Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era

Notes

182 Notes Chapter 1 1. These pages draw on, without merely repeating, Richard W. Etulain, ed., Lincoln Looks West: From the Mississippi to the Pacific (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). A very abbreviated section of this study also appears in Etulain, “Lincoln and the Oregon Country,” Lincoln Lore 1899 (spring 2012): 12-20. 2. This discussion owes much to three books. Published eighty years apart, these volumes add considerably to our understanding of Oregon and the region’s connections to as well as differences from national happenings. See Walter C. Woodward, The Rise and Early History of Political Parties in Oregon, 1843-1868 (Portland: J. K. Gill, 1913), most of which appeared serially in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, 1911-12; Robert W. Johannsen, Frontier Politics and the Sectional Conflict: The Pacific Northwest on the Eve of the Civil War (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1955), which was reprinted later as Frontier Politics on the Eve of the Civil War (1966); and David Alan Johnson, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon, and Nevada, 1840-1890 (Berkeley: University of California, 1992). I draw on the factual material contained in the first two books and am much indebted to the insights and interpretations in Johnson’s superb volume. Little has been published about the Pacific Northwest in the Civil War era; it is a topic worthy of much additional attention. 3. Dozens of good biographies of Abraham Lincoln are available. I have relied most heavily on David Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), Ronald C. White, Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York: Random House, 2009), and Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008). An even more extensive version of Burlingame’s huge biography, with additional sources cited, is available online at the Knox College Lincoln Studies Center, www.knox. edu/lincolnstudies. For a very useful overview of Lincoln’s pre-presidential career, see William C. Harris, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007). A near-exhaustive account of Lincoln’s life before 1861 appears in Richard Lawrence Miller’s four-volume biography: Lincoln and His World (Vols. 1 and 2: Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2006, 2008; Vols. 3 and 4: Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2011, 2012). Robert Bray insightfully deals with the books Lincoln read, including those about the West, before and after 1860. See Bray, Reading with Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010). 4. Lincoln’s economic ideas are perceptively covered in Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (1978; Urbana: NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 183 University of Illinois Press, 1994). For Lincoln’s ties to Whig ideas, see Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 5. The best source for understanding Douglas’s leading role in the expansion into the American West is Robert W. Johannsen’s thorough biography, Stephen A. Douglas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973). 6. Earl Schenck Miers, Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809-1865 (1960; Dayton, OH: Morningside, 1991), 1: 8-9; February 1843, p. 200; 5 June 1845, p. 252. 7. Roy P. Basler et al., eds, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1951-1953), 1: 382 (hereafter CW). 8. Kenneth J. Winkle, The Young Eagle: The Rise of Abraham Lincoln (Dallas, TX: Taylor Trade, 2001), 202, 238. 9. Dorothy O. Johansen and Charles M. Gates, Empire of the Columbia: A History of the Pacific Northwest, 2d ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), remains the most thorough history of the region, but see also Carlos A. Schwantes, The Pacific Northwest: An Interpretive History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). 10. The numbers of emigrants coming up the Oregon Trail differ slightly in varied sources. See, for example, Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 31, and Johnson, Founding the Far West, 43. 11. Kent D. Richards, “Growth and Development of Government in the Far West: The Oregon Provisional Government, Jefferson Territory, Provisional and Territorial Nevada” (PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1966), Robert J. Loewenberg, “Creating a Provisional Government in Oregon: A Revision,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 68 (January 1977): 13-24, and Robert W. Johannsen, “Oregon Territory’s Movement for Self-Government,” Pacific Historical Review 26 (February 1957): 17-32. 12. Johansen and Gates, Empire of the Columbia, Chapters...