See Douglas' account, in his Opening Speech, The First Joint Debate at Ottowa, August 21, 1858.
The account below follows Douglas' account, with what scholarship is cited therein. Lincoln of course denied Douglas' assertion and demanded proof. Being called an abolitionist was a sort of political insult. Abolitionists were considered radical whackos, they wanted to free all slaves unconditionally and immediately by violent means, and not necessarily arrange for transportation elsewhere; and no admitted abolitionists had been elected at that time, it seems I read this somewhere.
I am guessing that there are no extant copies of Matheney's speech discussing the Lincoln Trumbull Conspiracy.
However, a great deal of rather obvious, and quite public, circumstantial evidence supports Matheney's and Douglas' account:
Matheney was an old friend, a politician, and in a position to know from personal knowledge and political contacts. He had disagreed with Lincoln about taking down the Whig party.
Lincoln goes back into politics as a result of Kansas Nebraska in 1854.
Lincoln adopted the platform created at the Springfield Convention, although he denied this in the debates, arguing that he had not even been there. That is irrelevant. He had been a big promoter of it and adopted it. I quote it again below.
Lincoln always denied being an abolitionist, but that denial was false from before the very beginning of his going back into politics in 1854.
Lincoln thought that Dred Scott was a terrible decision, but it merely reaffirmed what both parties up to that time had made the law of the land. Lincoln and other radical abolitionists didn't like the law of the land and found a way politically to overturn it.
"Matheny did not join Mr. Lincoln’s move from the Whigs to the new Republican Party in 1856. Lincoln scholar Michael Burkhimer wrote: “Like Stuart, he too differed with Lincoln in politics in the 1850s. He supported the anti-immigrant Know-Nothing Party in the 1856 election. However, he did come to support Lincoln after the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court in 1857.” David Zarefsky wrote that Matheny “had supported Fillmore in 1856, not yet having become a Republican, and Lincoln opposed his nomination for Congress that year. Whatever bitterness had been between them, however, was past history by 1858, and Lincoln supported Matheny for Congress from the Springfield district.”
Instead, Matheny was the Whig candidate for Congress in 1856. He alleged a deal between Lincoln and Trumbull to split the Senate seats – with Trumbull getting the one in 1854 and Mr. Lincoln slated to get Douglas’s seat in 1858. Matheny was briefly a Republican before switching to the Democratic Party. In March 1858, Mr. Lincoln wrote Richard Yates and made a proposal to use Matheny for Republican advantage:
If you approve of the following, continue to have it appear in some one of the anti-administration papers down your way – better there than here.
‘Mr. Editor:
Why not all anti-administration men in the District vote for James H. Matheny, of Springfield, for Congress: He was opposed to the repeal of the Missouri compromise: was for Fillmore in 1856, but never was a Know-Nothing. He is now opposed to the Lecompton constitution, and the Dred Scott decision. Who can be more suitable, when a union of Fremont and Fillmore men, is indispensable?
[Signed]A republican’
We have thought this over here. The leading Fillmore men have wished to act with us, and they want a name upon which they can bring up their rank and file. It will help us in Sangamon, where we shall be hard run, about members of the Legislature. Think it over, and if you can approve it, give it a start as above.
I have not forgotten my course towards ‘Jim’ for a nomination 1856, which you also well know. The difficulty then was on a point which has since been measurably superseded by the Dred Scott decision, and he is with us on that.
[William] Butler says you rather have an eye to getting our old friend Bill Green on the track. Nothing would please me better, whenever he got on to ground that would suit you, except it would give us no access to the Fillmore votes. Dont you see? We must have some one who will reach the Fillmore men, both for the direct and the incidental effect.
I wish you would see Nult-Green, and present this view to him. Point out to him the necessities of the case, and also how the question, as to ‘Jim,’ is varied since 1856.17
When Matheny retired as clerk of the Sangamon County Circuit Court in December 1856, Mr. Lincoln gave a brief speech to the Springfield Bar to honor his friend: “This is the first intimation I have had any such meeting as this was intended. It takes me considerably by surprise, particularly as it might be expected that I am to say something. Much could be said of the man named in the resolutions, and of his public services. Indeed, much could be said, which, if said of other men, would be sheer flattery, whilst in respect to him it falls far short of the whole truth. That I have long esteemed Mr. Matheny as a man and a friend, is known to you all. But that I should mete out to you the full measure of his worth, I shall not now attempt to do. Besides, much of this has already been beautifully and graphically done by my friend Mr. Herndon. Mr. Chairman, allow me in conclusion to say that I fully concur in all that has been said and done on this occasion.”
In the 1858 Jonesboro debate, Senator Stephen Douglas referred to Matheny as “Mr. Lincoln’s especial confidential friend for the last twenty years.” Lincoln himself questioned Matheny’s veracity in the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Mr. Lincoln responded: “I can only ask him to show sort of evidence of the truth of his story. He brings forward here and reads from what he contends is a speech by James H. Matheny charging such a bargain between Trumbull and myself. My own opinion in that Matheny did do some such immoral thing as to tell a story that he knew nothing about. I believe he did. I contradicted it instantly and it has been contradicted by Judge Trumbull, while nobody has produced any proof, because there is none. Now whether the speech which the Judge brings forward here is really the one Matheny made I do not know, and I hope the Judge will pardon me for doubting the genuineness of this document, since his production of those Springfield Resolutions at Ottawa. [Laughter and cheers.] I do not wish to dwell at any great length upon this matter. I can say nothing when a long story like this is told except it is not true, and demand that he who insists upon it shall produce some proof. That is all any man can do, and I leave it that way for I know of no other way of dealing with it.” "I quoted the Springfield Republican platform, also in a prior post.Here it is again:Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:
1. That the history of the nation during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.
2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States must and shall be preserved.
3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may. And we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion so often made by Democratic members, without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendency as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence.
4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
5. That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas; in construing the personal relations between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted enforcement everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal Courts of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it by a confiding people.
6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at the Federal metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively demanded.
7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.
8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.
9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic
10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-Intervention and Popular Sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud involved therein.
11. That Kansas should, of right, be immediately admitted as a state under the Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House of Representatives.
12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imports as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges, which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.
13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by actual settlers, and against any view of the free-homestead policy which regards the settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty; and we demand the passage by Congress of the complete and satisfactory homestead measure which has already passed the House.
14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.
15. That appropriations by Congress for river and harbor improvements of a national character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are authorized by the Constitution, and justified by the obligation of Government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.
16. That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the federal government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily overland mail should be promptly established.
17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the co-operation of all citizens, however differing on other questions, who substantially agree with us in their affirmance and support.
