Lincoln's Boston Letter Fueled Presidential Prospects
- Ed Epstein
- Jan 9
- 2 min read
By Jeffrey Boutwell
Columbia, MD.
Jan. 10, 2026
In April 1859, Abraham Lincoln set forth his views on the importance of the founding
principles of the Declaration of Independence in a little-known letter to a political meeting in Boston that would help propel him to the presidency.
The occasion was that year’s Thomas Jefferson Birthday Dinner organized by the Massachusetts Republican party. Chaired by George Boutwell, former Massachusetts governor and President Lincoln’s future revenue commissioner, those attending included U.S. Sen. Henry Wilson, Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew, and Carl Schurz, future Civil War general and Senator from Missouri.
Anticipation that spring was already building toward the 1860 presidential election. Front runners for the Republican presidential nomination, including Sen. William H. Seward of New York and Gov. Salmon P. Chase of Ohio, sent letters of regret at being unable to attend, as did Rep. Francis P. Blair Jr., of Missouri on behalf of a likely third candidate, Edward Bates. Abe Lincoln was a name that was not yet in the mix, though his Illinois debates in 1858 with Sen. Stephen A. Douglas had raised Lincoln’s political profile.
Former Gov. Boutwell’s opening remarks, declaring that the “great issue of slavery is upon us, we cannot escape it,” were followed by a reading of the letters from Seward, Chase, Blair and Lincoln.
The gist of Lincoln’s letter was simple; Jefferson’s original “devotion to the personal rights of man, holding the rights of property to be secondary only,” was now the credo of the Republican Party, not the Democrats. The latter, he said, now “hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar, but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.”
Driving his point home, Lincoln emphasized the centrality of the Declaration, and its “abstract truth [of equality], applicable to all men and all times,” as a fundamental truth of the American experiment in democracy. Then followed one of Lincoln’s most enduring phrases: “he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and under a just God, cannot long retain it.”
As described by Lincoln biographer Ronald C. White, “Lincoln’s compelling words would receive wide circulation in the Republican press.” Momentum for his candidacy was building and would ultimately result in Lincoln becoming our nation’s 16th president.
Jeffrey Boutwell is author of a biography of George Boutwell, "Boutwell- Radical Republican and Champion of Democracy."
Image from the National Archives
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