VOL. VIII, No. 2. DES MOINES, IOWA, JULY, 1907.

3D SERIES.

IOWA AND THE FIRST NOMINATION OF ABRAHAM

LINCOLN.

BY F. I. HERRIOTT.

Professor of Economics, Political and Social Science,
Drake University.

The delegates from Iowa will go to Chicago to nominate a Presidential ticket-the strongest ticket possible-and to this end will be glad to listen to the suggestions of well informed friends at Washington or elsewhere, but they go unpledged, uncommitted, and fully at liberty to hear all suggestions and then to do what shall commend itself to their unfettered judgment as best for the cause. As it is in Iowa, so it will be elsewhere. -Horace Greeley (Feb. 8, 1860). 1

the blot does not rest upon the history of the Union, that this [Lincoln's nomination] the most fate-pregnant decision which an American convention had ever to make, was brought about by blind chance in combination with base intriguers. Far from it. It was the conscious act of clear-sighted and self-sacrificing patriots to whom honor and gratitude in the fullest measure are due.-Von Holst (1892). 2

I.

EXPECTATIONS AND THE MEAGRE MINUTES.

The average Iowan is wont to indulge in the presumption that Iowa's politicians and statesmen have always played prominent parts in our national affairs. While often expressed in language more exuberant and vasty than modesty or truth sanctions, the assumption is fairly well founded. In recent years no one will gainsay this State's prominence in our Federal councils. Fifty and sixty years ago the case was likewise. Iowa's chiefs commanded attention and exacted consideration in the conduct of the national government.

Mr. James G. Blaine in closing his characterization of the leaders of the Senate at Washington in the momentous session of 1850, says: "Dodge of Wisconsin and Dodge of Iowa, father and son, represented the Democracy of the remotest

(1) New York Tribune, Feb. 17, 1860.-Extract from letter dated at Mansfield, Ohio, written after making circuit of the Northwestern States. (2) Constitutional and Political History of the United States, Vol. VII, p. 173.

outposts of the North-West. . At no time, before or since in the history of the Senate has its membership been so illustrious, its weight of character and ability so great."" Henry Dodge, father, was Iowa's first Governor de facto when the State was a part of Wisconsin (1836-38). In the country at large Iowa was regarded as a stronghold of the democracy and her first Senators, A. C. Dodge and Geo. W. Jones, were considerable factors in the party councils of Presidents Pierce and Buchanan. Both men were given important diplomatic posts when the political revolution in Iowa enforced their retirement from the Senate, the former at Madrid and the latter at Bogota. At the National Democratic Convention in Charleston in 1860, the Douglas forces triumphed in the struggle over the platform and we are told that it was "skillfully accomplished under the lead of Henry B. Payne of Ohio and Benjamin Samuels of Iowa.""

In President Taylor's short-lived administration, an Iowan, Fitz Henry Warren of Burlington, acquired fame as Assistant Postmaster-General by his swift elimination of Democratic office-holders, and his resignation because of indignation over Fillmore's apostasy on the subject of slavery. Afterwards, in 1852, he became the Secretary of the National Executive Committee of the Whig party in the Pierce-Scott canvass. Later the pages of J. S. Pike show us that the brilliant flashes of Warren's pen made him a forceful factor in the determination of anti-slavery opinion and procedure." It was his clarion calls in 1861 that aroused the furore in the north against the inactivity of the new administration and forced the precipitate movement "On to Richmond" which ended in the disastrous rout at Bull Run.7

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(1) Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1, p. 90.

(2) Governor Robert Lucas, first Territorial Governor of Iowa, 1838-41, was the permanent chairman of the first National Democratic Convention, that met in Baltimore, May 21, 1832. See Parish's Robert Lucas, p. 111. (3) Blaine. Ibid, p. 162: McClure's Our Presidents and How We Make them, p. 167.

(4) Ben Perley Poore. Reminiscences, Vol. I, p. 355. (5) Annals of Iowa (3d ser.), Vol. VI, p. 486.

(6) Pike's First Blows of the Civil War, pp. 483-4, 496; and Von Holst's Vol. VII, pp. 155, 157.

(7) Letters from Washington to New York Tribune; see Mr. E. H. Stiles, Annals Ib., 487-490. It is not unlikely that President Lincoln's refusal to appoint him Postmaster-General, for which he was earnestly pushed by Iowans, made Warren's ink more acid than otherwise.

The triumph of James W. Grimes in 1854 made him a national figure. His election as Governor was a surprise to the entire country. This was not strange for Iowa was looked upon as a "hot-bed of dough faces," and the annals of the ante bellum period contain no clearer, stronger, or more courageous pronouncement against the aggressions of the Slavocrats than his address "To the People of Iowa" when he accepted the nomination for Governor.2 His election was mostly his personal achievement and not the result, as it would be nowadays, of organization and widely concerted effort. Senator Chase of Ohio wrote the new champion that he had waged "the best battle for freedom yet fought.''3 Giddings declared that he had made "the true issue" on which the battle had to be fought in the northern States.1 In the Senate from 1859 to 1869 he was distinguished "for iron will and sound judgment" and became, says Perley Poore "a tower of strength for the administration" in the crises of the war."

