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Lincoln-Douglas – The Final debates – Quincy and Alton

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It is the final stretch before the fall elections. Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas have had joint debates in Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, and Charleston, and Galesburg, plus each have given many dozens of individual speeches across Illinois. The final two joint debates occurred in quick succession in Quincy and Alton, two towns on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Lincoln-Douglas debates Quincy

Quincy

On October 13, the two men took the stage in Quincy in what was then called John’s Square but today is Washington Park. Approximately 10,000 to 15,000 people crowded into the square, many of whom claimed to be “Old Whigs” like Lincoln, who considered Henry Clay – a long-time leader of the Whig party – his “beau ideal of a statesman.” Because they were alternating who spoke first in a format that gave each of them plenty of time to present their views (as opposed to today’s “debates” in which each is given a scripted 2-minutes to answer a moderated question), it was Lincoln’s turn to begin. He reiterated what he had said in previous debates, reminding everyone that Douglas kept lying about Lincoln’s views and the party platform. Lincoln also reiterated his belief, and the belief of the Republican party at the time, that slavery was a moral wrong that should not be spread.

“We [the Republican Party] also oppose it as an evil so far as it seeks to spread itself. We insist on the policy that shall restrict it to its present limits.”

Republicans would focus on blocking the expansion of slavery into the western territories but abide by constitutional constraints that did not authorize federal abolition of slavery in the states where it already existed.

When Douglas’s turn came to speak, he said that:

“I will not argue the question whether slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. I hold that under the Constitution of the United States, each State of this Union has a right to do as it pleases on the subject of slavery.”

Douglas also denied Lincoln’s insinuation that Douglas has conspired with others to make slavery permanent. This denial stemmed from the first debate in Ottawa, where Lincoln implied that “Stephen, Franklin, Roger and James” (i.e., Douglas, Pierce, Taney, and Buchanan) had secretly worked together to nationalize slavery. Having said it in Ottawa, Lincoln dropped the line from future debates because it was too conspiratorial and without evidentiary support (although clearly Buchanan and Taney had so conspired). That didn’t stop Douglas from denying it at every debate thereafter.

Today, a bas-relief frieze sculpture depicts the event, while a low wall on either side of the sculpture features six pairs of “Point/Counterpoint” quotes take from the debate.

Lincoln-Douglas debates Alton

Alton

After Quincy, the two candidates hopped onto the same steamboat to travel to the next debate site in Alton. About 5,000 people gathered in front of the new city hall to hear the two men battle it out for one last joint debate. Many came from St. Louis, across the river from Alton, paying one dollar for each round-trip ticket. The Chicago and Alton Railroad offered half price fare from Springfield and elsewhere for those who wanted to attend the debate. Still, by this time most people had read about the debates in the newspapers, who had shorthand stenographers recording (more or less) verbatim what the two men were saying. The day was cloudy and fall weather was starting to settle in, which contributed to the lower turnout.

Douglas declared that the founders knew that the country had sectional differences and that they had deliberately left open the question of slavery for the states to decide.

“If they want slavery let them have it; if they do not want it, allow them to refuse to encourage it.”

Lincoln reiterated his “wish is that the further spread of it may be arrested, and that it may be placed where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.”

The Alton city hall burned down in 1923, but life-size statues of Lincoln and Douglas stand on a platform of the site in commemoration.

Aftermath

The seven joint debates were critically important, although they didn’t change the almost certain outcome of the senate election. At the time, state legislatures chose senators [the 17th Amendment giving direct vote to the people wasn’t until 1913], and although Lincoln’s Republican party gained more votes, Democrats still dominated the Illinois legislature and thus selected the incumbent Douglas for another senate term. Unquestionably, Lincoln the vote counter knew his chances of winning the election under such a system was unlikely, but the debates made him a national figure. Lincoln made sure to collect the newspaper transcripts of all seven debates, which he had published in book form in the spring of 1860, thus reminding everyone of his and Douglas’s views on slavery. Because of the Freeport Doctrine – Douglas saying that any territory becoming a state could block slavery if it so wanted – the slave powers of the South would never support Douglas as the Democratic presidential nominee. That led to a split Democratic party in 1860, allowing Lincoln as the Republican nominee to win the election and become president.

And the war came.

[Photos of Quincy (top) and Alton (bottom) by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Galesburg

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates GalesburgWith the Ottawa, Freeport, Jonesboro, and Charleston locations in the books, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates took a nearly three-week break before the two men met again for the fifth debate in Galesburg, about 120 miles north Springfield. Galesburg was, and is, the home of Knox College, a private liberal arts college founded in 1837. Originally called Knox Manual Labor College, the school had been organized by George Washington Gale for a colony of Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The name was changed to Knox College only a year before the famed debates, in 1837, presumably to broaden its outreach and because the country was already known as Knox County. Because of its role in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, the college seemed a natural place to host the Lincoln Studies Center led by Co-Directors Rodney O. Davis and Douglas L. Wilson, whose series of books documenting William Herndon’s sources of Lincoln’s early life have become essential tools in Lincoln scholarship.

