Lincoln in the World

by Kevin Peraino

  84. Marx to Engels, Oct. 29, 1962, in MAC, pp. 262–63 (“decisive”); Marx, “On Events in North America,” Oct. 12, 1862, Die Presse, in ibid., pp. 220–23 (“campaign in Maryland” and “reason does conquer”); Marx and Engels, “The Situation in the American Theater of War,” May 30, 1862, Die Presse, in ibid., p. 200; Marx to Engels, Aug. 7, 1862, and Marx to Engels, Sept. 10, 1862, in ibid., pp. 260–61 (assures Engels). See also ibid., p. xxv.

  85. Chase, Diary, Donald, ed., entry for Sept. 22, 1862, pp. 149–53; Welles, Diary, v. 1, entry for Sept. 22, 1862, pp. 142–45. See also Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, pp. ix–x.

  86. Hay, Diary, pp. 40–41, entries for [mid-Sept. 1862?] and [Sept. 24, 1862]; Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, p. 58 (Seward sent copies); Seward to Charles Francis Adams, Sept. 26, 1862, no. 359, Diplomatic Instructions (Great Britain), NARA (“The interests of humanity”); Seward, Seward at Washington, 1861–1872, p. 135; Bancroft, v. 2, p. 338; Hay, Diary, p. 40 (“confused”); McClintock sermon, in Voices from the Pulpit, p. 136, cited in RW, p. 314 (serious doubts). See also Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, p. 100.

  87. New York Tribune, Sept. 23 and 24, 1862, quoted in Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, p. 62; Missouri Republican, Sept. 29, 1862, in Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist, p. 312; Lincoln, “Reply to a Serenade in Honor of the Emancipation Proclamation,” Sept. 24, 1862, CWL, v. 5, p. 438.

  88. Everett diary, entries for Sept. 21–25, 1862, Everett Papers; Everett to Adams, Sept. 30, 1862, in Frothingham, Edward Everett, pp. 445–48.

  89. London Post, Oct. 8, 1862, quoted in Franklin, Emancipation Proclamation, p. 71 (“trash”); London Times, Oct. 7, 1862, in Mitgang, Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait, pp. 320–22 (“a Chinaman”); Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, p. 103 (Blackwood’s). See also Jones, Abraham Lincoln, p. 116.

  90. Newman Hall, “An Interview with Robert T. Lincoln,” The Broadway: A London Magazine, [Sept. 1867,] copy in Ruth Randall Papers, LOC.

  91. Dana to Seward, Sept. 23, 1862, ALP, LOC; Carpenter, Inner Life, p. 84; ALAL, v. 2, pp. 417, 462–63.

  92. Marx to Engels, Oct. 29, 1862, in MAC, pp. 262–63.

  93. Lincoln, “Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes,” Aug. 14, 1862, CWL, v. 5, pp. 370–72 (“better for us both”); Ninian W. Edwards to Lincoln, Aug. 9, 1861, ALP, LOC (Edwards report); Foner, “Lincoln and Colonization,” in Foner, ed., Our Lincoln, p. 151 (shelved after Welles’s opposition and modern-day Colombia).

  94. Chase, Diary, Donald, ed., entry for Sept. 24, 1862, p. 156; Seward, Seward at Washington, 1861–1872, p. 227 (“taking any out”); Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” Dec. 1, 1862, CWL, v. 5, p. 534 (“favor colonization”). See also Foner, “Lincoln and Colonization,” in Foner, ed., Our Lincoln, pp. 136, 158–59 (Baker comment, canvassing the powers, constitutional amendment).

  95. Sumner to Lincoln, Oct. 11, 1862, ALP, LOC; R. C. Wyllie to Thomas J. Dryer, July 27, 1861, FRUS 1861, p. 434; David L. Gregg to Lincoln, Jan. 24, 1863, ALP, LOC; Lincoln, “Memorandum Concerning Sandwich Islands,” Jan. 9, 1863, CWL, v. 6, p. 51n1; Seward to Lincoln, Jan. 21, 1863, ALP, LOC.

