LINCOLN AND
DOUGLAS
AT THE BRYANT COTTAGE
Abstract: The meeting in Bement, Illinois to finalize the Lincoln-Douglas Debates is documented. Originally published in the Lincoln Herald, Spring 1998, Vol. 100, pp. 11-28. Used with permission.
Author: Jim Fay, Ph.D. Posted 9/9/98.
Photograph by Virginia Dahms - A reenactment of Lincoln looking west from the parlor of the Bryant Cottage State Historical Site, Bement,Illinois. © 1996
Statement of the Problem
The story of the Bryant cottage in Bement, Illinois is an interesting case study of historiography, in that what was once history has, in recent years, ceased to be history. This has happened without any apparent refutation of the evidence or the treatment of that evidence on which the history is based.
The drama centers around the Bryant cottage in Bement, IL, a small farming community of some 1600 people in central Illinois. The Bryant cottage is an unassuming little structure that sits on a corner, beside a modest house and across the street from an auto parts store. There are no souvenir stands or commercial enterprises exploiting the site in the town.
The cottage is a historical site of interest for many reasons. It was the first home Francis E. Bryant, one of the pioneers who founded of the village along the track that the Great Western Railroad pushed through the tall grass prairie in the 1850's, although he quickly built the much finer home that now stands behind the original cottage.
The Bryant cottage is notable because Bryant was a friend of Stephen A. Douglas, and Douglas was staying at the Bryant cottage when he penned his letter to Lincoln, headed "Bement, Piatt Co., Ill., July 30, 1858", in which Bryant outlined the terms and dates of the various debates. But the real interest in the Bryant cottage centers around Lincoln and Douglas meeting in the little parlor of this modest cottage to work out the details of their debates, out of the merciless glare of the press of the day.
Lincoln's friend, confidante and biographer, who was also the son of Frances E Bryant's business associate, states unequivocally that the pre-debate discussion "was ended at the private house of Frank Bryant, who had, in partnership with my father, a store, a coal and lumber yard, etc in a small village called Bement".(1)
One concise and thoughtful an assessment of the Lincoln-Douglas meeting at the Bryant house came from Paul M. Angle, an historian for the Illinois State Historical Society. After spending a decade and a half studying Lincoln's activities during these years, largely in day-by-day detail and often in seemingly hour-by-hour detail, Angle wrote in a footnote:
Exactly what took place between Lincoln and Douglas at Bement will probably never be known. The conference took place on the night of July 29 -- but by that time Lincoln had issued his challenge and Douglas had agreed to meet him in the seven congressional districts in which they had not yet spoken. While Lincoln's acceptance of this proposal was dated July 29, it did not reach Douglas until the following day, when Lincoln was in Springfield. It is unlikely that at Bement the two men did more than work out the details of an arrangement already agreed upon in principle.(2)
This assessment reflected the policy of the State Historical Society for several decades. An editorial in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society asserted that it was an event of considerable interest and importance.(3) Accounts of the meeting were included in works of general history,(4) in works of state or regional interest,(5) and popular and juvenile literature(6).
The historical record of the events of that day, July 29, 1858, is a confused one. As Beveridge says, "We are caught in another of those curious tangles that so often confuse the student of Lincoln's career."(7) The situation has been made worse by a body of ludicrous hyperbole that has been expounded since the early part of this century. It is as if a plague of the usual human foibles -- personal egos and eccentricities, regional rivalries and a good measure of laziness -- have conspired to disparage and discredit the history of the Bryant cottage.
Perhaps a quick chronology dealing with one Piatt County historian will illustrate the problem. If it is true that every distinguished family has a horse thief, scoundrel or outrageous character somewhere in the family tree, then for the distinguished Shonkwiler family of Piatt County, that outrageous character is F.M. Shonkwiler. Shonkwiler was ostensibly a historian, but he was, in fact, an indifferent historian. His history of Piatt County published in 1917 shows virtually no interest in or knowledge of the events of July 29, 1858.(8)
However, if he was an indifferent historian, he was an extraordinary orator and raconteur. By the next year, 1918, he was a speaker at a commemorative program which featured orators asserting that the meeting between Lincoln and Douglas in Piatt County was the most notable event in American history.(9) By 1925 Shonkwiler was speaking again, this time as an intimate personal confidant of Bryant, who had died in 1889.(10) When Albert Beveridge published his study of Lincoln in 1928, Shonkwiler had somehow positioned himself to be expositor of the Bryant family history, a ludicrous history which has Douglas inexplicably coming down stairs in his night shirt to meet Lincoln, even though the Bryant cottage is and always has been a one story structure.(11) By the time of his death in 1935, Shonkwiler was recounting that it was his father who drove the prairie schooner that brought Lincoln from Bement to Monticello!(12)
It should be noted that the family tradition as related by the Bryant family itself was a much more sober and sensible account, but one that seldom seemed to find its way into the public record, given the attractiveness of the other, more flamboyant versions. The flamboyant, sensational anecdotes were an embarrassment to the Bryant family. The situation came to the point that the last survivor of the Bryant family line, Bryant Sprague, took some pains to distance himself from any association with the Bryant family tradition and burned all the family records and archival materials.
The dubious lore was also an embarrassment to the community. In covering the 1918 commemorative program described above, the Bement newspaper did not mention any of the hyperbole, but merely listed the participants.(13) When the community celebrated its centennial anniversary, some effort was made to make it a thoughtful, respectful celebration of the Bryant history as well. Arnold Toynbee was asked to suggest a theme for the celebration, and he offered the question "Can the world exist, half slave and half free?" a very pertinent question indeed in 1955, at the height of the cold war. During the centennial week the little town developed this theme by hosting, among others, Senators Ralph Flanders, Paul Douglas, Everett Dirksen and Hubert Humphrey; Ambassador Jose Mora of Uruguay; President of the National Arts Foundation, Carleton Smith; Adlai Stevenson; Walter Reuther; socialist Norman Thomas (the McCarthy-esqe red-scare notwithstanding); and Carl Sandburg.(14) The historic pageant performed by the townspeople was carried by the BBC and Voice of America,(15) but it made no flamboyant historical claims. The position of the community was that Lincoln spent the evening in Bement after being invited to the Bryant house by Douglas to discuss the debates.
The event was marred by a incident that occurred while the celebration was being planned. The documentation concerning the history of the Bryant cottage was stolen from the archives of the libraries in Bement and Monticello. A call went out to the public to try to replace or reconstruct the material(16), but the results were too little and too late to be of much value for the centennial celebration. The Bement Public Library and the Allerton Library in Monticello have since been able to reconstruct much of what was stolen.
At any rate, relatively few historians have been willing to deal with the confusing and troublesome history on the one hand, and with some of the highly improbably historical embellishments on the other. Beveridge is one notable exception. He cites the historical record as history, and then in a footnote offers the Shonkwiler narrative as one example of the local tradition.(17) Saul Sigelschiffer is another historian who distinguishes history from dubious tradition.(18)
Some authors lump both history and tradition together as history. This gives those hungry for colorful anecdotal material the pretext to launch into flights of dubious and fanciful speculations about Douglas(19) or about Lincoln(20).
Most writers, however, merely dismiss the entire history as local tradition. This has particularly become the case in recent years. The regional interest and travel books currently on the bookstore shelves, if they mention the Bryant cottage at all, almost invariable mention it as a site of interesting local tradition. This trend is continued in the CD-ROM materials. The Delorme Map 'n 'Go includes the Bryant cottage in Bement as a place with an interesting tradition.(21)
The attention paid to the Bryant cottage in recent years, has, as often as not, been disparaging. The newspaper article by Paul Wood, "Lincoln (may have) debated here"(22) disparages ("sneers at" would probably not be an unfair characterization) Francis Bryant, the town of Bement, and "major historians" such as Beveridge who "repeat the Bryant story as gospel," although as noted earlier, Beveridge in fact makes a pointed distinction between history and tradition, a distinction Wood does not make. Wood offers little evidence to support or refute anything. The point of the piece is to ridicule the notion that Lincoln and Douglas met "over corn bread and beans in a four-room cottage" or, for that matter, that Douglas even drafted his letter to Lincoln there. Wood ends the piece with the assertion that "it's unlikely that any newfound documents will surface to prove Lincoln was there, and in decades to come the ghost of Lincoln's latenight visit will likely dim."