With more than 15,000 people jammed onto the Knox campus, Galesburg welcomed the largest crowd for any of the seven debates. Perhaps appropriate for the town’s name, near-gale force winds had battered the area, and a heavy rain had fallen the day before and continued as the stage was being erected. To help protect both speakers and audience, the organizers moved the stage into the shadow of “Old Main,” the largest building on campus. Old Main still exists today and carries two plaques honoring Lincoln and Douglas on its outer walls. To reach the platform that day, Lincoln, Douglas, and other dignitaries needed to enter the front door of the building and crawl out a window. The self-taught Lincoln, according to tradition, joked that “At last I have gone through…college.”

As with all of the debates, the primary issue debated was slavery. Douglas denied there was any wrong in slavery, and in fact, vociferously argued that the government was by and for white people. He attacked Lincoln’s argument that the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” applied to all men, including Black men. Douglas vehemently reiterated his contrary view that, given the existence of slavery at the time and the fact that Thomas Jefferson and others were slaveholders, clearly the Declaration only applied to white men and that whites were superior to Blacks in all ways. Douglas postulated that given this “natural” disparity (as opposed to forced condition), slavery was not only right, but it was also the natural order and good for all involved.

Lincoln strenuously disagreed:

I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political evil [and] desire a policy that looks to the prevention of this wrong and looks hopefully to the time when as a wrong it may come to an end.

Two more debates would occur about a week later, in the Mississippi River towns of Quincy and Alton. More on those in the next post.

[Photos of Old Main and the Lincoln-Douglas plaques by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Abraham Lincoln’s New England Sculptor – Augustus Saint-Gaudens

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Technically, Augustus Saint-Gaudens was born in Dublin, Ireland and from the age of six months was reared in New York City. But by his late 30s he began spending his summers in Cornish, New Hampshire, moving there year-round from 1900 to his death from cancer in 1907. I had the opportunity to visit the Saint-Gaudens home and studio in Cornish a few weeks ago, now the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park, where I saw several of his greatest sculptures.

The most recognizable is his Abraham Lincoln: The Man, better known as the Standing Lincoln, which graces Lincoln Park in Chicago. Full-size recastings can be found in London’s Parliament Square, Mexico City’s Parque Lincoln, and, of course, at the Saint-Gaudens site in New Hampshire. There are numerous reduced size replicas throughout the United States, including inside the Lincoln Tomb in Springfield, Illinois. Saint-Gaudens also created a seated Lincoln called Abraham Lincoln: The Head of State, also in Chicago, for the 1909 centennial of Lincoln’s birth.

Abraham Lincoln, The Man at Saint-Gaudens Historical Park

My visit started the night before when I stayed at the Windsor Mansion Inn across the river in Vermont. Saint-Gaudens designed the stately home for his family friend, Maxwell Evarts, a Vermont lawyer and state politician. We’ll come back to the Evarts family in a minute. I stayed in the Auguste Rodin room, named for the French sculptor famous for The Thinker and The Kiss. Rodin never visited, but the story goes that he saw a plaster cast of Saint-Gaudens’s Robert Gould Shaw Memorial at an exhibition and, recognizing its brilliance, was noted to have bowed and tipped his hat to it. Another plaster cast is currently on display at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

After spending the night in the historic mansion, I crossed over the Connecticut River via the Cornish-Windsor Bridge, the longest wooden bridge in the United States and the longest two-span covered bridge in the world. I found the Saint-Gaudens site along a long early-fall foliage-lined lane, arriving just in time for a guided tour. Not surprisingly, the Standing Lincoln statue features prominently as you approach the main visitor’s center. With essentially a private tour for the two of us, the park ranger explained the background behind Saint-Gaudens’s life and the Lincoln statue. She expanded beyond her usual tour spiel when I told her I was a Lincoln researcher and writer. She was happy to expound to someone who knew more than the usual tourists.

The grand Lincoln is not Saint-Gaudens’s only famous statue, of course, and soon we were regaled with stories behind his first major commission, a monument to Civil War Admiral David Farragut that sits in New York City’s Madison Square. Like the Standing Lincoln, the architectural exedra surrounding the Farragut was designed by his friend Stanford White. Farragut established Saint-Gaudens’ reputation as a master sculptor. His many other significant figures include the Adams Memorial, the Peter Cooper Monument (of Cooper Union fame), and the John A. Logan monument, as well as the fabulous equestrian statue of William Tecumseh Sherman at the corner of New York’s Central Park. And then there is the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth Regiment, a massive bronze relief honoring the United States Colored Troops regiment depicted in the film, Glory, the original of which sits on the edge of Boston Common facing the Massachusetts State House. I had seen the original in Boston last year on one of my road trips.

