Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  A St. Louis paper identified the central Republican principle as “negro equality.” The party “seeks to confound the white and black races; and as it can never elevate the negro to the moral and intellectual level of the white, it can never bring about that promised equality save by dragging the whites down to the level of the blacks.” The result would be “intellectual, moral and physical degradation of both whites and blacks.”295 That paper ran a satirical letter maintaining that Black Republicanism was the progeny of Abraham Lincoln and the “darkey” Hagar.296

  The Illinois State Register described Lincoln’s “detestable doctrines” thus: “the worthless negro of our state” must be placed “upon full social and political equality with you—to associate him with you at the ballot box, in your legislative halls, in your judiciary, and in your family circle, and finally, if that full equality which Lincoln claims is his right, should be brought about, to mingle the African with the blood of the whites, by intermarriage with your sisters and daughters.” The Register claimed that Lincoln’s policies would turn Illinois into “an asylum for the worthless free negro population of the whole valley of the Mississippi.” Republican policy “must end in the Africanization of the slave states, and a gradual mingling of the races in the political control of the government.”297

  The New York Herald argued that the essential difference between the Republicans and Democrats was Republican insistence on “an equalization of the white and black races—which has never produced anything but bloodshed in other parts of the world, and which can only result in the subjugation or destruction of the numerically weaker race. There is no possibility of the black and the white existing harmoniously together in social and political equality,” the paper warned. “Even the blacks and mulattoes cannot do it.” The Republican doctrine of racial equality would lead to “anarchy, civil war, the rule of the military tyrant and the public robber,” such as could be seen in Spanish America. The paper speculated that once emancipated, blacks would flee the South for the North, where they would become public charges, for “the negro South cannot support himself in a state of freedom.” Rhetorically it asked readers, “Are you ready to divide you patrimony with the negro?”298

  Not only Democratic newspapers but also the party’s organizers and speakers stressed racial issues. In New York, the Second Ward Democratic Clubs drove a wagon through the streets of Manhattan carrying a huge transparency that depicted a boat with Lincoln in the bow waving a black flag labeled “Discord” and Horace Greeley in the stern, steering with his right hand and holding a copy of the Tribune in his left. Between them were a thick-lipped black male embracing a white girl, while a fellow black says, “Is looking at you, Sam,” and Sam answers, “Yah, yah.” Greeley remarks, “Colored folks have preference of state rooms”; and one of the passengers says, “Free Love and Free Niggers will certainly elect Old Abe if he (Lincoln) pilots us safe.” Another wagon bore a transparency representing a black man grasping Greeley with one hand and Lincoln with the other. Beneath them was a caption: “The Almighty Nigger.”299 Other banners read:

  “Republican Principle—‘The Negro better than the White Man,’ Republican Practice—‘Union of Black and White.’”

  What ‘Free Negro Suffrage’ Really Means—‘Amalgamation in the Military. Amalgamation in the Fire Department. Amalgamation in the Social Circle.’”

  “No Negro Equality.”

  “The Niggers of the North!”

  “Free Love, Free Niggers, and Free Women!”300

  Another campaign sign displayed a cartoon of a huge black man above an inscription identifying him as “The successor of Abraham Lincoln in 1864.”301

  New York Congressman Theodore R. Westbrook told several hundred of his fellow Democrats that the “only argument advanced by the Republicans is ‘Freedom, Freedom, Freedom—Darky, darky, darky.’ Indeed, they have a darky for breakfast, darky for dinner, darky for supper, and darky for bed-fellows.” Calling for a vote on what he termed “the nigger question,” Westbrook declared: “down with the darky.”302 The New York Morning Examiner asked, “Shall Africans govern Americans? Are you ready for negro equality? Are you ready for assimilation? Both are Republican principles.”303

  Constitutional Unionists also appealed to race prejudice. “In the spirit of profound fanaticism,” proclaimed John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, the Republicans “would destroy the white man in order that the black man might be free.”304

  Lincoln did not openly respond to race-baiting, but in September the Illinois State Journal published an anonymous contribution on race that he may well have written. Headlined “Negro Equality and Amalgamation,” it focused on the Douglas Democratic Party platform’s call for the acquisition of Cuba. That policy, the author pointed out, did not square with the Little Giant’s analysis of the Revolutionary fathers’ attitude toward mixed races (that they wanted nothing to do with them).