The Illinois state agency administering historic sites has in recent years adopted a policy of de-emphasizing the Lincoln-Douglas connection to the place and emphasizing its importance merely as an example of a mid-1800's workingman's cottage. The literature currently distributed by that agency say that "tradition has it" that Lincoln and Douglas met there.(23) The staff working at the site is instructed not to assert that the meeting took place. A theory that the debates came about as a result of enormous planning on the part of intermediaries seems to carry some weight within the State Historical Society. These clandestine negotiations are seen as an effort to allow the principals to distance themselves from the process.
This widespread change in perceptions from "history" to "not history" has come about without any refutation of the historic record or scholarly work on which the history is based. The change also happened, as the previous discussion might suggest, with almost no documentation about how or why it was taking place. In any event, virtually no effort has been made to clear up the confusion surrounding the historical record.
Toward that end, perhaps a review of the conventional reading of that record is in order.
Review of the Literature
Standard works such as the Beveridge mentioned above and Spark's Lincoln Series,(24) are in close agreement. Lincoln met Douglas by accident that afternoon on a hill about a mile south of Monticello, Illinois, in Piatt county. Lincoln was going to Monticello to give a speech as Douglas was coming from that village after having just given one. Lincoln had made a practice of "concluding on" Douglas, that is, of speaking to Douglas' crowds after he, Douglas had left, thereby rebutting Douglas without giving him a chance to respond.
Most newspaper reporters on the scene as well as historians since that time have assumed that Lincoln came to Piatt county to "conclude on" Douglas yet again and that their meeting on the road was accidental. According to this conventional view, after that meeting on the road events become confused until the next morning when Douglas receives in the mail Lincoln's letter agreeing on the debate sites Douglas had proposed. Commentators of the day and historians ever since have made a point of how Douglas must have seethed at receiving Lincoln's letter, which was a masterpiece of aggressive audacity. Wags in Illinois noted that with that letter Lincoln had effectively "concluded on" Douglas' previous letter to him, just as he had been "concluding on" Douglas' speeches.(25) A Douglas biographer writes that the letter made him "fighting mad, as has been said, and he took the time to speak his mind."(26)
The problems with all this is that while the various accounts of what happened at Monticello are very concrete and straightforward, the conclusions are not only very confusing, they don't begin to fit the facts as given in the newspaper reports of the day and as reprinted in such standard texts as Sparks and Basler's collected works(27). The historical record about what happened in Piatt county on that day in 1858 are in much greater agreement than is commonly assumed.
Perhaps a quick review of the events leading up to that day would be helpful as told in Basler and Sparks and many other texts on the topic.
A Closer Look at the Contemporaneous Record
Douglas was being hammered in the press, the anti-Douglas "black republican" press, that is, for avoiding Lincoln even before Lincoln wrote him a letter suggesting the debates.
Lincoln's letter(28) suggesting just that, dated Chicago, July 24th, 1858, was a concise, straightforward proposal. The entire letter is only two sentences long.
Bryant's reply to Lincoln(29), also dated Chicago, July 24th, 1858, reads like a press release (which it was) outlining at some length why Lincoln's suggestion was unfair and unreasonable. Douglas explains that he has already made a list of appointments that would "leave no opportunity" for debates until late October, expresses concerns that the debates would be used as a ploy to bring a third party candidate into the campaign and split the Democratic party, and complains that Lincoln has delayed his request for debates to inconvenience and embarrass Douglas.
Nonetheless, Douglas rather tentatively indicates the locations for seven debates and says he will confer with Lincoln "at the earliest convenient opportunity in regard to the mode of conducting the debate and the times of meeting at the several places".
It might be noted that one pro-Lincoln paper characterized the letter in which Douglas agrees in principle to debate as declining Lincoln's proposal "in the most pettifogging and cowardly manner."(30) Such was the tone the dialogue had assumed by this time. A common theme of the pro-Lincoln papers was the cowardly way in which Douglas was "dodging" Lincoln, a theme that was maintained even after the debates had been scheduled. The pro-Douglas press, for its part, was no more restrained in its treatment of Lincoln. He was a constant target of ridicule and abuse about his personal appearance, speech and literacy.(31) The use of racial invective was fairly routine.
It is true that both men used their letters as opportunities to "play to the press". But both men also always maintained a level of decency in their communications that was often notable only for its absence in the contributions of the press. Moreover, some papers, as the partisanship became ever more strident and brutal, were not above employing the favored tactic of the provocateur, that of putting words into another person's mouth. For example, did Lincoln really tell his Clinton audience that Douglas had refused to debate him, as the Illinois State Journal reported(32), or was that just another journalistic excess spawned by the frenzy of the moment? If Lincoln did in fact say that, why was it not reported elsewhere?
At any rate, although Lincoln and Douglas repeatedly crossed paths on the campaign trail, they never found the "convenient opportunity" Douglas wrote about to discuss the particulars of the debates out of the merciless attentions of the press. They dined together at a restaurant in Decatur on the evening of July 28th, but, if one pro-Douglas newspaper report is correct, that dinner turned out largely to be the occasion for Douglas supporters to pay homage to him.(33) There is certainly no reason to doubt this account. Douglas was a very prominent and powerful figure, and seldom without a retinue. At any rate neither Douglas or Lincoln was inclined to discuss the debates in that situation. According to Lincoln's letter of the next day to Douglas,(34) neither man made the least effort to broach the subject. Neither man asked the other the obvious question, "Did you get my letter?"
Lincoln's letter, headed Springfield, July 29th is a marvel of feisty disingenuousness. Lincoln professes to be innocent of any efforts to bring a third party candidate into the campaign to divide the Democratic party and assure Douglas' defeat. He even professes no knowledge of such efforts. This is at best a carefully worded dissemblance. It is more probably an outright untruth. Lincoln was without a doubt at least aware of the speculations about a third party candidacy that had appeared in the press, and his correspondence of the time indicates that he was actively working on his strategy for dividing the Democratic party, although not necessarily by overtly encouraging a third party candidate.(35)
Nonetheless, in his letter of July 29, Lincoln professed total innocence of, not to mention knowledge of, efforts to expedite a third candidate.
Lincoln's other statements in the letter were even more audacious and remarkable. He explained that he had waited to suggest the debates in order to give Douglas the opportunity to challenge him, Lincoln, to debate. This is a remarkable statement. Douglas was, at the time, perhaps the most well known personality in the nation, except for the President. He had nothing to gain by debating the virtually unknown Lincoln or any of the other numerous political opponents, and he had everything to lose. Lincoln's blithe assertion that he thought Douglas would challenge him to debates was a masterpiece of audacity.
Likewise, Lincoln's profession that he, in essence, wasn't paying attention to where Douglas was going or what he was doing in the campaign, seems to be a little less than honest.
And finally, Lincoln denied that he had been "concluding on" Douglas, that is, following him around and speaking to his crowds after he, Douglas, had left. At any rate, although Douglas had not accused Lincoln of concluding on him in his previous letter, Lincoln used the July 29 letter to put together a rather lengthy and involved argument denying the accusation (that Douglas never made) and accusing Douglas of concluding on him! It was, as the wags had it, a case of Lincoln using his letter to "conclude on" Douglas' previous letter.