Robert Shaw Memorial at Saint-Gaudens Park in Cornish NH

Which gets me back to Maxwell Evarts family of the Windsor Mansion Inn. Maxwell’s father, William Maxwell Evarts, had served for several months as Attorney General to Abraham Lincoln’s second vice president and successor, Andrew Johnson. He later served as Secretary of State under Rutherford B. Hayes and then United States Senator for New York. Exceedingly wealthy, Evarts was a patron of the arts. His daughter, Hettie, married Evarts’ law partner, Charles C. Beaman (who had negotiated the reparations agreement associated with the British allowing the Confederacy to build the CSS Alabama). Together they served as both models and benefactors for Saint-Gaudens lucrative business creating bronze relief sculptures. Saint-Gaudens used the money to purchase Beaman’s estate, which he renamed “Aspet” and that now makes up the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park.

Something I didn’t known. In addition to the prolific production of relief sculptures, Saint-Gaudens, and later his students, designed considerable coinage, including the ultra-high relief “double eagle” $20 gold coin for the US Mint, thanks to a recommendation from President Theodore Roosevelt.

The Saint-Gaudens site is so much more than his sculptures. There is his studio, the house, beautiful walking grounds and hiking trails, and a small temple where Saint-Gauden and his wife’s ashes are stored. The site is well worth the visit.

[Photos by David J. Kent]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Abraham Lincoln Goes to Hartford – Wide Awakes and Sculpture Walks

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Sometimes you find Abraham Lincoln in unexpected places. Take Hartford, Connecticut for example. Lincoln came to Hartford in early March of 1860, somewhat less than fresh off his successful speech at Cooper Union. His intent was to stretch out his trip east to visit his son Robert in Exeter, New Hampshire. Robert had spectacularly failed his Harvard College entrance exams and was doing remedial work at Phillips Exeter Academy in hopes of passing on the next go-around. The visit turned into an unexpected tour of three New England states. Local Republican operatives enlisted Lincoln to speak on behalf of each state’s governor and congressional races in the upcoming election. As a side benefit, it raised Lincoln’s profile just in time for the critical Republican National Convention happening in Chicago in May.

His Hartford version of the Cooper Union speech included some added features involving wens (aka, tumors), snakes in bed with children (an allegory for slavery), and opinions on a recent shoemakers strike in Massachusetts. And then there were the Wide Awakes.

Wide Awake exhibit at the CT Museum, Hartford

On my most recent New England road trip I stopped at the Wide Awake exhibit at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford. The exhibit had only opened a few days before, but I had heard about it from Jon Grinspan, the author of a book by that name. I was able to join an “exhibit talk” tour by Christina Rewinski, the lead museum educator, so I was able to learn first-hand even more than what I already knew from reading the book and speaking directly with Jon. In a nutshell, the Wide Awakes started as a group of five young men (ages 17-25) who decided to support the reelection campaign of incumbent Republican gubernatorial candidate, William Buckingham, and the Republican party in general. Donning oilcloth capes and carrying torches, these five men surreptitiously escorted a surprised Cassius Clay, a well-known abolitionist who had spoken that night for Buckingham. Gaining momentum, the five quickly became twenty so they officially formed as an advocacy group under the Wide Awake banner. The very next night they again found a politician to escort: Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was in town as one of eleven stops on his New England tour and found his carriage surrounded by a growing group of uniform-ish clad marchers as he wended his way back to his hotel for the night.

Viewing the unannounced group with a mix of confusion and amusement, Lincoln would watch the Wide Awake movement grow to several hundred thousand young men across the northern states, actively supporting the candidacy and election of Lincoln as the first Republican president. Lincoln would hold them at arm’s length – the exhibit examines how their militaristic style was seen by some, especially in the South, as a prelude to war – but appreciated the enthusiasm for his campaign they generated. The exhibit gives a history of the “Hartford Originals” and how the Wide Awakes grew exponentially over the next few months, only to effectively dissolve soon after the election (although many members enlisted to fight for the Union in the Civil War). The exhibit is well worth the visit if your travels take you nearby. It runs through March 16, 2025.

