Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era

2. The 1850s and Lincoln's Friends in Oregon

21 Chapter 2: The 1850s and Lincoln’s Friends in Oregon A braham Lincoln wobbled between satisfaction and disappointment . In the midst of his uncertainty, he wrote on 19 November 1858 to Dr. Anson Henry, his former personal physician and Whig crony, now living in Oregon. In referring to his just completed tangle with Stephen Douglas for his senate seat, Lincoln indicated that he was “glad” he had “made the late race” against Illinois’s senior senator. The dramatic contest, including the thunderous LincolnDouglas debates, allowed Lincoln “a hearing on the great and durable question of the age, which I could have had in no other way.” Further, Lincoln was convinced that he had “made some marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty long after I am gone.”1 But in the aftermath of his recent loss to Douglas, as revealed in the informal returns early in November, Lincoln also had to admit defeat to his political doctor in Oregon. Lincoln thought he would probably “sink out of view, and shall be forgotten.” Lincoln had “wished” for “but did not much expect a better result.”2 A few weeks later Henry replied, disagreeing with Lincoln’s gloomy prediction. “You have not ‘sunk out of sight’ as you seem to anticipate, no[r] will you be forgotten,” Lincoln’s supportive friend in Oregon told him. In fact, the doctor prophesied, “the people—the great & glorious People, will bear you on their memories until the time comes for putting you in possession of their House at Washington.”3 After attempting to dissuade Lincoln of his defeated spirit, Dr. Henry turned to Oregon politics. As Oregon was officially becoming a state (February-March 1859), its political parties were in disarray. Henry admitted his inclination to sublimate his Republican loyalties so as to Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era 22 bundle with the free-state Democrats, “who are right on the question of Slavery and the Dred Scott discussion.” Such a pragmatic union, Henry told Lincoln, “will secure a free constitution for Oregon beyond all question.” Rather than push for the narrowest of Republican stances, the good doctor was willing to work with Democratic leaders like Asahel Bush, the energetic editor of the Oregon Statesman, to secure a “free Constitution.” To do otherwise, Henry continued, would be to “give hope & encouragement to an unscrupulous Pro Slavery Organization, where all former party distinctions & principles are made to yield to the great [‘]Alpha and Omega’ of slavery.”4 (The willingness of other Republicans to “fuse” with antislavery Democrats worried Lincoln in the run-up to the presidency in 1860.) The contents of these exchanged letters between Lincoln and Dr. Henry in 1858-59 illustrate how much national political issues involving Lincoln had rolled into the distant Oregon Country. Lincoln was gratified that, even though he had lost his bid for Douglas’s seat in the Senate, he had been able, in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, to show his clear, unending opposition to the extension of slavery into the West. His position would provide an important rallying point against his better-known opponent’s willingness, through popular sovereignty, to allow the serpent of slavery to wriggle into and poison the West. The growing slavery controversy, with fiery emotional support and criticism of the peculiar institution, rearranged politics nationally in the 1850s, destroying much of the political turf on which Lincoln had stood for more than twenty years. He was forced, reluctantly, to join the Republican Party in the 1850s because the brouhaha over slavery had destroyed his Whig Party. In Illinois, Lincoln, a devout former Whig, had to find new political bedfellows to help him increasingly oppose slavery. Similar disruptions roiled Oregon politics in the 1850s. The Democrats clearly ruled, but controversies over slavery—and political stances about it—were beginning to divide the party and open space for an expanding slavery contingent, including the Republicans. Like Lincoln, Oregonians could not avoid the divisive issue of slavery and the contingent issue of race, even though both were hesitant to deal with racial politics. Lincoln and the Oregon Country wrestled with several similar issues in the 1850s. These parallels were magnified as four of Lincoln’s close THE 1850s AND LINCOLN’S FRIENDS IN OREGON 23 friends moved to Oregon between 1849 and 1860. David Logan, Dr. Anson G. Henry, Simeon Francis, and Edward D. Baker all left Illinois...