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One of the limitations to civic activities in small-town America in the nineteenth century was the lack of a place for large meetings. Dances could be held on barn floors hence our term “barn dance.” Churches and schools were sites of public gatherings, but they were small buildings. If an event needed space for 1,000 people, it could only be held in the open air.
There are some examples of the use of circus tents and seating in cases where a show happened to be performing in a town where a large public gathering was to take place. Stickney’s New Orleans Circus played Memphis, Tennessee, from October 31 to November 3, 1848. A notice in the Daily Appeal of October 1 said, “Messrs. Stanton and Gentry (local pols) will address the citizens of Memphis and others under the circus canvas which Mr. Stickney has kindly offered for the occasion.”
In 1856, the Rivers & Derious Circus put the following announcement in the September 24 Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, Journal: “[The] pavilion can be had free of charge for political meetings on the day of exhibition from 4:30 to 6:30. No notice is required to be given for permission.”
From these instances we would project other such tent use, though our research has not disclosed any. There are also several examples of circuses lending their bands to local parades, and even funerals. The most famous series of events involving circus tents occurred in 1858 during the Senate race between Abraham Lincoln and Steven Douglas in Illinois. To set the scene for the subsequent meshing of politics and show business, we have to go back to the mid-summer floods in Missouri in that year. Spalding & Rogers and Levi J. North were in opposition in the state in May, 1858. On, May 3 Spalding & Rogers was in Columbia, nine days ahead of North’s appearance there. Rocheport next day was the same. In Independence Spalding was six days ahead on the 18th and in Kansas City a week ahead on the 19th.
Manager C. J. Rogers then took the circus on a tour of six Kansas towns and when he returned to Missouri at Parkville on the 28th, found him self day and dating the Levi North show.
The same thing happened in Leavenworth on the 31st. About this time the Missouri River was flooding to the point that it was impassable in the western portion of the state. Both shows headed east as fast as they could, North by land to St. Louis, and Spalding & Rogers by railroad to Hannibal.
The bad roads and the competition were too much for North’s finances, and on July 5 he put into Quincy, Illinois, to reorganize. More on that in a moment.
Joel E. Warner was the assistant manager, under Charles Rogers, of the Spalding & Rogers troupe. It went into Iowa and Wisconsin, down to Chicago, and then into downstate Illinois, with an eye to the crowds being drawn by the Senate race. Warner arranged to have each candidate use the circus tent at least once.
Senator Douglas was to speak in Lincoln, Illinois, on September 4, which was also circus day. Spalding & Rogers’ advertisement in the Logan County News had this trailer: “The daylight performance at 11 and 1/2 will conclude before Judge Douglas’ speech for whose use the pavilion of the circus has been tendered to the Committee of Arrangements.
According to Warner, a big wagon was put in the tent when the matinee ended. On it was placed the concert stage, for a speaker’s platform. The sidewalls were “appropriately draped.” Five thousand people listened to the “little Giant” for two hours.
“Gloom palled the spirits of the Democrats the following morning,” Warner related, “for every Republican newspaper within reach of the telegraph appeared with flaming headlines, scoring Douglas for hiring out to a circus.”
The Chicago Press and Tribune, for example, printed, “Douglas Following a Circus,” with a sub-head saying, “Novel Acrobatic Performances.” The article asked would he be the rider, the acrobat, or the clown, and decided that he would be the contortionist, since he had come down on both sides of so many issues.
Abraham Lincoln was to give a speech in Hillsboro, Illinois, on September 9. This, too, was a circus date, and Warner had arranged with the local Republican committee to use the tent. However, after the comments on Douglas’ use of the facility, the locals said, “No tents for us. This is too good a thing on Douglas. We’ve arranged to hold our meeting in the grove,” as Warner recalled it.
The grove was about half-a-mile beyond the circus lot and everyone - six or eight thousand people - passed the circus on their way to hear Lincoln. Warner had received the committee’s promise to begin the program at noon, and they said it would finish at two p.m.
“The speaking was delayed half-an-hour,” Warner reported, “and I listened to Mr. Lincoln for a while, and then went to the tents to prepare for the crowd. A few minutes before two o’clock, the feature of our parade was drawn up to the grove, ready to allure the crowd to the tents when the speaking closed. It was an immense cage containing a woman surrounded by a dozen large pythons and anacondas, drawn by forty horses driven by a single man (Major Derth). Atop the cage sat a big band.
“Two o’clock came. Mr. Lincoln seemed no nearer his conclusion than when he began.
“‘I must have the crowd,’ I demanded of the master of ceremonies.
“‘Oh, give us a few more minutes,’ he begged.
‘“I’ll give you ten.’
“Watch in hand, I waited. When the time was up, the rail-splitter was still rending the air with his eloquence. Evidently, he was just becoming seriously and earnestly interested in his subject. If our show was to get any of these people, it must get them before sundown.
“I stepped to the road and waved my hand. The woman shook up the serpents. The band struck up a lively air. The procession moved and only the committee and a few personal friends were left to hear the eloquent peroration for which Abe Lincoln was famous.
“Our tents were not half large enough for that crowd.”
In addition to all the individual speeches which the candidates gave across the state, there were the seven face-to-face debates, which have gone down as the best remembered such events in American history. The only one involving the circus was in Quincy, Illinois, on October 13.
As we said, Levi J. North had stopped there on July 5 to reorganize after a disastrous trip through Missouri. He cut his roster from twenty to thirteen performers, and reduced the size of his tent. This made some of his seating superfluous, and he stored it in Quincy. North then set a course back to Missouri and Iowa. The Missouri River floods had abated by August, and he again went to Leavenworth, just ninety days after he’d performed there in May. The Cincinnati Daily Commercial characterized his troupe as inferior, with “performances on the cheap and nasty plan.”
Carl Landrum, a local Quincy historian and Bandwagon contributor (March-April, 1975), wrote in the Herald-Whig that the debate was the most important event in the history of the city. It was held in Washington Park, the town square. One Nathan Pinkharn rented North’s seating for the day, and as often happened, the seats collapsed just as the debate started. There were a number of minor injuries, but the speaking went on.
The outcome of all the debates and speeches was, as we know, a victory for Senator Douglas. But Lincoln’s stature was affected to the point where, in 1860, he received the nomination for Republican candidate for President of the United States.
The state convention that nominated him as Illinois’ choice was held in Decatur on May 9, 1860, and again, we’re talking about the greatest event in the history of a small town (population 2,000). A 100 x 70 building was erected for the convention. It was a wooden skeleton constructed between two brick buildings, but the funds provided for the lumber could not be stretched to include a roof. Once more, a circus came to the rescue. The contractor borrowed a tent-top and some sidewall from a show that was in the area. We believe this was the Great Van Amburgh Show, since no other circus was in Illinois at the time. Van Amburgh played Springfield May 1, Bloomington May 5, and LaSalle May 11.
Abraham Lincoln was nominated by acclimation, became the Republican nominee at the party convention in Chicago, and went on to win the national election in November. The theatre and the circus were seldom involved with great events, except to recreate them as drama. These interludes in Illinois are the only ones we’ve found.
CHS webmaster J. Griffin, last modified December 2005.