A Welcome Conversation on Hartford Lincoln Sculpture Walk

But Wide Awakes aren’t the only Lincoln connections in Hartford. Funded by a generous grant from the Lincoln Financial Group, the city created a Lincoln Sculpture Walk along River Front Park. When I visited there were fourteen sculptures by various artists lining both sides of the river. Some are obviously Lincoln scenes while others are more abstract or relate to some history associated with Lincoln. “Perseverance,” for example, by Darrell Petit, are two massive stones pushed against each other, signifying Lincoln’s perseverance despite the many setbacks in his life, including political defeats, financial failure, death of loved ones, and public humiliation. Similarly, “Right to Rise” by Don Gummer is a vertical sculpture that symbolizes Lincoln’s belief that each resident, regardless of origin, can rise up the economic ladder and better themselves through hard work and diligence. My favorite sculpture along the walk is “A Welcome Conversation” by Dan Sottile. A twenty-something Lincoln sits on a large rock, apparently in New Salem, his arm outstretched toward another empty rock as if inviting the viewer to join him in conversation. I did exactly that.

More on Lincoln in New England coming soon.

[Photos of Wide Awake exhibit at CT Museum (top) by David J. Kent and Hartford Sculpture Walk (bottom) by Ru Sun.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates: On to Jonesboro and Charleston

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After haggling out the arrangements and debates in Ottawa and Freeport in the northern part of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas slowly made their way down to the southern part of the state for two debates in quick succession. Along the way they each gave a myriad of additional individual speeches to smaller venues.

Jonesboro, September 15, 1858

The third official Lincoln-Douglas debate was held in Jonesboro, which was as far south as Freeport had been north. They reflected two vastly different citizenries. Whereas the northern part of Illinois had largely been settled by northeasterners moving west, the southern part of the state was mostly settled by slave state migrants moving north. Unlike Freeport, the sparsely populated Jonesboro (about 1,500 residents) was heavily supportive of the Democratic party views on slavery (i.e., proslavery or pro-accommodating to southern rights to enslave other Americans based on the color of their skin). It’s safe to say that Lincoln was at a disadvantage.

Douglas was well aware of this. He charged Lincoln and the Republicans (which by now Democrats had started to refer to as “Black Republicans”) said one thing in northern Illinois, something different in central Illinois, and something wholly different in the southern part of Illinois. Douglas argued that Lincoln wanted full racial equality, a position that was anathema across Illinois in general and perhaps fatal in the deepest south portions of the state like Jonesboro. Lincoln not only denied he pitched differently in the north and south, but also went on offense to quote documents and speeches by Democrats to demonstrate that it was they, the self-avowed conservative Democrats who had entirely different stories across the state.

Lincoln’s main focus in Jonesboro was to argue that the expansion of slavery into the western territories would endanger the rest of the Union. He pointed out this was already happening as he looked back over the fight over slavery in Missouri, the upheaval over whether slavery could go into the territories taken after the Mexican War, and the resulting “Bleeding Kansas” violence. The only way past the crisis, he said, would be to put slavery on “the course of ultimate extinction.”

Jonesboro Lincoln-Douglas statues

Charleston, September 18,1858

Three days later the two men found themselves about 175 miles northeast in Charleston, where they would begin a wide counterclockwise swing through the remaining four debate sites. Charleston had many southern migrants from slave states but even the more antislavery residents were not in favor of equal political or social rights for African Americans. It was one thing to find slavery abhorrent, yet another to call for full equality. Douglas used this sentiment to his benefit by running a clearly racist campaign overall. In Jonesboro he had accused Lincoln of favoring racial equality. To emphasize Douglas’s constant fearmongering of amalgamation, or worse, his supporters held up a banner that read “Negro equality” with a picture of a white man, a negro woman, and a mulatto child. His goal was to either get Lincoln to declare he was for full equality or to declare he wasn’t for full equality. Admitting the former would have ended Lincoln’s campaign immediately in a time when racism was the norm, even among most abolitionists.

Painted into a corner, Lincoln chose to open the debate by saying that while he was entirely against slavery, he was not “in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races.” He further added that he thought “there a physical difference” that would “forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so lie, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

That particular passage and similar statements in the other debates continues to be analyzed to this day. Those so inclined to find fault with Lincoln see him as a typical racist. Those more understanding see it as a political hedging to avoid being booed off the platform, or worse, dragged through the streets and perhaps killed. Those more thoughtful analysts see Lincoln as a less racist man of his racist times struggling to maintain political viability to continue the opportunity of ending slavery.

Lincoln had some charges of his own. He accused Douglas of conspiring with Chief Justice Roger Taney, former President Franklin Pierce, and current President James Buchanan to enable the creation of a pro-slavery constitution for Kansas without allowing the actual residents of Kansas to express their views and vote on it. Not surprisingly, Douglas denied it. Douglas did declare that the government should exist as he believed the founders intended, with some states slave and others free.*

These two debates offered distinct contrasts in other ways as well. Jonesboro had the smallest attendance with perhaps 1,500 people present. Charleston had around 12,000 in attendance, including eleven railroad cars of people who traveled from Indiana to hear these two men speak on the most contentious issue of the day.

