The Meaning of Lincoln’s “Such a <i>Sucker</i> as Me”

Henry Villard’s 1904 account of his 1858 meeting with Abraham Lincoln is a well-known tale about a beloved president:He and I met accidentally . . . on a hot, sultry evening, at a flag railroad station about twenty miles west of Springfield . . . a thunderstorm compelled us to take refuge in an empty freight-car standing on a side track . . . It was then and there he told me that, when he was clerking in a country store, his highest political ambition was to be a member of the State Legislature. Since then, of course, he said laughingly, “I have grown some, but my friends got me into this business . . . I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate, and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was. Now, to be sure,” he continued, with another of his peculiar laughs, “I am convinced that I am good enough for it; but, in spite of it all, I am saying to myself every day: ‘It is too big a thing for you; you will never get it.’ Mary . . . insists, however, that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States, too.” These last words he followed with a roar of laughter, with his arms around his knees, and shaking all over with mirth at his wife’s ambition. “Just think,” he exclaimed, “of such a sucker as me as President!”1We will never know how much, if any, of Villard’s report is genuine, but we delight in it because of its irony. We delight too because the story deftly captures Lincoln’s humility, his love of self-depreciating humor, and his wife’s ambition for him. So compelling are these elements—and the final line so perfect—that historical problems in the meaning of the word sucker pass us by almost unnoticed. Exploring these complexities, however, is important for our understanding of Lincoln and his times as well as for assessing our own window on history.2Recovering fully the subtleties of spoken language 160 years ago, especially of a word like sucker, is ultimately impossible, but nineteenth-century newspapers offer a continuous record of a significant body of everyday, public language—a body that offers a basis for exploring potential meanings of sucker in Lincoln’s day. This study relies on the Gale NewsVault proprietary collection of nineteenth-century U. S. newspapers, a collection offering full-text searching of facsimile copies of newspapers from a broad range of cities of various sizes across the nation. All conclusions about the meaning of the word sucker in this study derive from uses in the NewsVault sample for the twenty years prior to Villard’s reported meeting with Lincoln—that is, 1838 to 1858—but these conclusions are also informed by uses of sucker elsewhere in the NewsVault as well as by U.S. imprints in various publicly available electronic collections including, in particular, Wright American Fiction, Making of America, and HathiTrust Digital Library.3Between January 1, 1838, and December 31, 1858, the word sucker appears in 618 of the surviving issues of U.S. newspapers in the Gale NewsVault. The list below shows the number and percent of its various uses:4Students of Lincoln and Illinois have long known that the word sucker is a nickname for Illinois (Sucker State) or Illinoisan (Sucker), but these meanings have been lost in our time, even to Illinoisans. Indeed, this once common meaning has been so completely lost that only one recent scholar has so much as raised the possibility that sucker in Villard’s story could mean “Illinoisan.” The use of sucker in the sense of “Illinois” or “Illinoisan” in NewsVault newspapers, however, is so common, exceeding by a factor of three all other potential meanings, that Lincoln’s supposed use in Villard’s account almost certainly meant “such an Illinoisan.”10This once-popular nickname appeared sometime before the end of the 1820s and seems to have derived from the sucker, a species of fish (6.a. above). The April 21, 1829, issue of the Washington Daily National Journal, reprinting an earlier article from the Galena (Fever River) Miners’ Journal, reports as follows about miners in and around Galena, Illinois:Many find it most convenient to come here in the spring, mine through the summer, and go below in the fall; and hence the general appellation of Sucker [a similarly migratory fish] given to all such. The Illinoians were the first who received this appellative, which produced corresponding appellation for the citizens of many other States. . . . These nicknames are bestowed without any desire of producing unfriendly feelings, or of engendering sectional prejudices; but operate as a complete satire upon all such notions, remove all restraint and sweeten social intercourse.11A few years later, Charles Fenno Hoffman echoed the Journal in an 1835 account of his travels in the Michigan Territory. He described making his way toward an inn fireplace and encountering a group of “wild-looking” fellows on their way to a wedding who invited him to have a drink: “There was a long-haired ‘hooshier’ from Indiana, a couple of smart-looking ‘suckers’ from the southern part of Illinois, a keen-eyed leather-belted ‘badger’ from the mines of Ouisconsin, and a . . . genuine wolverine, or naturalized Michiganian. . . . just the sort of sallad of society I have been long wishing to meet with.” Although other explanations of its origins come later, Hoffman, too, traces the nickname to the migratory sucker fish.12The compound “Sucker State” with both Sucker and State nearly always capitalized is not only a popular but a fully normalized substitute for Illinois. This phrase appears in 60 NewsVault newspapers between 1838 and 1858. “Sucker [State],” indeed, occurs in connection with Lincoln himself when New York’s Weekly Herald reported on the governorship of Oregon: “Mr. Marshall, of the Hoosier State, would not have it; Mr. Lincoln, of the Sucker refused it.” That a distant New York City newspaper can, without explanation, substitute “Sucker” for Illinois shows this nickname was indeed common.13Sucker also appears in newspapers throughout the nation as an adjective and noun: “Illinois Sucker,” “Sucker from Illinois,” “venerable sucker,” “genuine Sucker,” “Sucker neighbors,” “Sucker friends,” “Sucker wag,” “Progressive Sucker,” “Sucker law,” “Sucker holes” (mines near Galena), “Sucker farmers,” “Sucker ladies,” “Sucker barns,” and so on. Lincoln himself used this familiar nickname when, in reference to the Illinois Whigs in 1844, he wrote that “the Suckers are willing to ‘divide the danger.’”14Although Illinois newspapers from this period are not well represented in the NewsVault, those printed elsewhere show that Illinois businesses incorporated Sucker into their formal names: the Montpelier Vermont Watchman & State Journal reported the founding of an Illinois newspaper called The Sucker, and the New York Herald included a long list of the owners of the “Illinois Sucker Company,” touting a forty-wagon expedition near St. Joseph, Missouri, headed for Sutter’s Fort during the California gold rush. In 1860, two years after the end of our period, the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel reprinted a report from the St. Paul Pioneer that the steamship Sucker State with 10,000 bushels of wheat from Minnesota was headed for St. Louis.15The word Sucker also, of course, attached itself to Lincoln. An 1848 report in the Boston Daily Atlas about Lincoln’s speech to the Whigs of Cambridge reads, “Mr. Lincoln, as many . . . readers need not be informed, and as many more, I trust, will see for themselves before election, is a capital specimen of a ‘Sucker’ Whig, six feet at least in his stockings16 and every way worthy to represent the Spartan band of the only Whig district in poor benighted Illinois.” An article in the New York Herald the same month described how Lincoln amused his eastern audience with tales mimicking a “genuine Sucker.” In the brief addresses at the conclusion of the nominating convention of the Republican party in 1856 at which Lincoln had been a candidate for vice president, a speaker from the New Jersey delegation referred to Lincoln as the “tall Sucker,” saying he “knew him well, and a right worthy man he was.” In a September 1858 St. Louis Daily Missouri Republican, Lincoln and Douglas were “the tall Sucker and the Little Giant.” In four subsequent issues of the same newspaper during the month of August, Lincoln is dubbed the “tall Sucker.” In two NewsVault papers during the 1860 campaign for president, Lincoln is called “the distinguished Sucker.”17The word Sucker for the state of Illinois and its inhabitants disappeared as the word shifted to its current, more pejorative, usage. To be sure, our word sucker can, as it did in Lincoln’s day, mean “lollipop,” and we can use sucker loosely to mean almost anything, as when a framer of houses might tell his assistant, “I’ll hold while you nail that sucker down.” Typically, however, our word sucker denotes someone too easily taken in, someone foolish, and can be cruelly derisive. No such use of the word sucker appears in the NewsVault for the period 1838–1858. Indeed, the second most common meaning of sucker in the NewsVault relates not to those taken-in by deception but, remarkably, to those taking others in: “Of or relating to a leech-like person, office holder, or institution exploiting, cheating, deceiving, or living off others or the body politic; a base or lazy person, loafer, swindler, trickster, villain” (definition 2. above). In short, all odds indicate that if Lincoln said “such a sucker as me” in 1858, he meant “such an Illinoisan as me.”The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary complicates the foregoing assertions. In its