  96. Hay, Diary, entry for Nov. 13, 1861, p. 32 (barely protested); McClellan to his wife, Nov. 17, 1861, in Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan, p. 135, cited in Burlingame, Inner World, p. 182 (“original gorilla”); Welles, Diary, v. 1, p. 118, entry for Sept. 8, 1862 (“slows”); McClellan to his wife, Sept. 25, 1862, McClellan Papers, LOC, cited in McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 559 (complained to his wife); McClellan to Lincoln, July 7, 1862, ALP, LOC (alienate European decision makers); Guelzo, Emancipation Proclamation, pp. 168–69 (dismissed McClellan day after election); Marx, “The Removal of McClellan,” Die Presse, Nov. 29, 1862, in MAC, p. 233 (“mediocrity”); Marx, “A Criticism of American Affairs,” Die Presse, Aug. 9, 1862, in ibid., p. 212 (“waging of war”).

  97. Palmerston to Russell, Oct. 22, 1862, Russell Papers, BNA (“decided turn”). The most distinguished treatment of the autumn 1862 intervention crisis is in Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom (Lincoln, 1999). For the Gladstone and Palmerston quotes see also pp. 122 (“made a nation”), 124 (“not far wrong”), 130 (“lookers-on”).

  98. William Henry Wadsworth to S. L. M. Barlow, Dec. 16, 1862, Barlow Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif., quoted in McPherson, Tried by War, p. 145; Donald, Lincoln, p. 425 (emboldened).

  99. Sumner quoted in Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man, p. 97 (“argument, persuasion”; the brackets are Donald’s); New York Tribune, Dec. 12, 1862, quoted in Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War, p. 107.

  100. Seward to Dayton, Dec. 1, 1862, FRUS 1863, v. 1, pp. 638–39; and Seward to James Shepherd Pike, Dec. 23, 1862, FRUS 1863, v. 2, p. 802. See also Mahin, p. 139.

  101. Guelzo, Emancipation Proclamation, pp. 179–80 (“judgment of mankind”); Sumner to Livermore, Jan. 9, 1863, in Livermore, “Emancipation Pen,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Apr. 1911), p. 597. Howard Jones, in his introduction to the Bison Books edition of Jay Monaghan’s classic volume on Lincoln and foreign relations, A Diplomat in Carpet Slippers, notes that Lincoln “kept the administration’s focus on the national interest while covering foreign policy with a veneer of idealism and morality.” Elsewhere Jones notes that Lincoln “personified a balanced combination of idealist and realist who recognized the preeminence of slavery in the war but exercised great caution in making it the central issue.” (Jones, “Introduction,” in Monaghan, pp. ix–x.) See also Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, p. 189: “Ideal and reality had meshed in shaping Lincoln’s decision, combining his longtime animosity toward slavery with the Union’s misfortunes on the battlefield to formulate a new policy that initially drew little support.”

  102. Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” Dec. 1, 1862, CWL, v. 5, pp. 518, 537.

  103. On the intersection of Lincoln and public opinion, see, for example, Foner, The Fiery Trial, pp. xix and 189; and Carwardine, Lincoln, pp. 45–90.

  104. Wheen, “Forward,” Dispatches for the “New York Tribune,” p. x (first editorial); Marx, “The London Times on the Orleans Princes in America,” Nov. 7, 1861, in ibid., p. 293 (“public opinion-mongers”).

  105. Bee-Hive quoted in Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War, p. 29 (“mindless man” and even after the preliminary).

  106. Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War, pp. 56–57; Blackett, Divided Hearts, p. 143; Marx to Engels, Jan. 2, 1863, in MAC, p. 266 (“cost nothing”).

  107. Blackett, Divided Hearts, p. 196 (100 gatherings); Nevins, War for the Union, v. 2, p. 271 (“nobodies” and “paroxysms of euphoria”); Charles Francis Adams to Seward, Jan. 23, 1863, no. 307, Despatches from U.S. Ministers (Great Britain), NARA; Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, p. 108; Oates, With Malice Toward None, locs. 6689–6702 (“rallied”); Ausubel, John Bright, p. 130 (Bright quote).

