Lincoln saw Kansas as proving ground, scholar says

By ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
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Abraham Lincoln never spent much time in Kansas, Arnold Schofield said. But the time he spent here was crucial in preparing him to make his first “official” stump speech in his bid for the presidency of the United States of America, he postulated.
Lincoln came to Kansas near the end of 1859 at the request of friend and supporter Mark Delahay, Schofield noted.
Over the years, Schofield, superintendent of Mine Creek Battlefield and Marais des Cygnes Massacre state historic sites said he has asked himself ‘Why?’
“Beyond politics, why?” Schofield said to a jam-packed crowd at the Frederick Funston Meeting Hall Tuesday night.
Schofield’s presentation on “Lincoln in Kansas” marked the annual fall meeting of the Allen County Historical Society.
Although not a Lincoln scholar, Schofield is a historian, he said, and could not pass up the invitation by ACHS Director Jeff Kluever to come talk in Iola about the president he calls “The greatest president the United States has had to date.”
Schofield believes Lincoln realized the good that making a series of stump speeches in Kansas could do him before his more famous appearance at the Cooper’s Union in New York City.
He basically gave slightly different versions of the same speech here three months before he would deliver it to the larger, more prominent crowd.
“This is the proving ground for that speech,” Schofield said of Lincoln’s whirlwind tour through Northeastern Kansas.
The speeches were Lincoln’s first promotion of his views on stopping the expansion of slavery, and his bid for the Republican nominee for president, Schofield said.
In so speaking, the future president displayed his political shrewdness, Schofield said.
“He knows if slavery is confined, it will die.”
Raising cotton and tobacco were depleting to the soil, Schofield said. Without new plantations — and slaves to work them — the system was doomed to obsolescence.
Lincoln was in Kansas from Dec. 1-3 of 1859. On Dec. 2, John Brown was executed in Virginia. The uncanny timing of the event offered Lincoln further opportunities to espouse abolition of slavery.
Ultimately, Schofield said, Lincoln visited Kansas “because he wants votes. Not in the general election, that comes later, but at the Republican convention” that would decide, in the spring of 1860, the party’s nominee for the nation’s highest office.
“He’s very well received in Kansas,” Schofield said. “And a lot of individuals said they would vote for him — and they did — in the general election.” But not one of the state’s six delegates gave Lincoln the nod at the time of the convention, Schofield said.
Kansas appealed to Lincoln because it reminded him of his boyhood and political origins on the frontier of Illinois, Schofield said.
That humble beginning never left him— “Lincoln wore a felt stove pipe hat — a poor man’s hat,” not one of more expensive beaver, Schofield said. It was the same with his suits, Schofield noted. They fit the man, but were never the finery of those at the top of the social heap.

SCHOFIELD opened his talk with an anecdote about a band of Neosho River Osage whose men all joined the U.S. Army in the spring of 1862.
Come fall, when regular soldiers were being sent to the army’s winter quarters, the Osage returned home to the Iola area, he said.
Because they had not yet been paid for their many months of service, the Osage betook a series of raids upon settler’s crops and cattle in order to provide their families with food for the winter. When confronted, they admitted the thievery, explaining they would repay the settlers when they received their payment from the army.
“It’s unknown if that ever occurred,” Schofield added. From accounts he had found, the army seemed less than eager to adequately pay the men for their time.

10/21/10