Essay on Lincoln's
Lyceum Speech
by Paul Simon
Visitors to the Illinois exhibit at the New York World's Fair in 1964-1965 saw a Disney-created President
Abraham Lincoln mannequin stand before them, with mechanically created movements of his arms and
lips that made him look almost life-like. When the audience quieted, the Lincoln-like figure spoke to us.
Part of what President Lincoln said at the New York World's Fair were phrases of his familiar to most
Americans, but part of what "President" Lincoln said there was not from his years as President, but words from
his first Lincolnesque speech, given to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield at the age of 28.
What caused Lincoln, a young state legislator, to carefully prepare such a speech?
Seven weeks earlier, a mob in Alton, Illinois, killed Elijah Lovejoy, a Presbyterian minister who edited a newspaper there with strong anti-slavery views. The slaying of Lovejoy stunned Illinois and the nation and around the
country-even in the slave-holding states of the South-public officials and newspaper editorials denounced the
mob action. But in Illinois, where the abolitionist cause did not generate popularity, most newspapers and
almost all public officials were audibly silent, or hinted that Lovejoy brought his death on by his extreme views.
How could that be in Illinois where the Constitution and laws banned slavery?
Illinois technically was a free state, but slavery existed when we became a state and continued for some time
afterwards. When Ninian Edwards, father of Lincoln's future brother-in-law, served as territorial governor of
Illinois, which did not legally permit slavery, he ran this classified advertisement:
"Notice: I have for sale twenty-two slaves, among them are several of both sexes
between the years of ten and seventeen. . . .I have also for sale a full-blooded horse,
a very large English bull and several young ones."
Shadrach Bond, the first Governor of the "free" State of Illinois, had this in his will:
"I give to my loving wife, Achsah Bond, all of my personal property. . .my Negro
Frank Thomas. . . .I give to my daughter Julia Rachel five hundred dollars and my
Negro girl Eliza. And to my daughter Achsah Mary five hundred dollars and my
Negro girl Harriet and to my wife Achsah I gave all the rest of my Negroes."
In 1853-twelve years after Lincoln left the Illinois House of Representatives-Illinois passed a law that a free
African American entering the state could be sold into slavery.
The mood of Illinois when an angry mob killed Lovejoy was pro-slavery, but not only in Illinois. The state legislatures of Connecticut and New York in the mid-1830s passed resolutions stating that slavery was accepted in
the U. S. Constitution and that no state had a right to interfere.
But Lincoln had a different attitude. He spent his first years in Hardin County, Kentucky, where the tax lists of
1811-when Lincoln was two years old-listed 1,007 slaves for purposes of taxation. But earlier, the South Fork
Baptist Church split on the basis of slavery, and before Lincoln's birth his parents had joined the Little Mount
Anti-Slavery Baptist Church. When they moved to Indiana, they joined a Baptist Church whose pastor had
strong anti-slavery views.
Ten months before Lovejoy's slaying, the Illinois House of Representatives adopted a resolution "that the right
of property in slaves is sacred. . .(that) we highly disapprove of the formation of abolition societies. . . .that the
General Government cannot abolish slavery in the District of Columbia." It passed 77-6, Lincoln being one of
the six to vote against it. Six weeks later, he and Representative Dan Stone filed a protest to the passage of the
resolution-a rarely used device to register strong disagreement.
Lovejoy's death brought the slavery issue to the fore, particularly in Illinois, because Illinois public officials had
been part of an attempt to muzzle Lovejoy.
24¦ ILLINOIS HERITAGE
Public Policy Institute, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
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Threatened with violence regularly, twice the Alton editor's printing equipment had been
thrown in the Mississippi River. Community leaders called a general meeting to work out "a
compromise" in the volatile atmosphere of Alton. Defending Lovejoy at the large meeting was
Edward Beecher, President of Illinois College of Jacksonville, but arrayed against Lovejoy were
several public officials including Cyrus Edwards, soon to be the Whig candidate for Governor.
Leading the charge was the politically ambitious Attorney General
of Illinois, Usher Linder. Linder
suggested the compromise:
Lovejoy and his family could
leave Alton without injury if he
would stop publishing his newspaper. Lovejoy declined to accept
the compromise in a ringing
defense of free speech. He concluded, "If I fall, my grave shall
be made in Alton." He lived four
more days.
His death shocked the nation.
John Quincy Adams called it an
earthquake. Protest meetings
were held all over the North. At
one, in a Congregational church
in Ohio, a young man stood up
and said he would devote his life
to fighting slavery. His name:
John Brown. Another leader of
the anti-slavery movement,
Wendell Phillips, emerged from a
Lovejoy protest meeting. Years
later, he wrote: "I can never forget the quick, sharp agony of that
hour which brought us the news
of Lovejoy's death. . . .The gun
fired at Lovejoy was like that of
Sumter-it shattered a world of
dreams. How prudently most
men creep into nameless graves
while now and then one or two
forget themselves into immortality."
However, Illinois had a muted
reaction.
And Lincoln, who might have
been expected to denounce the
mob action immediately, did not,
nor did any elected Illinois public
official. But seven weeks later, he
became the only state office-holder to comment with his speech to
the Young Men's Lyceum.
Politically cautious, he did not
mention Lovejoy but denounced
mob action, and everyone present
knew why. And here the future
Abraham Lincoln can be heard: "Let every man remember that to
violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear
the charter of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for
the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe,
that prattles on her lap.
Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges. . . .In
short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old
and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all
sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly
upon its altars."
ILLINOIS HERITAGE ¦25