origins and early uses, sucker has only the most innocent of meanings, namely, “a mammal before it is weaned, a child at the breast” (OED). Figurative uses of this innocent word begin to appear in the third decade of the nineteenth century. The first such development, or so the OED suggests, is “greenhorn, simpleton.” Significantly, the OED gives North America as the origin of this figurative new meaning, citing the May 29, 1838, Toronto Patriot for the first such use: “It’s true that pigs has their troubles like humans . . . constables catches ’em, dogs bites ’em, and pigs is sometimes as done-over suckers as men.” The OED includes two additional, early illustrations of what it takes as this same meaning: “You may think I’m a sucker,” from a San Francisco newspaper in 1857, and he’s “Goin’ out to stir up a boom, and sell his claim to some sucker” from a 1904 work by U.S. writer Elizabeth Robins.18The newspapers in the NewsVault show conclusively, however, that the development of our modern word is more complicated than the OED’s dates and examples imply. The OED’s first example, “done-over suckers,” does not so much suggest that humans and pigs are “greenhorns and simpletons” as that humans and pigs are both helplessly (like a “child at the breast”) at the mercy of forces beyond their control. If so, the OED’s earliest citation for sucker’s meaning “greenhorn, simpleton” is misleading. Further, the compound done-over sucker does not appear at all in NewsVault’s U.S. newspapers. What does appear, however, are two compounds, gone sucker and done sucker. These compounds appear exclusively in contexts like the humans and pigs from the Toronto Patriot, that is, when helplessly caught in larger, irresistible forces.19Gone sucker first appears in the NewsVault’s [Washington, DC] Daily National Intelligencer, and between 1838 and 1858, newspaper editors and storytellers reveled in this phrase, especially where puns on sucker were possible, applying it everywhere to drinkers, loafers, babies, Illinois babies, an Illinois groom, politicians, a city, a state, a hunter, animals, a fish, and so on. In every instance, the addition of gone to sucker brings a sense of being helplessly taken in, taken over, doomed by larger forces. The compound done sucker, similarly if more narrowly, plays much the same role. Echoing gone sucker, done sucker is part of a popular, brief newspaper filler and witticism about a child weaned: “‘I’m a done sucker,’ as the child said when his mother weaned him.” Appearing in nine newspapers during our period, this use of sucker remains faithful to its oldest meaning, “baby,” but with the addition of the word done, the baby is not only done sucking at the breast but also a helpless victim at the mercy of more powerful forces, very much, it would appear, like the “done-over pig” in the example from the Toronto Patriot.20The OED is correct, however, that sucker eventually takes on the figurative meaning “greenhorn, simpleton.” When this use of the word sucker emerges in NewsVault newspapers, it designates a young person innocent, inexperienced, or “green,” “verdant,” and—difficult as it may be for us to remember—this use comes without pejorative implications. The earliest unmistakable example of this use in the NewsVault appears in 1849, when a young a sucker,” a enough for a he is about to be in a and the on the of this use of sucker a on Illinois when a young in the on a on what he takes as and The throughout both these tales is on and but both tales for their young the word sucker, and at the time a baby before it is weaned, as the phrase sucker” a these two the between and between potential victim easily taken in and to be sure, of our word sucker. Sucker for an innocent or young person appears in other but as in the Wright American collection young the of out to is a in the of the innocent use of the word sucker to another figurative sense of any or An article from the reprinted in the Daily and between two of is a . . . a . . . sucker . . . bites and and on all and is not a to Lincoln in that this sense could be to the word sucker for “I have that the of the that the be & and that this could only be by up our upon the one after the other with never time to are that this is & ‘Sucker’ but I have that it is not sense of inexperienced, as with could well have to Villard’s “such a sucker as but a figurative development about the same time ultimately and the way for the development of our pejorative word sucker. long article from the Weekly Journal and in the New offers a of the as a of from the to our city, being in and done by In the of this the article to the of a meaning for the word sucker when it out that this by “a person called by a a person appears to be a to To the those of their by this are country in the of but to the a the person from the country a member of