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THE INFLUENCE OF ILLINOIS IN 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D., LL. D. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL 
 SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR 1921 
 
 (78186-225) 
 
THE INFLUENCE OF ILLINOIS IN 
 
 THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM E. BARTON. D. D., LL. D. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL 
 SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR 1921 
 
.Bay 
 
 .3 ' 
 
 73186—225—1922 
 
 Anthor 
 il2 2i628 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
THE INFLUENCE OP ILLINOIS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OP 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 By William E. Barton, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 Lincoln and Illinois were twin-born. Abraham Lincoln first saw 
 light on Sunda}', February 11, 1809. Nine days before his birth, Illi- 
 nois, by Act of Congress, began its autonomous existence as a territory. 
 The future commonwealth and its most illustrious citizen began life 
 together, both unconscious of the influence which each was to exert 
 upon the destiny of the other. 
 
 The first seven years of Lincoln's life were spent in Kentucky, and 
 twice seven years following were spent in Indiana. Both of those 
 States did well by him ; but when he came to his twenty-first year, 
 Illinois, his own State, beckoned to him, and he came. He came in 
 the dawn of his young manhood, and the whole of that manhood he 
 spent as a citizen of this, his State. From the time he entered the 
 young commonwealth in the Spring of 1830, driving an ox-team 
 through the rich, deep mud of her prairies, until he left it to be inau- 
 gurated President of the United States, he lived in Illinois- Gladly 
 yielding him to the Nation, when the Nation called, Illinois still knew 
 him as her own, and believed in him and loved him ; and when his work 
 was accomplished, and crowned by his martyrdom, Illinois stood tear- 
 fully awaiting the arrival of that majestic funeral train that wound 
 its way westward through many cities from the Nation's capitol, and 
 received back again into the heart of her soil the precious dust of her 
 own Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 It should be an interesting and profitable inquiry, what influence 
 had Illinois upon Abraham Lincoln? Did she help or hinder in his 
 development? Might it have been as well for him and the State had 
 he lived otherwhere? These are legitimate questions, and not unprofit- 
 able ; the more so because I do not find that they have been answered, 
 or even very seriously asked. Among the biographers of Lincoln, no 
 one. I think, traced his life so lovingly in its relation to that of his 
 State, as Hon. Isaac N. Arnold. He approached the possibility of 
 considering this question, but did not pursue the inquiry far, nor did 
 he, apparently, arrive at a convincing answer. He said : 
 
 "When, in 1830, Lincoln became a citizen of Illinois, this great common- 
 wealth, now the third or fourth state in the Union, and treading fast upon 
 the heels of Ohio and Pennsylvania, was on the frontier with a population a 
 little exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand. In 1860, when Lincoln was 
 elected President, it had nearly two millions, and was rapidly becoming the 
 center of the Republic. Perhaps he was fortunate in selecting Illinois as 
 his home." — Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 29. 
 
Mr. Arnold went on to show how central to the Union Illinois 
 had become, and he wrote of the growing importance of Illinois geo- 
 graphically, but he did not in any definite way undertake to answer 
 his question, whether it was well for Lincoln to have lived here, other 
 than with a judicial qualification. "Perhaps he was fortunate in select- 
 ing Illinois as his home." 
 
 It seems to me that the time has come for a more positive answer. 
 I believe that Lincoln would have been a great man if he had lived 
 in another State, but that Illinois contributed to his making some ele- 
 ments which were of particular significance, and which may have been 
 indispensable to his preparation for the particular work to which God 
 and the Nation called him. 
 
 Two Theories of the Origin of Great Men. 
 
 There are two opposing theories of the origin of great men. One 
 of them, derived from Buckle and his school, attempts to account for 
 all men, both individually and racially, by their environment, and by 
 the conditions of the times in which they live. The other, of whose 
 conviction Carlyle is the indignant spokesman*, explains not the man 
 by his times, but his times by the man. Emerson agreed with Carlyle, 
 and went even farther. Emerson would seem to say that the Atlantic 
 Ocean was there because nothing smaller would have answered the 
 purposes of Columbus. Columbus needed a large earth and a round 
 earth and a wide ocean to express what was inherent in himself. The 
 world and all external conditions are to be explained by the man, and 
 not the man by his world. 
 
 Something of this latter theory must be held as to genius. It has 
 its own laws. It produces its great exponents in manner and form 
 which cannot be predicted- It is impossible to explain Robert Burns 
 without Scotland, but Scotland alone does not explain Burns. Scot- 
 land has been on the map for a long time, and still there is but one 
 Robert Burns. Henry Ward Beecher stood at the foot of his class 
 in Amherst College. Since his day many men in Amherst College 
 
 * Thus, with hot indignation, did Carlyle reply to the theory that great men are 
 the product of their time and only that: "I am well aware that In their days hero- 
 worship, the thing I call hero-worship, professes to have gone out and finally ceased. 
 This, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age 
 that as it were denies the existence of great men ; denies the desirability of great men. 
 Show our critics a great man, a Luther, for example, they begin to what they call 
 'account' for him ; not to worship him, but to take the dimensions of him and bring 
 him our to be a little kind of man ! He was the 'creature of the time,' they say ; the 
 time called him forth, the time did everything, he nothing — but whatever the little critic 
 could have done, too ! This seems to me but melancholy work. The time call forth ? 
 Alas, we have known times call loudly enough for their great man, but could not find 
 him when he was called ! He was not there ; Providence had not sent him ; the time 
 calling its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not 
 come when called. 
 
 "For if we will think of it, no time need have gone to ruin could It have found 
 a man great enough, n man wise and good enough ; wishing to discern truly what the 
 times wanted, valor to lead it on the riplit road thither; these are the salvation of 
 any time. But I liken common languid times, with their unbelief, distress, per- 
 plexity, with their languid doubting characters and emltarrassod circumstances im- 
 potently crumbling — down into ever worse distress toward final ruin — all this I 
 liken to dry, dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of heaven that should kindle it. 
 The groat man, with his free force out of God's own hand, is the lightning. The 
 dry, mouldering sticks are supposed to have called bim forth ! They are critics of 
 small vision, I think, who cry: 'See is it not the sticks that make the fire?' No sadder 
 proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." — 
 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, Chapter 1, pp. 14-15. 
 
have stood at the foot of the class, and it is not known that that envi- 
 ronment has produced any more Beechers. Socrates was the product 
 of the hfe and spirit of Athens; but Athens has long since given up 
 the expectation of producing by wholesale and as the product of Athe- 
 nian environment men of Socratic mind. Of each of these men we 
 must say that Drinkwater says first of other great leaders and then of 
 Lincoln, "He was the lord of his event." 
 
 But no great man can be understood entirely apart from his envi- 
 ronment, and if he could, it would be unfair both to him and to his 
 environment thus to attempt to interpret him. 
 
 Lincoln would have been a great man in almost any environment. 
 But Gray is not the only man who has had occasion to moralize con- 
 cerning the "mute inglorious A'liltons" or the Cromwells guiltless of 
 their country's blood, and guiltless of anything else good or bad enough 
 to be mentioned, who lived and died in environments unsuited to their 
 development. 
 
 If Lincoln Had Lived in Another State. 
 
 Illinois has a right to remind herself of those elements in the 
 character of Lincoln which were, we will not say produced or created, 
 but developed, by his Illinois environment. 
 
 Lincoln was born in the very heart of Kentucky. It was the claim 
 of the La Rue County when its representatives asked to be severed 
 from Hardin and to become a separate county, that La Rue County, as 
 measured from east to west, and from the northermost point in the 
 State direct to the southern boundary, was the precise geographical 
 center of the State. Its centrality gave rise to some semi-burlesque 
 oratory at the time, and this probably suggested to Proctor Knott a 
 portion of his noted speech which many years later did so much for 
 Duluth, and relieved the solemn tedium of the United States House 
 of Representatives with a hearty laugh. 
 
