Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Back in New York, some regarded Seward’s defeat as poetic justice. Referring to the senator and his operatives, Hamilton Fish remarked that “[a]s he & they served others, so have he & they have been served. The little seeds that have been sown along the path way of twenty five years of ambition & selfishness, have just come to maturity & have overwhelmed the sower.”135

  At the Tremont House, Lincoln’s operatives celebrated wildly, forming processions, drinking gallons of whiskey, and carrying rails through the streets. A journalist deemed them “the craziest men I ever saw. Their demonstrations were such as to defy competition from the inmates of any Lunatic Asylum. Screeches were made, embraces were exchanged, and songs were sung.” From the hotel’s roof, one hundred artillery rounds were fired.136

  That afternoon the convention chose as Lincoln’s running mate the affable and portly Maine Senator Hannibal Hamlin, a long-time opponent of slavery and close friend of Seward’s lieutenant, Senator Preston King, who would have been nominated himself if he had wanted that honor. As a former Democrat, Hamlin lent both geographical and ideological balance to the ticket, but it would have made more sense to nominate someone from the swing state of Pennsylvania, where the outcome of the election was to be determined. To assuage the New Yorkers, Lincoln’s managers offered them the vice-presidency, but none of them showed interest. They did, however, insist on having the power to name someone from another state. Cameron would have been an obvious choice, but the Sewardites, resentful at his failure to support their man, resolved that he would not receive that honor. The Seward people also black-balled Andrew Reeder, John Hickman, John M. Read, and all other Pennsylvanians. Angry at Massachusetts and Kentucky as well, they vetoed the candidacies of Cassius M. Clay, the crowd favorite, and Nathaniel P. Banks, Burlingame’s favorite. Seward, like his operatives, was spiteful and seized opportunities to punish foes. Earlier he had dangled the vice-presidency before Frank Blair in return for his family’s support, but the offer was spurned. Maine’s delegates lobbied hard for Hamlin, suggesting to the New Yorkers that if they had no candidate for the second slot, the Maine senator should be glad to have their backing. Preston King agreed and successfully championed Hamlin’s cause. After all the excitement culminating in Lincoln’s nomination, the delegates paid little attention to the vice-presidential question.

  Democrats ridiculed the swarthy Hamlin, alleging that “his blood is that of the Niggergee” and that he resembled “a free negro, more than any man living who claims to be a white man!”137 When he first entered the Maine Legislature a decade earlier, he was known as “Negro Hamlin.”138 Some South Carolinians facetiously offered to purchase him. “A free nigger to preside in the United States Senate!” exclaimed an Alabamian. “How would Southern Senators like that? The humiliation and disgrace of the thing would certainly be something, but the smell would be awful.”139

  Some delegates believed Lincoln would have won at Chicago even if no bargains had been struck, because his debates with Douglas and his Cooper Union speech had won respect from all factions and because he was the only candidate with solid antislavery credentials who could carry the swing states. Although it is true that the delegates made the smart, rational choice, political conventions are not always ruled by reason. Without the able leadership of Davis and Judd, the support of their indefatigable operatives, the fortunate decision to hold the convention in Chicago, and the influence of the stentorian pro-Lincoln shouters, it is not at all unthinkable that Seward could have been the Republican nominee.

  Reaction in Springfield

  When news of Lincoln’s victory reached Springfield, the bearer of the dispatch rushed into the office of the Illinois State Journal, where the candidate and a large crowd had been following events, and proposed three cheers “for Abraham Lincoln, the next President of the United States.” After the huzzahing, Lincoln took the dispatch, read it, and said: “I must go home; there is a little short woman there that is more interested in this matter than I am.” En route people stopped him on the street to offer congratulations. He thanked them and jokingly said: “you had better come and shake hands with me now that you have an oppertunity—for you do not know what influence this nomination may have on me. I am human, you Know.”140 Two years later, he “said that when he received the nomination he had forebodings as to the trouble which might ensue. This passed away for a resolution to abide the consequences, whatever they might be.”141

