The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [71]
In a letter accompanying the book, Lincoln explained his position on racial equality. “I think the negro,” he wrote, “is included in the word ‘men’ used in the Declaration of Independence,” and that slavery was therefore wrong. But natural rights were one thing, political and social rights quite another. As Lincoln explained, “I have expressly disclaimed all intention to bring about social and political equality between the white and black races.” Lincoln added that these views were essentially the same as those of Henry Clay. On the day before the election, the Illinois State Journal devoted four columns on its front page to demonstrating that Clay and Lincoln held the same positions on slavery, racial equality, and “the separation of the races.”33
On election day, the Democrats carried seventeen of the formerly Whig legislative districts in central Illinois compared to only eight for Lincoln. “Thus was Lincoln slain in old Kentucky,” wrote the Chicago Democrat. William Herndon blamed a letter endorsing Douglas written by Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, Clay’s self-styled political heir, for the outcome. “Thousands of Whigs,” he lamented, “dropped us just on the eve of the election, through the influence of Crittenden.” But there were additional reasons why Republicans failed in 1858 to gain control of the Illinois legislature, ensuring Douglas’s reelection. Many eastern Republicans, including the influential Greeley, gave Lincoln only lukewarm support. Among the party’s national leaders, only Salmon P. Chase, who had been elected governor of Ohio in 1855, came to Illinois to campaign for Lincoln. (Two years later, when Lincoln sought the presidential nomination, he directed an Ohio supporter to “do no ungenerous thing towards Governor Chase, because he gave us his sympathy in 1858, when scarcely any other distinguished man did.”) Douglas’s strong opposition to the admission of Kansas under the Lecompton Constitution blunted Lincoln’s efforts to portray him as a supporter of slavery. Even the Chicago Press and Tribune, in its election postmortem, admitted that Douglas “stood right on the great vital issue of the day.”34
Nonetheless, had the senator been chosen by popular vote, it seems likely that Lincoln would have emerged victorious. Taken together, the Republican legislative candidates significantly outpolled their opponents. But because the apportionment of seats failed to reflect the rapid increase in population in the northern counties since 1850, Democrats retained control of both houses. The Republican candidates for treasurer and superintendent of public instruction, the only statewide offices contested in 1858, defeated their Democratic rivals by around 125,000 votes to 121,000. Because of the state’s “antique apportionment law,” wrote the Press and Tribune, Douglas was reelected, but “Illinois is a Republican state.”35
Outside Illinois, 1858 ushered in a historic electoral realignment. Republicans swept to power not only in their strongholds in the Upper North, but in the key swing states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. With the Lecompton battle having discredited the Buchanan administration in the North and Douglas in the South, prospects for a Republican victory in 1860 seemed bright. As for Lincoln, 1858 made him a national figure for the first time. “Your speeches are read with great avidity by all political men,” the Chicago editor Charles H. Ray reported from upstate New York in the midst of the campaign. Despite his refusal to embrace equal rights for blacks, many Radicals and abolitionists praised