 It is conceivable that Lincoln might have lived and died in Ken- 
 tucky. If so, it is not certain that he would have lived and died un- 
 known. Men from his own county rose to distinction, and he might 
 have done so. But it is certain that he would not there have lived in 
 an environment such as evoked in him those qualities that made him 
 President- 
 Indiana has its honorable place in the development of Lincoln. 
 We cannot spare the record of those years of frontier life, nor of 
 its proximity to that highway of traffic and thought, the Ohio River. 
 Lincoln's life-long interest in river navigation was prompted by his 
 experience in Indiana. His strong convictions on the slavery question 
 were influenced in no unimportant degree by his voyage to New 
 Orleans and his visit to the slave-market. Even if we discount the 
 statement of John Hanks that Lincoln then declared that if he had an 
 opportunity to "hit that institution" he would hit it hard, we know from 
 Lincoln himself that the sight of slaves, chained and sold, aroused in 
 him emotions of enduring significance; and this we must credit in no 
 small part to his life in Indiana. 
 
The Notable Influence of a Short Migration. 
 
 I have sometimes ventured to wonder what would have happened 
 to the Lincoln family had Thomas Lincoln continued to live in the 
 home on Nolin Creek where Abraham Lincoln was born until the 
 time when the Lincoln family left Kentucky. He would not have 
 sailed down the same stream. It might never have occurred to Thomas 
 Lincoln to sail down the river at all, for the distance by Nolin Creek 
 and Green River is several times as great.* By crossing Muldraugh's 
 Hill and living on Knob Creek he was within much shorter distance 
 of the Ohio River, and he reached it by an entirely different route. 
 Had he continued to live on the Nolin Creek farm, and had he taken 
 his long voyage from there, he would have landed much farther down 
 the Ohio, at a point where the confluence of the rivers had already 
 caused considerable settlements to be made. It is quite possible that 
 he might have floated on as far as the shores of Missouri before finding 
 land as convenient and as remote from settlement as he found in 
 Spencer County, Indiana. 
 
 If Lincoln had grown up in Hardin County, Kentucky, he might 
 have received as good an education as he received in Spencer County, 
 Indiana; have studied law and been admitted to the bar; have traveled 
 the circuit and entered political life, and possibly have been elected 
 to Congress. But it is hardly conceivable that Kentucky alone could 
 have made him the man that he was when he left Illinois. 
 
 Had the Lincoln famil}^ remained in Spencer County, Indiana, 
 Lincoln's most feasible avenue out into life was by way of the Ohio 
 river. That might have given him valuable contacts with life farther 
 south, and have widened his influence and made him a man of note 
 in some southern State. But that would not have done for him what 
 was done for him in Illinois. 
 
 Had the Lincoln family landed farther down the Ohio and made 
 their home, as Daniel Boone did toward the end of his life, and as many 
 other Kentuckians of Lincoln's day were doing, near the Mississ- 
 ippi river and within the borders of the State of Missouri, it is hardly 
 possible that he would have found there the environment which would 
 have made him what he became. 
 
 Social conditions in rural Kentucky, Missouri and southern 
 Indiana were not notably different from those in the portion of Illinois 
 where Lincoln made his home ; but Lincoln found at New Salem and 
 
 * In response to my request, the Director of the United States Geological Survey 
 furnishes ino this information : 
 
 Prom Knob Creek by way of Rolling Fork and Salt River, the flat boat of Thomas 
 Lincoln floated 42 miles to the Ohio, and then, assuming that he landed at the point 
 in Spencer County nearest his farm, 91 miles down the Ohio to his debarcation near 
 the mouth of Anderson River. Had he embarked on Nolin River, at its point nearest 
 to the Lincoln cabin before the removal from Nolin to Knob Creek, he would have 
 floated down Nolin and Green Rivers 256 miles to reach the Ohio, and would have 
 been 46 miles, by the Oliio channel, below the mouth of Anderson River. 
 
 So far as I am aware, no one has considered the importance of this short removal 
 from one sterile farm to another in tlie same county. I intend at some future time to 
 work out more in detail the effects of the removal of the Lincoln family from Nolin 
 Creek to Knob Creek. For the present it is enough to state that it appears to me 
 that, while tlie distance was only about 15 miles, and within the same county, the 
 effect upon the life of Lincoln was very great. Had the family remained upon Nolin 
 Creek, they would not have been so likely to undertake a voyage of 2.")6 miles to the 
 Ohio; and had they done so, they would have been very likely not to locate till they 
 reached Missouri. 
 
at Springfield, and in the circuit of the Eighth Judicial District, some- 
 thing which he did not find, and to the same degree was not very 
 likely to have found, in any other place where he had lived, or was 
 likely to have lived, had he not removed to Illinois. 
 
 Remembering that wherever he lived he would have been an 
 honest and influential man, and remembering further, that, in any 
 environment which Thomas Lincoln would probably have chosen, con- 
 ditions of his life would have possessed many elements in common with 
 those which obtained in Illinois, we may move on from the realm of 
 hypothesis and inquire what as a matter of fact Illinois did for Lin- 
 coln that assisted in the development of his latent greatness- 
 
 Illinois Stimulated Lincoln's Love of Learning. 
 
 Lincoln found in Illinois conditions which pOAverfully stimulated 
 his ambition to learn. He had received valuable instruction in Indiana. 
 He had learned to read, and had developed a strong desire to read. 
 He had read the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, a History of the United 
 States, Robinson Crusoe. Weems' Life of Washington and the Stat- 
 utes of Indiana. To this excellent list he had added a few other books 
 which happened to be within reach, and so far as we know they were 
 all remarkably good books. But he himself declared that "There was 
 absolutely nothing to stimulate ambition to learn." He learned, not 
 because his environment w^as favorable, but because he had within 
 him the determination to learn. 
 
 In Illinois, Lincoln found himself in an environment which greatly 
 encouraged his love of learning. New Salem may seem to the modern 
 student a poor, squalid little village, no one of whose few houses cost 
 much more than one hundred dollars. To Lincoln it was a city. It 
 was not sufficiently metropolitan to make him feel like a stranger, but 
 it had within it and passing through it men who greatly assisted in 
 making Lincoln what he would not have been likely to become in 
 Spencer County, Indiana. There he met Mentor Graham, the school- 
 master. The "few chicken-tracks" which Lincoln was able to make 
 on paper when he arrived became a clear, strong chirography. He had 
 already written his "Chronicles of Ruben," and certain treatises on 
 Temperance and on Cruelty to x\nimals ; but the debating society of 
 New Salem encouraged him to write on many great themes, and gave 
 him an appreciative audience. 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes has reminded us that authors need a 
 "mutual admiration society" in order to do their best work. Such a 
 society, with its adjuncts of frank and robust criticism and free dis- 
 cussion, Lincoln found at New Salem. 
 
 There he studied Kirkham's Grammar under Mentor Graham, 
 There he learned the rudiments of surveying. There he obtained his 
 copy of Blackstone and read law. It was not simply that he found 
 books in slightly larger number than had been available in Indiana; 
 he found an atmosphere that encouraged him to make the largest pos- 
 sible use of books. 
 
A College Education Not Impossible. 
 
 At this time Lincoln ma)' even have considered the possibility of 
 a college education. Some of his associates at New Salem were stu- 
 dents at Illinois College. Lincoln himself became possessed of a book 
 of Greek exercises. He probably did not make large use of it ; but 
 the fact that he owned it shows us that he did not think it impossible 
 that he might learn Greek. After his removal to Springfield he engaged 
 in a short study of German. Ann Rutledge desired him to spend at 
 least one year at Illinois College, while she attended its academy. I 
 have often wondered whether a college course would have made or 
 unmade Lincoln. It might not have done either, but it is an interesting 
 question, and one which I hope sometime to give a conjectural answer, 
 whether a college course, such as Lincoln might have obtained at Illi- 
 nois College in Jacksonville, would have developed his mind and 
 character more directly toward his success in life than did his years 
 at New Salem. Lie could probably have emerged from Illinois College 
 less deeply in debt that he was when he left New Salem. Financially 
 and geographically a college course was not impossible. At present we 
 will not ask whether it would have been better for him and the world 
 had he taken it, but only remind ourselves that Lincoln in Illinois was 
 so situated that a college course was one of the possibilities. 
 