Charleston Lincoln-Douglas statues

As with all the other of the seven debate sites, statues of Lincoln and Douglas have been erected. In Jonesboro, full-size bronzes of the two men stand on either side of a large limestone boulder carrying a bronze plaque. A “Looking for Lincoln” wayside marker explains the debate. The Charleston site also boasts full-size bronze sculptures, this time with the two men facing each other over rock-like “podiums.” Charleston is also the only site with a Debate Museum on the grounds, where visitors can pose for photos and watch a film that tells the story of the debate.

After Charleston, the next official debate would not occur for almost three weeks in Galesburg, where Lincoln would “go through college” for the very first time.

[Photos of Jonesboro (top) and Charleston (bottom) by David J. Kent.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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The Daughters of the American Revolution and Abraham Lincoln

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DAR 9-7-24I was invited to speak about Lincoln: The Fire of Genius by the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which usually we all refer to as the DAR. I spoke at their first meeting of the fall in northern Virginia and actually was able to bring them some DAR history they didn’t already know.

Having grown up in a town that billed itself the “Birthplace of American Independence,” I was exposed to a lot of Revolutionary War and Colonial era history. True, I did still gravitate to Abraham Lincoln studies (and science) but when you’re smack in the middle of where much of the fight for independence occurred, it’s hard to avoid learning about it. My hometown is swarming with DAR members.

That bit of DAR history they didn’t know involved Lincoln. I’ve done a lot of road tripping to Lincoln-related sites and while in Chicago a few years ago I sought out a plaque commemorating the site of the Wigwam, the temporary building erected in 1860 to house the Republican National Convention that nominated Lincoln for president. [Spoiler: Lincoln went on to win the presidency]. It was the Chicago Chapter of the DAR that in 1909, on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth, presented a large plaque on the site.  The original plaque was once mounted on a nearby building, but if you go there today, you’ll find it on the corner of North Wacker Drive and West Lake Street, embedded on the side of a stone base.

 

Wigwam plaque by DAR in Chicago

There was another Lincoln connection as this particular DAR is the Henry Clay Chapter. Lincoln considered Henry Clay as his “beau ideal” of a statesman, both for his ability to talk to people from all sides of an issue (usually related to slavery) and seek a path forward, and also for his leadership of the Whig Party and its promotion of progressive policies like government-supported internal improvements (infrastructure). As Whig leader in the Illinois state legislature, Lincoln was the local version of Clay when it came to promoting Whig ideals.

Discussion of Clay and internal improvements was a great segue into Lincoln: The Fire of Genius. I was able to bring out that Lincoln knew much more science, math, and technology than most people are aware, including how he gained and implemented that knowledge. The crowd of thirty-plus DAR members, who the vice regent noted were “historians and scientists…curious to find out what new information on Lincoln anyone could possibly have to share.” Following the meeting I was told that “They were literally delighted to find out you had plenty.” The appreciation shown by feedback and the number of books the members purchased and had me sign certainly made my day.

You can watch the video of my talk here:

My next presentation is on October 15th, when I’ll present in tandem with my successor as president of the Lincoln Group of DC on the timely topic of presidential elections – the 1864 election to be precise. Check out the Lincolnian website for more details and to register. It’s free and on Zoom.

[Photo of David J. Kent courtesy of DAR; photo of Wigwam plaque by David J. Kent.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Abraham Lincoln on Labor and the Lynn Shoemakers’ Strike

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Don Sottile "A Welcome Conversation" in Hartford CTOn March 5, 1860, Lincoln gave a speech in Hartford, Connecticut during his tour of New England after his Cooper Union address. One of the issues that Lincoln tackled was the role of labor and the ongoing Lynn shoemakers’ strike. Lincoln pointed used the strike to point out the difference between the free labor of the North (i.e., the paid labor in which laborers are free to find better paying employers) versus the slave labor of the South (i.e., chattel slavery for the life of the person, their children, their children’s children, ad infinitum). The conservative party at the time complained that the Lynn strike was the result of antislavery agitation and sectional controversy. Lincoln noted:

Now whether this is so or not, I know one thing – there is a strike! And I am glad to know that there is a system of labor where the laborer can strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system prevailed all over the world.

