Lincoln's Second Campaign: Voting for Women but not African Americans

By Racquel Henry, PhD

In an unknown location in New Salem, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln sat down to respond to an editorial printed in the Sangamo Journal of June 11, 1836. The writer had called out all those candidates planning on representing Sangamon County in the Illinois legislature. Signing the letter “Many Voters,” the anonymous writer had said, “I think the times demand from them a declaration of their political doctrines at as early a period as possible. Then the people will be better prepared to judge of their qualification and fitness to serve.”

Lincoln served his first term as a Whig in the House of Representatives in Illinois’s Legislature in 1834. He was running for re-election. On June 13th, he submitted his circular/letter in response to “Many Voters.” Immediately, Lincoln addressed who should vote in Illinois elections, concluding the privilege belonged to all whites “who pay taxes or bear arms.” He mentions not “excluding females.” Lincoln presents, for Sangamon constituents, how proceeds from public lands must be allocated for building needed state infrastructure. If the federal government awards Illinois her fair share of such monies, “our state … can dig canals and construct railroads, without borrowing … and paying interest.”

An artist’s conception of young Lincoln on the campaign trail.

In 1836, it is Lincoln’s Whig friend and editor of the Sangamo Journal, Simeon Francis, that used Martin Van Buren’s vote for colored suffrage to berate the Democrats, rehashing old news. Before his Vice Presidency, then Senator Van Buren, voted that free African Americans should have suffrage during a New York political convention in 1821. Even though African Americans were given enfranchisement, it came with a $250.00 property requirement.

Martin Van Buran’s presidential race and free African American suffrage was a point of contention in Illinois that year. In the Northwest, African American disenfranchisement was not uncommon. Lincoln side stepped announcing his Tuesday January 5, 1836 vote, against colored suffrage in the circular. The General Assembly resolved “[t]hat the elective franchise should be kept pure from contamination by the admission of colored votes.” White male suffrage already was part of the 1818 state constitution.

Lincoln on who should be allowed to vote.

It is believed that Lincoln pulled women into his response for two reasons. Lincoln did participate in debating and literary societies where he spoke on women’s suffrage. Lincoln also might have used women’s suffrage to avoid talking about colored voting directly. He is more focused on economic and infrastructure issues in the 1830s. He knew Illinois women did not have suffrage and lost any rights to their own property after matrimony, unless a “separate estate/trust” was created to circumvent the doctrine of coverture. Without a trust, coverture allowed husbands to take ownership of their wife’s property. Only the wealthy were afforded such estate planning in 1836.

Lincoln does not publicly speak to the horrific condition of African Americans in Illinois and the debate over American slavery’s spread until the 1850s. The 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act was the catalyst that brought Lincoln back into politics from his self-imposed retirement. In August 1858, Lincoln wrote the note now entitled “Definition of Democracy.” In it he said, “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master – This expresses my idea of democracy – Whatever differs from this to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.” Here, Lincoln rails against the evils of slavery that prevent true democracy in America. Even though he took this stand, Lincoln is in nineteenth century America, he will not win constituents in the prairie state with abolitionist rhetoric. So, on October 13, 1858, during his U.S. Senate race, in the series of seven debates across Illinois with Stephen Douglas, in Quincy, Lincoln held to his racial bias. This was evidenced when he said, “I am not in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races … I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes ...” Lincoln emerges as an anti-abolitionist candidate at this point in his career.

Beyond his stance on colored suffrage and slavery, Lincoln and half his political rivals also laid out their concerns about public land proceeds and federal refunds in the Sangamo Journal editorial page. He broached public land sale proceeds long before his re-election. January 10, 1835, he introduced a resolution that would allow the state of Illinois to receive 20% annually of the amount paid to the U.S. Treasury for lands sold in Illinois. The house legislature members tabled the resolution, but Lincoln remained focused on what these funds meant to his constituents. In Illinois, infrastructure improvements politically held sway because commerce’s progress depended on such funding. If the proceeds materialized, projects like the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the Northern Cross Railroad, and the Des Plaines River extension to the Saganashkee Slough could be realized.

Lincoln on selling public land to pay for infrastructure

In 1836, the federal government treasury surplus was distributed. U.S. House of Representative Henry Clay and U.S. Senator John C. Calhoun worked together crafting a bill that Jackson approved and signed into law on June 23, 1836. It was the Deposit/Distribution Act. Illinois received $477,919 in 1837 starting in January and ending in October. Lincoln’s desires materialized as infrastructure spread in spits and spurts throughout the antebellum period in Illinois.

The Whig newspaper, the Sangamo Journal, brought life and color to the 1836 candidate race for the legislature that year, but hardly did Lincoln know this was only the beginning for him. At age 27, he did not understand his charm, storytelling and popularity among constituents would lead to a presidential run by 1860. The 1830s, 40s and 50s were a time of character building for President Abrahm Lincoln. This is what prepared him for the bumpy ride of leadership as president who led a country through Civil War; slavery’s end; and created great things that America still enjoys.

Henry is the ALPLM's 19th Century Historian.