Lincoln ended his long letter with a rather short paragraph agreeing to the debate locations Douglas had indicated.
The letter eventually came to include a postscript: "As matters now stand, I shall be at no more of your exclusive meetings; and for about a week from to-day a letter from you will reach me at Springfield." Lincoln used postscripts relatively infrequently. When he did, they were almost always used to add some pleasantry or piece of incidental information such as the information in this postscript about where he could be reached. What is highly uncharacteristic of Lincoln is to use the postscript to tack on afterthoughts concerning the substance of the letter itself. The promise to refrain from concluding on Douglas contained in this postscript is remarkable, first, in that it is a hugely important piece of information that Lincoln would have been expected to put in the body of the letter and, second, that it is such an abrupt and radical change from the text of the letter itself. Indeed, the letter is largely concerned with presenting the argument that Lincoln had not been "concluding on" Douglas; the postscript promises he will not do it any more.
Lincoln wrote the letter in Springfield on the 29th, as dated, and brought it to Piatt county by way of the Great Western railroad through Bement because, as the Missouri Republican observed,
[Monticello] is removed from the railroad (Great Western), some seven miles, the station at which debarkation is made, being Bement, which is a small town of not more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred inhabitants.(36)
On his way to Monticello Lincoln met the Douglas entourage returning there after Douglas had made his speech.
The Chicago Times carried this account of that meeting:
About two miles out of the town the procession [Douglas'] met Mr. Lincoln, who was on his way to Monticello. As he passed, Senator Douglas called to him to stop, that he wanted to see him. Lincoln jumped out of his carriage and shook hands with the Senator, who said to him, "Come, Lincoln, return to Bement. You see we have only a mile or two of people here. I will promise you a much larger meeting there than you will have at Monticello". "No, Judge," replied Lincoln, "I can't. The fact is I did not come over here to make a speech. I don't intend to follow you any more; I don't call this following you. I have come down here from Springfield to see you and give you a reply to your letter. I have it in my pocket, but I have not compared it with the copy yet. We can compare the two now, can't we?" Senator Douglas told him that he had better compare the two at Monticello, and, when he had his answer ready, send it to him at Bement, where he intended to remain until the one o'clock p.m. train for the East. This Lincoln promised to do, after again assuring the Senator that he must not consider his visit to Monticello "following " him -- that such a "conclusion" would be erroneous -- the two separated, after shaking hands...(37)
The Illinois State Register carried a corroborating, if less detailed, story which also included Lincoln's statement he did not come to make a speech but to give Douglas his reply to Douglas' letter.
After the meeting adjourned, in his way over to Bement, with the delegations from that place and Okaw, Senator Douglas met Mr. Lincoln, who was going to Monticello to make a speech, as usual, in the evening, at the courthouse, and invited him to accompany him to Bement, promising to give him a larger meeting there, but Lincoln declined, saying that he did not intend to make a speech; but had come from Springfield to Monticello, in order to give Senator Douglas his reply to his proposition, to address the people of every congressional district in company. Lincoln' printed bills, announcing his intention to speak, had been posted all over the grove where the democratic meeting was held, as also throughout the town, and his assertion that he did not come to Monticello to speak, was therefore, a mistake.(38)
It might be noted that Lincoln's excuse for not giving Douglas the letter seems to be a flimsy one, coming as it does from a man who was well known for reading law books from the back of a horse and who had just spent hours with the letters on the train and then in the prairie schooner.
Several other elements of this exchange seem to be, if not confusing, at least a little disjointed. Lincoln states initially he came to Piatt County to meet Douglas and give him the letter, but then never mentions a meeting again. He tells Douglas he cannot return to Bement with him, but gives no reason. He says only that he is not going to make a speech in Monticello. His final comment to Douglas is that he is not going to make a speech in Monticello.
The report from the Times was reprinted by Sparks in 1908 and by innumerable writers ever since. However, virtually no one on the scene at the time or writing since then has viewed the events of the day from the point of view that Lincoln's purpose in coming to Piatt county that day was to meet Douglas and give him a letter.
If all the varied reports of the day are viewed with the assumption that Lincoln did not come to Piatt county to give a campaign speech but to meet Douglas and give him a letter, those varied and confusing reports come to remarkable agreement and become coherent and illuminating.
Lincoln was expected to give a speech, to conclude on Douglas. And yet, there is agreement that he did not give a speech, at least not according to 1858 standards and not the speech he was expected to make. The reports describe with varying degrees of consternation the different particulars of his not making the speech.
The pro-Douglas Missouri Republican, was very confused and not very sympathetic to Lincoln:
He mounted in the court house square and then spoke for about half an hour. He would not speak then, he would, however read the correspondence with the Judge, together with the reply he was going to send the Judge, all of which he did. Then he went on to answer the Judge...He then very abruptly came to a close by remarking that he would bring his friend Judge Trumbull to answer Mr. Douglas.(39)
The pro-Douglas Illinois State Register tried to play it both ways, that Lincoln's actions were inexplicably abrupt and unexpected, but that he did give a speech, in contrary to his assertions he was not going to:
I returned to Monticello to hear Lincoln. He spoke in the grove where Senator Douglas had spoken about an hour or two before and promised the people that before the canvass was over he would visit them again in the company with Judge Trumbull, who would reply to Douglas... It was expected that he would remain here for a day or two, or follow Senator Douglas to Paris, but he left suddenly on the midnight train for Springfield and one of his friends told me that he did not intend to follow Judge Douglas any more, but was going immediately to Chicago to consult with Cook, Bross, and other friends, and make out a list of his own appointments.(40)
In an account not widely reprinted in the history books, Our Constitution, a pro-Douglas newspaper in Urbana, Illinois was even more open in its ridicule:
Mr. Lincoln made his appearance between 5 and 6 o'clock, excused himself from speaking in reply to Mr. Douglas by the announcement that he would address the people of Piatt on some future occasion; his excuses were readily taken, and he left as suddenly as he appeared. The idea of inviting Lincoln to come then bringing him to town at a time when it must have been known the people would be on the way to their homes, then setting him up to make an excuse for himself and immediately trundling him off out of town again, looks like a piece of the very wickedest and deliberate sort of waggery.(41)
Lincoln's assertion that he had plans of going immediately to Chicago, was apparently a ruse. As noted earlier, in the postscript of the letter to Douglas Lincoln writes that he will remain in Springfield "for about a week from today."
By the same token, the assertion involving the need to take the midnight train was evidently a ruse. In retrospect, there seems to be no reason why Lincoln had to catch that particular train. There were two trains a day from Bement to Springfield.(42) Neither Basler's Collected Works(43) nor Paul Angle's Lincoln in the Year 1858(44) record any activities the next day at all for Lincoln. This is entirely understandable; he probably spent the day catching up on his sleep after catching the midnight train. There is no indication of why Lincoln could not have delivered the speech he was scheduled to make and then returned to Springfield the next day.
The postscript presents an interesting dilemma. Was it part of the letter when Lincoln was in Monticello? If so, Lincoln omitted the postscript when he read the letter and lied to his supporters about his intentions. Or was it added to the letter sometime after Lincoln left Monticello, but before he left Bement on the midnight train? If so, where and when was the postscript added, and why? It certainly seems the postscript was not part of the letter when Lincoln was in Monticello because he left his supporters with the impression he was going to Chicago immediately. It is true that the Missouri Republican quotes the postscript, but that account was written the next day and included Douglas' reaction to the letter.
At any rate, Lincoln's actions were a great surprise and huge embarrassment. Handbills had been printed and posted around town that same morning announcing Lincoln's speech.(45) Another speaker had declined to begin a speech because it might interfere with Lincoln's speech.(46) To make matters even worse, Lincoln's excuse was almost insultingly flimsy, that he had to catch a train in five or six hours.
