Abraham Lincoln

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Actions on Slavery

The extension of slavery into the territories was an important question during Lincoln's term in Congress. He supported the Wilmot Proviso, which proposed that slavery be prohibited in any territory acquired from Mexico. Lincoln also put forward a program for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. Although Lincoln's proposal never came up before Congress, it exemplified his opposition to slavery and the moderate means by which he wanted to achieve abolition. The proposal called for the emancipation of children born into slavery after January 1, 1850. These children would be placed in apprenticeship programs to learn a trade. The emancipation of other slaves would be voluntary, and the slaveholders would be compensated for their loss. Finally, the voters of Washington would have to approve the plan before it went into effect. Lincoln believed that Congress did not have the power to abolish slavery in the individual states. But where Congress did have the power, as in Washington, and where the electorate was agreeable, Lincoln thought it should abolish slavery.

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Whig Politics

In the presidential election of 1848, Lincoln decided to back the popular war hero Zachary Taylor, rather than his idol Henry Clay, for the Whig nomination. Lincoln's reasons were wholly practical. “Mr. Clay's chance for an election is just no chance at all,” he wrote. “In my judgment we can elect nobody but General Taylor.” Lincoln campaigned for Taylor in Massachusetts and Illinois. Taylor won the election, but much to Lincoln's disappointment, the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Lewis Cass of Michigan, carried Illinois.

Lincoln wanted to run for a second term in Congress, but it was traditional that the Whig candidate from the Seventh Congressional District in Illinois serve only one term. Further, Lincoln's antiwar position made him unpopular at home, and his former law partner Stephen Logan, running on Lincoln's record, was defeated. Lincoln discovered that the incoming Whig administration had little use for his services. He was offered nothing better than the governorship of far-off Oregon Territory. Lincoln rejected the appointment, and, thoroughly dejected and believing that his political career was over, returned to Springfield to renew his practice of law.

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Return to Law Practice

Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, had kept the firm going while Lincoln was in Congress. Now the two men built up their practice until it was one of the largest in Illinois. As senior partner, Lincoln made frequent appearances before the federal court in Chicago and the state supreme court in Springfield. He also continued to ride the circuit for six months each year. From the fall term of 1849 to the fall term of 1860 he missed only two sessions on the circuit, a record no other lawyer matched.

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Riding the circuit was an important, if unspectacular, stage in Lincoln's development from partisan politician to statesman. The long solitary journeys between county seats, first by horse or buggy and then by train, gave him opportunity for quiet thought. He reread Shakespeare, and for mental discipline he studied Euclidean mathematics. Politics, national affairs, and abstract ideas occupied his mind. Lincoln also enjoyed the companionship of the other lawyers and of circuit judge David Davis, whom he later appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. The migratory life of the circuit lawyer also enabled Lincoln to renew old acquaintances and make new ones.

Because he did not always have enough time to prepare an adequate case in the circuit courts, Lincoln often had to depend on his natural shrewdness and oratorical ability to sway a jury. His most celebrated circuit case was his defense of Duff Armstrong, the son of his New Salem friend Jack Armstrong, on a murder charge. When a witness testified that bright moonlight had enabled him to see Duff commit the murder, Lincoln produced an almanac and proved that the moon had not been shining brightly at the time. In summing up the case, Lincoln described with great emotion his friendship with the boy's father. The jury voted for acquittal.

Lincoln soon became one of the most respected lawyers in the state. The briefs he presented before the more formal state and federal courts were carefully documented and marked by unassailable logic. Lincoln argued many important cases. He often represented the interests of the growing corporations in Illinois. In Illinois Central Railroad v. County of McLean he successfully pleaded that a county could not tax a railroad. In another important case, Hurd v. Rock Island Bridge Company, he argued that a railroad had the right to build a bridge across a stream used for navigation. Despite his prominence as a lawyer, however, Lincoln was careless about his dress, and he sometimes carried important papers inside his battered stovepipe hat.

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Antislavery Leader

Lincoln was losing interest in politics when, in 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The act aroused Lincoln, in his words, “as he had never been before.” The act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, and stated that each territory could be admitted as a state “with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission.” The author of the act, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the leading Democrat of Illinois, called this program popular sovereignty because it allowed the voters in these territories to decide for themselves whether slavery would be allowed. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the old dividing line between free and slave states as set by the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, a new Lincoln emerged into the world of politics. Although he was as ambitious for political office as ever, he was now, for the first time in his career, devoted to a cause. He became a forceful spokesman for the antislavery forces.

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Early Contest with Douglas

In 1854 Lincoln campaigned for the election to Congress of Richard Yates, an antislavery Whig, on a platform of opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. However, Lincoln was after bigger game. His target was none other than Douglas himself, whose nickname was “The Little Giant.”

In October 1854, Douglas came to Springfield to defend the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After Douglas spoke, Lincoln mounted the speaker's platform and announced that he would answer Douglas's speech the next night. For days, Lincoln had haunted the state library, read congressional documents, and organized his arguments against slavery. The next night, in his shirtsleeves and without a collar or tie, Lincoln spoke. Attacking the Kansas-Nebraska Act itself, he said: “The Missouri Compromise forbade slavery to go north of 36°30'. Our government breaks down that restriction and opens the door for slavery to enter where it could not go. This is practically legislating for slavery, recognizing it, extending it.”

Douglas had spoken of slavery only as a political issue. The morality of the institution did not concern him. To Lincoln, however, slavery was both a political and a moral issue. “It is said,” Lincoln continued, “that the slaveholder has the same political right to take his Negroes to Kansas that a freeman has to take his hogs or his horses. This would be true if Negroes were property in the same sense that hogs and horses are. But is this the case? It is notoriously not so.”

To Lincoln, slavery was incompatible with American democracy. “When the white man governs himself,” he said, “that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another man—that is despotism. If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal,’ and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of another.”

Lincoln avoided abolitionist doctrine, taking the view that slavery was a national problem, not merely a Southern one. “I think,” he went on, “I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate, yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon ....It does seem to me that some system of gradual emancipation might be adopted, but for their tardiness in this, I will not undertake to judge our brethren of the South.” Lincoln repeated this speech in Peoria, Illinois, 12 days later. It has become known as his Peoria speech.

Despite his new role as a spokesman for the antislavery forces in Illinois, Lincoln declined to join the Republican Party, then being formed on an abolition platform. The Whig Party was in rapid decline, but Lincoln remained with it until its death. In 1855 he was the Whig candidate for the U.S. Senate, the upper chamber of Congress. U.S. senators were then elected by the state legislatures. Lincoln led for seven ballots. Then, seeing that he could not win, he threw his support to an anti-Douglas Democrat, Lyman Trumbull, who was elected.

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