a new someone to be taken in and That the writer to this shows that this use of sucker in the and that the word for inexperienced, has been by and years later, and years after the period of this an article about a at a the meaning of this was described as a that is, he was a but did not know all the and in and an to of however, the later, of our word sucker. in our can use the word sucker to potential as in the OED’s 1904 citation we the word sucker for those of who have who have been too easily taken in or too willing to in what their was a but he was out for a in a in a big not a where a man for the of those an work be in the first the taken in by the in the prior example not as the may taken in be enough to in what seems a with an third to the country the third party is in on the and the is easily taken for a of and the country who for the a for what eventually our word but not innocent, or but own of or throughout the period of this study and the word our modern a on the of on the of the between victim and the but of this over the especially when is ultimately in our pejorative, word from the or to sucker fish may be a final development of the word sucker and a potential of in our modern In a tale from the Little State a of gold a that he can the first time he The is however, and that the to more than the over, not a the the saying with time you fish for a out a on the The tale about the young at a the same connection between being taken in and as well as a potential on the sucker fish when the young is described as “a a sucker” for “the were at once short, modern readers of show more than to be not to our word sucker when the in Lincoln’s are so and so In on Lincoln and Illinois, is more “such an Illinoisan as me” from “such a sucker as me” in Villard’s of the the the delight but much as the story it by us to our and us to the Lincoln of Illinois in was sucker in our sense of the and much he was of his he was or 1858 he was an Illinoisan well of his potential in the larger especially for the highest office in the and Mary Lincoln was by all for him. of its and the meaning of sucker gives Villard’s account more of the of an in its time and and of a story a powerful word to to itself and to Lincoln as a So given the odds of the highest office in the would have the story in 1858 or even however, when Lincoln was a an story in 1858 had at least and would have at the very on sucker with its once but new and The of Lincoln as Villard’s is a to a of Illinois as is given to a of In Lincoln’s day, of course, the was not or not so, and would have been the and in however, sucker to the if the last line of Villard’s story is even if Lincoln the words the story in 1904 lost part of its for an early audience in new meanings for story in 1904 would also have lost well-known to in 1858. Illinois after all, part of the and for the first of the nineteenth and much of the of the country Illinois as in the and from the more and We have met Charles Fenno fellows going to a wedding in the early and we have The Boston Daily 1848 that Lincoln represented the only Whig district in benighted the NewsVault for the period is with of sometimes the and of the inhabitants of the Sucker and a group of sucker making about what might be in a and never a around a it.” about from Illinois first cities an from the Sucker State” in a too for his in his of all . . . to with his of a Sucker just of his who offers a a “a of a that on the with the that our Sucker has himself used it for two and the is in good of an Sucker who a railroad through his because he the is to off his An Illinois a man by a that for after and for “Sucker is described as a compound of the and the article political by an Illinoisan and an in which the is all but lost in and while the is with be sure, the newspapers other of of and of and of of and love of just as of of tall of suckers from the If Lincoln the words to Lincoln’s use of the formal nickname than “Illinoisan” more of the and we know Lincoln was a Illinoisan by 1858. If was a of Illinois, Lincoln in his was the most if as a Lincoln his only by of and if in the as by the nation as a was a of Illinois, Lincoln’s and love of to it; if were known for Lincoln was if the Illinois amused readers of the newspapers, Lincoln was known to have his In short, if Villard’s line is Lincoln’s in 1858, it was not without its what might Lincoln have he had of president, from a state with a sense of by his and his very and of of and the just such a genuine Illinois sucker as Lincoln did in the meaning of sucker have Villard’s story and our window on the we most of been by our to an historical meaning a genuine of an or however, to Villard’s story without readers about in the meaning of the word sucker is and a as the and as that may be to a modern

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