Lincoln - Part 87
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Part 87

131 "I see you": CW, 1:477.

131 he had appointments: The following paragraphs draw heavily on William F. Hanna's excellent monograph, Abraham Among the Yankees: Abraham Lincoln's 1848 Visit to Ma.s.sachusetts (Taunton, Ma.s.s.: Old Colony Historical Society, 1983), and on Wayne C. Temple's authoritative Lincoln's Connections with the Illinois & Michigan Ca.n.a.l, His Return from Congress in '48, and His Invention (Springfield: Illinois Bell, 1986).

131 "of the soil": CW, 2:34.

131 "a melancholy display": For these newspapers' verdicts, see Hanna, Abraham Among the Yankees, pp. 30, 34, 37, 64.

132 "of his countenance": Ibid., pp. 7273.

132 "a tasteful speech": Sheldon H. Harris, "Abraham Lincoln Stumps a Yankee Audience," New England Quarterly 38 (June 1965), p. 228.

132 "in the Union": E. L. Pierce to Jesse W. Weik, Feb. 12, 1890, HWC; Hanna, Abraham Among the Yankees, p. 40.

132 visited Niagara Falls: The date of this visit is problematic. By careful research in the shipping records Wayne C. Temple has shown that the Lincolns probably arrived in Buffalo on Sept. 25 and left the next morning for Chicago on the Great Lakes steamer Globe. He concludes that "it is most doubtful that they visited Niagara Falls for anything more than a brief glance, if at all." They did return and see the Falls in 1857. Temple, Lincoln's Connections with the Illinois & Michigan Ca.n.a.l, pp. 3234.

132 water came from: Donald, Lincoln's Herndon, p. 128.

132 "overwhelming, glorious triumph": CW, 1:477.

132 "known them to be": David Davis to W. P. Walker, May 16, 1848, photostat, David Davis MSS, Chicago Historical Society.

133 termed "heart-sickening": CW, 1:490.

133 Lincoln's "Spot" resolutions: Thomas L. Harris to Messrs. Lanphier and Walker, Apr. 5, 1848, in Charles C. Patton, comp., "Glory to G.o.d and the Sucker Democracy" (Springfield, Ill, 1973, photocopy), vol. 2.

133 "to do this": CW, 1:491.

133 "young men back": Herndon's Lincoln, 2:285.

133 the Democratic candidate: Herndon blamed Logan's defeat on Lincoln's Mexican War stand, which he said was the equivalent of committing "political suicide" (Herndon's Lincoln, 2:284), and a number of subsequent biographers echoed this view. It has recently been challenged by Gabor S. Boritt in "Lincoln's Opposition to the Mexican War" and by Mark E. Neely, Jr., in "War and Partisanship," and in "Lincoln and the Mexican War: An Argument by a.n.a.logy," Civil War History 24 (Mar. 1978): 524, who point out that Lincoln's antiwar views were shared by most Western Whigs and that criticism of his stand came mostly from partisan Democratic sources. Sangamon County poll books show that Mexican War veterans must not have been alienated by Lincoln's stand, since they split their vote almost evenly between Logan and Harris. Mark E. Neely, Jr., "Lincoln, the Mexican War, and Springfield's Veterans," LL, no. 1701 (Nov. 1979).

133 "newly acquired territory": CW, 2:11.

133 the congressional contest: Mark E. Neely, Jr., "Did Lincoln Cause Logan's Defeat?" LL, no. 1660 (June 1976).

133 and its expansion: For Lincoln's limited commitment to antislavery up to 1854, see Robert W. Johannsen's incisive Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), chap. 1.

134 "the different States": CW, 1:75.

134 "abate its evils": Ibid.

134 "in the old": CW, 1:347348.

135 voted for it: Beveridge, 1:480. Beveridge correctly notes that Lincoln's 1854 statement that he had voted for the Wilmot Proviso forty times while in Congress was "a campaign exaggeration."

135 him into custody: Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress, p. 130.

135 "Negro livery-stable": Ibid., p. 124.