He went on to acknowledge there was sectional controversy indeed involved, but only because the South had withdrawn their trade on a false accusation that somehow slavery was right and free labor was wrong. The Slave Powers argued that free labor in the North was worse than slavery because, after all, they claimed, slavery was a “positive good” in which enslaved people were given a way to rise up out of their natural inferiority. Lincoln replied incredulously by noting his surprise that no slaveholder was interested in desiring such a good thing for themselves, adding “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.” Further supporting the idea of workers striking, he noted that if slavery were allowed to spread to the territories, then it was only a matter of time before all the jobs in free states would also be replaced with slave labor.

Lincoln had always valued labor. His views are succinctly stated in his first annual message to Congress on December 3, 1861:

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation. A few men own capital, and that few avoid labor themselves, and with their capital hire or buy another few to labor for them. A large majority belong to neither class–neither work for others nor have others working for them. In most of the Southern States a majority of the whole people of all colors are neither slaves nor masters, while in the Northern a large majority are neither hirers nor hired. Men, with their families–wives, sons, and daughters–work for themselves on their farms, in their houses, and in their shops, taking the whole product to themselves, and asking no favors of capital on the one hand nor of hired laborers or slaves on the other. It is not forgotten that a considerable number of persons mingle their own labor with capital; that is, they labor with their own hands and also buy or hire others to labor for them; but this is only a mixed and not a distinct class. No principle stated is disturbed by the existence of this mixed class.

I should note that what I’m calling the Lynn shoemakers’ strike goes way beyond Lynn, Massachusetts. Starting intentionally on February 22nd, George Washington’s birthday, around 3,000 workers walked out of shoe factories in protest of working conditions that included 16-hour days, low pay, and dangerous machines in what previously had been an individual artisan business. The strike quickly became known more broadly as the New England Shoemakers’ Strike as the cause grew to over 20,000 workers from more than 25 towns across the region.

Despite the widespread nature of the strike, it was ultimately unsuccessful. Most factory bosses refused to negotiate and after six weeks with no pay, most returned to work. The strike did, however, lead to some changes that helped future labor efforts and eventually to unions, which successfully changed labor laws to protect workers. We should keep in mind also that the Civil War was to begin about a year later and the national focus shifted to wartime production, ramping up manufacturing and stretching labor thin as men volunteered for the Union war effort.

Lincoln had universally fought for the ability of all men to better their own condition, which included the right to fight for better working conditions in an increasingly industrialized world.

[Photo of Don Sottile statue “A Welcome Conversation” in Hartford, CT by David J. Kent.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln-Douglas Debates and the Freeport Doctrine

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Freeport Lincoln-Douglas debateLess than a week after their first debate in Ottawa, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas ventured into Freeport, Illinois, for the second of their seven joint debates during the senate election of 1858. By all standards, Freeport turned out to be the most consequential. From it came the Freeport Doctrine.

Freeport sits in the northern part of Illinois, which meant that it was generally settled by northern state migrants and tended to be more antislavery. Lincoln was on safer ground here. The joint debate agreement stipulated that the two candidates would alternate who spoke for the first hour, after which the other candidate had ninety minutes to speak, followed by a thirty-minute wrap up by the first speaker. Since Douglas started in Ottawa, Lincoln got to speak first in Freeport.

He started by answering the seven interrogatories (aka, questions) posed by Douglas in Ottawa. There was some danger to doing so as Douglas had tried to peg Lincoln as a “Black Republican,” that is, a radical leftist and abolitionist who wanted not only the end of slavery but the complete equality in all respects for African Americans. Lincoln as actually a moderate on those points, noting that the U.S. Constitution effectively barred the federal government from abolishing slavery in the states where it already existed. Indeed, all of the northern states that had banned slavery had done so at the state level, and Lincoln and others understood that the same would have to happen for any remaining slave states. In addition, the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, while it failed to acknowledge the immorality of slavery, was unfortunately the law of the land. Being an honest man, notwithstanding the danger even in a generally favorable part of Illinois, Lincoln reiterated and responded to Douglas questions:

Question 1. “I desire to know whether Lincoln to-day stands, as he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law?”

Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave law. [Cries of “Good,” “Good.”]

Q. 2. “I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to-day, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more slave States into the Union, even if the people want them?”

A. I do not now, or ever did, stand pledged against the admission of any more slave States into the Union.

Q. 3. “1 want to know whether he stands pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make?”

A. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new State into the Union, with such a Constitution as the people of that State may see fit to make. [Cries of “good,” “good.”]

Q. 4. “I want to know whether he stands to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia?”

A. I do not stand to-day pledged to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

Q. 5. “I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States?”

A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the different States.

Q. 6. “I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit slavery in all the Territories of the United States, North as well as South of the Missouri Compromise line?”

A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the United States Territories.

Q. 7. “I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited therein?”

A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of territory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition would or would not agravate [sic] the slavery question among ourselves. [Cries of good, good.]

