From Out of the Top Hat: A Blog from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum

1856 Republican ballot, showing Lincoln as an at-large presidential elector for Illinois.

 On August 30, 1860, Abraham Lincoln wrote a reply to Alexander Kelly McClure about the upcoming presidential contest.  McClure, a lawyer, newspaper editor, and chairman of the Pennsylvania State Republican Committee, kept in frequent communication with the Republican presidential nominee.  Lincoln wished to clarify how his chances of victory were materializing in the Keystone State.  “When you say you are organizing in every election district,” Lincoln queried, “do you mean to include the idea that you are ‘canvassing’—‘counting noses?’”  McClure responded that he was counting noses to “the man” in most districts and obtaining a careful “estimate” by loyal party men in the remaining districts.  All signs suggested that Pennsylvania’s 27 electoral votes would go to Lincoln. 

The Electoral College, not a majority of voters, determines who occupies the White House.  Having supporters and detractors over the centuries, the Electoral College was opposed early in his life by Lincoln, who then changed his mind.  Writing on February 13, 1848, to Josephus Hewett, a former Springfield lawyer, Lincoln argued: 

 “I was once of your opinion, expressed in your letter, that presidential electors should be dispensed with; but a more thorough knowledge of the causes that first introduced them, has made me doubt.  Those causes were briefly these.  The convention that framed the constitution has this difficulty: the small states wished to so frame the new government as that they might be equal to the large ones regardless of the inequality of population; the large ones insisted on equality in proportion to population.  They compromised it, by basing the House of Representatives on population, and the Senate on states regardless of population; and the executive on both principles, by electors in each state, equal in numbers to her senators and representatives.  Now, throw away the machinery of electors, and the compromise is broken up, and the whole yielded to the principle of the large states.” 

 While many Jacksonian Democrats preferred to do away with the Electoral College, all political operatives had to yield to the necessity of calculating the electoral math. 

A recently acquired form letter illustrates the calculations which political insiders were generating in anticipation of the 1860 election.  Dr. Charles Leib, a former Pennsylvanian residing in Chicago, began to distribute form letters in late 1859 urging Republican leaders to consider Simon Cameron, a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, as the party’s presidential candidate.  Arguing the electoral math, Leib states: “If we nominate Gen. Cameron and add to the vote of Col. Fremont (114) that of Pennsylvania (27,) New Jersey (7,) Kansas (3) and Minnesota (4,) we will elect him by one majority, if even the democracy [i.e., the Democratic Party] should carry the vote of Illinois (11,) Indiana (13,) California (4) and Oregon (3,) which, however, it will be impossible for them to do.”  Leib warns that “should a candidate be nominated who cannot carry Pennsylvania and New Jersey, he will fail of an election by two votes, should he receive the support of every other free state.”  The letter ends with an electoral breakdown based upon sections — the vote divided between free versus slave states. 

The electoral math was clear to many in both the North and the South that the new Republican party would be able to capture the White House in 1860 if it could build upon its electoral foundation of 1856.  That meant running a moderate who would be appealing in such states as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kansas, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, California, and Oregon.  It was also clear to Southerners that unless they could run a Northern Democrat who was partial to protecting slavery, the electoral math was against them in any election based upon sectional interests.

   “You must write me a good long letter after you get this,” implored Abraham Lincoln to his estranged fiancée, Mary S. Owens.  “You have nothing else to do, and though it might not seem interesting to you, after you had written it, it would be a good deal of company to me in this ‘busy wilderness.’”  Lincoln’s reference to Sangamon County as a ‘busy wilderness” was written only slightly in jest.  Indeed, Lincoln shared the expansive dreams that most residents had for the future of the county and the towns that had sprung up within its boundaries.  The dreams were built on visions of personal happiness and material advancement.  A fundamental element in realizing these visions rested upon the United States Postal System. 

   Tradition has it that Abraham Lincoln was appointed postmaster of New Salem after women of the village complained about the poor service being given by Samuel Hill and petitioned for his removal.  Even though Lincoln was an anti-Jackson man, President Andrew Jackson approved Lincoln’s appointment, being one among hundreds of postmaster applications to be approved.  The postal system was 19^th -century America’s version of the Internet.  The mails transported information that helped individuals in business and professional development, and the mails provided personal correspondence of the nature Lincoln was seeking from Mary Owens –  letters that could be read again and again in the absence of a loved one.  Letters were precious objects, conveying heartfelt sentiments and sharing experiences and dreams for a better life. 

