Lincoln's Ladder to the Presidency: The Eighth Judicial Circuit

12. A Little Sketch

210 12. A Little Sketch z Late in an afternoon during the special session of the McLean County Circuit Court that began in late December 1858, Jesse Fell watched Abraham Lincoln leave the Bloomington courthouse and cross the street. Fell intercepted Lincoln and invited him up the stairs to his brother Kersey’s office for a much-needed pep talk. During the Douglas campaign, Fell had traveled throughout New England and the mid-Atlantic states and observed substantial interest in Lincoln as a presidential candidate because of his strong showing against Douglas. Fell told Lincoln of this in detail, extolling the potential for his candidacy that Fell observed and characterizing Lincoln as a formidable candidate. Fell told Lincoln the people wanted to know more about him and his personal life than just his notable speeches, which had already been published around the country. Fell asked for a personal history to answer those inquiries for the eastern press. Lincoln admitted his ambition for the office but saw little chance of success, so he declined.1 The Illinois legislature convened to formalize the selection of Stephen A. Douglas as U.S. Senator on January 5. The exhilaration of the victorious Douglas forces swept over Lincoln’s hometown. Douglas’s loyal, career-long confidante and friend Charles H. Lanphier telegraphed him in Washington, D.C.: “Glory to God and the Sucker Democracy . . . town wild with excitement . . . guns, music, and whiskey rampant.”2 This contrasted sharply with the pall that hung over Lincoln forces. Henry Clay Whitney was in Springfield to keep Lincoln company on this difficult day, spending ten hours alone with Lincoln from two in the afternoon till bedtime. He describes 211 A Little Sketch Lincoln as being “gloomy, dejected, dispirited . . . radically and thoroughly depressed, so completely steeped in the bitter waters of hopeless despair.”3 However, the next day, Lincoln displayed his resilience at a meeting in the state capitol’s library. The meeting included his circuit cadre—Leonard Swett, Fell, and David Davis—as well as other supporters. The subject of the meeting was the coming presidential race and which candidate to support . The attendees skirted the issue until Lincoln brusquely and directly asked his team to consider him as that candidate, which turned the focus of the meeting back to Lincoln and strategies to advance his candidacy. Thus began Lincoln’s quiet testing of his candidacy and his patient wait for the right time to openly make his move.4 While he spent the better part of 1859 keeping himself a prominent figure without appearing to be a candidate, Lincoln also carefully and adroitly continued to mold the Illinois Republican Party and to keep it together. The contentious threads had to be held together but not so close as to rub and fray each other: the Free Soilers versus the abolitionists, antislavery Germans versus the nativists, former Know-Nothings and the old Whigs versus the former Democrats, each suspicious of the other. Lincoln understood the need to keep all of these elements supportive. The Republican Party in Chicago continued to grow in significance as the population of the city expanded. The bitter struggle within the Chicago party between former Democrat Norman Judd and former Whigs, the slippery John Wentworth and rival Charles Wilson, created a difficult situation. Judd’s friendship was a constant burden to Lincoln due to the continuing rumors of his disloyalty to Lincoln and his mismanagement in directing the campaign against Douglas.5 It took a deft touch on Lincoln’s part to maintain the unity of this alliance. Throughout, he gained strength from his team of Eighth Circuit friends whose principal motivation was personal loyalty to their longtime leader. In early 1859, Lincoln had to also deal with Douglas’s appeal during the senatorial campaign to certain elements of the Republican Party because of his split with the almost treasonous Buchanan administration. On March 1, Lincoln and Swett appeared jointly in Chicago speaking against the Douglas flirtation, one of his few political appearances early in the year.6 Throughout the year, Lincoln carefully juggled his somewhat competing professional and political lives. He became more selective in choosing his speaking engagements. He attended the spring sessions of the Eighth 212 Climbing the Ladder Judicial Circuit, appearing in court in Sangamon, DeWitt, Logan, McLean, and Champaign Counties. His strategy was to stay visible, which traveling the circuit allowed him to do. Another way was the...