We found numerous historic markers scattered around downtown Kalamazoo, Michigan, when we visited there late last August. We found it especially interesting to discover that a little-known Illinois lawyer, Abraham Lincoln, delivered a speech in 1856 at Bronson Park, not far from The Kalamazoo House, our downtown bed-and-breakfast home for that weekend.
Lincoln traveled to Michigan to stump for the first presidential candidate for the then-new Republican Party, John C. Fremont. It was the only speech he ever gave in the state.
Lincoln was one of many people to speak on August 27, 1856 at a large political rally for Fremont at Kalamazoo in what is now Bronson Park.
Speakers simultaneously took to one of the podiums in four different locations at the park during the rally to speak to crowds estimated to match, or exceed, Kalamazoo's population of 10,000 at that time. Other speakers at the event included Michigan politicians like Governor Kinsley S. Bingham and U.S. Senator Zachariah Wells.
As if simultaneous speaker presentations weren't enough, there was also plenty of food, as well as performances from the Battle Creek Glee Club and eight different bands to keep the rally crowds entertained.
Local Circuit Court Judge Hezekiah G. Wells invited Lincoln to speak and introduced him to the crowd at the rally.
Lincoln spoke about slavery and the importance of the Union, arguing that anti-slavery supporters of former U.S. President Millard Fillmore should vote for Fremont, rather than splitting the anti-slavery vote by electing Democrat James Buchanan.
Lincoln may have been persuasive that day, but Buchanan won the presidential race that year.
Lincoln, of course, went win the presidency as a Republican over Democrat, and fellow Illinois resident, Stephen Douglas four years later. Lincoln garnered 57% of Michigan's votes in the 1860 presidential election and 55% of Michigan's votes in his 1864 re-election campaign.
The exact spot where Lincoln spoke is difficult to pinpoint. A large oak tree he supposedly spoke under suffered from root rot, and the city cut it down in 2005.
There are two markers celebrating the event in Bronson Park.
One is a boulder with a plaque commemorating the speech placed by the Michigan chapter of the Daughters of the Civil War, and the other one is the official State of Michigan marker erected in 1957 about 400 feet away from the boulder marker.
No one had a copy of Lincoln's speech until Royal Oak, Michigan, resident Tom Starr found a copy of it in a bound volume of Detroit Daily Advertiser newspapers from 1856. The book fell from its place in the Detroit Public Library and lay hidden behind a bookshelf until 1930 when Starr discovered it and found speech's text in one of the newspapers from that year.
In 2006, Kalamazoo hosted a reenactment of Lincoln's speech in Bronson Park, on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's original delivery of the words.
I found a couple of other Lincoln connections to Michigan while researching this story.
Lincoln supposedly coined the word "Michigander" to refer to Michigan residents in 1848. Lincoln, then a Whig, used it to describe Michigan Democrat Lewis Cass during a speech in the House of Representatives. When Lincoln called Cass, a presidential candidate that year, a "Michigander", it was a bit of wordplay essentially calling Cass him a "silly goose". Lincoln also went on to accuse Democrats of exaggerating stories about Cass' military career.
Lincoln was also the only president to apply for a patent. Lincoln was traveling the Great Lakes between Chicago and Buffalo on a steamboat when he saw workers struggle to free a stranded boat on the Detroit River. Lincoln returned to Illinois and developed a system with inflatable chambers to allow boats to float over shallow shoals.
Want to learn more? Check out Memoirs of My Life and Times by John Charles Fremont, A Distant Thunder: Michigan in the Civil War by Richard Bak, or Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation by Willard Carl Klunder.
Interested in learning about another Civil War-related historic site in the Midwest? Check out my story, Brake for Civil War history in Indiana.
© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved
Great article!
I'm a Civil War buff myself. There are many facts that seem to get skipped elsewhere, but your site is spot on.
Keep up the good work!
Posted by: Ellen Handler-Murray | June 01, 2011 at 10:36 AM