After showing he was responsive to Douglas’s questions, Lincoln posed four of his own. He asked:

Question 1. If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State Constitution, and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English bill-some ninety-three thousand-will you vote to admit them? [Applause.]

Q. 2. Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution? [Renewed applause.]

Q. 3. If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decide that States cannot exclude slavery from their limits, are you in favor of acquiescing in, adopting and following such decision as a rule of political action? [Loud applause.]

Q. 4. Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the slavery question? [Cries of “good,” “good.”]

Feeling pressured to respond truthfully as Lincoln had done, Douglas’s answer to the second question would come back to haunt him.

Can the people of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State Constitution?

The question directly positioned Douglas’s Popular Sovereignty (from his Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854) against the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision (of 1857). Douglas was forced to choose between alienating those people he required to get reelected to the Illinois Senate or the Southerners he needed in his third run for the presidency two years later. After some obfuscation, Douglas finally responded that people in a territory could keep out slavery despite the Dred Scott decision, which stated that federal and state governments had no authority to exclude slavery because it would deprive slaveholders of their “property” rights without due process.

Southerners, who wanted the ability to expand slavery without limit, had grown concerned that states could choose to exclude slavery in accordance with Douglas’s Popular Sovereignty. They saw the Dred Scott decision as confirming their right to bring slaves wherever they wanted, and now Douglas was saying that was not true, that states could somehow choose not to allow slavery intrusion. This presented a long-term problem for slave-owning states. While they knew that most of the new territories were grossly inadequate for growing cotton, which was still the primary driver of the need for enslaving millions of their fellow Americans based solely on the color of their skin, they recognized that every new slave state would increase their representation in Congress—and their continued power to dictate policy.

Lincoln and Douglas would debate five more times during the campaign. When the votes were counted, Lincoln’s Republican party had won the popular vote and picked up seats in the legislature. But the state legislature, which due to gerrymandering would remain majority Democratic despite the vote totals, was still choosing Senators. Douglas retained his Senate seat. Lincoln likely realized his chances of winning the seat were close to nil because of the legislature’s makeup. When he was asked why he would give Douglas an advantage for Senate reelection, Lincoln replied that he had a longer view in mind: Douglas might win the Senate, but he would lose the presidency. The Freeport Doctrine would see to that.

It would be almost three weeks before the next debate in Jonesboro deep into the southern part of the state and with a significantly different view on slavery than Freeport.

[Photo of Lincoln-Douglas statues in Freeport, IL by David J. Kent.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Lincoln and Douglas Debate in Ottawa

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Lincoln Douglas debates OttawaAbraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas engaged in perhaps the most important series of debates on American history, the haggling over which I discussed in my last post. Their first debate took place on August 21, 1858, in Ottawa, Illinois.

While we usually refer to them as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, at the time there were referred to as the Douglas-Lincoln debates. Douglas was the incumbent U.S. Senator and de facto leader of the right wing conservative Democratic party. He had risen to fame in 1850, taking Henry Clay’s failed omnibus bill and turning it into five separate bills known as the Compromise of 1850. The most notable of the five were the creation of California as a free state and the formidable Fugitive Slave Law. Four years later he pushed through passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise banning slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase and opened up those territories and the new territories taken in the Mexican American War to a principle he called Popular Sovereignty. In short, Popular Sovereign meant that people in all territories and newly forming states could choose for themselves whether to enslave other Americans on the basis of color of their skin. This issue of expansion of slavery was the primary focus for both Lincoln and Douglas in the debate series.

Ottawa was, and remains, a small town southwest of Chicago. Newspapers report “Twelve Thousand Persons Present!” for the debate held in a small park now graced with full size statues of the two men perched on a podium in the center of a fountain. Being in the northern part of the state, most of the residents of Ottawa were migrants from New England, Ohio, and Indiana and thus more likely to oppose the extension of slavery. Later the two men would debate in the southern part of the state populated mostly by migrants from slave states like Kentucky. But Lincoln was on safer ground here in Ottawa. Still, Douglas was the incumbent senator, owned land in the Chicago area, and generally well liked. He also had a favorable state legislature where senators were still picked (the direct election of senators by the people would not occur until the 17th Amendment in 1913).

Douglas mainly stuck to his stump speeches heavy on pandering to racism and fears that somehow banning the extension of slavery to western territories would unleash millions of former southern slaves into the free state of Illinois. Douglas argued that this supposed influx would violate the Illinois state constitution “black laws” severely limiting the presence of African Americans, free or enslaved, in the state. He accused Lincoln of wanting full political and social equality for Blacks, something Lincoln would find himself having to refute. “Mr. Lincoln and his party…are trying to array all the Northern States…against the South, to excite a sectional war between the free States and the slave States,” Douglas would argue.