  Springfielders rejoiced wildly, dragging a cannon from the capitol to celebrate. Asked if it should fire one salute for each state or 100 salutes, Lincoln said: “I must begin my administration on the principle of retrenchment and economy. You had better fire but one gun for each state.”142 Lincoln banners of all varieties waved in the breeze, and church bells hailed the victory of the local hero. In the evening, townsfolk flocked to the statehouse to hear speeches and then marched to Eighth and Jackson Streets to serenade the nominee, who expressed his thanks “in a few good-humored and dignified words.”143 When the crowd rushed forward to shake his hand, Lincoln invited them into his modest home. One of the revelers streaming across the threshold shouted prophetically, “We’ll give you a larger house on the fourth of next March!”144

  16

  “I Have Been Elected Mainly on the Cry

  ‘Honest Old Abe’”

  The Presidential Campaign

  (May–November 1860)

  Shortly after the Chicago Convention, Joshua Giddings assured Lincoln with “certain knowledge” that “your selection was made upon two grounds,” first that “you are an honest man,” and second that “you are not in the hands of corrupt or dishonest men.”1 Seward suffered by contrast, and some of the senator’s backers acknowledged that they “must not blame the people of the United States for being afraid that the election of a leading New York politician to the Presidency would only displace the existing corruption at Washington by a new importation of venality and political knavery from Albany.”2 A New York delegate, former Lieutenant-Governor Henry R. Selden, declared that all the forces working against Seward would have been insufficient to defeat him “had not his opponents strengthened their arguments by allusion to the corruptions practiced at Albany during the past winter. No man entertained the idea that Mr Seward was connected with them, but it was charged that his friends were, and it was pretended that if elected the same practices would be transmitted to Washington.”3

  Hostility to corruption not only contributed to Lincoln’s nomination in May, but it also helped clinch his victory in November. The public was fed up with steamship lobbies, land-grant bribery, hireling journalists, the spoils system, rigged political conventions, and cost overruns on government projects. At a New York ratification meeting, Horace Greeley introduced a resolution proclaiming that there were two irrepressible conflicts, one pitting freedom against slavery and the other, “not less vital,” between “frugal government and honest administration” on the one hand and “wholesale executive corruption, and speculative jobbery” on the other.4 Along with several other newspapers, the Cincinnati Commercial predicted that a Lincoln administration would be “honest, economical and capable.”5 William Cullen Bryant pledged that his New York Evening Post would do all it could to “turn out the present most corrupt of administrations, and install an honest administration in its stead.”6

  New Englanders stressed the corruption issue. Samuel Bowles of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Republican accurately prophesied that on “an issue likely to rival, if not to overshadow, that of the irrepressible negro—that of honesty, simplicity and economy in public affairs,” Lincoln would run well, for “ ‘Honest old Abe’ will mean something serious, as well as prove a taking campaign cry.”7 Emphatically the Concord New Hampshire Statesman argued that Lincoln’s lack of national political experience was “an element of strength,” for it meant that he had not succumbed “to the gross corruptions so prevalent at Washington.” The nation “is suffering for want of an incorruptible Chief Magistrate; a man w
ho will indignantly crush out … and drive into perpetual exile the inexorable army of blood-suckers that hang around the democratic camp at Washington. This troop is Legion, and hover over the Treasury like Cossacks in the rear of the French army on its retreat from Moscow.… A change cannot be for the worse, and may be for the better; then let us have a change. Abraham Lincoln is ‘honest, capable and friendly to the constitution.’ Let us put him in [as] president, and drive all the treasury rats away.”8 In Connecticut, the Hartford Courant declared that “[o]ne of the strongest arguments in favor of the election of Lincoln to the Presidency is his HONESTY” and “old-fashioned integrity and firmness.” The people “all want the government administrated with integrity and economy. We have tried two dishonest Administrations of the Democratic party. Let us try them no longer, but place the government in the hands of uncorrupted and uncorruptible men.”9

  After winning the presidency, Lincoln told a visitor, “[a]ll through the campaign my friends have been calling me ‘Honest Old Abe,’ and I have been elected mainly on that cry.”10 His reputation as an honest man was as important as his reputation as a foe of slavery.

