Norman B. Judd

 

Role in the Republican National Convention of 1860

 

Norman B. Judd was vital to Lincoln’s success in Chicago. He has been credited as the man who brought the Republican National Convention to Lincoln’s home state, he helped Lincoln persuade the Illinois delegation to support a Lincoln nomination ahead of the convention, and at the time Judd was the chairman of the Republican State Central Committee (1856 to 1861) and member of the Republican National Committee.  During the convention, he worked laboriously alongside David Davis (among others) to procure votes etc. He was an influential man in Illinois and in the Republican party as a whole; he also helped to arrange the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates two years before.

 

Quotes and Excerpts from Primary/Secondary Sources:

 

- In a private letter from February of 1860, Lincoln asked Judd to aid him in amassing support in Illinois for a potential run at the Republican nomination for president, ending his letter to Judd saying: “Can you not help me a little in this matter, in your end of the vineyard?”

 

- William E. Barton: "It was in Judd's end of the vineyard that Lincoln needed help, for the northern end of Illinois was the old Whig end of the state, and was strong for Seward. But Judd did something very much more important than that of swinging a few delegates in northern Illinois from Seward to Lincoln. He so managed, as a member of the Republican National Committee, as to secure the Republican Convention for the City of Chicago."[i]

 

- Gordon Leidner of Great American History writes: “Lincoln had been busy preparing for the convention as well. Using all his political skill, he had persuaded the Illinois delegation to vote for him in a bloc. To lead the floor fight, he selected David Davis, a trusted friend, and Norman Judd, who was due most of the credit for bringing the Republican convention to Chicago.”

 

- Before the delegates arrived to the convention, according to his son, Judd designed a seating chart for the delegations which assured that those delegations not supporting Mr. Lincoln got seats in the back. "'By cracky, Abe's nominated,' Judd told his wife after he finished the plan. 'Father's plan was followed without change of any sort and with the results he had jubilantly predicted to my mother,' reported his son."[ii]

 

- It was Judd who nominated Lincoln, saying: "I desire, on behalf of the delegation from Illinois, to put in nomination as a candidate for president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois."[iii]

 

- Kenan Heise of the Chicago Tribune wrote: “To make sure a friendly crowd was on hand to out-shout the competition, batches of admission tickets were printed at the last moment and handed out to Lincoln supporters, who were told to show up early at the Wigwam, a rickety hall that held 10,000 people. And, for good measure, Illinois delegation chairman Norman Judd and Joseph Medill of the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune placed the New York delegates off to one side, far from key swing states such as Pennsylvania.”

 

- Burlingame: "Norman B. Judd’s son remembered his father describing a deal that gave Cameron an unspecified cabinet post in exchange for Pennsylvania’s votes."[iv]

 

- Lincoln, himself, apparently believed Judd to be the most essential person involved in getting the nomination. Simon Cameron said: “Lincoln told me that he was more indebted to Judd than any other one man for his nomination, but I told him I thought Davis and Swett did more for him. They bought all my men – Casey and Sanderson and the rest of them. I was for Seward[.] I knew I couldn’t be nominated but I wanted a complimentary vote from my own State. But Davis and the rest of them stole all my men. Seward accused me of having cheated him.”[v]

 

Relationship to Lincoln

 

Lincoln and Judd were friends and worked closely together, even before the convention. If it hadn’t been for Judd’s background as a democrat pre-1854, Judd would have likely served in Lincoln’s cabinet. Instead, Judd served as Minister to Prussia during Lincoln’s Presidency. Though liked by Lincoln, powerful figures such as Mary Todd Lincoln, David Davis, and Leonard Swett (among others) did not.

 

Quotes and Excerpts from Primary/Secondary Sources:

 

- According to David Donald’s We are Lincoln Men: Abraham Lincoln and His Friends, Lincoln “warriors” such as David Davis and Leonard Swett did not trust him – both resented him, actually. Because of his history as a democrat pre-1854, many of Judd’s powerful republican contemporaries looked at him with suspicion.

 

- During the 1858 Senate race against Stephen Douglas, Republican State Chairman Judd became one of Lincoln's key advisors. Lincoln wrote Judd on October 20, 1858 concerning his worries about potential fraudulent voting by Irish-American Democrats and penned: “I have a bare sugestion. When there is a known body of these voters, could not a true man, of the "detective'' class, be introduced among them in disguise, who could, at the nick of time, control their votes? Think this over. It would be a great thing, when this trick is attempted upon us, to have the saddle come up on the other horse.”[vi]

 

- Lincoln trusted Judd enough to loan him money (for example: to speculate land in Iowa). Willard R. King wrote: "Lincoln's estate included several debts that Davis collected. The only large note was that of Norman B. Judd for $3,000. When, in 1857, Lincoln received the $5,000 Illinois Central fee, he had invested his half of it, in a joint venture with Norman Judd, in lands at Council Bluffs, Iowa. Judd agreed to buy Lincoln out at any time within two years. In 1859 Lincoln had requested Judd to do so and Judd had given Lincoln this note for $3,000 at 10 per cent and agreed that Lincoln should retain the land as security."