 We cannot pursue the history of Lincoln's six years at New Salem 
 intelligently and confine our study to the financial adventures of the 
 firm of Lincoln and Berry, or the vicissitudes of Denton Oflfutt or of 
 Lincoln's rough-and-tumble encounters with the Clary Grove boys. 
 Lincoln was in an environment that gave him adequate mental stimu- 
 lous and encouragement. 
 
 Illinois Favored Lincoln's Political Ambition. 
 
 Lincoln found in Illinois conditions highly favorable to his ambi- 
 tion to become a political leader. He had hardly landed from the 
 return voyage of the flat boat which had conveyed him to New Orleans 
 than he announced himself a candidate for the Legislature. The out- 
 break of the Black Hawk War, if it interrupted for a few weeks his 
 campaigning, brought him a popular election as captain, and did not 
 diminish his political ambition or his prospect of success in that field. 
 
 Had Abraham Lincoln's flat boat stuck, not on Rutledge's dam, 
 but let us say at the foot of Long Wharf, Boston, or at the Battery 
 in New York, or in Mobile or New Orleans, and had he made any one 
 of those cities his home, and there entered political life, he would not 
 have found conditions as favorable either for his immediate entry, or 
 for his prospective development, as he found in Illinois. 
 
 Illinois offered Lincoln an opportunity to enter politics almost the 
 moment he crossed the State line. After a year spent as a day laborer 
 in the vicinity of his father's home near Decatur, he made his second 
 flat-boat journey to New Orleans, and by good fortune his boat stuck 
 on the dam of Rutledge's mill at New Salem. Returning from New 
 Orleans, in the Summer of 1831, he took up his home in that micro- 
 scopic and short-lived village, and almost immediately proclaimed him- 
 self a candidate for the legislature. 
 
Illinois politics up to this time had been local and factional. The 
 State was a Democratic State ; its southern part was settled very largely 
 from Kentucky, and its northern portion as yet was almost uninhab- 
 ited. National politics entered the State with the popularity of Andrew 
 Jackson, and took a strong hold on the life and enthusiasm of the 
 voters in 1840, when William Henry Harrison was a candidate, and 
 the watchwords were "Log cabin and hard cider." It was not neces- 
 sary for a candidate to have any large political program in 1832. Abra- 
 ham Lincoln fitted well into his new environment. An unlettered 
 backwoodsman, just off a flat boat, could poll a very respectable vote 
 as a candidate for a member of the legislature in 1832, and could be 
 elected two years thereafter, and re-elected regularly once in two years 
 so long as he cared to announce himself a candidate. But Abraham 
 Lincoln and Illinois politics were both developing through that period. 
 Neither he nor the political situation remained unmodified. Illinois 
 was not too proud to receive Abraham Lincoln as a member of her 
 legislature in 1834, and was gratified and honored to have a share in 
 electing him President in 1860. Illinois furnished a part of the neces- 
 sary environment for the political development of Lincoln. 
 
 We know the political character of Illinois at the time when Lin- 
 coln became a resident of the State. It was Democratic, and its De- 
 mocracy was divided between the "whole-hog" Democrats and those 
 whose devotion to Andrew Jackson carried them to less violent ex- 
 tremes. Lincoln's personal backgrounds v.^ere those of Jacksonian 
 Democracy. Thomas Lincoln was a Jackson Democrat ; John Hanks, 
 as late as 1860, was "an old Democrat who will vote for Lincoln." 
 Persons who heard what is believed to have been Lincoln's first stump 
 speech at Decatur in the summer of 1830 say that he was then for 
 Jackson and internal improvements. I have not found the personal 
 recollections of those who profess to have heard this speech very clear 
 or consistent, but they may be correct. Andrew Jackson was a name to 
 capture the imagination, and he may at that time have been Lincoln's 
 hero personally if not politically. Lamon holds that Lincoln at the 
 outset was "a nominal Jackson man." He says on the authority of 
 Dennis Hanks that Lincoln was "Whiggish but not a Whig." (Lamon: 
 Life of Lincoln, 123, 126.) 
 
 From the time of his first candidacy, however, there is nothing 
 that identifies Lincoln with Jackson Democracy. His earliest announce- 
 ment of himself as a candidate for the legislature did not name the 
 party with which he was affiliated, and he was warmly supported by 
 local Democrats as well as Whigs. But as soon as he began to express 
 any principles which could be alligned with national issues, they were 
 unqualifiedly those of the Whigs. He may have continued to admire 
 Andrew Jackson, but he became immediately a disciple of Henry Clay. 
 (See Nicolay and Hay, 1 : 102, 103; Morse", 1 : 38.) 
 
 In this development his personal evolution was like that of the 
 State. But Lincoln's own development was in advance of that of the 
 State as a whole, and qualified him to lead in a movement that in time 
 committed Illinois against the policy of the extension of slavery. 
 
10 
 
 The Incidental Values of Political Mistakes. 
 
 It would perhaps be but fair to add that the standards which ob- 
 tained in Illinois politics were the more favorable to the advancement 
 of Lincoln because the mistakes of politicians in his day, in which mis- 
 takes Lincoln participated, were so largely the mistakes of the whole 
 body of the people and of Lincoln's constituents, that a public official 
 was not too summarily condemned to oblivion for his errors of judg- 
 ment. Governor Ford comments on this matter with characteristic 
 severity, condemning the "Long Nine" whose log-rolling in connection 
 with the removal of the Capital from Vandalia to Springfield cost the 
 State, as he maintained, more than the value of all the real estate in the 
 vicinity of Springfield, and he records the names of those members 
 of the House of Representatives who voted for the disastrous "Inter- 
 nal improvement system." He was especially indignant when he con- 
 sidered how many of these men, who, as he believed, ought to have 
 been repudiated by the people, were continued in office. Ninian W. 
 Edwards and others were "since often elected or appointed to other 
 offices, and are yet all of them popular men. . . . Dement has been 
 twice appointed Receiver of Public Moneys. . . . Shields to be 
 Auditor, Judge of the Supreme Court, Commissioner of the General 
 Land Office, and Brigadier General in the Mexican War. . . . Lin- 
 coln was several times elected to the Legislature and finally to Con- 
 gress; and Douglas, Smith and McClernand have been three times 
 elected to Congress, and Douglas to the United States Senate. Being 
 all of them spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe 
 it is to be a politician, and how disastrous it may be to the country to 
 keep along with the present fervor of the people." — History of Illinois, 
 pp. 195, 196. 
 
 We need not claim for Lincoln in these matters wisdom superior 
 to that of his associates, but may remind ourselves that his errors of 
 judgment were not only shared by his associates in office, but that their 
 errors did not prevent his repeated re-election, much to the disgust of 
 Governor Ford, who counted him one of the "spared monuments of 
 popular wrath." 
 
 The historian of the future is certain to set enhanced value upon 
 Governor Ford's History of Illinois. The future student is not likely 
 to condemn with less severity than Governor Ford either the log-rolling 
 of early Illinois politics or the folly of the financial methods by which 
 it was undertaken to support the State banks and the Internal Improve- 
 ment system which ended with the financial crash of 1837. In the 
 main Governor Ford was right. But Governor Ford lacked perspec- 
 tive. He was not strictly accurate in describing Lincoln and his asso- 
 ciates as "spared monuments of popular wrath." There ought to have 
 been more wrath than there was. The men who were responsible for 
 those measures in the Legislature fairly represented the will and the 
 wisdom or unwisdom of their constituents. The law-makers and the 
 men who elected them to make laws were involved in the same attempts 
 to create values out of things that had no value. The long list which 
 Governor Ford gives us of men who were responsible for the financial 
 
11 
 
 evils of their time and who nevertheless were thereafter elected and 
 re-elected to office is its own answer. These men were as wise as their 
 constituents, and not much wiser. Illinois had to learn from bitter 
 experience, and Lincoln was one of the men who had his share in the 
 education which the whole State was compelled to undergo. 
 
