LINCOLN AND OREGON
Abraham Lincoln knew little about the Oregon Country before the late 1840s. Although his long-time political competitor in Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas, was already deeply involved in Oregon controversies by the mid-1840s, Lincoln's connections with the region came later. Lincoln seemed even quarantined from the Oregon Fever that infected the upper Midwest and raged across the Mississippi Valley by the mid-1840s.
But the Lincoln links began to form from 1847 forward. In December of that year Lincoln arrived in Washington, D. C., to take up his two-year seat in Congress, the only national office he held before winning the presidency in 1860. During his stint in Congress that body considered territorial organization for Oregon. For the most part Lincoln supported and voted for these measures. When his two years in Congress ended, Lincoln was disappointed not to receive appointment to the General Land Office. Realizing that disappointment, the new Zachary Taylor administration in August 1849 surprised Lincoln with a nomination as secretary of Oregon Territory. When Lincoln rejected that offer, one month later came an invitation to become governor of Oregon. Probably family and political considerations led to Lincoln's rejection of both offers.
But in the next decade when several of Lincoln's friends moved to the territory or new state, his personal links with Oregon changed. Four close acquaintances of Lincoln came to Oregon - David Logan (1849), Anson G. Henry (1852), Simeon Francis (1859), and Edward D. Baker (1859). They became Lincoln's political eyes and ears on the West Coast. Most of all they reported on the political events of the Pacific Northwest and California, explaining the unique party competitions in these areas and urging Lincoln, sometimes, to take new tacks. For roughly the last fifteen years of his life Lincoln, save for Missouri, knew the Oregon political scene as well as that any state or territory west of the Mississippi.
Lincoln's personal and political connections in Oregon often differed from those in several other western areas. For example, the controversies over slavery, the Civil War, and the earliest Reconstruction measures that embroiled the president and Missouri in an ongoing fractious disputes were absent in Oregon. In addition, because Oregon had become a state (1859) before Lincoln entered the White House, he did not appoint the dozens of officeholders he named in territories such as New Mexico, Colorado, and others across the northern West. But the quartet of long-time acquaintances that began moving to Oregon in 1849 linked Lincoln to the political party transformations in the territory and then state of Oregon. All of these men, Logan, Dr. Henry, Francis, and Baker, were active Whigs and then Republicans. In the election of 1860 they were particularly important figures in Lincoln's close win in the state.
Edward Baker (1811-1861) was probably the most influential of Lincoln's friends in Oregon, even though his stay was the briefest. Born in Britain and reared in the eastern U. S., Baker arrived at Springfield, Illinois, as a lawyer in 1835. For almost twenty years this charismatic orator, card shark, and nonstop activist competed politically with Lincoln but also remained a dear friend. Indeed, Abraham and Mary Lincoln even named their second son, Edward (Eddie), after Baker. Disappointed with political prospects in Illinois and drawn by a new challenge, Baker and his family removed to California in 1852. He quickly became a Whig leader but, understandably, lost campaigns later in the 1850s for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives in a predominantly Democratic state. Then another of Lincoln's friends already in Oregon, Dr. Anson Henry, urged Baker to move there in 1857. David Logan added his voice of encouragement in 1859. An ambitious political carpetbagger, Baker arrived in Portland in late 1859. Immediately playing on the controversies dividing Democrats in the state, and nationally, Baker quickly won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1860. He was the first West Coast Republican to be elected to Congress.
Soon after introducing Lincoln at his First Inaugural Address, Baker joined the Union army and helped raise a regiment of soldiers. Tragically, he was shot and killed at the Battle of Ball's Bluff in October 1861, possibly because of his own or his superior's bad decisions. Although Baker served but a few weeks in the Senate, he had helped Lincoln forge an early link with the minority but expanding Republican Party in the Far West.
The career of David Logan (1824-1874) in Oregon was the longest and the most controversial of Lincoln's four close acquaintances in the state. The son of Lincoln's second law partner, Stephen Trigg Logan, David arrived in Oregon in 1849, probably coming at the command of his imperious father. Logan, quickly exhibiting his obvious talents as a superb lawyer, inspiring speaker, and a first-rate legal mind, was elected to the territorial legislature in 1854 and again in 1857. But his alcoholism, rumored immoral behavior, and involvement in political controversies were large barriers to his lifelong dream of winning a seat in Congress. He wrote Lincoln after the election of 1860, suggesting that his work in Oregon for Lincoln and the Republicans clearly merited a patronage appointment. Apprised of Logan's personal and political difficulties, by Lincoln's other friends in Oregon, the president did not reply directly to Logan (then only in his mid-thirties) but through those connections encouraged David to soldier on politically. Later, Logan was elected mayor of Portland but never reached his much-desired goal of a national political office before his early death at age 50.
