
The Time Abraham Lincoln Passed By Mackinac Island
It was in 1848 that Lincoln, then a congressman from Illinois, passed by Mackinac Island on his way home from the East Coast. Ironically, Lincoln had just come from a time of campaigning against Michigan’s own Lewis Cass, who later was memorialized with a monument on Mackinac Island! Cass had been the Michigan Territory’s first governor and served as the government’s Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He was part of the first American expedition into the Upper Peninsula, visiting Mackinac Island for the first time in 1820. Cass went on to negotiate many treaties with Native Americans that opened the door to settlement throughout Michigan. In 1848, Cass became the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States, and he encountered opposition from Lincoln. For several days, Lincoln traveled around the northeast, making stump speeches in support of the Whig Party’s nominee, Mexican War hero Zachary Taylor, and taking shots at Cass. Then he went across New York and boarded the Michigan-made S.S. Globe steamship in Buffalo. Although there’s no evidence that Lincoln stopped on Mackinac Island – which at the time had not yet blossomed into the world-renowned tourist attraction that it is today -- the ship went right through the Straits of Mackinac en route to Chicago.