 Lake and River Transportation. 
 
 Lincoln became a factor in Illinois life just at the time when the 
 question of transportation was becoming most acute. Whatever sur- 
 plus Illinois produced in the early days, was floated down the Mississ- 
 ippi, whose commercial outlet was New Orleans ; but there were other 
 agricultural states tributary to the Mississippi, and the wharves of 
 New Orleans were piled high in time with unmarketable produce. It 
 was less easy to float goods upstream than down, and New Orleans 
 was not a manufacturing city. The goods which Illinois required for 
 her own use were largely produced in Philadelphia or New York. The 
 accounts and bills payable of Illinois merchants tended to accumulate 
 in New York ; the credits were in New Orleans. The money in circu- 
 lation was largely issued by wildcat banks, and afforded no suitable 
 basis of exchange. If this situation went on permanently, Illinois 
 could have no great commercial future. Her banking was principally 
 done in St. Louis. In 1831, for the first time, goods were imported 
 from the East to St. Louis by way of Chicago at one-third less cost 
 than by New Orleans. That fact did more than we can now imagine 
 to compel the unification of Illinois. Lake Michigan became a neces- 
 sity to Menard and Sangamon Counties, as certainly as to Cook County 
 and the northern end of the State. We remember the disastrous experi- 
 ments in public improvements by means of which creeks were <"0 have 
 become rivers and canals were to have connected the heads of naviga- 
 tion through the .State. Let us not forget that these conditions with 
 all their blundering and bankruptcy were potent in making Illinois a 
 commercial unit and in securing her a place of influence in the com- 
 mercial life of the nation. 
 
 Illinois and the Unification of the Nation. 
 
 The relation of Illinois to the unification of the nation was no 
 accident. Governor Thomas Ford died in 1850, leaving the manu- 
 script of his History of Illinois to be published after his decease. In 
 that work he clearly set forth the aim of Hon. Nathaniel Pope, delegate 
 in Congress from the Territory of Illinois, when, in January, 1818, he 
 on his own responsibility amended the proposal for the admission of 
 Illinois to the Union by moving her boundar}^ north from the southern 
 extremity of Lake Michigan to the line of 42° 30' so as to include 
 within the State fourteen additional counties and the port of Chicago. 
 Governor Ford said : 
 
 "It was known that in all confederated republics there was danger 
 of dissolution . . . Illinois had a coast of 150 miles on the Ohio 
 river, and nearly as much on the Wabash ; the Mississippi was its 
 western boundary for the whole length of the State ; the commerce of 
 all the western country was to pass by its shores, and would necessarily 
 
12 
 
 come to a focus at the mouth of the Ohio, at a point within this State, 
 and within the control of Illinois, if, the Union being dissolved, she 
 should see proper to control it. It was foreseen that none of the great 
 States in the West could venture to aid in dissolving the Union, with- 
 out cultivating a State situate in such a central and commanding posi- 
 tion. What then was the duty of the national government? Illinois 
 was certain to be a great vState with any boimdaries which that govern- 
 ment could give. ... If left entirely upon the waters of these great 
 rivers, it was plain that, in case of threatened disruption, the interest 
 of the new State would be to join a southern and western confederacy. 
 But if a large portion of it could be made dependent upon the com- 
 merce and navigation of the great northern lakes, connected as they 
 are with the eastern States, a rival interest would be created, to check 
 the wish for a western and southern confederacy. It therefore became 
 the duty of the national government, not only to make Illinois strong, 
 but to raise an interest inclining and binding her to the eastern and 
 northern portions of the Union. This could be done only through an 
 interest in the lakes. At that time the commerce on the lakes was 
 small, but its increase was confidently expected, and indeed it has 
 exceeded all expectations and is still in its infancy. To accomplish 
 this object effectually, it was not only necessary to give to Illinois the 
 port of Chicago, and a route for the canal, but a considerable coast on 
 Lake Michigan, with a country back of it sufficiently extensive to con- 
 tain a population capable of exercising a decided influence upon the 
 councils of the State." — Ford's History of Illinois, 22-23. 
 
 If Governor Ford had written these words after the Civil War, 
 we might have suspected him of attributing to Judge Pope more of 
 political foresight than either he or Judge Pope really possessed. But 
 he wrote before 1850, and we have no reason to doubt that this remark- 
 ably clear view of the influence of Illinois as a State that might bind 
 together the expanding Union was really possessed by Judge Pope 
 when he secured for the new State her fourteen additional counties, 
 including the port of Chicago, and keenly appreciated by Governor 
 Ford in his stern opposition* to the proposals of Wisconsin that the 
 northern counties of Illinois should be restored to the newer State. 
 
 The Courts of Illinois Developed Lincoln. 
 
 Illinois offered to Lincoln through her Circuit Courts an oppor- 
 tunity of widening his acquaintance and influence and also of meeting 
 in political and legal relations a circle of men admirably suited to his 
 intellectual development. The lawyers of early Illinois represer'ted 
 widely divergent types. There were frontier shysters of small ability 
 
 ♦ The fight of Wisconsin was very strong in Ford's administration. Not only so, but 
 the northern counties of Illinois were inclined to think they had more in common with 
 Wisconsin thuTi with Egypt. Tlicre was miiT<> than ono p(>tition froTU the Cdunties 
 themselves or from some party within thei aslving that they be severed from Illinois and 
 joinrd to the State to the north. Governor Ford's arguni(>nt in refutation of the claim 
 of Wisconsin is given in extenso in his Historii and is a document of permanent 
 interest. 
 
 A proposal to separate northern Illinois from southern Illinois is at this moment 
 pending before the General Asseml)ly. Those who propose such a sundering of what 
 God hath joined will find instructive reading in some of the early literature of this 
 State. 
 
13 
 
 and less legal learning, but there also were men of large native ability, 
 whose wits were sharpened by much experience. Lincoln's practice 
 soon brought him before the Supreme Court of Illinois, where he had 
 to plead before judges of learning and high standing. The courts of 
 Illinois were not essentially different from those of Indiana and Mis- 
 souri in the same period. Any of the frontier States then rapidly 
 filling could have furnished him an arena for his legal skill ; but the 
 skill which Lincoln developed and the acquaintance which he formed 
 in Illinois had their relation to a political situation which no other 
 State could quite have duplicated. Mr. Arnold relates an interesting 
 incident which occurred after Mr. Lincoln was elected President. He 
 was asked to appoint a man named Butterfield to a position in the 
 Army. This man Butterfield w'as the son of Justin Butterfield, who in 
 1849 had secured an appointment to the Land Office, a position greatly 
 desired by Lincoln at the close of his term in Congress. Arnold says : 
 
 When the application was presented, the President paused, and after 
 a moment's silence, said: "Mr. Justin Butterfield once obtained an appoint- 
 ment I very much wanted, and in which my friends believed I could have 
 been useful, and to which they thought I was fairly entitled, and I have 
 hardly ever felt so bad at any failure in my life; but I am glad of an oppor- 
 tunity of doing a service to his son." And he made an order for his commis- 
 sion. He then spoke of the offer made to him of the governorship of Oregon. 
 To which the reply was made: "How fortunate that you declined. If you 
 had gone to Oregon, you might have come back as Senator, but you never 
 would have been President." — Life of Ahraham Lincoln, 81. 
 
 Lincoln assented to the foregoing and said he had always been a 
 fatalist, believing with Hamlet in the Divinity that shapes our ends. 
 
