Voters Cast Their Ballots
On August 6, a harbinger of things to come appeared in Missouri, where Frank Blair won election to the U.S. House on the Republican ticket, reversing the outcome of 1858. “I count that day as one of the happiest in my life,” Lincoln said a few weeks later.326
The first gubernatorial election of the campaign occurred on September 10 in Maine, which Douglas’s strategists regarded as vital and where the Little Giant had stumped. To counter his efforts, Republicans imported outside speakers, including Anson Burlingame, who proved especially effective. “The way Burlingame hits the crowds is astonishing,” James Shepherd Pike reported. “Everybody thinks him angelic.”327 Lincoln felt some anxiety about the Pine Tree State when late in August he heard an allegation that Hannibal Hamlin predicted a Republican loss of two congressional seats and a narrow, 6,000-vote victory in the gubernatorial race. Lincoln wrote to his running mate that he was “annoyed some” by this news, especially since he had received optimistic reports from other Maine leaders. “Such a result as you seem to have predicted in Maine … would, I fear, put us on the down-hill track, lose us the State elections in Pennsylvania and Indiana, and probably ruin us on the main turn in November.”328 Hamlin promptly denied saying any such thing and accurately predicted a Republican landslide. Thanks in part to the popularity of gubernatorial candidate Israel Washburn, the party swept all six congressional races and won the governorship by more than 15,000 votes.
In Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania state tickets were elected on October 9. Assured by Pennsylvanians that the Republican gubernatorial candidate would win easily, and with Ohio safely in hand, Lincoln advised that all efforts be focused on Indiana, where a fusion movement of the three opposition parties threatened Henry S. Lane’s chances of capturing the governorship. In August, after stumping the Hoosier State for two weeks, Herman Kreismann of Chicago was pessimistic. “I have worked like a nigger,” he reported. “I have been in the d[amnde]st holes worse than any places we have in Egypt. It was the first time many of them had ever heard anything about slavery etc.” The Republicans in Indiana “are just four years behind us [Illinoisans] in organization and efficiency.”329 David Davis, who thought Indiana was “in great danger,” urged Thurlow Weed and Edwin D. Morgan to send thousands of dollars for speakers and efforts to combat fraud.330 Davis’s old friend John Z. Goodrich of Massachusetts, a wealthy member of the Republican National Committee, swiftly provided the money. Goodrich visited Boston in September and raised $7,000 to counter Democratic “pipelaying” operations in Indiana.331 Luckily for the Republicans, the leader of Indiana’s Breckinridge forces, Jesse D. Bright, hated Douglas and spitefully threw his support to Lane. Exacerbating tension between the Democratic factions, the Little Giant unwisely abused Breckinridge and his followers during a swing through Indiana. In addition, Bell’s supporters, headed by Lincoln’s friend Richard W. Thompson, eventually decided to back the Republican gubernatorial candidate. On the eve of the October elections, Davis, who was heroically organizing the Lincoln campaign, told his son: “Tomorrow is the most important day in the history of the Country.” Davis felt “uneasy, very, about the Indiana & Pennsylvania elections.”332
Davis need not have worried, for Republicans triumphed in both states. Lane defeated his opponent 136,725 to 126,968 (52% to 48%), in part because during the final months of the campaign, the Republicans had taken Lincoln’s counsel and flooded Indiana with money and speakers. As Lincoln had been advised, the Republicans did much better than usual in southwestern Indiana, where he grew up. In Pennsylvania, Democrats bemoaned the power of their opponents’ emphasis on protectionism. One Democrat observed that “the Tariff possesses more interest to the working classes than the ‘Nigger’ question” and that “the Republicans, in their speeches say nothing of the nigger question, but all is made to turn on the Tariff.”333 Cameron noted that to his constituents, the tariff “is the great question of the day, it is our nigger.”334 Feuding within the Republican ranks, though worrisome to Lincoln, was far less bitter than it was among the Democrats. As a result, Andrew G. Curtin was elected governor by a vote of 262,403 to 230,239 (53% to 47%).