  108. Marx, “A London Workers’ Meeting,” Die Presse, Feb. 2, 1862, in MAC, pp. 157–58.

  109. Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, p. 113 (resolution text); Donald, Charles Sumner and the Rights of Man, pp. 111–12; Blackett, Divided Hearts, pp. 209–11 (more on resolutions); Donald, Lincoln, p. 415; Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom, p. 155 (secret payments); Lincoln to the Workingmen of Manchester, England, Jan. 19, 1863, CWL, v. 6, p. 64 (public letters).

  110. Pease and Randall, eds., Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, v. 1, pp. 618–19, entry for Jan. 22, 1863.

  111. Henry Adams later told historian Ephraim Douglass Adams that he assumed Marx had been involved, although the latter Adams could find little supporting evidence for the claim. See Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, pp. 291–93; and Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War, p. 57. Historian Royden Harrison discounts the possibility that Marx helped organize the meeting, and speculates that Marx may have le
ft before the end. See Harrison, Before the Socialists, pp. 41–42. For the quotes see Marx to Engels, Apr. 9, 1863, in MAC, p. 268 (“spoke excellently”); and Marx to Joseph Weydemeyer, Nov. 29, 1864, quoted in Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War, pp. 12–13.

  112. On this point I am indebted to the analysis of diplomatic scholar Howard Jones, who has written persuasively on the subtleties of European reactions to Lincoln’s proclamation. “Lincoln had been only partly correct in believing that emancipation would kill the idea of foreign intervention,” Jones writes. “In the immediate sense, his Proclamation encouraged interventionists in both England and France to fear a racial war.… [B]ut over the long term the document convinced the British to drop the cause of intervention.” Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, p. 290. See also Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom, p. 104. D. P. Crook agrees: “Much evidence still stands to the effect that the northern image improved, especially in the long run, after Lincoln adopted a war aim more intelligible to European opinion.” Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War, p. 96. For Palmerston’s wish to see the United States divided, see Palmerston to Russell, Jan 19, 1862, quoted in Bell, v. 2, p. 315.

  113. Henry Adams to Charles Francis Adams Jr., Jan. 23, 1863, in Ford, ed., Cycle of Adams Letters, v. 1, p. 243.

  114. Harrison, Before the Socialists, pp. 68–69.

  115. Blackett, Divided Hearts, pp. 142–43; Ellison, Support for Secession, pp. 189–92. “Most studies of British views on the war,” writes R. J. M. Blackett, citing, among other sources, Martin Crawford’s The Anglo-American Crisis, “ignore this exchange between readers and editors, so vital to an understanding of the nature of public opinion, and by concentrating almost exclusively on editorials, conclude erroneously that most newspapers favored the Confederacy.” (Blackett, Divided Hearts, p. 143.)

  116. On the Bee-Hive, see Logan, “The Bee-Hive Newspaper,” pp. 343 (“effete aristocrats”), 344–45, 348 (“wage slaves”). See also Marx to Engels, Dec. 2, 1864, quoted in Foner, British Labor and the American Civil War, p. 82 (“It is impossible”); and Harrison, “E.S. Beesly and Karl Marx,” p. 34.

  117. Marx, “Inaugural Address of the Working Men’s International Association,” in Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, p. 519 (“mysteries”); McLellan, Marx, p. 368 (“haunts me”); Marx to Engels, Dec. 27, 1863, MECW, v. 41, p. 503 (“Frankenstein”). See also Wheen, pp. 72, 294; KMIR, p. xviii (perennial sores, and opium and arsenic); Gabriel, loc. 5951 (Spanish fly).