 Oregon could have made Lincoln a Senator, but it is not certain 
 that any other State than Illinois could have made him President. He 
 needed essentially the conditions which he found in Illinois to develop 
 the qualities which were inherent in him ; and he needed a political 
 situation such as existed in Illinois to make him at the opportune time 
 the President of the United States. We can never be too certain con- 
 cerning the negative implications of a study like this. We can never 
 be quite sure what another State might have done. We are quite 
 certain that no other State, then in the L^nion, could have furnished 
 all the conditions which Illinois supplied and which were so important 
 both in the evolution of Lincoln and in his elevation. 
 
 Illinois the National Keystone. 
 
 Pennsylvania is proud of her soubriquet, "the Keystone state." 
 Had that name not been pre-empted when the L^nion formed a smaller 
 arch, it should have been reserved for Illinois. Both the shape and 
 geographical position of Illinois entitle her to that designation. Her 
 superficial area extends from the lakes to the confluence of the great 
 rivers, and hence virtually from the northern boundary of the nation 
 to Mason and Dixon's Line. In the beginning it shared with Ken- 
 tucky and Missouri the status of a southern State, but Lincoln saw 
 and had some reason to fear the development of its northern and larger 
 portion. It was an ominous sign for Lincoln when he who had done 
 so much for the election of Zacharv Taylor as President, was set aside 
 
14 
 
 in his application for the Land Office and that position was given to 
 Mr. Justin Butterfield of Chicago.* Lincoln had good reason to fear 
 the growth of Chicago and of northern lUinois. As late as the State 
 Convention of the RepubHcan party at Decatur in 1860, the northern 
 part of Ilhnois was for Seward. Not even the sight of John Hanks' 
 two fence rails wholly convinced the politicians of the Chicago area 
 that Lincoln was the right man for President. His solidifying of his 
 own State was an important step toward the solidifying of the nation. 
 
 The River and Harbor Convention. 
 
 So far as I am aware no biographer of Lincoln has ever heard of 
 the River and Harbor Convention of 1847. I do not find it mentioned 
 by Nicolay and Hay, by Arnold, by Morse, by Miss Tarbell, or by any 
 other biographer of Lincoln. But it was that which first brought 
 Lincoln to Chicago. The Chicago papers, truthful then as always, 
 stated that this was the first visit of the Honorable Abraham Lincoln 
 to the "commercial emporium of the State."* He was more welcome 
 than he might have been at some earlier periods in his career. In the 
 first place he was the only Whig member of Congress from Illinois, 
 was just elected and had not yet taken his seat. In the second place 
 he was thoroughly committed to the policy of developing inland waters 
 and of connecting the lakes with the rivers. It will some time become 
 the duty of the historian to show what that convention did for Abra- 
 ham Lincoln. The presiding officer of that convention was Edward 
 Bates of Missouri. Lincoln probably did not know it at the time, but 
 then and there he probably formed the impression which later made 
 Bates a member of his Cabinet. It was there that Lincoln first heard 
 Horace Greeley, and Greeley heard Lincoln in a short and tactful 
 speech. Greeley did not know it, but he was forming an impression of 
 Lincoln, which thirteen years later was to influence his judgment in 
 accepting Lincoln as the compromise candidate who could not only 
 defeat Seward in the Convention, but defeat the Democratic nominee in 
 the election following. What Lincoln came to learn of the qualities 
 essential to unifying his own State went far toward making him capable 
 of unifying the nation. 
 
 * Justin Butterfield was born in Keene, N. H., In 1790. He studied at Williams 
 College, and was admitted to the bar at Watertown, N. Y., in 1812. After some years 
 of practice in New York state lie removed to New Orleans, and in 1835 to Chicago. 
 He soon attained high rank in his profession. In 1841 he was appointed by President 
 Harrison United States District Attorney. In 1849 he was appointed by President 
 Taylor Commissioner of the General Land Office. He was logical and resourceful, and 
 many stories are told of his quick wit. He died October 25, 1835. 
 
 Mr. Butterfield probably owed his appointment over Mr. Lincoln to the influence 
 of Daniel Webster, who was his personal friend, and also to the growing importance 
 of the uortbcrn portion of the State of Illinois. Taylor was, according to his own 
 pre-election statement, "a Whig, but not an ultra-Whig." The Whig interests in 
 Illinois could better afford to overlook the claims of a down-state ex-congressman than 
 those of a strongly backed rciiresentative from tlu> Whig end of the State. 
 
 * ".\brnliain I.,incoIn, the only Whig represciitativo to Congri'ss from this State, 
 we are happy to see in attendance upon the Convention. This is his first visit to the 
 commercial emporium of the State, and we have no doubt his first visit will Impress 
 him more deeply, if possible, with tlie importance, and inspire a higher zeal for the 
 great interest i^f river-and liarl)or improvements. We expec't mucli from him as an 
 representative in Congress, and we have no doubt our expectations will be more than 
 realized, for never was reliance placed in a nobler heart and a sounder judgment. 
 We know the banner he bears will never be soiled." — (Jhkago Journal, July 6, 1847. 
 
15 
 
 The Chicago Journal in an indignant editorial inquired whether 
 of the River and Harbor bill, on August 3, 1846, by President James 
 K. Polk, that bill had contained appropriations of $15,000 for the 
 Harbor of Buffalo, $20,000 for Cleveland, $40,000 for the St. Clair 
 flats, $80,000 for Milwaukee, Racine, Chicago and other nearby ports, 
 and sums for other lake harbors. President Polk affirmed that as these 
 ports were not harbors of vessels used in international trade, "It would 
 seem the dictate of wisdom under such circumstances to husband our 
 means, and not waste them on comparatively unimportant objects." 
 
 The Chicago Journal in an indignant editorial inquired whether 
 this same James K. Polk was not squandering millions upon an inva- 
 sion of Mexico for the sake of the extension of slavery? Was he not 
 buying steamboats at exorbitant prices for use in the transportation 
 of troops and supplies to Mexico, and leaving our legitimate commerce 
 on the lakes unprotected, with lives liable to be lost for lack of safe 
 harbors, and great territory of our own undeveloped while he sought 
 to acquire other territory by bloody means and for ignoble ends? 
 What an insult to the intelligence of the nation for him to declare that 
 these lake harbors were "comparatively unimportant objects!" 
 
 A great convention assembled in Chicago on July 5, 1847, to pro- 
 test against James K. Polk and all his works, to advance the interests 
 of the lake harbors, and incidentally to promote the welfare of the 
 Whig party. The significance of that convention has never been ade- 
 quately understood.* 
 
 The attendance upon the River and Plarbor Convention was not 
 limited to residents of lake cities. There were seven delegates from 
 Connecticut, one from Florida, two from Georgia, twelve from Iowa, 
 two from Kentucky, two from IMaine, twenty-eight from Massachu- 
 setts, forty-five from Missouri, two from New Hampshire, eight from 
 New Jersey, twenty-seven from Pennsylvania, three from Rhode 
 Island, one from South Carolina. I have not tried to count the long 
 lists from New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon- 
 sin. These are all located by counties, and show a widespread repre- 
 sentation from all parts of these States. The Convention was felt to 
 be of vast economic interest, and was by no means lacking in political 
 importance. Theoretically it was assembled for the consideration of 
 internal improvements ; but in addition to this it was convened for the 
 sake of opposing James K. Polk and all his political associations. 
 
 Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Thomas H. Benton, Lewis Cass 
 and other national leaders all were invited, and responded in letters, 
 that of Webster especially being a document of considerable size and 
 importance. Anson Burlingame headed the Massachusetts delegation, 
 and Ohio followed the lead of Thomas Corwin. 
 
 Horace Greeley was there, and he wrote up the convention for 
 the New York Tribune, and ever afterward advised young men to 
 "Go West, and grow up with the country." Thurlow Weed reported 
 
 * I am Indebted to Mr. James Shaw, of Aurora, for first calling my attention to 
 the significance of this convention. 
 
16 
 
 it in full for the All:)any Journal, and gave an interesting account of 
 his own journey around the lakes on "the magnificent steamer, 
 E)npire." 
 