   A small collection of letters sent from New Salem by residents Matthew Marsh and James Fox Clarke describes the rich Illinois prairie soil and the wonderful opportunities for farming and raising a family.  By enticing family and friends from the exhausted soils of New England to a new life in Illinois, the letters were part of a chain migration, encouraging the rapid settlement of the area. The post office also provided access to newspapers and political speeches made by congressmen, connecting individuals on the frontier to a larger identity as a community, state, and nation.

   Abraham Lincoln’s brief, three-year tenure as postmaster offered him many benefits.  Since mail was not delivered, people had to pick their mail up from Lincoln; this system allowed him to read the various state and national newspapers subscribed to by various residents.  Unlike service today by which the sender pays for the cost of postage, in Lincoln’s time as postmaster, the recipient paid for the privilege of receiving mail.  Postal rates varied depending on the distance traveled and the number of pages in the letter.  A single sheet cost 6 cents for the first 30 miles, and up to 25 cents for more than 400 miles.  But Lincoln was willing to accommodate the residents of the area and occasionally placed correspondence in his hat if he were traveling in the direction of postal patrons located miles outside the village.  He also bent the rules by using his franking privileges as postmaster to waive the cost of a letter for a resident.  Mathew Marsh provided a sketch of Lincoln as postmaster in a letter to his brother: “he is a very clever fellow and a particular friend of mine.  If he is there when I carry this [letter] to the office—I will get him to ‘Frank’ it.”  And frank it Lincoln did, saving George Marsh 25 cents.

   New Salem gave way to the town of Petersburg, ending Lincoln’s career as postmaster on May 30, 1836.   Lincoln had clearly enjoyed his brief stint as postmaster.  He provided the line of communication with the larger world beyond frontier Illinois.  The office allowed a young man with political ambitions an opportunity to meet and mingle with townspeople and farmers alike.  And by connecting with the outside world, the office brought new information and ideas to feed the ambitions and imagination of people, like Lincoln, who saw their future in the further settlement and growth of Illinois.

The painting ‘Lincoln the Postmaster at New Salem, Illinois,’ by Fletcher C. Ransom (1942).

   Let me introduce you to a woman of the past.  She was well-born in a southern state early in the 19^th century.  She was not entirely happy with her home life after a certain point, and left that home as a teenager. She fell in love with a man and eventually married him, giving over nearly all of her personal life and identity to his work, his efforts, his and her children, as was common in that day.  After his death she grieved deeply and thought sadly of him every day.  You are thinking of her name now:  Is it Mrs. Lincoln?  Is it Mary Lincoln?  Is it Mary Todd Lincoln?  The person ‘Mary Todd’ ceased to exist in a legal sense on Nov. 4, 1842, when she wed Abraham Lincoln.  In a personal sense she may have ceased to exist then, too.  She became Mary Lincoln.

   There are 319 documents at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum in this woman’s hand.  That total is roughly 70 percent of all known letters by her.  On these 319, she signed herself one dozen distinct ways, involving her full name, initials, with or without ‘Mrs.,’ etc.  She never once used the name ‘Todd’ in any of these, and she never once used the initial ‘T.’  She signed her name ‘Mary Lincoln’ or ‘Mrs. Lincoln’ or ‘Mrs. Abraham Lincoln’ or ‘Mrs. A. Lincoln’ and even, 12 times, ‘Mrs. Cuthbert’ or just ‘Cuthbert.’  (This was a maid in the Executive Mansion who helped Mary Lincoln cover up some of her many unpaid bills between November 1864 and May 1865.)  She did not ever, let me repeat, ever refer to herself as ‘Mary Todd Lincoln.’

   The 1911 campaign to raise a statue for her at Sayre College, in her hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, seems to be the real origin of the name ‘Mary Todd Lincoln.’  Admittedly, when Robert Lincoln’s wife, Mary Harlan Lincoln, was named in the press – this rarely happened – a distinction had to be made between the mother Mary and the daughter-in-law Mary.  But our Mary died in 1882.  Kentuckians were proud of her illustrious heritage, and using three names for her was their fundraising way, I surmise, to re-unite South and North in that 50^th anniversary year of the beginning of the Civil War.  The 3-name usage was fairly common for about 20 years, then faded away until it was revived in the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  It is now firmly, probably irreversibly, in common usage.  But its use is unfair to the woman who devoted her life from 1842 till 1865 to her living husband, and to his memory from 1865 to 1882.  Let us try to heed her own sense of who she was: Mrs. Abraham Lincoln.  Mrs. Lincoln.  Mrs. President Lincoln.  Mrs. A. Lincoln.  Sometimes to friends, M.L.  Most often, Mary Lincoln.  But never, I repeat never, was she Mary Todd Lincoln.