  118. Marx to Engels, Sept. 10, 1862, in MAC, p. 261 (“bourgeois republic”); Moore, European Socialists and the American Promised Land, p. 24 (“multiplied its vices”); Greeley, quoted in Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, p. 372 (“unprincipled egotism”); Marx, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Tucker, ed., Marx-Engels Reader, p. 475 (“egotistical calculation”).

  119. Lincoln, “Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum,” CWL, v. 1, pp. 114–15 (“reason, cold, calculating”).

  120. Lincoln to Isaac M. Schermerhorn, Sept. 12, 1864, CWL, v. 8, p. 2 (“Steam-power”). I am indebted to Howard Jones for helping me to understand the nuances of Lincoln’s evolving antislavery position in the context of international diplomacy. For a succinct encapsulation of this argument, see Jones and Rakestraw, eds., “Diplomacy of the Civil War,” in American Foreign Relations Since 1600: A Guide to the Literature, p. 372.

  121. Carwardine, Lincoln, p. 250; Donald, Lincoln, p. 416.

  122. French, Witness to the Young Republic, pp. 416–17; Jones, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 1, 146–47; Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, p. 290.

  123. Marx quoted in Wheen, p. 157 (“clumsily cunning”); Marx, “A Historic Parallel,” Mar. 31, 1859, in Dispatches for the “New York Tribune,” p. 92 (“reckless gambler”).

  CHAPTER FIVE: LINCOLN VS. NAPOLEON

  1. Mary Lincoln quoted in Keckley, Behind the Scenes, p. 157 (“worn out”); Rice, ed., Reminiscences, pp. 249–50. See also Goodwin, p. 702.

  2. Bradford Wood to Salmon P. Chase, May 19, 1863, Chase Papers, LOC, cited in ALAL, v. 2, p. 611 (diplomat in Denmark wants to come home); Grant to Stanton, Nov. 10, 1864, Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, v. 12, p. 398; Adams to Seward, Nov. 25, 1864, FRUS 1865, v. 1, p. 1. See also ALAL, v. 2, p. 729.

  3. Jones, Blue and Gray Diplomacy, p. 293 (Polish revolt); Ridley, Palmerston, pp. 571–74; Crook, Diplomacy, p. 162 (date of invasion); Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, p. 353; Foreman, World on Fire, p. 627 (looks weak).

  4. Dayton to Seward, no. 129, Mar. 25, 1862, cited in Case and Spencer, United States and France, p. 288; Perkins, History of the Monroe Doctrine, p. 118. See also Mead, Special Providence, p. 23.

  5. Mahin, p. 196 (Lincoln recognized); Josephine Shaw Lowell diary, entry for May 20, 1863, copy in Allan Nevins Papers, Columbia University, cited in ALAL, v. 2, pp. 478–79. The brackets in this quote were presumably inserted by Prof. Burlingame. Lincoln in this quote is referring specifically to a French mediation proposal in early 1863.

  6. Donald, Lincoln, p. 553; New York Herald, Jan. 21, 1864, quoted in Mahin, pp. 234–35 (“grand army”); Stoeckl to Foreign Office, Jan. 24, 1865, No. 187, cited in Adams, Great Britain and the American Civil War, v. 2, p. 251 (“sure source”); Geofroy to Drouyn, Jan. 24, 1865, quoted in Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, p. 358 (“pivot of reconciliation”).

  7. Important accounts of the Hampton Roads Conference include Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War during the Year 1865, pp. 11–17; Daily Chronicle and Sentinel (August, Ga.), June 7, 1865; Hunter, “The Peace Commission of 1865,” Southern Historical Society Papers 1876, Apr. 1877, pp. 168–76. I have also consulted secondary accounts, including Nicolay and Hay, “The Hampton Roads Conference,” Century, v. 38, issue 6 (Oct. 1889), pp. 846–52; ALAL, v. 2, pp. 755–59; Donald, Lincoln, pp. 556–60; Goodwin, pp. 690–95; Bancroft, v. 2, pp. 410–15. See also Donald, Lincoln, pp. 556–57; New York Herald, Feb. 3, 1865, cited in Goodwin, p. 692 (small bag); Van Deusen, p. 383 (champagne and whisky); New York Times, Feb. 6, 1865, quoted in Goodwin, pp. 692–93 (bunting).

