Leaping Lincoln - Springfield, Illinois - Illinois Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

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Leaping Lincoln

Fell Whip legislators Joseph Gillespie and Asabel Gridley joined Lincoln in leaping from the Methodist Church window in an ill-fated attempt to stop a legislative vote.  "We have not learned whether their flying members got hurt," wrote bemused Democrats; Lincoln, they assumed, hand not "as it was noticed that his legs reached nearly from the window to the ground!"  Democratic editors suggested that workers add a third story to the new statehouse so as to prevent members from jumping out of the windows!... Mr. Lincoln will in [the] future have to climbdown the spout!"

In November 1840 Legislators convened in the cramped quarters of the Methodist Church while workers were completing the statehouse a block away.  "The House of Representatives was crammed in a room barely large enough for members to turn round in, having no tables to write upon, or space to move from one part of the house to another," newspapers reported.  These conditions added to the confusion Lincoln encountered as leader of the minority Whig party.  On December 5,  when the Democratic majority was about to pass a measure that threatened the State Bank,  Whigs conspired to prevent a legal voting quorum by staying away.  Only Lincoln and a few lieutenants remained to observe.  Suddenly it became evident that democrats had rounded up enough members to form a quorum.  "Mr. Lincoln came under great excitement," Democrats mocked.  Blocked from the door, he "unceremoniously raised the window and jumped out."  The Democratic measure passed anyway.  An embarrassed Lincoln ever after resented references to what he called that "jumping scrape."

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