 The political aspects of the convention are suggested by the fact 
 that Lewis Cass of Michigan, which State might have benefited by 
 river and harbor improvements, remained away and sent a very dis- 
 tant note of regret, while Daniel Webster, from Massachusetts, in a 
 long letter read at the convention, came out unqualifiedly for all that 
 the convention stood for. Cass wanted to be President, and greatly 
 needed the vote of the slave States ; Webster's position was, of course, 
 that of a politician who greatly desired to link the political and eco- 
 nomic future of the new States with the North and East. 
 
 David Dudley Field was present to speak for the administration. 
 He did it with shrewdness ; Greeley gives the gist of his address. The 
 convention did not treat him any too courteously ; and Lincoln followed 
 with his one speech, a tactful one, of which we have no report, but 
 one that appears to have stood for fair play while being ardently in 
 favor of the whole plan of internal improvements. The convention 
 at its next session apologized to Mr. Field for the uncivil treatment 
 he had received, but did not alter its program or change its convictions 
 on account of this apolog}' for bad manners. 
 
 * The River and Harbor Convention of 1847 put Chicago upon the 
 nation's map. It did more than any previous or subsequent assembly 
 to link the fortunes of the great State of Illinois with the North and 
 East. 
 
 It must have been a very illuminating event to Lincoln. It was 
 his first visit to Chicago, his first view of the great lakes.* It was his 
 first important reminder that, while he was elected from Central Illi- 
 nois, he, as the only Whig member of Congress from the State, must 
 find his political support thereafter largely in the newer portion of 
 the State where the Whigs were more largely in control. It must have 
 reminded him, and he was soon to be rudely reminded again, that 
 Chicago, and Northern Illinois with her, was thenceforth to be reck- 
 oned with as an important political as well as economic factor. He 
 had hoped to effect the unity of Illinois by a canal connecting the lakes 
 with the rivers ; whether this ever was accomplished or not, the whole 
 future of Illinois, central and southern as well as northern, was tied 
 up with Chicago, and through Chicago with the East and North. Illi- 
 nois, with her whole western boundar\' washed by the Mississippi, her 
 southern border hemmed in by the Ohio, and a large part of her east- 
 ern border determined by the Wabash, and all of these streams bearing 
 their cargoes through slave territory to New Orleans, was an indivis- 
 ible political and economic, unit, bound by Chicago and the great lakes 
 to New York and New England, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 
 
 * My good friends, Mr. J. Seymour Ciarrey. of Evanston, and Prof. Julius E. Olson, 
 of the State University of Wisconsin, are of opinion tliat Lincoln made two earlier visits 
 to Chieago ; and they may be eorreet. To me, however, the evidence does not appear 
 entirely conclusive; and in any event, those earlier visits, if they occurred, were with- 
 out important significance. Prof. Olson's interesting study is published by the Wis- 
 consin Historical Society, Vol. 4, p. 44, 1920, and Mr. Currev's susgestive article is in 
 the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Vol. 12, No. 3, Oct., 1919, p. 412. 
 
17 
 
 Illinois and Slavery. 
 
 In 1808, one year before the birth of Lincoln, the slave trade 
 ceased by constitutional limitation. If slaven,' itself could have gone 
 out with the importation of slaves, the history of Lincoln and our 
 nation had been quite otherwise. It was not so, and in 1820 came the 
 Missouri Compromise. By this act Missouri was admitted to the 
 LTnion as a slave State, and slavery which before that time had been 
 held south of Mason and Dixon's line was extended for north on the 
 west side of the Mississippi river ; but by the agreement then entered 
 upon, States thereafter to be admitted into the Union were to come 
 in free unless they lay south of the parallel of 36 degrees and 30 min- 
 utes north longitude, the southern boundary of Missouri. For thirty- 
 four years that Compromise had stood, but thirty-four years is a long 
 time, and slavery had been gaining ground. The Louisiana purchase 
 had brought in material for a number of new slave states and the 
 Mexican War had brought in others. California had indeed entered 
 the LTnion as a free State, but that was not the fault of the slave- 
 holding element in Congress or even of the then occupant of the 
 White House. 
 
 The removal of the Capital of the United States from Washington 
 and later from Philadelphia to a small district taken from and bounded 
 by the two slave States of Maryland and Virginia did much to 
 strengthen slavery socially and politically. In 1854 the Kansas- 
 Nebraska Bill repealed the Missouri Compromise, started Kansas to 
 bleeding, set John Brown's soul and body to marching in the path 
 that led to the gallows, and called Abraham Lincoln back into politics, 
 from which he had retired in 1848. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln could not remember the time when he had not 
 believed slavery to be wrong, but he found no occasion in his early 
 political life to make slavery a direct issue. It was well for him and 
 the nation that his home was in a State where he had to define his own 
 position on the slavery question in terms both ethical and legal. 
 
 Illinois as a part of the Northwest Territory was forever dedi- 
 cated as a shrine of freedom ; but Illinois as a State settled from Ken- 
 tuck}' permitted a good many slaves to be held by families who moved 
 into the State and brought their negroes with them. Illinois had a 
 "Black Code" of disgraceful and revolting severity. On March 3. 
 1837, Abraham Lincoln and Dan Stone, representatives from the 
 County of Sangamon, filed their protest against resolutions adopted 
 on the preceding day by their fellow members of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, violently denouncing abolitionists and expressing strong 
 pro-slavery sympathies. This protest of Lincoln and Stone stated that 
 its two signers, "believe that the institution of slavery is founded on 
 both injustice and bad policy." In 1841 the sale of a negro girl named 
 Nancy, resulted in the case of Bailey vs. Cromwell, which was carried 
 to the Supreme Court of Illinois. There Lincoln contended that this 
 slave girl was free by virtue of the Ordinance of 1787, w^hich prohibited 
 slavery in the Northwest Territory. This case which Lincoln argued 
 
18 
 
 when he was thirty-two years of age, compelled him to consider slavery 
 both in its legal and its moral aspects. Such an issue could hardly 
 have risen, except in Illinois or Indiana or Ohio.* 
 
 The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
 
 The leader in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was Stephen 
 Arnold Douglas, Senator from Illinois, and at that time chairman of the 
 Senate Committee on Territories. Whether he was the real author of 
 the measure is hotly disputed. The most careful study of this question 
 seems to me to be that of Prof. P. Orman Ray, who, after a careful 
 analysis of the material available, supports the view of Colonel John 
 A. Parker, in his pamphlet, "The Secret History of the Kansas- 
 Nebraska Bill", and derives the movement for the repeal to the fac- 
 tional strife in Missouri between Thomas Hart Benton and David R. 
 Atchison. Atchison, as Professor Ray believes, was the real author of 
 the measure; and his conclusions appear to me to be valid. (See The 
 Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by P. Orman Ray, Ph.D., Cleve- 
 land, 1909). He shows that much has been written about the part 
 which Douglas took, and of his motive in the matter, is not sustained 
 by adequate evidence, and that some things which Douglas claimed, 
 as, for instance, that for eight years prior to the repeal, he had stead- 
 ily advocated it, appear to be unreliable. But conceding, as we may 
 well concede, the authorship of the repeal to David R. Atchison, and 
 perhaps also in part to Judge William C. Price, it is Douglas with 
 whom we have to reckon as the man responsible for the form of its 
 presentation, for its report from the Committee, and for its adoption 
 by Congress and discussion by the country, and Douglas was proud 
 to be known as its responsible author. 
 
 And, whatever Douglas' motive at the outset, or even if he had 
 then no motive except that of the possibility of being removed from 
 the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, to make way for 
 Atchison to introduce the bill, he must ultimately have seen that he 
 was certain to be held responsible for it, and it was well for him, if he 
 expected to be a candidate for the Presidency, to use to his advantage 
 in the Southern States what was certain to be used to his disadvantage 
 in the States where a strong anti-slavery sentiment existed. 
 