Perhaps the most lively personally, and rabidly political, of Lincoln's acquaintances in Oregon was Dr. Anson G. Henry (1804-1865). Born with an evident cocklebur in his diaper, Henry never seemed to find a way to rid himself of that irritant. It was also a spur to his incessant movement and activity. Trained as a doctor he arrived in Springfield in 1833 and in the next two decades became Lincoln's confidant and firm Whig friend. In 1840-41 Henry was instrumental in helping Lincoln and Mary Todd work out their courtship problems and eventual marriage. At that time, while recommending Henry for a political plum, Lincoln told another correspondent that the good doctor was "necessary to my [Lincoln's] existence." Soon thereafter Henry caught the Oregon ailment that severely attacked Illinois in the late 1840s. In 1852, he and his family traveled over the Oregon Trail to resettle his family in Lafayette, Oregon, where David Logan had earlier landed.
Then Dr. Henry's penchant for pugnacity surfaced again. By 1854 he was an outspoken Whig in the Oregon territorial legislature, telling his neighbors how they should operate politically after being among them less than two years. Although Henry claimed to be farming and doctoring, politics grabbed his attention, and energies. In the late 1850s Henry reconnected with Lincoln and Edward Baker, describing for Lincoln the political terrain of Oregon and urging Baker to move north and run for office. In the elections of 1860 Henry supported Baker's successful U.S. senatorial candidacy and helped swing the very close vote in Oregon to Lincoln and the Republicans.
Once Lincoln was in the White House, Henry often made clear his continuing desire for a patronage appointment. The president responded by naming the doctor as surveyor general of Washington Territory. Henry then moved his family to Olympia and once again plunged into the politics of his new home. His irascibility and impatience drove him to Washington in early 1863 to fill Lincoln's ear with stories about divisive political machinations in Washington territory. When Lincoln was reelected in 1864, Henry hoped for and hinted at a more prestigious appointment. Returning to Washington in February 1865 to lobby Lincoln again for a diplomatic or even cabinet post, Henry was there when the president was assassinated. Henry helped Mary Lincoln during the sad weeks that followed before he returned west. On the last leg of the doctor's journey home in August he boarded the heavily overloaded steamer Brother Jonathan and was lost at sea when the ship went down just off the northern California coast.
To the end of his life Henry battled for Lincoln. One scholar described Henry as Lincoln's "junkyard dog," barking, even snarling, at Lincoln's opponents. The doctor, the self-appointed protector of the president's personal and political interests, often kept critics at bay even while he sometimes alienated possible Lincoln supporters or converts. Lincoln, understanding the flawed side of Henry but also recalling his positive characteristics, once said of Henry: "What a great, big-hearted man he is. Henry is one of the best men I have ever known. He sometimes commits an error of judgment, but I never knew him to be guilty of a falsehood or of an act beneath a gentleman. He is the soul of truth and honor."
Simeon Francis (1796-1872) was the fourth of Lincoln's friends to immigrate to Oregon. A long-time Whig editor of the Sangamo Journal (renamed the Illinois State Journal), Francis sustained Lincoln's politics and opened the pages of his newspaper for Lincoln's writings. When Lincoln and Mary Todd's courtship seemed to be floundering, Francis and his wife Eliza opened their home as a haven for renewing Abraham and Mary's friendship and encouraged their later steps to marriage. When the Oregon frenzy engulfed Francis in the late 1840s, Lincoln urged the Zachary Taylor administration to appoint the editor as the territory's secretary, a position, ironically, that Lincoln himself was offered and rejected in August 1849.
A decade later, Francis, feeling threatened by journalistic competitors, sold his newspaper and moved to Oregon. Soon after his arrival in 1859, Francis wrote an important newspaper article calling for Lincoln's election to the presidency and penned a revealing letter to the Republican candidate about the political terrain in Oregon. For a short time Francis edited the Oregon Farmer and then The Oregonian. After Lincoln won in 1860, he named Francis army paymaster at Ft. Vancouver. Francis served in that position until he retired in 1870. Like Baker, Logan, and Henry, Francis from time to time wrote Lincoln about the politics of the Oregon Country and recommended persons for political appointment. In 1872 he died in Portland.
This quartet of friends and political acquaintances were important Lincoln links in Oregon. They encouraged Lincoln's political prospects in the territory and new state and helped establish the Republicans as a party in the area. In turn, all but Logan benefited from Lincoln's clear political support of old friends. For a decade and a half, these friends were helpful sources of political information and support for Abraham Lincoln in faraway Oregon.
Richard W. Etulain
