This article documents the political career of Abraham Lincoln from the end of his term in the United States House of Representatives in March 1849 to the beginning of his first term as President of the United States in March 1861.
After serving a single term in the U. S. House, Lincoln returned to Springfield, Illinois, where he worked as a lawyer. He initially remained a committed member of the Whig Party, but he joined the newly formed Republican Party after the Whigs collapsed in the wake of the 1854 Kansas–Nebraska Act. In 1858, he launched a challenge to Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas. Though Lincoln failed to unseat Douglas, he earned national notice for his role in the Lincoln–Douglas debates. He subsequently sought the Republican presidential nomination in the 1860 presidential election, defeating William Seward and others at the 1860 Republican National Convention. Lincoln went on to win the general election by winning the vast majority of the electoral votes cast by Northern states. In response to Lincoln's opposition to the expansion of slavery into the western territories, seven Southern states seceded, and the American Civil War commenced in the second month of Lincoln's presidency. Four additional states then seceded.
Background
From the early 1830s, Lincoln was a steadfast Whig and professed to friends in 1861 to be "an old line Whig, a disciple of Henry Clay".Donald (1996), p. 222. The party, including Lincoln, favored economic modernization in banking, protective tariffs to fund internal improvements including railroads, and espoused urbanization as well.Boritt (1994), pp. 137–153. Lincoln won election to the House of Representatives in 1846, where he served one two-year term. He was the only Whig in the Illinois delegation, but he showed his party loyalty by participating in almost all votes and making speeches that echoed the party line.Oates, p. 79. Lincoln, in collaboration with abolitionist Congressman Joshua R. Giddings, wrote a bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for the owners, enforcement to capture fugitive slaves, and a popular vote on the matter. He abandoned the bill when it failed to garner sufficient Whig supporters.Harris, p. 54; Foner (2010), p. 57.
Realizing Clay was unlikely to win the presidency, Lincoln, who had pledged in 1846 to serve only one term in the House, supported General Zachary Taylor for the Whig nomination in the 1848 presidential election.Donald (1996), pp. 124–126. Taylor was elected president, and Lincoln hoped to be appointed Commissioner of the United States General Land Office, but that lucrative patronage job went to an Illinois rival, Justin Butterfield, considered by the administration to be a highly skilled lawyer, but in Lincoln's view, an "old fossil".Donald (1996), p. 140. The administration offered him the consolation prize of secretary or governor of the Oregon Territory. This distant territory was a Democratic stronghold, and to accept the post would have effectively ended his legal and political career in Illinois, so he declined and resumed his law practice.Harris, pp. 55–57. Lincoln returned to practicing law in Springfield, handling "every kind of business that could come before a prairie lawyer".Donald (1996), p. 96. Twice a year, 10 weeks at a time, he appeared in county seats in the midstate region when the county courts were in session.Donald (1996), pp. 105–106, 158.
Emergence as Republican leader
The debate over the status of slavery in the territories exacerbated sectional tensions between the slave-holding South and the North, and the Compromise of 1850 failed to defuse the issue.White, pp. 175–176. In the early 1850s, Lincoln supported efforts for sectional mediation, and his 1852 eulogy for Henry Clay focused on the latter's support for gradual emancipation and opposition to "both extremes" on the slavery issue.White, pp. 182–185. As the 1850s progressed, the debate over slavery in the Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory became particularly acrimonious, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois proposed popular sovereignty as a compromise measure; the proposal would take the issue of slavery out of the hands of Congress by allowing the electorate of each territory to decide the status of slavery themselves. The proposal alarmed many Northerners, who hoped to stop the spread of slavery into the territories. Despite this Northern opposition, Douglas's Kansas–Nebraska Act narrowly passed Congress in May 1854.White, pp. 188–190.
For months after its passage, Lincoln did not publicly comment on the Kansas–Nebraska Act, but he came to strongly oppose it.White, pp. 196–197. On October 16, 1854, in his "Peoria Speech", Lincoln declared his opposition to slavery, which he repeated en route to the presidency.Thomas (2008), pp. 148–152. Speaking in his Kentucky accent, with a very powerful voice,White, p. 199. he said the Kansas Act had a "declared indifference, but as I must think, a covert real zeal for the spread of slavery. I cannot but hate it. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world ..."Basler (1953), p. 255. Lincoln's attacks on the Kansas–Nebraska Act marked his return to political life.White, pp. 203–205.