 

- Judd was heavily criticized in 1859 for his management of the 1858 Lincoln senate campaign. According to historian Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Democrat editor John Wentworth "launched a series of violent editorial attacks upon Judd, whom he accused of mismanaging the 1858 campaign, wasting party funds, betraying Lincoln and using his power as state chairman to promote Trumbull for the presidency and himself for the governorship...Coming from Long John alone, these charters might not have carried much weight, but they were quickly taken up and repeated by other Republicans, including Lincoln's close friend, David Davis, and his law partner, William Herndon."[vii]

 

- Fehrenbacher: "Mr. Lincoln knew the hazards of peacemaking and was reluctant to give any appearance of taking sides in the heated gubernatorial contest, since the three leading candidates - Judd, Leonard Swett and Richard Yates - were all personal friends whose support he needed...Yet justice, self-interest, and party welfare all seemed to require his intervention. Accordingly, he first proceeded to write for publication a letter warmly praising Judd's loyalty and skill, but at the same time affirming his own neutrality with regard to the governorship. Later, he also attempted to patch up a truce between Wentworth and Judd, even drafting terms for the settlement of their lawsuit."[viii]

 

- On Dec. 14. 1859, Lincoln wrote to George W. Dole, Gurdon S. Hubbard, and William H. Brown:  “In answer to your first question as to whether Mr. Judd was guilty of any unfairness to me at the time of Senator Trumbull's election, I answer unhesitatingly in the negative. Mr. Judd owed no political allegiance to any party whose candidate I was. He was in the Senate, holding over, having been elected by a democratic constituency. He never was in any caucus of the friends who sought to make me U.S. Senator - never gave me any promises or pledges to support me - and subsequent events have greatly tended to prove the wisdom, politically, of Mr. Judd's course… During the canvass of 1858 for the Senatorship my belief was, and still is, that I had no more sincere and faithful friend that Mr. Judd - certainly none whom I trusted more…I take pleasure in adding that of all the avowed friends I had in the canvass of last year, I do not suspect any of having acted treacherously to me, or to our cause; and that there is not one of them in whom honesty, honor, and integrity I, to-day, have greater confidence than I have in those of Mr. Judd.”[ix]

 

- Donald wrote that Lincoln wanted to add Judd to his cabinet after his election. He would serve as a “political advisor and personal friend.”

 

- Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles noted that Lincoln told him about how the Cabinet was selected, writing: "In the first case of his cabinet on the day succeeding the election, Mr. Lincoln had included Mr. N. B. Judd of Illinois, an old and valued personal friend to whom he was under many and great obligations, as one whom he should desire to have in his council…But in the final make-up, partly from the fact that Mr. Judd's antecedents were Democratic, but more from other influences, he was omitted …”[x]

 

- Unlike her husband, Mary Todd Lincoln did not like Judd. She never forgot about Judd's oppoisition to her husband in 1855 and helped in blocking Judd. She wrote David Davis in January: "Doubtless you will be surprised, to receive a note from me, when I explain the cause, of my writing, I believe your honest, noble heart, will sympathise with me, otherwise I am assured, you will not mention it…Judd would cause trouble & dissatisfaction, & if Wall Street testifies correctly, his business transactions, have not always borne inspection. I heard the report, discussed at the table this morning, by persons who did not know, who was near, a party of gentlemen, evidently strong Republicans, they were laughing at the idea of Judd, being any way, connected with the Cabinet in these …”[xi]

 

Lincoln-Related Primary Sources

- [Abraham Lincoln] Letter to Norman B. Judd (October 20, 1858)

- Norman Buel Judd to Abraham Lincoln, November 20, 1858

- Norman Buel Judd to Abraham Lincoln, September, 1858

- Norman Buel Judd to Abraham Lincoln, June 1, 1858

- Norman Buel Judd to Abraham Lincoln, November 15, 1858

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                           

                             "Yr Friend, NB Judd"

 

 

Related Links

- Mr. Lincoln & Friends

- Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

- Judd, Norman Buel (House Divided)

 

Citations

[i] Barton, William E., The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume I, p. 413.

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[ii] Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, editor, Intimate Memories of Lincoln, p. 4.

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[iii] Barton, William E., The Life of Abraham Lincoln, Volume I, p. 434.

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[iv] Burlingame, Michael. “Make No Contracts,” Journal Divided (September 2010),

http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/sites/journal/2010/09/27/no-contracts/.

 

[v] Burlingame, “Make No Contracts.”

 

[vi] Abraham Lincoln to Norman Buel Judd, October 20, 1858, Rushville, IL, in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (8 vols., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 3: 329-330, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/.

 

[vii] Fehrenbacher, Don E., Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850s, p. 149. http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[viii] Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness..., p. 150.

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[ix] Basler, Roy P., editor, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume III, p. 507-509 (Letter to George W. Dole, Gurdon S. Hubbard, and William H. Brown, December 14, 1859).

 

[x] Wilson, Rufus Rockwell, editor, Intimate Memories of Lincoln, p. 351-355 (Gideon Welles).

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68

 

[xi] Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, editor, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters, p. 71 (Letter from Mary Todd Lincoln to David Davis, January 17, 1861).

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=68