The Heroic and the Notorious: U.S. Senators from Illinois

6. Civil War and Reconstruction

51 ★ 6 ★Civil War and Reconstruction Throughout Lyman Trumbull’s service in the Senate, Illinois was also represented there by another person. It is timely here to give consideration to the several senators who filled that other chair. There is no better example of the impact of Civil War and slavery politics on Illinois than the combined stories of the U.S. senators who were in office from 1847 to 1876, through nearly thirty years of continuous tumult in the state and in Washington, D.C. They spanned the political landscape from frontier days through Reconstruction. Aside from Trumbull, of those serving in the Senate, Senator Stephen A. Douglas had by far the greatest impact on national and state agendas during those three decades. On the other hand, the four persons who occupied the “Douglas seat” from 1861 to 1876 reflected the years of the “Little Giant,” Abraham Lincoln, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and Civil War and Reconstruction. The four whose tenure in the Senate following Douglas occupied the second half of those thirty years are Orville H. Browning, William A. Richardson, Richard Yates, and John A. Logan. Their political roots plus those of Douglas and Lincoln go back to the state legislature of the 1830s and 1840s, when they framed opinions that shaped political discourse in Illinois throughout the Civil War and the years that followed. 52 ★ CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION That their lives and careers were intertwined for so many years and at such a critical time in the state’s history is a matter of wonder . From those state legislative times in Vandalia and then Springfield through the war years and reconstruction, they contested on the political stump, on the floor of Congress, and in head-to-head presidential elections. They carved out the enduring images of Illinois and its Civil War-time politics. While their service in the Senate ties them together, except for Lincoln, they had distinguished careers at all levels of public service and in the private practice of law. And, incredibly, their personal relationships survived, in spite of the victories, defeats, and passions of partisanship. At one time or another, each of them supported the Union in its darkest hour. Orville Hickman Browning (1861–63) Orville H. Browning made it to the U.S. Senate in spite of his longtime association with Abraham Lincoln, who failed in that endeavor in 1854 and 1858. The two had worked shoulder to shoulder through travails of the Whig Party, in opposition to the Democrats, and in the beginning of Republicanism. Browning, one of the many Kentuckians who migrated to Illinois politics, was born on February 10, 1806, in Harrison County, Kentucky. He attended college, studied law, and in 1831 moved to Quincy, Illinois, where he opened a law practice. He served in the Illinois volunteers in the Black Hawk War of 1832, as Lincoln did. Browning was elected to the state Senate in 1836 and remained there for two terms. He tried for a congressional seat in 1842 but lost to Douglas. Until Douglas’s death in 1861, Browning never won office against him or his Democratic Party faithful, despite several attempts. Running as a Whig, he tried unsuccessfully for Congress in 1850 and 1852 against Douglas loyalist William A. Richardson, who also was from Quincy. During the 1850s, Browning worked tirelessly to build the Republican Party in Illinois. This brought him in frequent close contact with Lincoln. One might assume that that contact would have put Browning at the forefront of Lincoln’s candidacy for president in 1860. Strangely, Browning did not support Lincoln for the Republican nomination, and that short-circuited a political alliance and possibly a friendship. 53 ★ Historians believe that Browning felt superior to Lincoln both politically and intellectually, and thought that since he could not be nominated for president, Lincoln should not be. While Illinois Republicans enthusiastically rallied for Lincoln, Browning supported Missourian Edward Bates for the nomination, and only reluctantly decided to support Lincoln after the nominating convention had adjourned. Upon Lincoln’s election, Browning violated one of the cardinal rules of politics when it comes to asking for favors: Do not ask if you did not support. Browning lobbied hard for a significant position in the Lincoln administration. When nothing materialized, he turned to pleading for an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. These frantic requests in correspondence were accompanied by ongoing criticism of Lincoln and...