Nationally, the Whigs were irreparably split by the Kansas–Nebraska Act and other efforts to compromise on the slavery issue. Reflecting the demise of his party, Lincoln would write in 1855, "I think I am a Whig, but others say there are no Whigs, and that I am an abolitionist [...] I do no more than oppose the extension of slavery."White, pp. 215–216. Drawing on the antislavery portion of the Whig Party, and combining Free Soil, Liberty, and antislavery Democratic Party members, the new Republican Party formed as a northern party dedicated to antislavery.McGovern, pp. 38–39. Lincoln resisted early attempts to recruit him to the new party, fearing that it would serve as a platform for extreme abolitionists.White, pp. 203–204. Lincoln also still hoped to rejuvenate the ailing Whig Party, though he bemoaned his party's growing closeness with the nativist Know Nothing movement.White, pp. 191–194.
In the 1854 elections, Lincoln was elected to the Illinois legislature but declined to take his seat. In the aftermath of the elections, which showed the power and popularity of the movement opposed to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Lincoln instead sought election to the United States Senate.White, pp. 204–205. At that time, senators were elected by the state legislature.Oates, p. 119. After leading in the first six rounds of voting, but unable to obtain a majority, Lincoln instructed his backers to vote for Lyman Trumbull. Trumbull was an antislavery Democrat, and had received few votes in the earlier ballots; his supporters, also antislavery Democrats, had vowed not to support any Whig. Lincoln's decision to withdraw enabled his Whig supporters and Trumbull's antislavery Democrats to combine and defeat the mainstream Democratic candidate, Joel Aldrich Matteson.White, pp. 205–208.
In part due to the ongoing violent political confrontations in the Kansas, opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act remained strong in Illinois and throughout the North. As the 1856 elections approached, Lincoln abandoned the defunct Whig Party in favor of the Republicans. He attended the May 1856 Bloomington Convention, which formally established the Illinois Republican Party. The convention platform asserted that Congress had the right to regulate slavery in the territories and called for the immediate admission of Kansas as a free state. Lincoln gave the final speech of the convention, in which he endorsed the party platform and called for the preservation of the Union.White, pp. 216–221. At the June 1856 Republican National Convention, Lincoln received significant support on the vice presidential ballot, though the party nominated a ticket of John C. Frémont and William Dayton. Lincoln strongly supported the Republican ticket, campaigning for the party throughout Illinois. The Democrats nominated former Ambassador James Buchanan, who had been out of the country since 1853 and thus had avoided the debate over slavery in the territories, while the Know Nothings nominated former Whig President Millard Fillmore.White, pp. 224–228. In the 1856 elections, Buchanan defeated both his challengers, but Frémont won several Northern states and Republican William Henry Bissell won election as Governor of Illinois. Though Lincoln did not himself win office, his vigorous campaigning had made him the leading Republican in Illinois.White, pp. 229–230.
Eric Foner (2010) contrasts the abolitionists and anti-slavery Radical Republicans of the Northeast who saw slavery as a sin, with the conservative Republicans who thought it was bad because it hurt white people and blocked progress. Foner argues that Lincoln was a moderate in the middle, opposing slavery primarily because it violated the republicanism principles of the Founding Fathers, especially the equality of all men and democratic self-government as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.Foner (2010), pp. 84–88.
In March 1857, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. The opinion by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney held that blacks were not citizens and derived no rights from the Constitution. While many Democrats hoped that Dred Scott would end the dispute over slavery in the territories, the decision sparked further outrage in the North.White, pp. 236–238. Lincoln denounced the decision, alleging it was the product of a conspiracy of Democrats to support the Slave Power.Zarefsky, pp. 69–110. Lincoln argued, "The authors of the Declaration of Independence never intended 'to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity', but they 'did consider all men created equal—equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'."Jaffa, pp. 299–300.
Lincoln–Douglas debates
Douglas was up for re-election in 1858, and Lincoln hoped to defeat the powerful Illinois Democrat. With the former Democrat Trumbull now serving as a Republican senator, many in the party felt that a former Whig should be nominated in 1858, and Lincoln's 1856 campaigning and willingness to support Trumbull in 1854 had earned him favor in the party.White, pp. 247–248. Some eastern Republicans favored the reelection of Douglas for the Senate in 1858, since he had led the opposition to the Lecompton Constitution, which would have admitted Kansas as a slave state.Oates, pp. 138–139. But many Illinois Republicans resented this eastern interference. For the first time, Illinois Republicans held a convention to agree upon a Senate candidate, and Lincoln won the party's Senate nomination with little opposition.White, pp. 247–250.
Accepting the nomination, Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech, drawing on Mark 3:25, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government 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 it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."White, p. 251. The speech created an evocative image of the danger of disunion caused by the slavery debate, and rallied Republicans across the North.Harris, p. 98. The stage was then set for the campaign for statewide election of the Illinois legislature which would, in turn, select Lincoln or Douglas as its U.S. senator.Donald (1996), p. 209. On being informed of Lincoln's nomination, Douglas stated, "[Lincoln] is the strong man of the party ... and if I beat him, my victory will be hardly won."White, pp. 257–258.