The Bement train station was about seven miles from Monticello. No information is available about exactly what conveyance Lincoln's supporters used in "immediately trundling him off out of town", but it seems improbable that Lincoln could not have made the speech and still had plenty of time to get to the train station if that is what he wanted to do.
A student of railroad and transportation history, C.C. Burford, wrote a series of articles for the Bement Register, for that village's centennial celebration during the summer of 1955. In these articles Burford reviews the history of July 29, 1858 with special emphasis on questions of transportation -- train schedules, traveling times, other modes of travel, road systems and conditions, etc. He examines some possible scenarios such as Lincoln going to Decatur to catch the train and concludes without reservation that "Lincoln spent the evening of July 29, 1958 in Bement, doubtless conferring with Douglas."(47)
If the historical record is read with the assumption that Lincoln's intent was to make a campaign speech, they are confusing indeed. If they are read with the assumption that Lincoln was trying to get away from Monticello as quickly and unobtrusively as possible, they make a lot of sense.
This conclusion, however, involves one of those "curious tangles" Beveridge wrote about, and this "curious tangle" deals with the very evident tendency of reporters on the scene as well as historians writing later to assume that Lincoln "mailed" the letter to Douglas, even though the closest thing to evidence to support that is the Times reporters rather casual use of the word "send". That same issue of the Chicago Times that quotes Lincoln's statement to Douglas that he came to Piatt County to meet him and deliver his letter also contains, in a companion story, the conclusion that the letter "was sent by the author from some place in Piatt County."(48) The writer of this assertion gives no evidence to support it, even though there are real problems with it. Even if the letter were mailed, it is extremely improbable that it would have been mailed from any place but Bement. Otherwise the letter would have to be picked up in the other town the next morning, taken to Bement and delivered to Douglas on that same morning.
The logic of mailing the letter from Bement is even more problematical in that the train depot was across the street from the Bryant house. It seems unlikely that after coming all this way for the stated purpose of delivering the letter, Lincoln would have spent some hours sitting in the train depot across the street from the residence to which he had been invited without taking advantage of that invitation.
Basler asserts in a rather ambiguously worded statement that Lincoln carried the letter with him until his return to Springfield, but this information is offered in a footnote dealing with a "fragmentary" report from the Missouri Republican.(49) Regardless of the provenance of this assertion, it would mean that Lincoln mailed the letter from Springfield on Monday morning to get it to Douglas that same morning (or at least before he left on the 1:00 train), and is even more problematical than mailing the letter in Piatt County.
In one instance, the Times reporter's rather casual use of the word "send" to describe Douglas' suggestion to Lincoln evolves, through a couple of rather tortuous requotings, into "mail". When Lincoln's statement to Douglas that he came to Piatt county to meet with him was quoted by Stevens(50), a Douglas biographer, it was, quite properly, rendered as a direct quote from Lincoln. But Stevens, through ambiguous and incorrect use of quotation marks, gave the impression that the phraseology of Douglas' suggestion about sending the letter was also a direct quote from Douglas. In the original newspaper account, that is clearly not the case. By 1926 this text from Stevens was cited in turn as the basis for this flat statement of historical fact: "That night Lincoln mails his letter..."(51)
The intent here is not to get bogged down in speculations about what specific phraseology Lincoln or Douglas used, or about the subtle nuances of one reporter's use of the word "send" versus, for example, another's use of the word "forward".(52) The account of the conversation in the Register includes a description of Lincoln "saying that he did not intend to make a speech; but had come from Springfield to Monticello in order to give Senator Douglas his reply," but does not mention any interchange about mailing or sending the letter at all.(53) Nonetheless, this recurrent perception that Lincoln "mailed" the letter cannot be merely dismissed out of hand as incidental or spurious. It was neither. The assumption was widely held and oft repeated. The puzzle could be resolved if one or more of the writers had given some evidence for it, especially since the various scenarios involving mailing the letter are improbable, if not impossible.
For moment however, it will merely be noted that Lincoln's actions did not support the contention that he mailed the letter. They rather support the other contention, the one he himself stated, that he came to Piatt County to give Douglas the letter. He declined to make a scheduled speech and left immediately for Bement. It seems safe to assume that all the various accounts about Lincoln mailing the letter are based, not on Lincoln's widely observed actions (which suggest just the opposite), but on Douglas' letter the next day in which he implies he is merely responding to a letter he received, presumably in the mail.
At risk of belaboring the obvious: Lincoln's coming to Piatt County to mail a letter makes no more sense than his coming to Piatt County not to make a speech.
At any rate, Lincoln without a doubt arrived in Bement well before, perhaps hours before, the departure of the midnight train to Springfield. He had plenty of time to meet with Douglas, whether or not he gave him the letter at that time.
A meeting between Lincoln and Douglas would offer an elegant solution for another of the mysteries surround the events of the day.
As noted earlier, commentators have speculated that Douglas must have seethed when he read Lincoln's letter. It was not a conciliatory or accommodating letter, nor does it address in any way Douglas' fears or reservations about the third party candidacy. If anything it would seem to aggravate those fears and reservations. And yet Douglas' reply to the letter shows not a hint of rancor or reservation. It was decidedly not the letter of a "fighting mad" man, intent on "speaking his mind" as his biographer characterized it. Quite the contrary, in this letter gone were the contentious cat-and-mouse posturings. Dispelled were the very well-founded concerns over the third party candidate. Gone were the difficulties about scheduling any debates before late October. The wish to "confer with you at the earliest convenience" seems to have been resolved. Douglas' letter outlining the mode of the debate and the dates of them was succinct and free of polemic and political spin.
The only exception to this absence of posturing is that if Lincoln did meet with Douglas the night before, then Douglas' implication that he is merely responding to a letter he received by mail or by messenger is a another dissemblance. It is also understandable. Douglas, in particular, wanted to keep everything as low-key as possible, and the dramatic details of Lincoln's tracking him down late at night in Piatt County would only give ammunition to those who were already pasting him in the papers for being afraid of Lincoln and afraid of debates. It was in the best interests of both men that the public perceive that the debates resulted merely from the exchange of their published letters and without any behind-the-scenes deal-making.
Lincoln's letter(54) accepting all the dates, locations and conditions was also succinct and free of political spin, in contrast to his previous letter. Gone were the multitude of harangues that characterized his previous letter, although he could not refrain from observing that Douglas got to conclude the debate in four instances while he, Lincoln, got to conclude in only three.
Lincoln also never acknowledged that a Bement meeting ever took place. As a matter of fact, he glossed over events of the Monticello-Bement embarrassment(55), and promoted the perception that the agreement came about merely through the exchange of letters. He repeatedly expressed the same "little white lie" that Douglas "strongly intimated" some concerns to him by letter that Douglas in fact never mentioned in his letters.(56) The gratuitous nature of the "little while lies" is remarkable in that Lincoln, usually a master of stonewalling, in these instances felt compelled to offer superfluous and bogus explanations for actions that were wholly understandable without the explanations.
This meeting represented what had been missing in their recent dealing with each other, the opportunity for the two men to meet quietly and to speak forthrightly and confidentially to each other, away from the hyperbole and sensationalism of the political circus that had engulfed and mercilessly exploited both of them. Skeptics who find it improbable that the event could take place in little out-of-the-way Bement or that the meeting would go unreported by the press or uncommented on by the principals miss the whole point of closed door discussions. The unobtrusive nature of the meeting was not an inexplicable accident; it was the essence of the event. The opportunity for a quiet conversation might have been under the surface when Lincoln made his flimsy excuse to Douglas for not giving him the letter and for Douglas' statement that he would be at the Bryant house until 1:00 o'clock the next day. It certainly must have been on Lincoln's mind in Monticello when he was offering his improbable "have to catch a train" excuses.