  Rather than write many such pieces, Lincoln left it to Republican orators and newspapers to rebut charges that he was a deep-dyed abolitionist, that he had been unpatriotic during the Mexican War, that he sought to provoke warfare between the sections, that he had betrayed Henry Clay, and that he favored equality for blacks.

  In reply to such charges, Republican spokesmen sometimes echoed the Democrats’ racism. Pointing to Maryland, Frank P. Blair noted that half its population lived in Baltimore but that the state legislature was dominated by rural areas where slaves were numerous. “Talbot County, where they had nothing but niggers and blackbirds,” was represented by one state senator, as was the populous city of Baltimore. “The nigger representatives in Maryland have charge of the City of Baltimore, and have disfranchised it; the niggers vote down the white residents.” Blair protested against the perversion of language whereby “the Republicans were called ‘Black,’ because their aim was to dignify free white labor, and sustain white men: and the Democracy called themselves white because they wished to cover the country with niggers, to the exclusion of white men.” He urged laborers to “put the Government into the hands of Lincoln. He will respect the rights of the whites.”305

  The New York Times scoffed at charges that Republicans favored racial equality. Over 90 percent of the delegates to the Chicago Convention, the paper argued, would oppose “making negroes, in all respects, the political equals of whites,—of giving them the same rights of suffrage, the same right to office and the same political standing and consideration which belong to the white race. Nor is the proportion greater among their constituents.” Pointing to the lack of political rights enjoyed by blacks in the Free States, the Times asked rhetorically, “how is the doctrine of negro equality to be ‘forced upon the South’ by the Republicans, when they scout and scorn it for the free negroes of the North?” Republicans do not “have any more love of the negro—any greater disposition to make sacrifices for his sake, or to waive their own rights and interests for the promotion of his welfare, than the rest of mankind, North and South.” The Republican Party is “pretty thoroughly a white man’s party.”306 The Indianapolis Daily Journal said it was absurd to charge “ ‘nigger equality’ against a party, the first cardinal principle of whose creed is, exclusion of Niggers from the Territories.”307

  In addition to attacking Lincoln’s record and principles, Democrats also ridiculed him personally. According to the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Democrat, he was “a stiff-necked, cold-blooded, calculating man, who keeps an eye to the main chance, and was never known to serve even his own party except as a means of personal advantage.”308 When opponents belittled Lincoln’s appearance, origins, education, and even his nicknames, Congressman John Sherman of Ohio admitted that “Lincoln cannot be recommended as a parlor President, like Gen. Pierce, and is not as familiar with the etiquette of foreign courts, as Mr. Buchanan,” but, Sherman insisted, “he is honest, faithful and capable.… He is far better for having lived a short time in Washington, for that city of politicians is not particularly celebrated for sound principles or
rigid morals.”309

  Democrats also tried to show that Lincoln’s relatives opposed his election, and they were not entirely wrong. In July, John Hanks published a 1,600-word letter countering rumors that he would not vote for his cousin, but in fact, he was the only member of the Hanks family who did support the Republican nominee. John’s brother Charles criticized his account of Lincoln’s life, which was widely reprinted. Asserting that he had known the candidate well as a young man, Charles scornfully called him “a wild harum scarum boy” and insisted that “jumping and wrestling were his only accomplishments. His laziness was the cause of many mortifications to me; for as I was an older boy than either Abe or John, I often had to do Abe’s work at uncle’s, when the family were sick … and Abe would be rollicking around the county neglecting them.”310 To rebut these allegations, Lincoln wrote a public letter pointing out that he had spent virtually no time with Charles Hanks in Indiana or Kentucky but had done so in Macon County in 1830–1831.

  Lincoln composed another reminiscence responding to charges by John Hill, son of the New Salem merchant Samuel Hill, that he had betrayed the principles of Henry Clay. In a detailed rebuttal, which he left incomplete, Lincoln reviewed Hill’s allegations and showed that his record as a state legislator and a congressman had been misrepresented.

