State Historian address Colorado Legislature

Honorable members of the state legislature, ladies, and gentlemen: My name is Bill Convery. I am the state historian at the Colorado Historical Society and a member of the Colorado Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. On this day two hundred years ago, America’s sixteenth President, Abraham Lincoln, was born. Exactly seventy years later, on February 12, 1879, Fredrick W. Pitkin, the second governor of the Centennial State, signed House Bill 134 creating the Colorado Historical Society. On this dual birthday, it is altogether fitting and proper, to borrow the President’s phrase, to take a moment to reflect on Lincoln’s role in shaping Colorado.

“Although he never set foot here, Abraham Lincoln was at heart a Westerner”

Although he never set foot here, Abraham Lincoln was at heart a Westerner, and his thoughts never strayed far from the future of the West. Lincoln himself became politically energized over the debate to expand slavery into Kansas and Nebraska during the 1850s. His Republican Party framed themselves as the party of expansion and opportunity for small family farmers. As President, Lincoln signed several measures intended to expedite the settlement and development of the West. The Homestead Act of 1862, put 160 acres of public land within reach of the most humble citizens—and potential citizens. The Pacific Railroad Act subsidized the construction of a steel lifeline between the West and the rest of the nation. And the College Land Grant Act, which allotted federal land to states in order to fund agricultural and technical colleges, allowed Westerners to develop their own human capital, and in Colorado’s case, led to the establishment of the Colorado Agricultural College (today’s Colorado State University) in 1877.

Colorado State Historian William Convery and Gayle Gunderson, Librarian and Curator of the Lincoln exhibit at Colorado Christian University, pose outside the CCU Library after Convery’s talk on “Lincoln and Colorado” to a CCU audience on February 12th.  Earlier in the day, Convery addressed the Colorado Legislature on the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birthday.  Gunderson is wearing clothing appropriate to the Civil War era.

As President, Lincoln was instrumental in shaping Colorado’s political future. Although Colorado Territory was created on President James Buchanan’s watch, the outgoing President left the appointment of territorial officials to Lincoln. The knowledge that Lincoln would select Colorado’s first territorial administrators helped persuade Congress to shy away from a provision, proposed by Southern Congressmen, to guarantee slavery in Colorado. So in a sense, Lincoln’s determination to keep slavery out of the West helped Colorado remain free of the stain that precipitated the Civil War.

Lincoln appointed Colorado’s first territorial officials, even as war clouds covered the horizon in the East. Yet although the President’s attention was diverted elsewhere, he made up for it with some strong appointments. Colonel William Gilpin, his selection as Colorado’s first territorial governor, was one of the nation’s foremost experts on Western affairs. Under Gilpin’s supervision, Colorado convened its first territorial assembly, established official courts, drafted a code of laws, and instituted voting qualifications that included African Americans. Gilpin raised a regiment of Colorado volunteers that successfully turned back a Confederate invasion at the Battle of Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in March 1863. Although his unauthorized expenditure of $375,000 to outfit his army eventually led to his removal, Gilpin’s actions proved prescient.

Lincoln’s second choice, John Evans of Illinois, was a respected physician, politician, railroad developer, and financier who had co-founded both Evanston, Illinois, and Northwestern University. Over time, Evans did as much, and more, for his adopted home, developing railroad systems and public utilities, founding churches and a college (the University of Denver) and generally leaving Colorado a better place than when he found it; but he too ran into problems. Charged with keeping the peace with Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, whose land settlers had abruptly appropriated, Evans fell victim to the anti-Indian panic that gripped the territory during the Civil War. Governor Evans’ inability, or unwillingness, to prevent the Sand Creek Massacre of November 1864 represented a failure of President Lincoln’s goal to maintain good relations with Indians on the plains during the Civil War, and led to Evans’s removal the following year.

“National outrage over Sand Creek helped postpone one of Lincoln’s most cherished goals for Colorado—rapid admission into the Union ”

National outrage over Sand Creek helped postpone one of Lincoln’s most cherished goals for Colorado—rapid admission into the Union and, more pragmatically, the addition of Colorado’s Republican electoral votes in the Presidential election of 1864. In March of that year, the President invited Colorado to hold a constitutional referendum. Not everyone here was ready for admission; mountain miners opposed an additional tax burden; Hispanos in southern Colorado worried about Anglo political domination in the north; draft dodgers feared the extension of conscription; while the unsettled affairs with the Plains Indians brought Colorado’s security into question. Statehood failed by a sizable margin in August, 1864, while national uproar over Sand Creek the following year polarized local politics and made consensus even less likely. Ironically, just as Lincoln appealed to the better angels of our nature, Colorado Territory boiled over in a brutal Indian war, assassination, recrimination, and the bitter fruits of Sand Creek. We’re all proud that Colorado is known as the Centennial State, but it could have been different. We could have taken our place in the Union much sooner. Perhaps it’s a shame that Lincoln was unable to heal our divisions when we needed him the most.

But he did send a several emissaries. His secretary, John Nicolay, traveled to Colorado in 1863 to help negotiate a treaty with the Ute Indians. And on April 14, 1865, Lincoln sent a personal communication to Colorado’s miners through former Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax. Colfax was scheduled to embark the following day on an inspection tour of the proposed Pacific railroad route. Along the way, he planned to stop in Central City to visit his half-sister, Clara Witter, who was married to a mine owner. Visiting the White House on a social call, the Indiana Republican found President Lincoln relaxed, if careworn. “You are going to California, I hear,” Lincoln began. “How I would rejoice to make this trip [with you], but public duties chain me down here, and I can only envy you its pleasures.” The President handed Colfax a letter. “I want you to take a message from me to the miners [of the Rocky Mountains],” he instructed. Then, Colfax took his leave and the President resumed his preparations for an evening’s entertainment at Ford’s Theater.

The events of that evening, and of the following days, forced Colfax to postpone his western trip. It was not until May 31, 1865 that Lincoln’s emissary was able to deliver the martyred President’s message to Colorado’s miners. Lincoln wrote:

I have a very large idea of the mineral wealth of our nation. I believe it practically inexhaustible. It abounds all over the western country from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, and its development has scarcely commenced.

During the war, when we were adding a couple of million dollars every day to our national debt, I did not care about encouraging the increase in the volume of the precious metals. We had the country to save first. But now that the rebellion is overthrown, and we know pretty nearly the amount of our national debt, the more gold and silver we mine makes the payment of the debt so much easier. Now I am going to encourage you in every possible way.

We shall have hundreds of thousands of disbanded soldiers, and many have feared that their return home in such great numbers might paralyze industry by furnishing suddenly a greater supply of labor than there will be demand for. I am going to try and attract them to the hidden wealth of our mountain ranges, where there is room for all. Immigration, which even with the war has not stopped, will land upon our shores hundreds of thousands more per year from over-crowded Europe. I intend to point them to the gold and silver that waits for them in the West.

Tell the miners from me that I shall promote their interests to the utmost of my ability, because their prosperity is the prosperity of the nation. We shall prove in a very few years that we are indeed the treasury of the world.