Peck: A lesson from Lincoln in honor of his birthday

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Graham A. Peck is an associate professor of history at St. Xavier University in Chicago.

Updated: March 17, 2012 8:05AM

Abraham Lincoln is best known for his role in preserving the Union during the Civil War and emancipating southern slaves. Yet his prewar career in Illinois made those later achievements possible.

During the 1850s, he helped found the Illinois Republican Party on an antislavery platform that would carry him to the presidency in 1860. In doing so, he showed his great capacity for marshaling support among politicians and the broader public in the service of important reforms.

In early 1856, Illinois’ antislavery politicians confronted a major challenge — the state’s powerful Democratic Party controlled state politics. At the head of the party was nationally renowned U.S. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas, who had championed compromise measures in 1850 that had resolved disputes over slavery that had threatened to plunge the nation into war.

In 1854, Douglas’ Kansas-Nebraska Act again addressed slavery’s status in American life. In organizing the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, the law authorized the territorial legislatures to decide whether to legalize slavery within their borders.

Douglas hoped his approach could resolve the nation’s long-running debate over slavery’s expansion and cement the bonds of union among the states. Most antislavery Illinoisans, however, believed that Douglas’ approach would enable slavery’s expansion and thus perpetuate it.

But stopping him was no easy matter. Antislavery Illinoisans were neither of one mind nor one organization.

Some were abolitionists, pledged against slavery everywhere. Some were anti-Nebraska Democrats, who loved their party but reviled the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Some were former Whigs, like Lincoln, who detested slavery but acknowledged its constitutional protections. Some were German immigrants who believed the country should stand for freedom, and some were nativists who seasoned their antipathy toward foreigners with hostility towards slavery.

It was a combustible mix, filled with foes. Forging them into an effective political coalition was no small task.

The man for the job was Abraham Lincoln. In February 1856, he led a movement to create the Illinois Republican Party, which met in a convention three months later and resolved to prohibit slavery’s spread “into territories heretofore free.” This language was unmistakably antislavery but did not violate the Constitution.

Meanwhile, the party welcomed Democrats and antislavery immigrants, many of whom had hesitated to join a political party dominated by Whigs or nativists. In the end, 270 cheering delegates came together to limit the spread of slavery.

In recognition of his leadership, Lincoln received the party’s U.S. Senate nomination two years later, enabling him to challenge Douglas to a series of campaign debates. Although he lost the election, Lincoln’s eloquent arguments to prohibit slavery’s expansion won him a national reputation.

In the 16 months after his defeat, Lincoln used his newly acquired influence to unify the Republican Party further, concentrating initially in Illinois. He urged Chicago Republicans not to demand radical antislavery policy from downstate Republicans and scolded central Illinois Republicans who had censured the “ultra” antislavery men of the North.

Lincoln also urged Ohio Republicans to drop their opposition to the fugitive slave law and persuaded Massachusetts Republicans that nativism undermined liberty. He rallied the party around the “great principle” that slavery was morally wrong and the central objective of “preventing the spread and nationalization of slavery.”

Lincoln’s leadership in the Illinois Republican Party in the 1850s had profound historical consequences, as his presidency would make clear. But his political approach also offers us a valuable lesson.

In a complex world in which political choices abound, we need to develop sufficient unity in which to pursue critically needed public policy changes. This is as true today as it was in Lincoln’s Illinois.

Graham A. Peck is an associate professor of history at St. Xavier University in Chicago.