  Another misrepresentation which Lincoln took pains to challenge involved an attack on Jefferson that he had allegedly made in 1844. The language ascribed to Lincoln actually came from a hostile sketch of the Sage of Monticello written by a Scottish Tory, Thomas Hamilton. Insisting that his name not be used in any denials, the candidate authorized friends to denounce the misattribution. The Illinois State Journal did so in an editorial that Lincoln himself probably wrote: “This is a bold and deliberate forgery, whether originating with the Chicago Times and Herald or the Macomb Eagle. Mr. Lincoln never used any such language in any speech at any time. Throughout the whole of his political life, Mr. Lincoln has ever spoken of Mr. Jefferson in the most kindly and respectful manner, holding him up as one of the ablest statesmen of his own or any other age, and constantly referring to him as one of the greatest apostles of freedom and free labor. This is so well known that any attempt, by means of fraud or forgery, to create the contrary impression, can only react upon the desperate politicians who are parties to such disreputable tactics.”311

  In August, Lincoln told an interviewer from the New York Herald that when invited to visit his birthplace in Kentucky, he playfully asked if he would not be lynched if he were to accept. The Herald’s report did not make his remark sound playful. Lincoln, said the paper, concluded “that the invitation was a trap laid by some designing person to inveigle him into a slave State for the purpose of doing violence to his person.”312 When Lincoln declined the invitation, Democrats attacked him as a coward. Douglas pounced on the report, telling an audience in Indiana how Kentuckians “regretted exceedingly that Lincoln was afraid to come to Kentucky to look after his mother.” (Lincoln’s mother was buried in Indiana, and his stepmother lived in Illinois.) “But I told them to have no uneasiness on that subject, for Lincoln was a friend of mine, and I never yet failed to do him an act of kindness when I had a chance; that while, perhaps, his principles would not allow him to visit the grave of his grandfather in the valley of Virginia, or his mother, in Kentucky, mine would allow me to go wherever the American flag waved over American soil. Hence I told them when I returned to Illinois I would call on my friend Lincoln and tell him I had visited his good old mother [in] Kentucky and that she was grieved to know that her son had forgotten the land of his birth; had proved false to the grave of his fathers; had joined her enemies, and was now preaching a crusade against the State that gave him birth.”313

  To Samuel Haycraft, who had invited Lincoln to visit Kentucky, he denied the Herald report: “I was not guilty of stating, or insinuating, a suspicion of any intended violence, deception, or other wrong, against me, by you, or any other Kentuckian.”314 Lincoln prepared a correction for the Herald to publish: “We have such assurance as satisfies us that our correspondent writing from Springfield, Ills., under date of Aug. 8—was mistaken in representing Mr. Lincoln as expressing a suspicion of a design to inveigle him into Kentucky for the purpose of doing him violence. Mr. Lincoln neither entertains, nor has intended to express any such suspicion.” He asked George G. Fogg to persuade the Herald’s editor, James Gordon Bennett, to run the correction. Bennett replied that he would not do so unless Fogg would sign it or it could be datelined Springfield. Fogg advised Lincoln to drop the matter, and so he did, explaining: “Although it wrongs me, and annoys me some, I prefer to let it run it’s course, to getting into the papers over my own name.”315

  Simon P. Hanscom of the Herald helped undo some of the damage created by his newspaper. He interviewed Lincoln and published the candidate’s explanation of the Kentucky story, which resembled the denial he had penned for Fogg. According to Illinois Congressman William Kellogg, Hanscom was one of Lincoln’s “warmest supporters” at the Chicago Convention and “well known to be a true and staunch republican” whose coverage of Congress for the Herald was fair and just to the party. “No man I am confident enjoys more of the confidence of the republicans here than he does,” Kellogg told Lincoln, “and no man has done more than him to present Douglass in his true character before the American people, and to the utmost of his ability will he, I do know wage an unyielding warfare against [the] democracy in any of [its] phases.”316 Hanscom claimed that at Chicago he had “contributed somewhat … to remove the obstacles in the way of his [Lincoln’s] nomination” and was one of the original members of a rail-splitter’s club.317 (Not everyone in the capital agreed with Kellogg. A Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune alleged that Hanscom “is known here, as one of the most unscrupulous & notorious of all the corrupt gang who infest this capital.”)318