The silence Lincoln and Douglas maintained about the meeting was also shared by a third man, the only witness to the event, the owner of the cottage, Francis E. Bryant. There were no Piatt County papers in 1858. No newspapers published in Bement during Bryant's life are extant, and there is no record of him ever making a public statement about a meeting. There is, however, a curious instance in which he offered a tacit confirmation that the meeting took place. That confirmation was included in the history of Bement written by George L. Spear.(57)
George Spear was an early figure in the history of Bement, arriving in that village some five years after it had been founded and two years after the events of 1858 described earlier. At that time the population was so small that the same pool of individuals tended to serve at various times most of the same functions: postmaster, village police magistrate, County Judge, etc. So it was that Spear probably rubbed shoulders with Bryant on a more or less daily basis.
In many ways the two men were kindred spirits. Bryant was a vigorous champion of education, and in later years would be a supporter of the fledgling Illinois Industrial University at Urbana. Spear was a civic and cultural lion in his own right with a passion for education, books and history. He was, for example, President of the Bement Library Association that founded a very respectable library in the little village, and he was a member of the Literary Society that organized the first school.(58)
It is not surprising that when a newspaper was started in the town and the publisher was looking for a historian to write a serialized history of the village, an obvious choice was Spear. The 20 installments were later collected into a single volume. It is the first extant public record of events in Bement.
Spear devoted one chapter to Francis E. Bryant, and in that chapter demonstrated that he stood in great admiration, if not awe, of his close friend. Most of the next chapter of Spear's history is about the meeting between Lincoln and Douglas, and it reflects Spear's struggle between his passion for history on the one hand and his determination to offer a straightforward presentation of the material on the other.
Spear does not cite Bryant as the source for his narrative, but rather cites merely "an eyewitness." Yet given Spear's close friendship with Bryant, it highly improbable that he wrote and published the account about his friend without Bryant's approval. Perhaps he received little cooperation from Bryant, however, in that he included only information that may well have already been widely known in the community at the time. Other lines of evidence suggest that townspeople observed Lincoln and Douglas conversing in the front yard either before or after (probably after) their discussions inside.(59)
Here is Spear's account of Lincoln and Douglas' meeting in Mr. Bryant's little parlor.
It is not generally known that there is a sacred piece of ground in Piatt Co., but such is the fact. An eyewitness tells it to us. On a pleasant afternoon in the month of June, 1858, Hon. Stephen A. Douglas was called by his party friends to make a political speech at Monticello. Having answered the call, was returning from that place in company with F.E. Bryant of Bement. When they had reached the top of the hill at J. Piatt's farm residence, which was standing a little east of the road leading from Bement to Monticello, Mr. Douglas remarked: "There comes Lincoln. I wish to speak to him a moment."
On coming in close proximity, they came to a halt. Passing the usual salutation, Mr. Douglas says to Mr. Lincoln, "Did you receive my letter?"
Mr. Lincoln replied affirmatively.
Mr. Douglas then asked him what he thought of it.
Mr. Lincoln said he thought favorably of it at the same time asking him where he could see him upon his return from Monticello (as he also had a call from his political friends to speak at that place.)
Mr. Douglas replied that he would meet him at Mr. Bryant's at Bement.
Mr. Lincoln then proceeded with the procession which had arrived at Monticello to meet him and escort him to the place of appointment. At the conclusion of the speaking Mr. L. set out for Bement to meet Mr. Douglas. On arriving at Bement he called at the place appointed and was cordially received.
They repaired to the parlor, and entered into a conversation which led to great results in the future.
That conversation involved matters of national importance. It was with reference to making arrangements for the great senatorial contest and debate which was soon to follow.
The parlor in which these giant minds planned and arranged the mental combat, we visited this morning (although at present occupied by Dr. G.P. Ruby, as an office,) yet we felt the presence of the great dead, in our mind; for it was here in this unimposing room of small proportions that the terms of the great debate were agreed to and signed by those God-like men. Their fame knew no bounds.
The debate soon followed. Mr. Douglas was re-elected, but that debate had won for Mr. Lincoln national laurels and the people in 1860 elected him to the presidency.
Mr. Douglas was United States senator and even then aspiring to the giddy height of the Presidency, and Mr. Lincoln was an eminent attorney of law at the Springfield bar, yet Mr. Douglas held him to be at least his equal: Mr. Douglas made Mr. Lincoln, President of the United States. It was a little affair that took place in Mr. Bryant's little parlor in Bement that led to the development of the man. Mr. Douglas simply became Mr. Lincoln's exhibitor, and his fame has spanned the globe, while Bement is a modest little village. By this we are reminded that from "small acorns, tall oaks grow."(60)
This is a narrative from a different perspective from the newspaper accounts of the day. It seems to be entirely the point of view of the eye witness. No attempt has been made to reconcile this account with other accounts, or the "June" would have been corrected to a "July". The temptation to embellish the narrative with endearing anecdote has been denied. In contrast to most "George Washington slept here" claims, the information supplied by the eye witness is remarkably under-stated.
It should be noted that the perceptions of the eye witness were that the meeting on the hill between Lincoln and Douglas was essentially concerned with arranging a later meeting in Bement. This was not a perception of any of the reporters on the scene.
Perhaps another point is in order. Although this account was based on information told to the writer, the Spear history should not be viewed in the pejorative light often associated, fairly or not, with "oral history." The Spear history was not an uncritical recording of hazy, picturesque reminisces. Most of the history bristles with details of individuals, dates, locations, votes, boards, committees, memberships, etc. and Spear proved to be a meticulous and trustworthy historian, the June-July error notwithstanding. A later chapter of the history included errors and comments on the previous nineteen chapters of facts and figures, and the only factual error mentioned in that chapter was an inaccuracy regarding one member of the Board of Trustees for one year.
The 1878 issues of the Bement Independent that originally printed this history have not survived, so there is no record of comment or dispute this history may have engendered. The chapter offering postscripts of the previous material raised no comment about the Lincoln-Douglas history.(61) The chapter on the Lincoln Douglas meeting was reprinted in the Monticello Bulletin without dispute.(62)
Spear's account was confirmed in the public record repeatedly within the living memory of much of the citizenry of 1858. In Emma Piatt's History of Piatt County of 1883, Spear's account is taken at face value. It should be noted, however, Piatt's history confuses the two visits Lincoln and Douglas made to Monticello in 1858. She has the two men meeting to discuss the debates (the July 29 visit) in the midst of the tumult created by the debates (the Sept. 6 visit).(63) The value of Piatt's endorsement of Spear is therefore open to question. Nonetheless, the matter-of-fact manner in which she quotes "Judge Spear" without introduction or explanation suggests rather persuasively that her readership is already familiar with him and already knows about and accepts as history the meeting at the Bryant house.
Piatt's history offers an interesting example of the phenomenon that tries the patience of historians. People living through history are often extremely indifferent to the significant events they are witnessing. They tend to be more interested in marriages and babies and jobs and fraternal affiliations, all of which of course usually interest historians not at all. In the Piatt narrative, the people are interested in the "media event" of which they were a part. Even though by 1883 the intervening 25 years had demonstrated that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were of enormous interest and importance in the history of the republic, to the people of the day they were relegated to an incidental and hazy detail compared to a "media event" they were involved in consisting of a procession and big dinner.
The Chapman Brothers Biographical Album of DeWitt and Piatt Counties of 1891 affirms that it was at the Bryant cottage that "Lincoln and Douglas held a conference and made the arrangements for the public debate that played so important a part in the history of the State and Nation."(64) No sources are credited for this information.
