They resented President Martin Van Buren, who had ignored their plight, and Governor Boggs, their persecutor. As a member of the legislature and as a state official , Douglas had been influential in securing a special charter for Nauvoo that provided broad powers of self-government, in establishing the Nauvoo Legion (that gave extensive military force to local government), and in fostering the appointment of Mormon leaders to positions in local government. Left behind from the Missouri years were various indictments, and Justice Douglas twice blocked the extradition of Joseph Smith, acts that Smith remembered gratefully.3 When Mormons voted the Whig presidential ticket in 1840, 200 Mormons struck Lincoln’s name as elector, a development charged to Douglas’s influence.4 Nonetheless, Lincoln voted for legislative acts authorizing Mormon autonomy and pointedly congratulated John C. Bennett, their leading lobbyist. The Mormon Dimension 47 Within two years, Douglas had achieved an alliance with the Mormons. Smith declared Douglas ‘‘a Master Spirit, and his friends are our friends—we are willing to cast our banners on the air, and fight by his side in the cause of humanity, and equal rights—the cause of liberty and the law.’’5 Yet Smith still had reservations, warning Douglas that ‘‘if ever you turn your hand against me or the Latter-Day Saints you will feel the hand of the Almighty upon you.’’ As for threats, Smith intoned ‘‘I prophesy in the name of the Lord God of Israel, unless the United States redress the wrongs committed upon the Saints . . . in a few years the government will be utterly overthrown and wasted, . . .’’6 In 1842, Democrat Thomas Ford won election as governor with enthusiastic support from Mormon voters. By this time Nauvoo had an estimated population of 12,000, while Chicago had fewer than 4,500, Springfield 2,500, and no other Illinois city more. Since Mormon voters invariably voted as Joseph Smith wished, their political impact exceeded these numbers. In 1843, at a public meeting in Nauvoo, Hyrum Smith raised his arms and proclaimed, ‘‘Thus saith the Lord, those that vote this ticket . . . this Democratic ticket, shall be blessed...