  Hanscom visited Springfield, where he wrote two pro-Lincoln dispatches that ran in the Herald on October 20. The candidate evidently disliked the publicity that had been generated earlier that month by his brief meeting with Seward. To help put a positive gloss on that story, Hanscom (perhaps at Lincoln’s urging) said that Seward should be honored “for his avoidance of even the semblance of hypocrisy.” The brief stopover in Springfield “may be said the proof of Mr. Seward’s regard for Lincoln.” On one hand, if the senator had failed to visit the party’s standard-bearer, it “would surely be construed into an evidence of hostility against Lincoln.” On the other hand, if the two men held a long conversation, “the same slanderous spirit might find in that fact ‘confirmation as strong as proofs of holy writ’ that Seward was negotiating for the State Department or for the mission to London.” So the New Yorker decided to stop in the Illinois capital but to avoid any private consultation with Lincoln.319

  Hanscom also sought to modify the out-and-out abolitionist image of Lincoln that the Herald had been portraying. He assured readers that Seward would “not hold a place in the next administration.” Unlike the New York senator, Lincoln “rather inclines to follow a moderate, fair, constitutional course of policy. If you believe his own assurances, the most violent Southern fire-eater will find it difficult to question his patriotism or impartiality. He is a man of a rough, original turn of mind, and just such a man, it strikes me, as would, in the administration over which he should preside, show rather more obstinacy and self-will.… And such a man would not be likely to tolerate such a vizier as Wm H. Seward.” “I found him eminently conservative,” Hanscom added; “I have reason to know that because of the great ability he exhibited and the high national conservative position taken by him” in the 1858 campaign, “he was selected by the Chicago Convention as the standard bearer of the republican party. The platform adopted by that Convention is in harmony with the view expressed by Mr. Lincoln in his discussions with Douglas.” On slavery, Lincoln’s record “is not nearly so radical as some of the avowed doctrines of the democratic party” a few years earlier.320

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bsp; Hanscom forwarded a copy of his handiwork to Lincoln with a cover note: “Of course you will find some things in it that will amuse you, but it had to be dished for peculiar appetites and in taking advantage of my opportunities and facilities I trust I have done you no injustice. At first I thought I would not publish the paragraph about your visit to Kentucky, but many of your best and most sagacious friends advised that it had better be done.… The editorial accompanying the letter is quite as important as the letter.”321 That editorial, in stark contrast to Bennett’s earlier ones denouncing Lincoln as a dangerous Radical, referred to the candidate as “a conservative republican” who “contemplates no war upon the constitutional rights of slavery in the slave States,” and predicted “that his general policy upon slavery will be to conciliate the South into submission instead of exasperating her people into open rebellion.”322

  During the Civil War, Hanscom would become Lincoln’s favorite journalist. In 1863, the well-informed Noah Brooks, Washington correspondent of the Sacramento Union, asserted that Hanscom, “a pushing and persevering man, has managed to so ingratiate himself with the President that he has almost exclusive access to the office of the Executive, and there obtains from our good-natured Chief Magistrate such scanty items of news as he is willing to give out for publication.”323 Hanscom laid the foundations for his status as presidential insider during the 1860 campaign. Lincoln’s cultivation of Hanscom was yet another example of his solicitude for the press and his subtle manipulation of it to ensure favorable coverage for him and his party.

  The Herald’s new tune was indicative of a growing trend. By September the New York Times could observe that critics had abandoned their earlier attacks on Lincoln as a Radical. “It begins to be universally seen and felt, that Mr. Lincoln’s position is eminently conservative, and that his election will by no means involve a triumph of the ultra Anti-Slavery element of the Northern and Eastern States.”324 Some Northern papers, however, still pictured him as a dangerous extremist. In September the Illinois State Register said: “Lincoln has the insane idea that he is a sort of second Messiah; that he is the man selected from all time to establish a new law, under which African slavery is to be abolished in the United States.”325