Predictably, Republicans did well in Ohio, one of their safe states, winning thirteen of the twenty-one congressional races and electing their candidate for the state supreme court by a 13,000 vote majority. In Cleveland, a party leader observed that “Old Abe has nothing left for himself to do but to put his affairs at home in order and get ready for the White House.”335
Lincoln received the good news from the key October states with characteristic equanimity. On election night, while awaiting the returns in the capitol, he calmed his neighbors who feared the opposition might combine against him, saying “that he was not only morally convinced that the people of the North, East, and Northwest would teach the Fusionists a hard lesson, but that he had precise forecasts and reports from the best-informed men in Pennsylvania, New York, and Indiana showing that his election was beyond a doubt in those states.” Favorable dispatches rolled in until finally, a little after midnight, the Republican victories seemed assured. As his friends whooped and hollered, Lincoln alone retained his composure. He permitted himself to rejoice only upon receipt of Cameron’s telegram announcing the Pennsylvania result, which prompted him to remark: “Now Douglas might learn a lesson about what happens when one tries to get people opposed to slavery to vote for slavery. It is not my name, it is not my personality which has driven Douglas out of Indiana and Pennsylvania, it is the irresistible power of public opinion, which has broken with slavery.”336 When a crowd of well-wishers called at his home, he had his houseguest, Lyman Trumbull, address them.
On paper, Lincoln was more effusive, writing John M. Read: “We are indulging in much rejoicing over the late splendid victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio, which seem to foreshadow the certain success of the Republican cause in November.”337 Those victories, he told Seward, “have surpassed all expectation, even the most extravagant.”338 But approaching success also meant that he must soon cope with burdensome challenges. After visiting Springfield in mid-October, David Davis wrote his wife that “Lincoln looked as if he had a heavy responsibility resting on him. The cares & responsibilities of office will wear on him.… Politicians are gathering round Lincoln. The cormorants for office will be numerous & greedy.” In contrast, Mary Lincoln “seemed in high feather” at her prospects, according to Davis. She was “not to my liking,” he added. “I don[’]t think she would ever mesmerise any one.” His feelings were not unique, he said, for the “people of Springfield do not love Lincoln’s wife as they do him.” Davis’s hope “that she will not give her husband any trouble” would prove vain.339
After the October triumphs, attention shifted to New York, which the Democrats strove to win and thus force the election into the U.S. House of Representatives. In August, Lincoln had told Weed, “I think there will be the most extraordinary effort ever made, to carry New-York for Douglas.… it will require close watching, and great effort on the other side.”340 His prediction seemed borne out later when the Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas forces agreed on a unified slate of presidential electors. The fusionists spent lavishly, causing some alarm, for the overconfident Empire State Republicans had exported money to New Jersey and Delaware and could not match their opponents’ last-minute outlays.
To improve the Republican chances of carrying New York, Joseph Medill had been trying since June to persuade James Gordon Bennett to moderate the New York Herald’s criticism of the Republican ticket. That paper initially dismissed Lincoln as “an uneducated man—a vulgar village politician, without any experience worth mentioning in the practical duties of statesmanship, and only noted for some very unpopular votes which he gave while a member of Congress.” To compare “this illiterate Western boor” with Seward “is odious—it is Hyperion to a satyr.”341 After speaking twice with the crusty Bennett, Medill reported to Lincoln that the editor pledged “he would not treat
you harshly,” for he “thought you would make a very respectable President, if you kept out of the hands of the radicals.” Bennett boasted to Medill that he and his fellow conservatives “could beat your man Lincoln, if we would unite, but I think it would be better for the country to let him be elected. I’ll not be hard on him.”342 The Herald originally favored Breckinridge and later switched to support the fusion ticket of Bell-Douglas-Breckinridge electors.