  8. Lincoln to Herndon, Feb. 2, 1848, in CWL, v. 1, p. 448.

  9. Ibid. (“consumptive man”); Campbell, Reminiscences, pp. 11–12.

  10. Campbell, Reminiscences, pp. 12–13, 16. On the similarities between Seward’s “foreign war panacea” and Stephens’s Mexico scheme, see Jones, Lincoln, p. 185 and ALAL, v. 2, p. 751.

  11. Nicolay and Hay, “Hampton Roads Conference,” Century, v. 38, issue 6 (Oct. 1889), p. 851; Campbell, Reminiscences, p. 17 (“maturely considered”); Angle, Lincoln Reader, p. 504 (“keep the champagne”). See also Donald, “We Are Lincoln Men,” pp. 174–75; and Taylor, Seward, p. 236.

  12. Lincoln scholar David Donald uses the above quote as the epigraph for his biography, which emphasizes Lincoln’s fatalism. Other scholars, such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, have argued against the notion that Lincoln was a fatalist. See Goodwin, p. 236. Richard Carwardine observes that Lincoln “may have been fatalistic, but he was also ambitious, enterprising, and determined.… The fatalist and activist were thus fused in Lincoln” (Carwardine, Lincoln, pp. 43–44). Michael Burlingame, while he notes the president’s “characteristic fatalism,” compares Lincoln’s attitude to the message in Reinhold Niebuhr’s “Serenity Prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.” Lincoln, Burlingame argues, believed he could “shape events up to a point” (ALAL, v. 2, p. 711).

  13. Lincoln, “Second Inaugural Address,” Mar. 4, 1865, CWL, v. 8, p. 332; Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, p. 267 (“progress” quote); McPherson, Tried by War, pp. xiv (“progress” quote), 3 (Hay’s recollection). Howard Jones, in his studies of Civil War diplomacy, emphasizes how Lincoln had come to consider “[d]omestic policy … inseparable from foreign affairs” (Jones, Abraham Lincoln, pp. 15, 191).

  14. Boritt, Lincoln a
nd the Economics of the American Dream, p. 270.

  15. Schlesinger Jr., Imperial Presidency, pp. 68–69; Perkins, History of the Monroe Doctrine, p. 122. James McPherson finds “Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive liberty … useful to explain the transformation wrought by the Civil War in the relationship between power and liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from interference by outside authority with individual thought or behavior. Positive liberty is freedom to achieve a status of freedom previously denied by disability or law. Negative liberty is vulnerable to power; positive liberty is a form of power.” See McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, p. 137. Jay Sexton argues that “within [the Monroe Doctrine] lurked the imperial ambitions of the expansionist United States.” Sexton, Monroe Doctrine, p. 3.

  16. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865, p. 358 (deeply troubled); Maximilian to Napoleon, Jan. 27, 1865, in Corti, v. 2, p. 871 (“barely sufficient”); Ridley, Napoleon III, p. 97 (burglars); Ridley, Palmerston, p. 413 (“my dear friend”); Kissinger, Diplomacy, p. 106 (“the worm”).

  17. Jerrold, v. 1, p. 71; Ridley, Napoleon III, p. 23.

  18. Jerrold, v. 1, pp. 84 (quiet and introverted), 75 (“Oui-Oui”), 93 (dressmaker), 123 (vineyards and pines); Ridley, Napoleon III, pp. 24 (Oui-Oui), 39–40 (hosiery shop etc).

  19. Ridley, Napoleon III, p. 51 (bird), 91 (local girls); Bierman, Napoleon III, p. 15 (“not attractive enough”).

  20. Ridley, Napoleon III, pp. 55 (Rubicon), 61–67 (expelled); Bierman, Napoleon III, pp. 18–19 (mom rescues).