Encounters
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To embarrass Van Buren and his supporters, Whigs in the 1835–1836 special session of the Illinois Legislature introduced a resolution condemning several Democratic policies and slyly included as one of them: “Colored persons ought not to be admitted to the right of suffrage.” When, as expected, the Democrats voted against that omnibus resolution, Whigs, including Lincoln, taunted them for implicitly endorsing black voting rights. The Sangamo Journal protested that Illinois “is threatened to be overrun with free negroes” and suggested that such undesirables be sent to Van Buren’s home state of New York. (In fact, the census of 1835 showed that of the 17,523 people in Sangamon County, only 104 were black.) The editor denounced Van Buren’s running mate, Richard M. Johnson of Kentucky, as “the husband of a negro wench, and the father of a band of mulatoes.” (Johnson did have a black mistress who bore him two children.) As election day drew near in 1836, the Journal asked: “If Mr. Van Buren be made the president, is it not reasonable to suppose that before his term of service expires, free negro suffrage will prevail throughout the nation? If Col. Johnson be elected, will not every future aspirant to the vice presidency, set about qualifying himself for public favor by marrying a negress? If these men be elected, how long before poor white girls will become the waiting maids of sooty wenches? How long before we shall have a negro president? How long before white men and black men will have passed away, and the whole population of the country become one huge mass of degenerate and stupid mulatoes?”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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