Also lobbying Bennett on Lincoln’s behalf was Simon Hanscom, who wrote the candidate in late October: “I had a long talk with Mr. Bennett, about you, after my return and he was pleased at the assurances I made him that you would persue a conservative course &c. &c. and said he would give you his support with the greatest pleasure, especially if you would make a clean sweep of the present corrupt office-holders.”343
Though Illinois seemed safely in his column, Lincoln and the Republican National Committee worried that the legislature might go Democratic and thus jeopardize Trumbull’s reelection. In August, it appeared likely that the Democrats would retain control of the General Assembly. John Wentworth, whom Caleb B. Smith described as “a man of great energy & a shrewd manager” but “unscrupulous and unreliable,” complicated matters in Illinois by publishing radical antislavery editorials which Democrats cited as proof that Lincoln was an out-and-out abolitionist.344 Joseph Medill warned Lincoln that Long John’s plan “is to pretend that he is your devoted friend; that you are an ultra abolitionist who will if elected put down slavery in the South.… While he is thus stabbing you, he is deluding the more radical anti-slavery element into the belief that he is a sincere abolitionist.”345 To combat the deleterious effects of Wentworth’s editorials, Medill wrote to newspapers in the East denouncing Long John, and the Chicago Press and Tribune regularly excoriated the mayor.
Because Wentworth’s strategy would alienate voters in southern Illinois, outside speakers were dispatched to that region. When Robert C. Schenck, a “strong, terse and sometimes withering” orator from Ohio and a quondam Whig, offered his services, Lincoln accepted enthusiastically, telling him: “We really want you.”346 In October, Schenck and other Ohioans—including Donn Piatt, Samuel Galloway, Thomas Corwin, and David Cartter—stumped throughout lower Illinois, where they impressed local Republicans mightily.
Lincoln was also eager to have Republicans carry Springfield and Sangamon County for a change, partly for sentimental reasons but more importantly because Trumbull’s election depended on it. (The senatorial district composed of Sangamon and Morgan counties would elect Republican William Jayne by a margin of seven votes, thus giving the Republicans a majority of one in the state senate.) When he asked a Republican running for some county office what steps were being taken to turn out the vote, the answer was so unsatisfactory that Lincoln spelled out a plan for generating the maximum number of Republican votes.
Fearing that a split in the Republican ranks in Vermilion County might cost the party a seat in the legislature, Lincoln urged the contending parties—William H. Fithian and Oscar F. Harmon—to patch up their quarrel. “To lose Trumbull’s re-election next winter would be a great disaster,” he wrote to Fithian. “Please do not let it fall upon us. I appeal to you because I can to no other, with so much confidence.”347 The plea worked; both aspirants withdrew in favor of a third candidate.
Secession Threats
After the Republican victories in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, Southern threats of secession grew louder. The day after that electoral sweep, the Alabama fire-eater William L. Yancey announced that if Lincoln were to win and then “undertake to use Federal bayonets to coerce free and sovereign states in this Union,” he would “fly to the standard of that state and give it the best assistance in my power.”348 A newspaper in Yancey’s state said ominously: “Let the boys arm. Every one that can point a shot-gun or revolver should have one. Let every community supply itself with munitions, and store them safely. Abolitionism is at your doors, with torch and knife in hand!”349 In mid-October, the pro-Breckinridge Richmond Enquirer lamented that “Virginia can no more prevent the dissolution of this Union after Lincoln’s election, than she can prevent that election. She will be powerless to prevent civil war, with all its horrors.”350 A pro-Douglas newspaper in Georgia defiantly announced that “the south will never permit Abraham Lincoln to be President of the United States. This is a settled and sealed fact. It is the determination of all parties at the south. And let the consequences be what they may—whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania avenue is paved ten fathoms in depth with mangled bodies, or whether the last vestige of Liberty is swept from the face of the American continent. The south, the loyal south, the constitutional south, will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.”351
The South’s reaction to Lincoln’s impending victory puzzled Northerners, who regarded the Rail-splitter as a Moderate. As one observer noted, however, many Republicans “spurn indignantly the imputation of being Abolitionists when it is preferred against them, and yet they are ignorant of the characteristics of those whom the Southerners almost universally declare to be Abolitionists. The South do[es] not think it alone requires an incendiary, cut-throat, robber, assassin, or a nigger insurrectionist to be an Abolitionist. The moderate members of the Northern Republican party think it does. But the South insist[s] that Abolitionism consists in lesser evils than these; and those are the demands of the anti-slavery men of the North—demands they have been urging and presenting in the face of the South for years past—upon which the anti-slavery movement of the North is based, and which infuse into it much of its vitality, independent of the Territorial question.”352 To Southerners, Lincoln’s call for the “ultimate extinction” of slavery conjured up visions of the bloody revolt in Haiti two generations earlier and Nat Turner’s uprising in 1831.