Lincoln countered this by pointing out how slavery was morally wrong and the primary source of conflict since the beginning of the country: “I leave it to you to say whether, in the history of our government, this institution of slavery has not always failed to be a bond of union, and, on the contrary, been an apple of discord and an element of division.” Lincoln and the recently formed Republican party – a progressive party arisen from the ashes of the liberal northern Whigs and the antislavery factions of other parties – emphasized the immorality of slavery but limited their platform to barring the extension of slavery into the western territories. Despite Douglas’s race baiting, Lincoln repeatedly said that the party would make no effort to abolish slavery in the states where it still existed. He understood that the U.S. Constitution effectively blocked the federal government from dealing with slavery in the states, and that all the northern states that had abolished slavery had done so at the state level. Lincoln reiterated that it was up to the states to rid themselves of the horror of slavery. But Lincoln also emphasized that the federal government did have the right to limit slavery in the federal territories like the District of Columbia and all the territories west of the Mississippi River.

Since Douglas had the privilege of making the opening arguments in Ottawa (they would alternate in the seven debates), he posed a series of questions to Lincoln with the expectation they would be answered in the next debate in Freeport. Lincoln would answer, but also propose four questions of his own to Douglas, which became the most consequential result of the debates for both their future political careers. I’ll have more on that next week when I talk about the Freeport debate.

[Photo of Lincoln-Douglas statues in Ottawa, IL by David J. Kent.]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.

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Haggling Over Presidential Debate Arrangements: Lincoln-Douglas Edition

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Stephen A. Douglas had been selected by the Illinois State Legislature to serve as senator in the same year that Abraham Lincoln was elected by the people to serve in the House of Representatives. Lincoln would serve only a single term, heading back home to a more pedestrian life as a circuit lawyer. Roused to get back into politics following the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which his old rival Douglas had pushed through Congress, Lincoln found himself in 1858 trying to block Douglas’s reelection and become a senator himself. Perhaps if Douglas would agree to a series of debates?

On July 24, Lincoln wrote to Douglas:

“Will it be agreeable to you to make an arrangement for you and myself to divide time, and address the same audiences during the present canvass?”

Douglas had little to gain. He was the incumbent senator, highly influential, and the state legislature that made the final senate selection was overwhelmingly gerrymandered to reelect him. He had known Lincoln for two decades and debated him many times. Douglas acknowledged to friends that Lincoln was a formidable debater. Why should he take the risk of debating?

After some hesitation, Douglas responded with a certain amount of indignance and some accusations that Lincoln wanted to include third-party candidates–which Lincoln just as indignantly denied–and some rather whining complaints about the tardiness of asking for joint debates. After more discussion, Douglas offered the following to Lincoln:

“I will, in order to accommodate you as far as it is in my power to do so, take the responsibility of making an arrangement with you for a discussion between us at one prominent point in each Congressional district in the state, excepting the second and sixth districts, where we have both spoken and in each of the cases you had the concluding speech. If agreeable to you I will indicate the following places as those most suitable in the several Congressional districts at which we should speak, to wit, Freeport, Ottawa, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton, Jonesboro & Charleston.”

In his response, Lincoln pointed out that Douglas was not correct that Lincoln “had the concluding speech” in Chicago and Springfield, but notwithstanding this misrepresentation, he accepted the proposed seven joint debates. Douglas followed up on July 30 by stipulating the times and places:

  • Ottawa – August 21
  • Freeport – August 27
  • Jonesboro – September 15
  • Charleston – September 18
  • Galesburg – October 7
  • Quincy – October 13
  • Alton – October 15

Douglas also in that letter agreed to Lincoln’s suggestion that the two of them alternate the opening and closing of the debates, stipulating that:

“I will speak at Ottawa one hour; you can reply occupying an hour and a half and I will then follow for half an hour. At Freeport you shall open the discussion and speak one hour, I will follow for an hour and a half, and you can then reply for half an hour. We will alternate in like manner at each successive place.”

The following day, Lincoln responded in a bit of a whiney tone that “although, by the terms, as you propose, you take four openings and closes to my three, I accede, and thus close the arrangement.”

The debates were on!

[Photo of Lincoln-Douglas statues in Freeport, IL by David J. Kent. This post was originally published at Lincolnian.org]

 

Fire of Genius

Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.

Limited signed copies are available via this website. The book also listed on Goodreads, the database where I keep track of my reading. Click on the “Want to Read” button to put it on your reading list. Please leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon if you like the book.

You also follow my author page on Facebook.

David J. Kent is Immediate Past President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.

His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity andEdison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.