Encounters
''crimination'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜encounter｜ENC｜20260904152658-20-•
A struggle over the Whig-dominated supreme court convulsed the legislature. The justices had angered Democrats by overruling Governor Carlin’s decision to remove Alexander P. Field, a partisan Whig, from his post as secretary of state. When the court also seemed likely to weaken the Democrats’ electoral base by denying aliens the right to vote (most of the state’s 10,000 foreign-born voters were Democrats), the General Assembly entertained a motion to pack the supreme bench by adding five justices, a proposal that became “the Lion measure of the session.” The ensuing debate was, in the words of a state senator, “vehement & exciting, partaking much of party abuse & personal crimination.” In the midst of the heated exchanges, a member of the lower house reported that the “very Genius of Disorganization is holding the reins whilst Old Nick whips the horses. Every thing is done by party votes.” Beholding the spectacle from Washington, John Todd Stuart lamented: “I have often been ashamed of my State or rather of its Loco Legislators. They are a laughing stock.” Lincoln’s friend, Senator William H. Fithian, thought that he had previously seen “the business of the people … carelessly and tardily attended to by their Representatives,” but now he felt “compelled to say, I have never until this session, fully realized the length and breadth of the unparalleled embarrassments of the people of Illinois.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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