Asbury

Quincy Friends

Henry Asbury

Henry Asbury was born in Harrison County, Kentucky, on August 10, 1810, and came to Illinois in 1834, traveling on horseback and arriving in Quincy when it was a “thicket of hazel brush.” His first home was a log cabin on the southeast corner of Seventh and Hampshire.

Asbury began the study of law with the Hon. O.H. Browning and was admitted to the bar in 1837, being for a time the Henry Asbury partner of Col. Edward D. Baker, later U.S, Senator from Oregon and killed at Ball’s Bluff in 1861. In 1843 Asbury opened a law partnership with Abraham Jonas, whose friendship with Lincoln enabled him to arrange the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debate in Quincy.

Mr. Asbury was elected a justice of the peace in Quincy in 1836. He was appointed Registrar of the Quincy Land Office in 1849 by President Taylor and in 1864 and 1865 served by appointment of President Lincoln, his close personal friend, as Provost-Marshall of the Quincy District. He thereby obtained the title of “Captain,” by which he became widely known. He later served for several years as Registrar in Bankruptcy at Quincy, his last official position.

Originally a Kentucky Whig, Captain Asbury was one of the founders of the Republican Party in Illinois along with Abraham Jonas, Archibald Williams, Nehemiah Bushnell, O.H. Browning, other fellow Quincyans and Abraham Lincoln, with whom he was a frequent correspondent at that time. Horace Greeley, New York Tribune editor and prominent Republican, and a group of local Republicans discussed the upcoming 1860 election and who would be the presidential standard bearer for the Republican Party during a December 1858 meeting in the offices of Asbury and Jonas. Asbury suggested Lincoln’s name as a possible candidate, and the idea was endorsed by Jonas. This was one of the first endorsements by the local Republican power base and an important endorsement if Lincoln was to become a presidential candidate.

Asbury is given credit for framing the four questions Lincoln asked Douglas to answer during their Freeport Debate. However, it was reported that a number of Republican leaders came to Lincoln’s room the night before the speech and strongly advised him not to put the interrogatories to Douglas, saying, “If you do you can never be senator.”

“Gentlemen,” replied Lincoln, “I am killing larger game; if Douglas answers, he can never be president, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.” Asbury was quite proud of his connection with that incident and believed that he had contributed greatly to the election of Lincoln as President. He also prized highly his correspondence with Lincoln and the many letters he received from him.

Lincoln’s high regard for Asbury is seen in Lincoln’s directive to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in December 1862 to have Asbury and Jonas decide the fate of a St. Joseph, Missouri, man arrested for disloyalty, describing Asbury and Jonas as “both of whom I know to be loyal and sensible men.” Captain Asbury often visited Lincoln in Washington and is thought to have been there when the Lincoln conspirators were executed. Since he had been such an intimate friend of the President, it is believed he was able to obtain without difficulty the relics connected with the assassination, which now are in the possession of the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County.

Mr. Asbury wrote Asbury’s Justice, a method of procedure for justice courts, and Reminiscences of Quincy, Illinois, a history of the early years. He was one of the first members of Quincy’s newly formed Historical Society and was its first corresponding member. He moved to Chicago in 1886 and lived in the home of his daughter until his death in November 1896. He is buried in Quincy’s Woodland Cemetery in a plot adjoining the burial plot of the Orville Hickman Browning family. – Chuck Radel

City of Quincy Lincoln Bicentennial Commission 706 Maine Quincy, Illinois 62301