F.M. Shonkwiler, in his History of Piatt County of 1917 merely lifts multi-paragraph passages from Emma Piatt, including her flawed account described above.(65)
Shonkwiler does not include a biography of Francis E. Bryant in his history as previous county historians did, but does include the following couple of sentences in his biography of Bryant's grandson, John Francis Sprague:
Mr. Bryant was the owner of the property now occupied by his grandson, John F. Sprague. It is a historic place, because in what is now the front yard, arrangements were made for the debate between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas, the latter of whom was a close personal friend of Mr. Bryant.(66)
Conclusion
The historical record of July 29, 1858 offers no readily apparent reason why after the passage of some time the history should be considered suspect or "not history". The history has traditionally been considered confusing and troublesome for historians, but this confusing nature of the record is perhaps overstated. The record is in considerable agreement when viewed from the assumption that Lincoln was telling the truth when he told Douglas he came to Piatt County to talk to him, Douglas, and give him a letter.
Douglas had previously told Lincoln by letter he intended to confer with him, Lincoln, about the debates, but neither man made any effort to broach the subject when they dined together the evening before. Corroborating reports recount that Lincoln told Douglas he came to Piatt County to meet Douglas and give him the letter. Toward that end, he declined to give the speech he was scheduled to give and instead returned almost immediately to Bement, where Douglas was staying at the Bryant house. By the next morning, the very well-founded concerns Douglas had about a third party candidate had been dispelled, and the questions about which Douglas wanted to confer with Lincoln concerning the mode of the debates had been answered.
Given that historical record, the conclusion that Lincoln and Douglas did in fact meet at the Bryant residence would seem to be a soundly warranted one.
This conclusion is confirmed by a history written twenty years later by a close associate of Bryant and local historian of very respectable credentials. This history was endorsed repeatedly by newspaper publishers and historians during the living memory of many of the observers of those events of 1858. The history was also documented some years later, in 1892, by Henry C. Whitney, Lincoln's personal friend, confidante and biographer, and son of Frances E. Bryant's business partner.
The assertion that Lincoln and Douglas met at the Bryant cottage has never been refuted in the true sense of the word. In general discourse, refutation can take two forms. It can come from disputing the facts themselves or the validity of the conclusions drawn from those facts, or it can come from offering a rival conclusion that fits those facts more completely and elegantly. The facts as presented here do not seem to be in dispute. And it would be hard to formulate a rival conclusion that ties up all the loose ends as neatly and elegantly as the conclusion presented here. If such a rival conclusion exists, it is not readily apparent in the literature.
The various assertions that Lincoln mailed the letter are indeed bothersome. They are improbable and unsupported, and no theory of Lincoln's actions based on his mailing the letter is apparent in the literature. The assertions are bothersome nonetheless.
At any rate, given the current historical record available to us, the conclusion that Lincoln and Douglas met and the Bryant house does not seem to be ridiculous or suspect in any way. There seems to be no reason why this particular information and line of reasoning should not be considered history.
The history is not based on a single isolated source or on the subtle nuances of a dubious turn of phrase. There are multiple, unambiguous, mutually-corroborating reports about virtually every element of this history, although there are only two extant accounts of the actual meeting. Any potential dispute of that specific event will probably have to take the form of evidence 1) from a source more credible than Spear and Whitney that 2) Lincoln was doing something else during the hours the current evidence indicates he spent in Bement on the evening in question, and that 3) offers an explanation of the abrupt change in the nature of the letters written before and after that evening.
However, the debate about the Bryant cottage has seldom taken this form. The debate has seldom had anything to do with evidence, lines of reasoning, conclusions, Occam's razor or historical method. Other than emphasizing Douglas' implication he merely received the letter by mail on the morning of the 30th, the debate consists almost exclusively of the strategy of disparaging the discourse and is expressed in the usual terms: "Who cares? So what?" "Just because it says something in the history books (or newspapers) doesn't make it so." "History is bunk."
Of all the strategies for disparaging the discourse, the most pernicious and perverse is always "You have no proof." This is the major thrust of the "Lincoln (may have) debated here" newspaper article from the News-Gazette mentioned earlier. The story could serve as a microcosm of the treatment the topic has received in recent years. The writer of the story, Paul Wood, admits that much of the historical record "rings true" and is corroborated by the Spear history, but shows more interest in reviewing some of the more entertaining, but spurious, absurdities put forth about the event. He concludes by disparaging the notion that Lincoln and Douglas met at the Bryant house or even that Douglas drafted his letter to Lincoln there, a position not usually held in dispute.
The closest Wood ever comes to offering any evidence to support this position is to offer a quote from noted historian Robert Johannsen:
"Scheduling seven debates involved Lincoln's managers and Douglas' managers and a lot of paperwork," he says. "You can't do this sitting around the table in five minutes."
While we do not know the context in which Johannsen was quoted and it is unfair to take him to task for a quote offered by a third party, as a refutation of the meeting at the Bryant cottage, this quote is perhaps an overstatement. There is no evidence that "enormous planning" was required, as the story suggests. The first three debates were scheduled for dates and locations for which Douglas had already scheduled appearances in August and September. It was just a matter of adding one more date in September and three in October. Douglas apparently did this rather quickly and easily on or about the evening of the 29th. The same issue of The Illinois State Register that announced the debates also announced Douglas' list of speech commitments made before the debate were arranged.(67) That list of commitments, which the newspaper presumably received at roughly the same time it received the debate schedule, documents that Douglas had no intention of speaking in Charleston on September 18 until he made out the schedule for the debates. Moreover, the same issue of that newspaper included an article entitled "Mr. Douglas' Further Appointments" mentions the change in schedule as a matter of course and gives no suggestion those changes involved enormous planning.
Lincoln, for his part, had no need to meet with his managers in Chicago, as he told his supporters he was going to do, but merely wrote a few letters canceling appearances that conflicted with the debates. These letters are among those that contain the recurrent "little white lies" about what Douglas communicated to him through letters.(68)
Neither the collected works of Lincoln nor Douglas contain any correspondence dealing with planning the debates, other than the letters to each other already noted. If the historical record contains any information about enormous planning, it is certainly not readily apparent. And yet Woods assures the reader that the "enormous planning" scenario "represents the mainstream opinion" about the event.
The various newspaper accounts of events on the 29th all offer persuasive evidence to refute any "enormous planning" scenario. Quite the contrary, events were moving very rapidly at that juncture. On the night before the 29th meeting, neither man seemed to have received the other's letter. On the morning of the 29th notices appeared announcing Lincoln was going to speak in Monticello. That afternoon he arrived in Piatt County and told Douglas he had come to Piatt County, not to make a speech, but to meet with him and give him a letter. The next morning Douglas pens his response to Lincoln listing the times and locations. Douglas' schedule of debates and pre-debate schedule of engagements arrive at the newspapers at roughly the same time and are both printed in the same issue.
Wood cites the issue of the Illinois State Register that documents Lincoln's actions and his statement that he came to Piatt County to meet with Douglas. It also prints Douglas' pre-debate schedule and debate schedule. But Wood dismisses all this information as "maddeningly vague". Moreover, Wood's ridicule of the notion that anything as important as planning the debates could happen in Bement is expedited by his having Douglas leave Bement an hour after Lincoln, on the 1:00 a.m. train instead of the 1:00 p.m. train. This eliminates the factor of the letter written by Douglas the next morning and headed "Bement" which Wood does not mention.
At any rate, in his "cornbread and beans" ridicule, Wood misses the whole question regarding the working out of the arrangements for the debates. Given the evidence from the newspaper accounts mentioned above and the very detailed documentations of Douglas' activities, the question is not whether Douglas worked out the arrangements for the debates while staying at the Bryant house. Any other scenario would be extremely hard to reconcile with the facts. And so the question is not whether it is possible two men could have arranged the seven debates sitting around a table in the course of an evening. The question is whether two men arranged the seven debates sitting around a table in the course of an evening or one man arranged the seven debates the next morning merely in response to a letter received in the mail, as Douglas implies. Given the evidence, those are about the only two possibilities.
