How Lincoln handled a deadlocked legislature

He put his cause ahead of himself.

This week’s chaos in the House of Representatives brings to mind an episode of Differ We Must in which Lincoln faced a fragmented legislature, and an election that took many ballots.

It happened after the elections of 1854, the year that slavery cracked up both major parties, the Whigs and Democrats. Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic Senator from Lincoln’s state of Illinois, was an author of this chaos; his Kansas-Nebraska Act split the parties on a single issue and prompted the creation of a new antislavery party, the Republicans.

Lincoln, then out of office, campaigned for the antislavery side against Douglas’s Democrats. Douglas was not up for re-election, but his party was defending its control of the state legislature. In the November election, antislavery forces won a majority—but they were fragmented, a mix of antislavery Whigs, antislavery Democrats and Republicans against the remaining Douglas Democrats.

At the start of the session in 1855, this fractured legislature was to elect a U.S. Senator to serve alongside Douglas. The incumbent was James Shields, a Douglas ally—and Lincoln resolved he wanted the job. He was ambitious, and also wanted to deal a blow to Douglas.

He led all candidates on the first ballot, but fell short of a majority of the one hundred votes. There were other antislavery candidates, among them Lincoln’s friend Lyman Trumbull.

Here, from Differ We Must, is what happened next:

—

The sun set as legislators voted a second, third, and fourth time. Lincoln wasn’t on the House floor, but was nearby to talk strategy with allies; there were places to huddle among the spectators who sat in the overhead gallery or stood in the lobby by the stairs.

As the balloting went on some of his former supporters voted against Lincoln, who perceived what was going wrong. Shields was no longer his principal threat. The Douglas men above all supported Douglas, and if Shields couldn’t win, any other Douglas Democrat would do. Some were covertly campaigning for a dark horse, the Democratic governor, who hadn’t been in Congress for the Nebraska debate and could fudge his position to appeal to both sides. He could win.

Lincoln concluded he would never win. A few anti-Nebraska Democrats would never vote for a Whig like him. He decided the most important thing was defeating Douglas—and if he could not reach fifty-one, then Lyman Trumbull could, because he was a Democrat and Lincoln could get Whigs to vote for him. Lincoln urged his core supporters to switch to Trumbull, who won on the next ballot.

People cheered in the chamber and the lobbies until the Speaker pounded his gavel to restore order.

The next day’s Illinois State Journal celebrated a triumph: Illinois had “rebuked” Douglas in a way that would be felt across the country. The Whig editor added a weather report on the bottom of one of the columns: “The flag flies beautifully over the State House. Wind from Nebraska.” Lincoln had made this possible, though his friends felt the result was unfair. Judge David Davis, an adviser, said Lincoln never should have yielded to Trumbull, who had begun the day with a fraction of Lincoln’s support. Mary Lincoln was so angry at Trumbull that she largely broke off contact with his wife, Julia.

Lincoln brooded privately, but received compensation. Because he couldn’t run directly against Douglas, he had to challenge the senator’s whole party—and this pushed Lincoln into party-building, helping to assemble the ad hoc coalition that eventually formed the bulk of the Republican Party of Illinois. His self-sacrifice in the Senate race assured that coalition’s unity, completed its initial success—and left him in line for his next opportunity.

—

Thanks for reading Differ We Must, my exploration of our present and past divides. You can order Differ We Must here.