  National Reaction

  As word of Lincoln’s nomination spread throughout the North, jubilant Republicans set off fireworks, rang bells, ignited bonfires, illuminated buildings, erected rail fences, paraded by torchlight, cheered speakers, and fired cannons with the same high spirits that had characterized the boisterously successful Harrison campaign of 1840. An Illinois delegate freshly returned from the Chicago Convention predicted accurately that “the coming campaign will not be a whit behind that of [18]40 in point of enthusiasm.”11

  There was, in fact, a great deal of hoopla in the canvass, provided largely by Rail-splitter and Wide-Awake organizations, which led countless demonstrations. Wide-Awakes, groups of young Republican activists, made their debut in Connecticut that spring during the gubernatorial campaign. They were best known for nighttime parades, during which they carried tin torches on poles, which they deemed “rails.”

  Lincoln himself said he “was not particularly fond of show and parade, and personally did not care much for such demonstrations,” though he acknowledged that the organizations were useful in turning out crowds for speakers and in providing opportunities for partisans to take an active role in the campaign.12 “Principle composed only about ten per cent of our political contests,” he told a New Yorker.13 Sharing Lincoln’s aversion to hoopla was New York attorney George Templeton Strong, who eventually voted for Lincoln, though not enthusiastically. A month after the convention he confided to his diary: “I am tired of this shameless clap-trap. The log-cabin hard-cider craze of 1840 seemed spontaneous. This hurrah about rails and rail-splitters seems a deliberate attempt to manufacture the same kind of furor by appealing to the shallowest prejudices of the lowest class.”14 Fellow New Yorker Hamilton Fish agreed, sarcastically exclaiming, “Hurrah for Lincoln & Hamlin!!!! … We want a log-splitter, not a hair splitter—a flatboatman, not a flat statesman. Log cabin—coon skins—hard cider—Old Abe & dark Ham—hurrah!”15

  In Washington, Republican members of Congress received the news from Chicago “with great enthusiasm.”16 Senator William P. Fessenden of Maine, who had favored Ben Wade of Ohio for the presidency, reported that Lincoln’s nomination “surprised us all, but, on the whole, has given general satisfaction to the Republicans, & frightened the democrats.”17 Wade himself said: “We are all safe if Old Abe is on the track.” A Representative from Wade’s state was reminded of a traveler in the Southwest who once asked a black man how distant a certain town was. “Well, sah,” came the answer, “wid an oddinary hoss, it am ’bout sixteen mile; wid a right smarht nag, it ’ud be ’bout eight mile; but wid massa Jim’s horse, you dar now!” Said the congressman: “So, with Seward we should have had a hard road to travel; with Ben Wade, we should have been pretty sure of winning the race, having no dead weights; but with Honest Old Abe, we’re there now!”18 Congressman Charles Francis Adams, who thought Seward deserved the nomination, expressed reservations about Lincoln. “I believe him honest and tolerably capable,” he wrote, “but he has no experience and no business habits.” Yet, Adams noted, many of his Republican colleagues in the House seemed delighted.19

  Because all Republican factions could unite behind Lincoln, the party enjoyed a huge advantage over its badly divided rivals. Already the candidacy of the cold, reserved, colorless, 64-year-old Tennessee slaveholder and former senator, John Bell—standard-bearer of the new Constitutional Union Party, comprised mostly of Southern ex-Whigs—had weakened Democrats in the Upper South. (He was to win his own state plus Kentucky and Virginia.) When in June the Democratic national convention reassembled in Baltimore, Northern and Southern delegates continued the bitter fight that had begun at Charleston. Utterly unable to compromise, each section nominated its own candidate. Douglas won the endorsement of the Northern Democrats, while Vice-President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky became the choice of the Southerners. With his opposition now backing three different candidates, Lincoln appeared to have an excellent chance.

