Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was in St. Joseph twice in 1859. His first visit was on Tuesday, August 11. The Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad had been completed in February, and his strenuous campaign for the U.S. Senate from Illinois had ended in November 1858 with his defeat by Stephen A. Douglas. There were several reasons for Lincoln's trip to St. Joseph. In general, he was intensely interested in the question of the extension of slavery into the territories-specifically Kansas. Of immediate interest, Norman B. Judd, a fellow attorney who had acted as his campaign manager in the 1858 senatorial contest, had requested that Lincoln loan him $3,000, the loan to be secured by a pledge of seventeen lots-a quarter section of land— The Riddle Tract, at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Judd had been attorney for the short-lived Mississippi & Missouri Railroad which had collapsed in the Panic of 1857. The line never reached Council Bluffs, but Judd's land was at the point where its western terminus was to have been. Lincoln was willing to oblige his friend-the earnings of his legal work for the railroads had put him in prosperous condition -but he felt that he should have a look at the collateral before making the loan. He arrived in St. Joseph by train and there is the tradition that he went across the river and spoke in Kansas though no record of what he said has come to light. He then returned to St. Joseph and took passage by steamboat up to Council Bluffs.

Lincoln knew two families in Council Bluffs, who had come out from Springfield, Illinois-the Puseys and the Officers. The public library of Council Bluffs now stands on the site of the Pusey home and has a plaque with this inscription:

In the Memory of Abraham Lincoln

who, on August 13, 1859

was the guest of Hon. William H. M. Pusey

whose residence stood on this ground

Tablet placed - Sept. 14, 1914.

Lincoln was called upon to make several speeches, and one hot evening, after dinner, he was sitting on the porch of the Pacific House talking to Mr. Pusey. He told of his long-standing interest in the Pacific Railroad, which had been discussed in Congress since the 1840s. He had complete confidence that the road would be built one day, but he wondered what its route would be. Mr. Pusey said:

“The man who is best equipped to give you an opinion is right here, and I’ll introduce you to him. That young man standing over there is Grenville Dodge, an engineer engaged in building a railroad across the State of Iowa, who has just returned from a trip to the Rocky Mountains for the purpose of looking over the land there, in order to determine where the line coming across Iowa should terminate in this vicinity.’

That was the first meeting of Lincoln and the man who, as General Grenville M. Dodge, later built the Union Pacific Railroad. Dodge expressed to Lincoln the opinion that from a professional engineering point of view there was no question but that the most economic route was up the long, gradual slope of the Platte River Valley, with no grade exceeding fifteen feet, to a natural pass over the Rocky Mountains at the lowest point in the entire range.

Lincoln never forgot the conversation, and three and a half years later, in the spring of 1863, when Dodge was with the Army in Corinth, Mississippi, he received a dispatch from General Grant to proceed to Washington and report to President Lincoln. His apprehensions were relieved when he learned from the President that the purpose of the meeting was to review the discussion they had had in 1859 on the porch of the Pacific House in Council Bluffs. Dodge repeated his conviction as to the most economic route for the railroad west of the Missouri River and, as a result, Lincoln issued his executive order of November 17, 1863, starting the building of the Union Pacific Railroad west from Omaha.

Lincoln had a friend in St. Joseph-General James Craig-who was elected to Congress in 1856 and served until March 3, 1861. He was defeated in the election of November 1860, and there have been those who believed that if he had been in Washington during the war years he would have been close enough to Lincoln to have been of some influence in having the executive order of November 1863 designate St. Joseph as the starting point for building the Union Pacific west rather than Omaha. The strong influence of General Dodge's opinion, however, casts some doubt on this speculation.

Lincoln made the $3,000 loan that Judd requested in 1859 and in the settlement of his estate, after the assassination of 1865, the loan with accumulated interest was paid off. The grandson of W. H. M. Pusey's brother is Nathan Marsh Pusey, born in Council Bluffs, who became president of Harvard University.

Abraham Lincoln's second trip through St. Joseph was on Thursday, December 1, 1859. He was invited in May to speak in Leavenworth, Kansas, by Mark W. Delahay, a newspaper man there who had lived in Springfield, Illinois, and had known Lincoln. Delahay had married Miss Louisiana Hanks, whose grandfather, Joshua Hanks, was a relative of Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks. Delahay advised D. W. Wilder, publisher of the Free Press of Elwood, Kansas, of the visit, so the two men met the Hannibal & St. Joseph train at the old depot at Eighth and Olive Streets, when Lincoln arrived. Wilder later wrote of the occasion as follows:

[November 30.] Delahay came to Elwood and stayed all night. He and I went to St. Joe the next morning and to the Hannibal Depot where we met Lincoln and took him uptown in an omnibus. I took him to a barber shop believed to be in the old Edgar House, still standing in part, at the northeast corner of Main and Francis Streets) and bought newspapers for him believed to be at the old Post Office, on the east side of Second Street, a few doors north of Francis Street). It was a warm day and we all sat in the dirt, waiting for the ferry boat. We went to the Great Western Hotel, a large frame building in Elwood. That night he spoke in the dining room of the hotel, the meeting being announced by a man going through the streets pounding on a gong. He spent that night in Elwood.’

The St. Joseph Gazette of December 1, 1859 carried this item: “The Hon. Abe Lincoln of Illinois passed through this city yesterday on his way to Kansas, where he is advertised to make Republican speeches.'

At Elwood, Lincoln's party hired a two-seated buggy with one horse from the livery stable of Cook & Selover, and started off to Troy, Kansas. On the way, they met an east-bound wagon bringing Henry Villard, a newspaper correspondent whom Lincoln knew, back from the Colorado gold fields. The day was bitterly cold and Villard noticed that Lincoln was shivering as the raw northwest wind cut through his short overcoat. Villard offered a buffalo robe, which Lincoln accepted and later returned. Arriving in Troy, Lincoln purchased a pair of overshoes, size thirteen, the largest available, which he got on with difficulty. He then spoke at the courthouse for over al hour. He spent that night at the Sidney Tennant house in Troy, still standing on the corner of the Square, across the street from courthouse.

The Lincoln party was up early on December 2 and drove to Doniphan, Kansas, reaching there in time for lunch. He then addressed a crowd at the hotel. Continuing on, the party reached Atchison at about five o’clock in the afternoon, and Lincoln was taken to the Massasoit House where reservations had been made. The local Republican committeeman, S. C. Pomeroy, had been fearful that attendance at the evening meeting at the Methodist Church might not be large, so he had had printed a thousand handbills nine by twelve inches in size and reading:

HONEST ABE

LINCOLN

OF ILLINOIS

will speak at the Methodist Church

tonight at 8:00 o'clock

on the

Political Issues of the Day

By order of the Committee

Atchison, K.T. December 2, 1859

These handbills were distributed to all the business houses and residences by small boys which Mr. Pomeroy hired.

Lincoln was a dinner guest at the Pomeroy home with a number of prominent men. After dinner a procession led by a band was formed to escort his carriage to the church. They arrived at 7:45 p.m. and found the crowd larger than had been expected. The speech he gave was essentially the one later known as the “Cooper Union Address.' After the meeting, Lincoln was followed back to his hotel by a por tion of the crowd. He talked to them in the parlor of the hotel and later in the evening played a game of billiards.

After an early breakfast on December 3, Lincoln was surrounded in the bar of the hotel by a group of well-wishers. He entertained them with stories while waiting for the rig that was to take him to Leavenworth. A delegation from Leavenworth arrived to escort him to their town. A crowd with a band met the party and escorted them to the Planters House. The meeting that evening was at Stockton's Hall and Lincoln's speech was the same as that given in Atchison. Lincoln spent the next few days, December 4-7, visiting the Delahays. He was invited to speak again on Monday afternoon at Stockton's Hall and there was a late reception for him at the Planters House. There he spoke again. The next day, Tuesday, December 6, was election day, when the first Kansas officers were elected under the Wyandotte Constitution. The Delahays gave a party for Lincoln and on Wednesday, December 7, he left by steamboat to St. Joseph, and then east by train. He was at home in Springfield, Illinois, by December 9.

The two-seated buggy used by Lincoln on the trip is now on exhibit at the museum at Fort Leavenworth.

Lincoln had another friend in St. Joseph-Willard P. Hall, who had been a member of Congress from 1847 to 1853, and had known Lincoln when he was in Congress in 1847 and 1848. Hall's home in St. Joseph, still standing, is now the rectory of SS. Peter and Paul Catholic Church at Messanie Street and Warsaw Avenue. Lincoln is known to have visited at Hall's home in St. Joseph, but on which of the two occasions in 1859 is not now clear.

An interesting link between Lincoln and St. Joseph rests in several letters written in 1836 and 1837 by Lincoln, when he was twenty seven years of age, to Miss Mary S. Owens of Kentucky. She had been visiting her sister in New Salem, Illinois, and had met Lincoln, a struggling young lawyer there. The letters proposed marriage but Miss Owens did not reply. She later married Mr. Jesse Vineyard of Weston, Missouri, great grandfather of Benjamin R. and Barkley Vineyard of St. Joseph, who now own the Lincoln letters.

Another link: Lincoln married Miss Mary Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, in 1842. Her first cousin, Rebecca Todd, married George Warren Samuel, and they came to Savannah, Missouri. Their daughter, Annie Samuel, was married to Mr. John S. Lemon of St. Joseph.