Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [60]
His 1840 campaign plan divided the party organization into three levels of command. The county captain was “to procure from the poll-books a separate list for each Precinct” of everyone who had previously voted the Whig slate. The list would then be divided by each precinct captain “into Sections of ten who reside most convenient to each other.” The captain of each section would then be responsible to “see each man of his Section face to face, and procure his pledge…[to] vote as early on the day as possible.”
That same year, Lincoln and four Whig colleagues, including Joshua Speed, published a circular directed at the presidential campaign of William Henry Harrison. “Our intention is to organize the whole State, so that every Whig can be brought to the polls.” To this end, the publication outlined a plan whereby each county would be divided into small districts, each responsible for making “a perfect list” of all their voters, designating which names were likely from past behavior to vote with the Whigs and which were doubtful. Committees in each district would then “keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence.” These committees were to submit monthly progress reports to the central state committee, ensuring an accurate survey of voters in each county before election day. Party workers could then be dispatched to round up the right voters and get them to the polls to support the Whig Party. In setting forth his campaign plan, as meticulously structured as any modern effort to “get out the vote,” Lincoln did not neglect the necessity of fund-raising, asking each county to send “fifty or one hundred dollars” to subscribe to a newspaper “devoted exclusively to the great cause in which we are engaged.”
LINCOLN LIKENED his politics to an “old womans dance”—“Short & Sweet.” He stood for three simple ideas: a national bank, a protective tariff, and a system for internal improvements. A state legislator could do little to promote a national bank or raise tariffs, but internal improvements, which then usually meant the improvement of roads, rivers, harbors, and railways, were largely a local matter. Many Whigs, Seward and Bates among them, spoke of improving waterways, but Lincoln had actually worked on a flatboat to bring meat and grain down the Mississippi to New Orleans; he had a flatboatman’s knowledge of the hazards posed by debris and logs while navigating the Sangamon River. Nor would he ever forget the thrill of receiving his first dollar for transporting two gentlemen on his flatboat from the riverbank to their steamer, which was anchored “in the middle of the river.” The experience of earning two half dollars in a single day made the world seem “wider and fairer,” giving him confidence in the future.
Lincoln knew firsthand the deprivations, the marginal livelihood of the subsistence farmer unable to bring produce to market without dependable roads. He had been paid the meager wages of the hired hand. Primitive roads, clogged waterways, lack of rail connections, inadequate schools—such were not merely issues to Lincoln, but hurdles he had worked all his life to overcome in order to earn an ampler share of freedom. These “improvements” to the infrastructure would enable thousands of farming families to emerge from the kind of poverty in which the Lincoln family had been trapped, and would permit new cities and towns to flourish.
Lincoln’s dedication to internal improvements and economic development was given strength, nourishment,