Abraham Lincoln and the Politicians

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE POLITICIANS William B. Hesseltine THE PEOPLE, DECLABED THE I WENI Y-EICHT-YEAR-OLD LEGISLATOR, were not suffering great injuries. "No Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the alarm---- Itishe,who, by theseunholy means, is endeavoring to blowup a storm thathe may ride upon and direct. . . . This movement is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men."1 Forthe remaining halfofhis life, Abraham Lincoln clung to his opinion of politicians. Although he added the ruefully facetious remark, "I say this with the greater freedom because, being a poUtician myself, none can regard it as personal,"he mainly reserved the term for his opponents , and especially for Democrats. "If the politicians and leaders of parties were as true as the people, there would be little fear," he told a crowd in Lawrenceburg, Indiana on his fifty-second birthday, and three dayslater,inPittsburgh,heexplained in words reminiscent ofhis speech in the IlUnois legislature ". . . there is no crisis, except such a one as may be gotten up at any time by designing poUticians."* "You are quite a female poUtician," he told Jesse Fremont when she irritated him by explaining the effect her husband's emancipation order would have on British sentiment.3 "May I inquire how long it took you and the New Yorkpoliticians to concoctthat paper?"he asked a group ofTennesseans Df. Hesselttne isone ofthe most well-known andrespected Lincoln scholars in the world. His more recent works include: Lincoln's Plan of Reconstruction and Three Against Lincoln: Murat Hulstead Reports the Caucuses of 1860. This article was one offour addresses deliveredat the ThirdAnnual CwQ, War Conference, sponsored by Gettysburg College, November 19-21, 1959. ? Roy P. Basler, ed., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln ( New Brunswick, 1953 ), 1,65-ßß.» Ibid., TV, 197, 211. 3 AUen Nevins, The War for the Union (New York, 1959), I, 338, 428. 43 44WILLI A M B. HESSELTINE who protested against Andrew Johnson's arrangements for the election of 1864.·· Yet, however low his opinion of politicians, Abraham Lincoln took an active interest in the minutiae of poUtics. Formally he could advise a Young Man's Lyceum tolet"reverencefor thelaws . . . become the political religion of the nation," whüe from the elevated post of congressman he could instruct young Billy Hemdon on forming a "Rough and Ready Club.""Take in everybody you can get . . . gather up all the shrewd wild boys about town. . . . Let everyone play the part he can play best—some speak, some sing, and all hollow."5 He added example to precept. He attended meetings, and, with more talent for speaking than for singing, he spoke on every occasion. He carefully surveyed the prospects of the Whigs in each electoral campaign, and once stood for election to the legislature only to resign upon winning. "I only aUowed myseU to be elected," he explained, "because it was thought my doing so would help [Richard] Yates."8 He understood the necessity for preparing careful lists ofvoters and organizing them—and even for "working so quiet that the adversary shall not be notified." As for money, its use, "in the main," was wrong—"but for certain objects, in a political contest, the use of some, is both right and indispensable." So saying, he promised one hundred doUars to a prospective delegate to the Chicago Wigwam.7 With so intimate a knowledge of the precepts and practice of politics, Lincoln found it easy, as president-elect, to deal with such experienced political engineers as Thurlow Weed and Simon Cameron. He was fully, even keenly, aware of the role of patronage in building and maintaining a poUtical party. When rumor reached Illinois in 1849 that Zachary Taylor was about to appoint Justin Butterfield as Commissioner of the General Land Office, Lincoln raised a hue and cry and wrote vigorously to leading Whigs to bring pressure on the president. Butterfield's appointment, he assured them, would be an "egregious poUtical blunder." It would "dissatisfy, rather than gratify," the...