At any rate, most of the article, although it is about history, is not sound history, to say the least. The material of history is either discounted out of hand or given the most desultory treatment. Most of the story is simply a series of variations on the theme "You can't prove it."
This, of course, is absolutely true. No one can prove Lincoln and Douglas met at the Bryant cottage or that Douglas drafted his letter to Lincoln there. No one can prove any assertion of history such as "Columbus discovered America", or for that matter, any statement based on the meaning of words. The impossibility of proof is simply a reality of epistemology and semantics. It is not a flaw of history or of historical method. Quite the contrary, one of the cornerstones of history is that all history is subject to revision; all history is open to dispute; no history is ever proven absolutely and completely, once and for all.
To turn this fundamental assumption of history around and argue that because the meeting at the Bryant house is not proven absolutely and completely it is therefore "not history" is itself a perversion of historical method. To blur the distinction between "there is no proof" and "there is no evidence" is also a perversion of historical method. In history, proof is an impossibility while evidence is everything. The history of the Bryant cottage is soundly warranted by the evidence and is therefore an honest history in ways that the efforts to disparage and ridicule that history are not.
And so, the original question of when and why history stops being history is unanswered. Indeed, it is more confusing than ever.
For example, Basler's inference that Lincoln took his letter back to Springfield and mailed it to Douglas, who received and answered it on the morning of the same day, is almost certainly not correct. Moreover, it absolutely contradicts Angle's statement that Lincoln mailed the letter the preceding night. Although both these assertions could not be correct, neither of them is considered "not history."
By the same token, Stevens' assertion that Douglas was indignant when he wrote his response to Lincoln is apparently sheer speculation on the part of Stevens. If there is any evidence to support that conclusion, Stevens does not offer it, nor is it readily apparent in the literature. If anything, most observers would probably argue that the tone of Douglas' response argues persuasively for the opposite point of view. Yet Stevens' is not taken to task for not "proving" the statement.
Both these instances of history are points that are not only disputable, but disputed by the evidence in ways the meeting in the Bryant house has not been. And yet the Bryant incident is often dismissed, not because it has been disputed, but because it is not in some absolute sense indisputable.
The general question of when is history not history suggests another question. Why is the historical record of the events of Piatt County in June 29 inevitably characterized as so extraordinarily confusing when, except for the business about mailing the letter, the accounts are rather straightforward and mutually corroborating.
This question, in turn, may suggest the most provocative question of all. How did Lincoln and Douglas manage to pull it off? How, in the midst of all the hyperbole and hoopla of the intense media attention, did the two men manage to have a private discussion without the papers ever having a clue about what was going on?
Actually, a closer look at the newspaper accounts of the day suggests that misleading the press was appallingly easy. Perhaps the reader has already perceived what was going on, in particularly regarding the "curious tangle" about mailing the letter and in general regarding the confusion and ridicule that characterized the events in general. Let us quickly review those events, and we can watch Lincoln and Douglas finesse the situation as they go along.
When Lincoln first met Douglas on the hill south of Monticello, he was very open in stating that his purpose in coming to Piatt county was to meet Douglas and give him the letter. Douglas tells Lincoln he will be at the Bryant residence until 1 o'clock the next day but plays down the meeting angle. Whether or not Douglas used the word "send" is immaterial. The important point is that Douglas de-emphasized the meeting itself while giving Lincoln the particulars of his stay at the Bryant cottage. Lincoln sensed what he was doing and followed his lead. Again, whether or not Lincoln used the term "send" is immaterial.
It will be remembered that Spear's eyewitness, a close friend of Douglas, perceived that a meeting was being arranged. If the Chicago Times account of the rather disjointed interchange is re-read from this point of view, it tends to makes more sense. The abrupt shift in the conversation away from any discussion about a meeting is understandable. Lincoln's repeated assurances to Douglas that he was not going to make a speech in Monticello could be seen, in effect, as a reply to Douglas' invitation to meet in Bement.
The various newspaper reports, on the other hand, indicate that the reporters had no inkling of the subtle interaction that was going on just under the surface between the two men. This is not surprising; nothing in their accounts indicates they were creatures of subtlety. They were more concerned with what they perceived as only facetious banter.
One can imagine the smiles the two men might have exchanged as they shook hands and went their separate ways that day on the hill. They were both being exploited savagely and incessantly by the press. They knew the press very well, and calculated the press would not be inclined to look beyond the surface of the media event they had come to cover. They would certainly not be inclined to follow Lincoln back to the little "cornbread and beans" town of one hundred fifty or two hundred people.
So Lincoln never mentioned any meeting with Douglas again that day, or ever, for that matter. He declined to make the speech he was scheduled to make, but gave no credible reason for doing so. He merely said he had to get back to Bement to catch the train. This is Lincoln at his audacious best. He remained nonplussed by the flimsiness of his excuse and the obvious questions it raised.
We don't know whether he actually said or did anything to suggest to the reporters he intended to mail his letter to Douglas. Again, whether he actually used the word "send" or "mail" is immaterial. The reporters certainly got that impression, as we have noted earlier, and Lincoln certainly did nothing to disabuse them of that misconception.
For that matter, perhaps he really did mail the letter to Douglas in addition to meeting with him. As demonstrated earlier, if Lincoln really did mail the letter, it almost certainly had to be from Bement. Now we can take that point one step further. If Lincoln mailed the letter to Douglas from Bement, it almost certainly had to be as part of the little ruse he was working with Douglas so that Douglas could honestly say he received the letter in the mail the next morning.
All in all there is no reason to assume Lincoln mounted any kind of elaborate deception. The evidence suggests he just stonewalled it and headed back to Bement, letting ridicule and confusion run their course.
What is surprising is how effectively the men, especially Lincoln, cultivated such an obviously improbable assumption on the one hand, and how subtly they accomplished it on the other. As stated earlier, traveling for some hours to Bement to mail a letter makes no more sense than traveling to Monticello not to make a speech. And yet the reporters were pretty certain Lincoln mailed the letter, but they didn't seem know why they thought that. It is as if by inviting ridicule and confusion Lincoln precluded critical thought.
In retrospect, Lincoln had gauged the reporters well. The record shows that reporters from at least four papers covered the events in Monticello that day. Some of them, the pro-Douglas reporters, had a field day ridiculing Lincoln's actions and statements, not entirely unlike the contemporary disparagement of the subject. But none of the reporters bothered to go with Lincoln to Bement to find out what it was in Bement that was more important than making the speech he was scheduled to make.
It might be noted that what was even more remarkable was that apparently Douglas had managed to lose his retinue in the half hour or hour after he arrived in Bement but before Lincoln arrived there. The Register reported that he left Monticello with delegations from Bement and Okaw. And the account of Douglas' dinner with Lincoln the previous night argue that supporters and well-wishers (pro-Lincoln observers tended to view them as sycophants and parasites) were not reluctant to approach Douglas uninvited. If Douglas was free to receive Lincoln more or less without interruption, that probably could not have happened without some initiative on Douglas' part.
Neither Lincoln nor Douglas needed to build any grand edifice of deceit. They merely perceived that the press of the day would not take the trouble to sort out the confusing and bothersome questions, particularly as those questions dealt with little out-of-the-way Bement. The journalists on the scene vindicated that perception in 1858, as have journalists and historians, to a large extent, for almost 140 years. This has particularly been the case in recent years.