 Beyond any reasonable doubt Douglas hoped to gain sufficient 
 political influence in the slave-holding states to make him President. 
 In the two sketches of Lincoln's life which he himself prepared, 
 Abraham Lincoln stated that after his return from Congress in 1848. 
 he returned to the practice of law with more ardor than he ever had 
 manifested before, but that the Missouri Compromise recalled him 
 to political activity. When Abraham Lincoln found himself recalled 
 to political life by a great moral crisis in the life of the nation, it was 
 the good fortune of Illinois to be able to furnish to Abraham Lincoln 
 a foeman worthy of his steel. He did not have to go out of his own 
 State to meet the national issue. Illinois furnished him an arena of 
 
 * Thooreticnlly, such a cai?e might have risen in any one of the five States carved 
 out of the Northwest Territory, but it would not have been likely to rise in Wisconsin 
 or Michigan, bfcause they were newer and more remote from slave territory. 
 
19 
 
 national proportions. He did not need to go to Missouri or to bleed- 
 ing Kansas, though he paid an important visit to the latter ; he was 
 able to beard the slavery lion in his political den in his own State and 
 the State of Douglas. 
 
 An Illinois Foeman Worthy of Lincoln's Steel. 
 
 Who can measure the influence upon Lincoln of the fact that 
 Stephen A. Douglas was in 1854 and still in 1858 not only a resident 
 of Illinois but a dominant force in national politics? The joint debate 
 between these two great men stands out in our national life and occu- 
 pies a place all its own. The significant fact of our present purpose 
 is that this contest found both of its notable participants in this State 
 and the State itself on tiptoe eager for the contest between them. 
 
 Both Lincoln and Douglas knew that Illinois was not a unit, 
 and each of them used that fact to the utmost to the disadvantage of 
 the other. Douglas repeatedly charged Lincoln with uttering senti- 
 ments in Northern Illinois which he would not dare to repeat in 
 Egypt; and Lincoln succeeded in committing Douglas to the "Free- 
 port heresy" which ultimately proved his undoing. 
 
 But Lincoln forced the issue on this platform, that while the 
 Constitution recognized slavery as existing, and he had no plan or 
 purpose to interfere with it where it then was, the framers of the 
 Constitution had clearly understood that slavery was an evil, and it 
 was a thing to be faced as such. At Galesburg, Lincoln quoted Doug- 
 las as saying that Douglas did not care whether slavery was voted up 
 or voted down ; and he proceeded : 
 
 "Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery, they have 
 a right to it. He can say that logically, if he says there is no wrong in 
 slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it. he cannot logically say 
 that anybody has a right to do wrong. He insists that, upon the score of 
 equality, the owners of slaves and the owners of property — or horses and 
 every other kind of property — should be alike, and hold them alike in a 
 new territory. That is perfectly logical if the two species of property are 
 alike and equally founded in right. But if you admit that one of them Is 
 wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and wrong. 
 
 "Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who 
 regard slavery as a moral, social and political evil having due regard for 
 Its actual existence among us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any 
 satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been 
 thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy which looks to the pre- 
 vention of it as a wrong, and look hopefully to the time when as a wrong 
 it may come to an end. He is blowing out the moral lights around us when 
 he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them." 
 
 It was thus that Lincoln came to his position, not as an aboli- 
 tionist, but as one who could say what Lincoln did say with great 
 deliberation at Springfield on June 17, 1858 : 
 
 " 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this govern- 
 ment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect 
 the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect 
 that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 
 other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
 and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course 
 of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be- 
 come alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, north as well as south." 
 
20 
 
 How carefully Lincoln had prepared this paragraph and its 
 context is shown by the fact that when Douglas made quotations from 
 it a few months later, Lincoln was able to repeat it word for word, 
 saying as he did so, that Douglas had repeated it so often that Lincoln 
 had learned it from him. That, of course, was only an excuse for 
 knowing it so well that he could repeat it months after the occasion 
 for which it had been prepared. The fact is, that when Lincoln went 
 before the convention which on June 17, 1858, nominated him as a 
 candidate against Douglas for Senator, Lincoln had determined to 
 force the slavery issue upon moral grounds, indicated by the repeal of 
 the Missouri Compromise ; and the man with whom he had to discuss 
 that issue' was not John C. Calhoun of North Carolina or any other 
 statesman from the Southern States, but Stephen A Douglas, of 
 Illinois. 
 
 The Slavery Issue National and Moral. 
 
 Considered in their intellectual aspects, it is hard to decide which 
 to admire the more, the speeches of Lincoln or those of Douglas. 
 But what we are to remember is that Lincoln deliberately forced the 
 consideration of slavery in its ethical aspects. Douglas set forth 
 strongly his claim for "squatter sovereignty." He maintained that the 
 founders of the republic never intended that there should be uniform- 
 ity in matters of local concern, but that there should be large liberty 
 in each State to decide its own policy in matters within its own bound- 
 aries. The slavery issue thus was an issue for each State to determine 
 in its own way. He insisted that to hold this principle was not to 
 commit one's self to the pro-slavery view ; he did not care, so far as 
 this principle was concerned, whether slavery was voted up or voted 
 down, but he did care for the sacred right of each State to work out 
 its own salvation in matters of its own concern. 
 
 But what Lincoln said at the outset, he reiterated in nearly every 
 speech, and stated thus in the debate at Quincy: 
 
 "The difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than 
 the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong, and those who do 
 not think it a wrong. The Republican party think it wrong; we think it is 
 a moral, a social, a political wrong. We think it a wrong not confining itself 
 to the persons or the states where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its 
 tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole 
 nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall 
 deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far 
 as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the 
 run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due 
 regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting 
 rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown 
 about it." 
 
 It was no political accident that drove Lincoln to this position. 
 The Kansas-Nebraska bill and the Dred Scot decision had practically 
 nationalized slavery. This he affirmed in his speech in Springfield, 
 June 17, 1858, and in that speech declared that a house divided against 
 itself could not stand. He knew what answer Senator Douglas would 
 make. There was nothing in the Chicago speech of Douglas on July 
 
21 
 
 9, 1858, that surprised him, and Lincohi was present and heard it, 
 Douglas quoted Lincoln's "house divided against itself" paragraph, 
 and commented. 
 
 "In other words, Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of this 
 government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic 
 institutions of each and all the states of the Union. 
 
 "Now, my friends, I must say to you frankly, that I take bold, unqualified 
 issue with him upon that principle. I assert that it is neither desirable nor 
 possible that there should be uniformity in the local institutions and domestic 
 regulations of the different states of the Union. The framers of our govern- 
 ment never contemplated uniformity in its internal concerns. Mr. Lincoln 
 has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our government 
 rests." 
 
 Lincoln did not misapprehend. He knew just what he was doing, 
 and he knew why he was doing it. He was determined to force the 
 fight with Douglas on these two grounds, that the slavery issue was 
 national, and that it was fundamentally moral. 
 
 Illinois is not the only State in which Lincoln might have form- 
 ulated or forced that issue ; but Illinois was the State in which, above 
 all other States, that issue could be squarely joined between himself 
 and the advocate of "squatter sovereignty," Stephen A. Douglas. 
 The event made Douglas a Senator again, and two years later it 
 made Lincoln President. 
 
 Illinois the Forum for Lincoln's Greatest Speeches. 
 
 Illinois offered to Lincoln a forum for the delivery of very nearly 
 all his greatest speeches up to the time of his departure for his Inaug- 
 ural. If we except only the Cooper Union address, virtually all the 
 other of Lincoln's outstanding speeches were delivered in his own 
 State, and it was the best possible place for their delivery. The 
 "House-divided-against-itself" speech has already been referred to. 
 His "Lost Speech" at Bloomington, May 20, 1856, could not so well 
 have been delivered in any other State convention. His Peoria speech 
 of October 16, 1854, might have been ignored if delivered in another 
 State, but in Illinois, it virtually made certain the contest four years 
 later with Douglas. 
 
 Illinois Gave Lincoln Most of His Offices. 
 