On April 16, 1865, European newspapers published some “decisive news from the United States,” as Le Temps in Paris phrased it.  You’d think the decisive news on that date would have been the assassination and death of Abraham Lincoln, the world-shaking event that occurred during the night and early morning of April 14-15. 

But in early 1865 no transatlantic telegraphic cable linked the U.S. to Britain or the continent.  American news took almost two weeks to reach England by ship.  From London it could be relayed quickly to Europe and on to Constantinople, Teheran, and other capitals. The “decisive news” announced to European readers on April 16 concerned an American event of April 3:  the fall of Richmond to Union troops.

When Europeans finally got wind of the assassination on April 26, Lincoln had been dead for 12 days and his funeral train was rolling through western New York on its way to Springfield.  The next day, mourners deluged American consular buildings across Europe.

In Paris thousands of French people, mainly students, pressed toward the U.S. mission.  The police blocked their path, fearful that a large, spontaneously formed crowd might prove unruly.  Only a few small delegations were allowed in to offer their sympathies to American officials.

Within days U.S. diplomats in city after city were greeting delegations of mourners.  In Constantinople, various ethnic groups — Armenians, Greeks, and Italians among them — arrived at the U.S. legation to express their condolences.  Hundreds were wearing black mourning badges and carrying Greek or Armenian flags.  One delegation brought a framed photo of Lincoln decorated with laurel.

In France, where the Second Republic had been toppled by Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1851, public manifestations of affection for Lincoln were not permitted, since republicans saw him as a beacon of hope for anti-monarchists everywhere.

Yet in the days ahead the French republican press gave detailed coverage to the American funeral events, following the progress of the funeral train from city to city and editorially elevating Lincoln to the company of the immortals— “the battalion of Plutarch,” as one paper put it.

Portrait of Lincoln in silk, 9 inches tall, made in Lyon, France, 1865

This print with no identifying caption — in the collection of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum — shows that Lincoln’s image as well as name were recognized by many Europeans.

Le Temps hailed his individual exploits, and shrewdly slipped in an endorsement of the American republican way of life as the model for all nations:

“His life is one of the most striking examples of what intelligence, work, perseverance, honesty, and common sense can do in a society devoted to all the free expressions of individual activity, and profoundly imbued with the democratic Spirit.”

Americans residing in France tried their best to grieve there, just as they would have done at home.  The first step in public mourning for a civic hero like Lincoln involved assembling citizens in a public place to honor the “illustrious dead.”  The crowd would listen to eulogies and endorse heartfelt resolutions drawn up by a committee of dignitaries.

But the French police looked askance at large American gatherings as much as at French ones.  So a committee of nine Americans privately circulated a letter articulating their feelings about Lincoln, got several hundred of their countrymen to sign it, and handed it over to the American consul-general.

“Already the world is claiming for itself this last martyr to the cause of freedom,” they wrote, “and Abraham Lincoln has taken his place among the moral constellations which shall impart light and life to all coming generations.”

Meanwhile, a group of French republicans, including novelist-poet Victor Hugo and historian Jules Michelet, organized a campaign to spread the republican gospel by raising a subscription among working people for an elegant monument to Lincoln: a small, intricately designed gold Médaille to be presented to Mary Lincoln. 

Ordinary citizens across France were asked to donate 10 centimes each for the medal.  In the end, despite a police campaign to interfere with the subscription, 40,000 French people participated, and Mrs. Lincoln gratefully accepted the gift almost two years after her husband’s death.

On its front side the medal said, “LINCOLN, an honest man, abolished slavery, saved the republic, and was assassinated the 14^th of April, 1865.”

And on the back it said, “Dedicated by the French democracy to LINCOLN, twice elected President of the United States.  Liberty!  Equality!  Fraternity!” 

(You can see the medal at http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/reconstruction/section1/section1_06.html)

“The death of Lincoln,” U.S. Consul-General John Bigelow observed, “is destined to work a radical change in the Constitution of France.”  Perhaps in some small way it did help prepare the ground for the Third Republic, inaugurated in 1870 after the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

Whatever its impact on the future, Lincoln’s death provoked an outpouring of sentiment for him across Europe in 1865, lifting him up as a vital symbolic face of republican liberty. 

It was “difficult to imagine,” concluded Bigelow, “the enthusiasm which his name inspires among the masses of Europe at this moment … the death of no man has ever occurred that awakened such prompt and universal sympathy at once among his own country people and among foreign nations.”