Perhaps the lack of interest in this confusing and troublesome bit of history is understandable. There is no reason to believe, as one post-1917 anecdote has it, that a great, rancorous debate ensued that lasted for hours and changed the course of American history. Nor is there any reason to assert that the meeting was particularly noteworthy because it happened at that specific time or place. Quite the contrary, if the two men had not been able to manage a meeting in Bement, they probably would have met a day or two later at Paris since Lincoln seemed to be prepared to follow Douglas there if the need be.
So perhaps history is done no great disservice if the little drama in Bement is allowed to be discounted and disparaged.
But in another sense, sloppy history is history profoundly damaged. One of the lessons to be gained by reviewing this historical record concerns the manner in which instances of sloppy history invariably tend to subtly "homogenize" the evidence to support the most widely held assumption (in this case, that Lincoln came to Piatt County to conclude on Douglas) and indirectly discredit the less popular but more historically defensible (and more illuminating) point of view.
The instance has already been noted in which a rather questionable assumption about intent based on a reporter's use of the word "send" evolves into flat statement of historical fact that Lincoln mailed the letter that night.
Another misquoting by a Piatt County historian illustrates another tendency. Jessie Morgan wrote a history of Piatt County in which she took the phrase from Basler "spoke for about half an hour"(69) and misquoted it as "spoke for about an hour."(70) This is admittedly a rather minor error, but one that nonetheless has the effect of affirming that the important history happened at the county seat. Another example of this tendency is less minor. Morgan's account of Lincoln's Sept. 6 speech at the county seat was 12 paragraphs long and cited multiple sources. However, although she had a transcript of Spear in her notes and quoted Whitney elsewhere in her history, her discussion of the meeting at the Bryant house is limited to a single paragraph of Shonkwiler buffoonery, which she attributed to Beveridge.(71) As a result, her Piatt County history gives the reader an incomplete, anomalous and certainly far-from-sympathetic impression of the historical record concerning the meeting at the Bryant house.
The effect of all these developments is that, with the passage of time, the neat, homogenized version of history becomes the only history, a history without the provocative and perhaps illuminating little anomalies. History is impoverished in the process. In this case, the impoverishment is particularly poignant in that valuable, irreplaceable archival records that did not support the homogenized version of history were destroyed, no doubt with the best of intentions.
And so perhaps, honest history is important, even when that history deals with complications in little out-of-the-way places. Perhaps the complications and the little "cornbread and beans" events have important stories to tell us also. And historians who vindicate Lincoln's perception of humanity and who, from time to time, allow dismissal to replace reasoned inquiry and disparagement to replace discourse cease to be historians.
And a history seen exclusively in terms of big media events and celebrities and souvenir sales and tourist attractions and press releases is no history at all.
Perhaps we are at last approaching some vague understanding about why some history tends to be relegated over time to "not history". It is an understanding Lincoln and Douglas seemed to grasp only too well.
Perhaps, in the final analysis, the anonymous little drama surrounding the Bryant cottage in 1858 is important because it gives us a rather profound insight: insight into the humanity of the two men engulfed in the debilitating hyperbole that defined the tenor of their times, and insight into the very foibles that, to a sadly great extent, shape the tenor of our times.
1. Henry Clay Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Caldwell, ID, 1940), 402.
3. Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 11, p. 440.
4. Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 1809-1858 (Boston, 1928), 272-273.
5. Illinois Guide & Gazetteer (Chicago, 1969), 75. The work was "Prepared under the supervision of the Illinois Sesquicentennial Commission" and includes a Foreword by Paul Angle.
6. Mary Kay Phelan, Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Journey (New York, 1972).
8. Francis M. Shonkwiler, History of Piatt County (Chicago, 1917).
9. Piatt County Republican, August 1, 1918.
10. Bement Register, Aug 6, 1925.
12. Manuscript of an "address given by E.J Hawbaker to be given to the Monticello Women's Club for Lincoln's birthday program for 1949." Manuscript is in the Piatt County archives of Allerton Library, Monticello IL.
13. Bement Register, Aug 1, 1918.
14. St. Louis Globe Democrat, June 19, 1955. The national and international flavor of the celebration was largely the work of Bement native Carleton Smith, one-time University of Chicago professor, fine arts critic for Esquire Magazine, journalist (He interviewed Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin.) and general man-for-all-seasons.
16. The Bement Register, Feb. 10, 1955.
18. Saul Sigelschiffer, The American Conscience: The Drama of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, (New York, 1973), 207.
19. Jeanette Covert Nolan, The Little Giant: Stephen A. Douglas, (New York, 1964), 138-139.
20. Frederick Holmes, Abraham Lincoln Traveled This Way, (Boston, 1939), 154-155.
21. DeLorme and the American Automobile Association, Map 'n 'Go (1996).
22. The Champaign News-Gazette, February 10, 1991.
23. Illinois Department of Conservation, Land and Historic Sites, Bryant Cottage. A tri-fold pamphlet, no date.
24. Edwin Erle Sparks, Lincoln Series, Vol. I: The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858 (Springfield, IL, 1908), 66-68.
25. James W. Shehan, The Live of Stephen A. Douglas (New York, 1860), 419.
26. Frank E. Stevens, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas (Springfield, IL, 1924) 560.
27. Roy P. Basler, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1953).
30. Illinois State Journal, July 31, 1858.
32. Illinois State Journal, August 2, 1858.
33. The Missouri Republican, August 3, 1858.
36. The Missouri Republican, August 1, 1858.
38. Illinois State Register, August 2, 1858.
39. The Missouri Republican, August 1, 1858.
40. Illinois State Register (Springfield, Illinois), August 2, 1958.
41. Our Constitution (Urbana, Illinois), July 31, 1858.
42. C.C. Burford in The Bement (IL) Register, May 26, 1955.
44. Paul M. Angle, Lincoln in the Year 1858 (Springfield, IL, Lincoln Centennial Assn., 1926), 34.
47. Bement Register, Sept. 1, 1955.
49. Basler, 527. It might be noted that locating this account is still something of a problem. The issue of the newspaper in question is inexplicably not included in the standard microfilm archives of that publication. That issue of the Missouri Republican is available in the bound volume archives of the St. Louis Mercantile Library, 510 Locust, St. Louis MO 63101, which is now part of the University of Missouri -- St. Louis library.
51. Paul M. Angle, Lincoln in the Year 1858, (Springfield, IL, Lincoln Centennial Association, 1926), 34.
52. Missouri Republican, Aug. 1, 1858.
55. Basler, 534-535. Lincoln's letter to Whitney is a remarkable document. The two men often included in their letters personal information, confidential political strategies, acerbic comments about individuals or situations, and so forth. Whitney was very well informed on the political scene in Champaign and Piatt counties. The purpose of Lincoln's comment to him regarding the Monticello fiasco with the words "I was in Monticello Thursday evening. Signs all very good." is an intriguing mystery. It is would be extremely hard to characterize Lincoln's accomplishments in Monticello as "very good," as Whitney without a doubt knew, and one wonders what purpose this little comment served unless it was intended to be shown to third parties, as many of Lincoln's letters to Whitney were.
57. George L. Spear, History of Bement, Piatt County, Illinois (Bement, IL, 1878).
59. Francis M. Shonkwiler, History of Piatt County (Chicago, 1917), 640-641.
62. Monticello Bulletin, May 23, 1878.
64. Chapman Brothers, Biographical Album of DeWitt and Piatt Counties (Chicago, 1891), 963.
65. Francis M. Shonkwiler, History of Piatt County (Chicago, 1917), 640-641.
70. Jessie Borror Morgan, The Good Life in Piatt County (Moline, IL, 1968), 60.
71. Ibid.
Originally published in The Lincoln Herald, Lincoln Memorial University,
Cumberland Gap Parkway, Harrogate TN 37752.
Author: Jim Fay, Ph.D.
Search terms: Abraham Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, Bement, Piatt County,
Frances Bryant
Comments to: jamesfay@uiuc.edu
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