As time went by, Lincoln received many warnings about Southern secession, but, like most Republicans, he failed to take them seriously. In August, he told John B. Fry: “The people of the South have too much of good sense, and good temper, to attempt the ruin of the government, rather than see it administered as it was administered by the men who made it. At least, so I hope and believe.”353 Southerners had so frequently raised the specter of secession that their threats had lost credibility. In 1859, the New York Courier and Enquirer observed that for almost five decades “a mere handful of ignorant, reckless and unprincipled men at the South, have, by bullying and threatening, governed the millions of educated and intelligent men of the North; simply because they are men of peace and busily engaged in moral industrial pursuits which do not encourage or foster restlessness and excitement.”354 Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine told his son, “All this vaporing about secession is nonsense, and nobody cares a button for it.”355 A Connecticut newspaper scoffed at the secessionist threat, calling it “an empty sham”; secessionists had “about as good a chance of succeeding as the lunatics in the Retreat at Hartford would have of capsizing the state of Connecticut into Long Island Sound. They are too few and too crazy.”356
Secession threats aided Republicans, for Northern voters had grown tired of Southern intimidation and contempt for fair play. They had come to think of the typical Southerner as a Preston “Bully” Brooks, the cane-wielding South Carolina congressman who had bashed in the skull of Senator Charles Sumner four years earlier; just as Southerners regarded Brooks’s tactic as a legitimate way to deal with political opponents, so they viewed disunion threats as a legitimate tactic in election campaigns. The Chicago Press and Tribune assured Southerners “that they entirely underestimate the character of the Northern people, and that their ‘boo-boos’ and their ‘bug-a-boos,’ instead of frightening any one, are really helping Lincoln.” Free State residents “have become entirely satisfied that the only way to effectually stop this threat of disunion, is by the election of a Republican President.”357
That fall, many Northerners did vote Republican to protest the
South’s arbitrary, high-handed behavior. On November 6, the New York Tribune exclaimed: “the repudiation of the Missouri Compact, the brutal bludgeoning of Charles Sumner, the wanton outrages that so long desolated Kansas, the infamous Lecompton outrage, and all the long series of plots and crimes by which Kansas and Nebraska were temporarily subjugated to Slavery, all come up for review To-Day!”358 The Tribune declared that the South “is only semi-civilized. It may call itself republican; it may profess the abstract faith of Christianity; it may possess, to a certain limited degree, the arts of a cultivated people; it may live under some of the forms of enlightened society; but it wants that inherent moral sense, that accurate conception of social law, that intelligent submission to the purpose of civil government which mark the highest civilization. It is merely semi-barbarous in its spirit, savage in its instincts, reckless of human life and human rights, faithless in everything but brute force, unintelligent in its aims, and unscrupulous in the means with which it seeks to attain them.”359 The Missouri Democrat observed that the “north has habitually yielded, until we are supposed to be craven, and incapable of the manhood to defend our common rights or liberties. This system has been carried far enough, and it must stop.”360 William Cullen Bryant likened the South to “a spoiled child” and the federal government to “its foolishly indulgent nurse.” Everything the South “asked for has been eagerly given it; more eagerly still if it cries after it; more eagerly still if it threatens to cut off its nurse’s ears. The more we give it the louder it cries and the more furious its threats; and now we have Northern men writing long letters to persuade their readers that it will actually cut off its nurse’s ears if we exercise the right of suffrage, and elect a President of our own choice, instead of giving it one of its own favorites.”361
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