Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [154]
Now there was work to be done at home. A successful bid would require the complete support of the Illinois delegation. To accomplish this, Lincoln would need to bridge the often rancorous divisions within the Republican ranks, a task that would demand all his ample and subtle political skills.
At the end of January 1859, Lyman Trumbull, concerned that the increasingly popular Lincoln might contest his reelection to the Senate, had apprised him of an article “said to have been prepared by Col. John Wentworth,” the Republican mayor of Chicago, “the object of which evidently is, to stir up bad feeling between Republicans who were formerly Whigs, & those who were Democrats.” The piece suggested bad faith on the Democrats’ part, singling out Norman Judd and Trumbull himself, in 1855, and again in 1858, when Lincoln ran a second time against Douglas. “Any effort to put enmity between you and me,” Lincoln reassured Trumbull, “is as idle as the wind…the republicans generally, coming from the old democratic ranks, were as sincerely anxious for my success in the late contest, as I myself…. And I beg to assure you, beyond all possible cavil, that you can scarcely be more anxious to be sustained two years hence than I am that you shall be so sustained. I can not conceive it possible for me to be a rival of yours.
“A word now for your own special benefit,” Lincoln warned in a follow-up note. “You better write no letters which can possibly be distorted into opposition, or quasi opposition to me. There are men on the constant watch for such things out of which to prejudice my peculiar friends against you. While I have no more suspicion of you than I have of my best friend living, I am kept in a constant struggle against suggestions of this sort.”
It would require more effort to defuse the increasingly bitter feud between Norman Judd and John Wentworth. In public forums, Wentworth would drag out past wrongs, continuing to accuse Judd and his former Democratic allies of conspiring to defeat Lincoln in 1855, of “bungling” Lincoln’s campaign in 1858, and of working now “to advance Trumbull as a presidential candidate, at Lincoln’s expense.”
Lincoln hastened to reassure Judd, who hoped to run for governor, that the “vague charge that you played me false last year, I believe to be false and outrageous.” In 1855, “you did vote for Trumbull against me; and, although I think, and have said a thousand times, that was no injustice to me, I cannot change the fact, nor compel people to cease speaking of it. Ever since that matter occurred, I have constantly labored, as I believe you know, to have all recollection of it dropped.” Finally, “as to the charge of your intriguing for Trumbull against me, I believe as little of that as any other charge.” If such charges were made, Lincoln promised, they would not “go uncontradicted.”
The controversy erupted into public view when Judd brought a libel suit against Wentworth, who tried to retain Lincoln as his counsel, claiming that the “very reason that you may assign for declining my offer is the very one that urges me to write you. You are friendly to us both. I prefer to put myself in the hands of mutual friends rather than…in the hands of those who have a deep interest in keeping up a quarrel.” Of course, Lincoln had no intention of entangling himself in such explosive litigation, but he did help to mediate the altercation. The dispute was resolved without a court fight. Consequently, both Wentworth and Judd remained close to Lincoln and would support his efforts to control the Illinois delegation.
“I am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegation,” Lincoln wrote Judd, knowing that the former Democrat had influence with the Chicago Press and Tribune, which covered the northern part of the state.