 Illinois gave to Lincoln every office that he ever held, except 
 that of the Presidency and the postmastership of New Salem. Even 
 in those important positions Illinois exerted an influence far from 
 negligible. When he was a candidate for the Presidency he recorded 
 in a sketch of his life written with his own hand that his election as 
 captain of his company in the Black Hawk war gave him at the time 
 more satisfaction than any subsequent honor. He also recorded that 
 his defeat in 1832 when he was a candidate for the Legislature was 
 the only defeat he ever sviffered at the hands of the people. The 
 people who thus voted for him whenever they had opportunity were, 
 down to 1860, wholly Illinois people. Even in the election of 1832 
 when he was defeated, that part of Illinois that knew him, the part 
 
22 
 
 adjacent to and inclusive of New Salem, voted overwhelmingly in 
 his favor. A Legislature declined in 1858 to make him Senator; a 
 President in 1848 declined to make him Land Commissioner, but the 
 people of Illinois gave him every office which he ever asked of them. 
 
 Illinois Fence Rails and Their Various Uses. 
 
 Illinois did something for Lincoln worth remembering in pre- 
 serving some of his fence-rails, and the memory of his making them. 
 He made them in 1830, and the State Republican Convention of 1860 
 was held in Decatur, only ten miles away from where those rails still 
 formed some part of a fence. Thither came Lincoln, to attend the 
 convention that on May 9 and 10, 1860, was to elect delegates to the 
 National Republican Convention, to be held in Chicago, scarcely a 
 week later. May 16. The northern part of the State was still strongly 
 for Seward, though the Chicago Tribune had already come out 
 squarely for Lincoln. But the Decatur Convention was not long 
 divided. Richard J. Oglesby and old John Hanks had found two of the 
 old rails, and at the opportune moment they were brought into the 
 Convention, with a reminder that Lincoln was "the rail candidate." 
 So he proved to be ; and the Seward boom fell flat in Illinois. From 
 Decatur the Lincoln hosts went almost directly to Chicago, carrying 
 with them the fresh enthusiasm of their Decatur experience. 
 
 Illinois the Scene of the Convention that Nominated Lincoln. 
 
 Finally, Illinois offered to Lincoln a place for the National Re- 
 publican convention of 1860. In the boisterous young city by the lake, 
 within the borders of the very State where Lincoln had split his rails, 
 convened the delegates from all the States where there w^as organized 
 opposition to the extension of slavery. We do not know what would 
 have happened if the Republican Convention had been held in some 
 other city where as many men were shouting for Seward as in Chi- 
 cago were shouting for Lincoln. We do know that the galleries were 
 potent then and even now not wholly lacking in their power to influ- 
 ence a body of delegates. It was Lincoln's own State that furnished 
 the theater for that dramatic act which made him President of the 
 nation. 
 
 But the theater was not the whole play. Illinois was geographic- 
 ally and politically even then a State whose support was of vast impor- 
 tance to the ticket of the new political party. Illinois did not dictate the 
 nomination ; that was done by the opponents of Seward, after failure to 
 discover another candidate who could carry the convention with good 
 prospect also of carrying the election ; but the influence of Illinois in 
 both these matters was important ; and Illinois was by that time united 
 in support of Lincoln. And, when all else has been said, it is not to 
 be forgotten that Illinois furnished a large fraction of the shouting. 
 
 Lincoln's Farewell and Return to Illinois. 
 
 The time came for him to say farewell to his own Illinois. He 
 said it first to his aged step-mother, who remembered with loving 
 heart how he had been dear to her as her own son, and had never 
 
23 
 
 spoken to her an unkind word. He said it to his old neighbors, as he 
 stood on the rear platform of the train with the wet eyes asking them to 
 commend him to God in their prayers. And then he went away. 
 
 He came not back, save only the sacred memory of him, and 
 the holy pride with which he was held to lasting honor, and the dust 
 that once had enshrined his great soul. Thus wrote Walt Whitman 
 in the spring of 1865 : 
 
 "When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed, 
 
 And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, 
 
 I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring. 
 
 ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; 
 Lilacs blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west. 
 And thought of him I love. 
 
 Over the breast of the spring, the land amid cities, 
 
 Amid lanes and through old woods (where lately the violets peeped from 
 
 the ground, spotting the gray debris;) 
 Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes — passing the endless 
 
 grass; 
 Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the 
 
 dark-brown fields uprising; 
 Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards; 
 Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave. 
 Night and day journeys a coffin. 
 
 Coffin that passes through lanes and streets. 
 
 Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land. 
 With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped in black, 
 With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women 
 
 standing. 
 With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night. 
 With the countless torches lit — with the silent sea of faces and the un- 
 bared heads, 
 With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber faces, 
 With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong 
 
 and solemn ; 
 With all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin, 
 The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organ — where amid these you 
 
 journey. 
 With the tolling, tolling, bells' perpetual clang; 
 Here! Coffin that slowly passes, 
 
 1 give you my sprig of lilacs!" 
 
 The long journey ended. The lilacs bloomed and drooped. The 
 gates of Oak Ridge opened and closed. Abraham Lincoln was at 
 home again, in his own Illinois.* 
 
 As the body of Lincoln returned to the soil of his own State, 
 Edna Dean Proctor, then a young woman, wrote a noble poem, a copy 
 of which in her own handwriting hangs in the tomb of Lincoln, from 
 which I quote a few lines : 
 
 *A))iaham I/incoln was assassinated on Good Friday night, April 14, 1865, and 
 died the following morning. His funeral was held from the White House at noon 
 on Wednesday, April 19. The body left Washington at 7 o'clock, Friday morning, 
 April 21, and journeyed by way of Baltimore, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, 
 Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis and Chicago. The departure from 
 Chicago was at 8 o'clock p. m. on Tuesday, May 2. Springfield was reached next 
 morning. The Springfield funeral took place on Thursday, May 4. Late on the after- 
 noon of that day, his body was laid to rest in Oak Ridge cemetery. 
 
24 
 
 "Now must the storied Potomac 
 
 Honors forever divide; 
 Now to the Sangamon fameless 
 
 Give of its century's pride; 
 Sangamon, stream of the prairies, 
 
 Placidly westward that flows, 
 Far in whose city of silence 
 
 Calm he has sought his repose. 
 
 "Not for thy sheaves nor savannas 
 
 Crown we thee, proud Illinois! 
 Here in his grave is thy grandeur. 
 
 Born of his sorrow thy joy. 
 Only the tomb by Mount Zion 
 
 Hewn for the Lord do we hold 
 Dearer than his in thy prairies, 
 
 Girdled with harvests of gold." 
 
 Is Illinois Capable of Producing More Lincolns.? 
 
 Times have changed. We no longer have or need those same 
 conditions, but we need men of the same spirit. Is Illinois adapted to 
 produce men now of the Lincoln type? We have sung tonight our 
 State song which has some merit, and some undeniably fine lines. I 
 could wish that it had more idealism. It is not enough that we have 
 rivers gently flowing or prairies verdant growing and straight roads 
 leading along section lines to Chicago, nor that the breezes murmur 
 the musical name of our State. What does that name mean ? To the 
 Indians it meant, 'We are men.' It was a proud boast of the manhood 
 of the State. Are we producing manhood like Lincoln's ?_ I have not 
 undertaken to write a new State song, but I have written a little 
 rhymed sermon, and that is no apology : 
 
 Not thy farms with cattle teeming, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 Nor thy factories smoking, steaming, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 Nor thy railroads hauling freight, 
 Made thee, or can make thee great, 
 Righteous manhood builds a State, 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 By thy rivers gently flowing, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 Are there any great men growing, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois? 
 Long before the white man's ken. 
 Proud thy boast, "My sons are men"; 
 This thy glory now as then, 
 
 Illinois. 
 
 Lincoln's ashes thou dost cherish, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 Guard his virtues, lest they perish, 
 
 Illinois, Illinois, 
 Justice, righteousness and skill, 
 Honor, faith and strong good will. 
 These thy guiding beacons still, 
 
 Illinois. 
 

 
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