Abraham Lincoln was not happy. He had worked hard to get Zachary Taylor elected as president as a Whig, and yet he was being passed over for the lucrative General Land Office job. Worse, he was being ignored, something the man who had been Whig leader in the Illinois legislature and recent representative to Congress. On May 16, 1849, he made his dissatisfaction with Taylor’s appointment of Justin Butterfield to the Land Office in Illinois.
Always a Whig in politics (to that point), Lincoln had used his time between sessions of his single term in the U.S. House of Representatives to stump for Zachary Taylor in Massachusetts. Taylor was a strange choice for the Whigs, who had generally disapproved of the Mexican War as a transparent attempt to enlarge the territory in which to expand slavery. But the Whigs felt he was the only candidate who could win (both major parties courted him) and that he would be pliable (he professed no firm political views), so they chose him over perennial candidate, Lincoln’s beau ideal of a statesman, Henry Clay. That wasn’t the only problem. As a Southern slaveowner, Taylor rankled the antislavery sensibilities of the liberal wing of the Whig party in Massachusetts, although the more conservative Whigs (e.g., textile mill owners who depended on the availability of Southern cotton) were less concerned. Disaffected Whigs had built a Free Soil movement to promote an antislavery candidate and Lincoln was sent to smooth over ruffled feathers in an attempt to keep party leaders in the Whig camp. Lincoln was well received and did seem to convince many Whigs, and although the central part of Massachusetts with its more stringent Free Soil passions voted for former president Martin Van Buren as the Free Soiler candidate, the full contingent of Massachusetts’s electoral votes went to Taylor. Taylor became president.
Lincoln continued to stump for Taylor once he returned home to Illinois. Which is why he was so rankled. After first suggesting others for the Land Office job, he switched to seeking the office for himself to ensure that a strong supporter of Taylor would get the prime position. He was ignored. Taylor (or more accurately, those in the administration making the appointment recommendations) had gotten it into their heads to appoint Justin Butterfield of Chicago. Lincoln was incensed. Writing to the Secretary of the Navy William B. Preston on this date, Lincoln argued that Butterfield had done nothing to get Taylor elected:
“[W]hen you and I were almost sweating blood to have Genl. Taylor nominated, this same man was ridiculing the idea . . . and when Gen: T. was nominated, if [Butterfield] went out of the city of Chicago to aid in his election, it is more than I ever heard, or believe. . . . If there is one man in this state who desires B’s appointment to any thing, I declare I have not heard of him.”
His pleading fell on deaf ears. Butterfield got the job, and Lincoln was out of political office for the next twelve years. He would build a steady legal practice, get aroused back into politics by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, fail in two senate races, and then – after another tour of New England in 1860 – get elected as the 16th President of the United States.
Those two tours of New England bracketed the most contentious and critical decades in our nation’s history. Lincoln was vastly different men from one tour to the next, as was the country.
Stay tuned!
[Photo credits: Public Domain]
Coming in February 2026: Unable to Escape This Toil
Available now – 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 and Edison: 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.
