During the waning weeks of a New England winter in early March of 1860, Abraham Lincoln visited Norwich during his first presidential campaign. Lincoln’s itinerary had not included a visit to Norwich. Lincoln’s speaking schedule originally included the cities of Hartford, New Haven and Bridgeport before moving on to Providence, Rhode Island. Hugh Henry Osgood, a successful Norwich businessman and an ardent Republican traveled to Hartford and persuaded Lincoln to speak at the Norwich Town Hall on March 9th following his appearance in New Haven.
Historically speaking, Lincoln had recently delivered his most passionate and persuasive speech to date against the institution of slavery in late February at Cooper Union in New York City. Supporters and anti-slavery proponents hailed the Cooper Union speech as a touchstone in their campaign to curb the expansion of slavery in the United States.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had overturned the previous law prohibiting slavery in all territories north of the 36th parallel. The Cooper Union speech was a rebuttal to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and an explanation of an essential element to the Republican Party’s political strategy for preventing the expansion of slavery into the new Western territories. Lincoln had emphatically stated that the Federal government was well within its constitutional mandate to regulate slavery within the federal territories.
Governor William Buckingham, previously a two term mayor of the city of Norwich had acted as master of ceremonies for Lincoln’s speech in Hartford on March 5th. It was during that speech when Lincoln articulated the main theme of all his campaign speeches for that year, that “the slave question is the prevailing question before the nation.”
During his visit to Norwich a few days later, Governor Buckingham entertained Lincoln at his house on Main Street during the afternoon prior to his speech. That evening, Lincoln was welcomed with thunderous applause by the standing-room only crowd gathered in the town hall. He delivered nearly the identical speech he had given in New Haven two nights prior to his visit to Norwich. Lincoln reiterated the theme from his Cooper Union speech when he proclaimed “We think slavery a great moral wrong, and while we do not claim the right to touch it where it exists, we wish to treat it as a wrong in the Territories, where our votes will reach it.”
To see photographs and political cartoons of Abraham Lincoln during his 1860 presidential campaign and read his full speech delivered in New Haven and Norwich in March of that year, visit the Otis Library’s Flickr site of historical photographs.