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Grimes's victory in 1854 sent James Harlan to the Senate in 1856. He, too, says a distinguished historian, immediately made his "mark. His speech on the Lecompton Constitution won Seward's admiration. The Republican Association at Washington printed and sold at a low price Senator Harlan's speeches along with those of Collamer, Hale, Seward and Henry Wilson." Harlan was a statesman the country reckoned with, Mr. Blaine telling us that he later became "one of Mr. Lincoln's most valued and most confidential friends and subsequently a member of his cabinet.""10

No fact, in the writer's judgment, indicates more strikingly the potency of Iowa's influence at Washington fifty years ago than President Lincoln's appointment in the forepart of his first term of Samuel F. Miller as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. He was endorsed strongly by Iowa's bench and bar and by others in States adjacent. The President, however, delayed making the appointment. Upon per

(1) Von Holst, Vol. V. p. 78. (2) Salter's Life of Grimes, pp. 34-50. (3) Ib., p. 54. (4) Ib., p. 63. (5) Blaine, Ib., p. 321. (6) Poore, Ib., Vol. II, p. 100. (7) Rhodes' History of U. S., Vol. II, p. 130. (8) Pike's First Blows, etc., p. 417. (9) Rhodes, Ib., p. 131. (10) Blaine, Ib., p. 321

sonal inquiry, Mr. John A. Kasson, then Assistant Postmaster-General, learned that the reputation of the Keokuk lawyer "had not then even extended so far as to Springfield, Illinois" (a distance but little over one hundred miles).1 Nevertheless the appointment was made and Justice Miller became almost immediately the "dominant personality" of our great court.2 The significance of his elevation is thisPresident Lincoln was not a petty spoilsman and he had no special fondness for the office monger; but he was a politician par excellence. He made appointments with an eye single to the public good, which was then the preservation of the Union, yet he always gave close attention to the influence of the Potentialities back of the aspirants for office who pressed their claims upon him.3 Government is not a philosophical abstraction or an academic thesis. It is a constantly shifting balance of contrary and divergent forces and interests. was essential to success in combating the nation's enemies at the front for the President so to co-ordinate factors and control conditions behind him as to assure him at once non-interference and efficient support. Justice Miller's appointment must have appeared to President Lincoln not only creditable and safe, but eminently worth while, insuring strength upon the bench and influential support for his administration, both in Congress and in Iowa. Besides consideration of the influence of Iowa's leaders we should naturally presume that recollections of the prominent part taken by Iowans on his behalf in the Convention that first nominated him for the Presidency played no small part in deciding President Lincoln to select the then but little known jurist of Keokuk.

It

This presumption, however, is apparently upset if the curious make casual inquiry. There is nothing whatever in the record of the proceedings of the Convention showing that Iowa did anything for any candidate worthy of special note or remembrance. One of Iowa's delegates moved an amendment to a motion to thank Chicago's Board of Trade for an invi

(1) Mr. John A. Kasson to Charles Aldrich-letter dated Washington, D. C., Nov. 10, 1893. See Annals, Vol. I, p. 252. (2) Characterization of Chief Justice Chase quoted in Annals, Ib., p. 247. (3) See Mr. Horace White's introduction to Herndon & Weik's Lincoln, Vol. I, p. XXII.

tation to an excursion on Lake Michigan.1 Another delegate secured an amendment allowing each State to choose its member of the National Committee as it pleased.2 When the Committee on Credentials reported that Iowa had "appointed eight delegates from each Congressional district [Iowa had only two] and sixteen Senatorial delegates," when entitled to but eight votes, the minutes record "[laughter].'" In the entire proceedings of the Convention, Iowa is credited with but one significant performance and that was manifestly either a blunder due to excitement or a play to the galleries-A delegate elicited "great applause" by seconding the nomination of Abraham Lincoln "in the name of twothirds of the delegation of Iowa." Yet, on the first ballot immediately following, Iowa gave Lincoln only two votes, or one-fourth of her quota; and on the third ballot even when it was clear that the candidate of Illinois was almost certain to be nominated Iowa gave over a third of her vote to other candidates. After Mr. Cartter of Ohio changed four of Chase's votes to Lincoln and decided the result then a delegate from Iowa joined the chorus and on behalf of the delegation moved to make it unanimous. But there is nothing in all this that denotes conspicuous achievement or influence, neither staunch service nor effective generalship such as politicians exact.

If we turn to formal histories or accounts of national currency or general use our presumption is further seriously disturbed. Iowa's influence in the nomination seems to have been conspicuous chiefly by its absence. There are no references to Iowans whatever in scores of volumes relating the events of the convention week. One would almost imagine that Iowa's men were not present at all. In practically but one case has the writer found mention of Iowa's influence in a favorable connection and even here the assertion is disputed. In two other instances distinguished national historians refer to her representatives in Chicago in derogatory terms that

(1) Proceedings of the First Three Republican National Conventions of 1856, 1860, 1864, published by Charles W. Johnson, p. 91. (2) Ib., p. 107. (3) Ib., p. 110. (4) Ib., p. 149. (5) Ib., pp. 149, 153. (6) Ib., p. 154.