  Lincoln confidently believed that the Democrats could not reunite. He said their predicament reminded him of a story: “I once knew a good, sound churchman, whom we’ll call Brown, who was on a committee to erect a bridge over a very dangerous and rapid river. Architect after architect failed, and at last Brown said he had a friend named Jones who had built several bridges and could build this. ‘Let’s have him in,’ said the committee. In came Jones. ‘Can you build this bridge, sir?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Jones; ‘I could build a bridge to the infernal regions, if necessary.’ The sober committee were horrified, but when Jones retired, Brown thought it but fair to defend his friend. ‘I know Jones so well,’ said he, ‘and he is so honest a man and so good an architect that, if he states soberly and positively that he can build a bridge to Hades, why, I believe it. But I have my doubts about the abutment on the infernal side.’ So, when politicians said they could harmonize the northern and southern wings of the Democracy, why, I believed them. But I had my doubts about the abutment on the southern side.”20

  Republican newspapers rejoiced at the nomination of such an appealing and unblemished candidate. One called him “just the man that this sorely swindled and disgraced nation needs for President,” for Lincoln “is a man of stainless purity—his whole life is as spotless as the driven snow. He is no corruptionist, no trickster, no time-server, but an honest, brave, straight-forward, able man, who will restore the Government to the purity of practice and principle which characterized its early days under the administrations of the Revolutionary patriots.” A pro-Seward journal assured its readers that Lincoln was “no expediency candidate, but one who early embraced the Republican cause, has always labored consistently for its success, has, from the beginning, stood, and stands now fair and square on its national and conservative platform.” It was a cause for celebration that “a candidate is fixed upon who has so many recommendations as Abraham Lincoln, whose character embraces so many excellent qualities, and whose personal history gives him so strong a hold on the good will of the people.” He would attract voters “who float loosely between the two parties.” The convention had wisely picked two candidates “fresh from the people, of broad and statesmanlike qualities, of unquestioned abilities, and of tried patriotism.”21

  Northern Democrats countered that the “platform and the head of the ticket are a shrewdly disguised, abolition whig move.” Lincoln was, they sneered, “an obscure lawyer, confessedly lacking the culture and capacity which are requisite to the creditable occupancy of the high office for which he has been nominated,” an “extreme abolitionist of the revolutionary type,” a “weak and unfit man for so high a place,” a “third rate country lawyer,” an “uneducated man—a vulgar village politician, without any experience worth mentioning in the practical duties of statesmanship,” a “fourth rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar,” a “man whose only merit consists in splittin
g rails or splitting the sides of a village audience with his smutty stories,” an “obscure partisan,” a “bigot and extremist,” and an “honest, well-meaning man of less than average mental caliber … who is almost a monomaniac on the subject of negro slavery” and who “is brim full of nigger.”22

  What the Republicans applauded as Lincoln’s freshness the Democrats denounced as an appalling lack of credentials. The Philadelphia Evening Journal complained that his “record as a statesman is blank. He has done nothing whatever in any executive, judicial, or legislative capacity, that should entitle him to public respect.”23 In the opinion of a former colleague in the Illinois Whig Party, Lincoln’s experience was “only that which has been acquired in the worst governed State in the Union—he himself being identified with its worst blunders and follies.”24 Another former ally, Benjamin S. Edwards, publicly “asked what had Lincoln ever done to stamp him as a statesman worthy to be at the head of a great nation like ours?”25 The Albany Atlas and Argus chastised the Republicans for nominating an obscure man who “represents no principle and no sentiment except hostility to Seward.”26

  Above all, Democrats objected to Lincoln as an antislavery Radical. Politically, “he is as rabid an abolitionist as John Brown himself, but without the old man’s courage,” jeered the New York Herald.27 Citing Lincoln’s 1837 vote against a resolution condemning abolitionists and his protest stating that slavery was based “on injustice and bad policy,” the Illinois State Register said he “is as much an abolitionist as are [William Lloyd] Garrison, Gerrit Smith, or Wendell Phillips.”28 Democratic Congressman Charles Drake Martin of Ohio called Lincoln the originator of a “treasonable heresy,” the irrepressible conflict doctrine.29 Don Morrison of Illinois condemned him as a Kentucky abolitionist, “infinitely worse than a Yankee Abolitionist.” To illustrate the candidate’s devotion to the doctrine of racial equality, Morrison quoted passages from his Chicago speech of July 10, 1858: