Lincoln and the Power of the Press The War for Public Opinion

by Harold Holzer

  Of course Henry Villard of the Herald was part of that press contingent, by now well established as the reporter who knew Lincoln best. Joining the corps as well were Joseph Howard, Jr., of the New York Times, O. H. Dutton of Greeley’s Tribune, and T. C. Evans of the New York World, all recently arrived in Springfield so they could leave town with the incoming president and travel with his party to the capital. The Chicago Tribune assigned Henry M. Smith, the Cincinnati Gazette sent W. G. Terrell, the Philadelphia Inquirer dispatched Uriah Hunt Painter, and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper credentialed its talented sketch artist Henri Lovie. Other papers would not be deprived of firsthand reports. Determined to miss no detail of what promised to be a dramatic cross-country journey, the Associated Press sent no fewer than five correspondents: J. R. Drake, S. D. Page, J. H. A. Bone, A. W. Griswold, and Theodore Stager. Deputy presidential secretary John Hay, who had continued to file pro-Lincoln dispatches for the Missouri Democrat throughout the Secession Winter, qualified as a traveling correspondent as well: as usual, he served during the inaugural journey as both an aide and a reporter.50

  Fortunately, this retinue overheard just enough of Lincoln’s Springfield farewell to realize at once that they had missed a major story. As soon as the train lurched out of town, Villard visited the presidential “saloon” car and asked Lincoln to provide the press pool with his text so reporters could belatedly transmit it by telegraph at the first stop. Lincoln, however, had no text to give him. He had spoken extemporaneously—and not with perfect grace, as the Springfield transcript would later show—but he agreed to reconstruct the speech for the journalists now. As the train steamed toward Indiana, the president-elect took pencil in hand and commenced writing in an increasingly shaky scrawl as his car lurched along the tracks, rocking as it picked up speed. Then, perhaps made queasy by the effort, he handed the task over to secretary John Nicolay, who took dictation for a few sentences more. Inexplicably—was Nicolay writing too slowly?—Lincoln then reclaimed the page and finished the text himself. What Lincoln ultimately handed Villard was a vastly improved, highly polished version of the spontaneous goodbye he had delivered moments earlier. As recrafted, it was not only a testament to the orator’s gift for captivating hearing audiences, but also to his consummate skill at massaging such remarks for adaptation by the press. Most memorably of all, his original “Friends, one and all, I must bid you an affectionate farewell” emerged far more eloquently as “To His care commending you as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.” For his own report on Lincoln’s impromptu farewell speech, Villard made no mention of his missed opportunity to hear it firsthand, instead adding a flourish as if he had witnessed not only Lincoln’s remarks but the crowd’s reaction: “As he turned to enter the cars three cheers were given.”51

  Had Lincoln been able to control his message with equal success for the duration of his inaugural journey, he might well have entered Washington and begun his presidency with his reputation at an all-time peak. But after nearly a year of unaccustomed silence, Lincoln soon showed that he was out of practice as a public speaker. Over the next few days, the president-elect sounded bellicose at Indianapolis (“Doctor Lincoln,” commented the Herald, was not the first “political quack who has killed his patient through combined stupidity and ignorance”); oversanguine in Columbus (he “did not know what he was saying,” Bennett insisted of the performance), and inexplicably focused on corollary tariff issues in Pittsburgh (offering “crude, ignorant twaddle,” even Villard admitted).52

  In a sense, it did not much matter what Lincoln said on the trip, or how he said it. In reports published in pro-Republican newspapers like the New York Times and New York Tribune, Lincoln inevitably appeared as a restrained leader well aware of the perils facing his fractured country, and consistently rising to the occasion with homespun, practical, and, in some instances, inspiring calls for calm and patience. To the press long aligned with the opposition Democrats, the reemergent Lincoln seemed more like an embarrassing comedian joking his way across the country, unwilling or unable to confront the grave crisis at hand. Journals in each two-paper city along the inaugural route affirmed these partisan sentiments: Republican papers in Indianapolis, Columbus, and Pittsburgh hailed the president-elect’s less-than-sterling performances, while their pro-Democratic counterparts lacerated him even more brutally than he deserved. If Lincoln harbored any thought that the ongoing secession nightmare and the approach of inauguration day might unite Northern press support for his administration, he quickly learned he was mistaken.

  Judging solely from the unfiltered transcripts of all his recorded remarks—more than a hundred public utterances, when all was said and done—the inescapable truth was that Lincoln did not really regain his oratorical footing until he reached Trenton, New Jersey, a week and a half after his departure from Springfield. The Republican press never admitted as much, but the incoming president did little until then to build public confidence as he made his way toward the national capital, even if his welcomes were mostly warm. Toward the end of the journey, even the loyal John Hay seemed disappointed. In one dispatch filed with the Missouri Democrat after the inaugural caravan reached upstate New York, Hay reported: “The greatest, richest and most powerful of the states has slapped the President upon the shoulder emphatically, told him to ‘go it,’ and be sure of at least one ‘backer.’ The state will keep its word. The question is, will ‘Old Abe’ go it?” If some of Hay’s inaugural journey reports often seemed equally irreverent, they were marks not of disloyalty but of professional frustration. In each city, the official press corps monopolized the telegraph lines to file their daily reports. Forced to send his own stories by post, Hay had no choice but to make them vivid and offbeat. They featured, he admitted, “incidents of the sort not written in the chronicles of that natural enemy of the scribe, whose letters go by mail—the telegraph reporter,” adding: “Accursed be his memory, forever and a day.”53

  On February 15, Lincoln’s train paused at the tiny hamlet of Girard, Ohio, where an uninvited, curious-looking passenger boarded, clutching a gripsack and comforter as he entered the press car. “He wore that mysteriously durable garment, the white coat,” John Hay caustically observed, “and carried in his hand a yellow bag, labelled with his name and address, in characters which might be read across Lake Erie.” Here again was none other than the editor of the New York Tribune, still wandering through the countryside in search of news, influence, and lecture income. “No little sensation was produced . . . by the unexpected appearance on the train of Horace Greeley, equipped with a valise and his well known red and blue blanket,” Henry Villard reported. Entering “the reporters’ car,” Greeley tried explaining that he believed he had boarded the regularly scheduled train east, a story that failed to convince the other journalists riding in what may have been the most gaudily decorated conveyance ever to pass through the countryside.

  John Nicolay quickly ushered Greeley to Lincoln’s private car, where the president-elect “came forward to greet him” and introduced him for the first time to Mrs. Lincoln. Thus Greeley enjoyed his second face-to-face conference with the president-elect within just ten days. Their conversation, however, went unrecorded. And then, after about twenty miles, the editor disembarked at one of his onetime stamping grounds: Erie, Pennsylvania. As usual, Greeley had caused a stir. It was not for nothing that the Cleveland Plain Dealer described him at the time—half disrespectfully, half admiringly—as the “drab-coated, white-hatted Philosopher” who enjoyed unlimited access to Lincoln because he had “made him President.”54

  Like Greeley, Henry Villard soon abandoned the entourage as well. Declaring himself “sick of the ‘traveling show,’ ” and no doubt believing he would hear nothing further of importance from the man of the hour, the correspondent peeled away from the press corps once Lincoln reached New York City on February 19. Making his way through the narrow hallways and overcrowded warrens that the Herald still c
alled home, the indefatigable reporter asked James Gordon Bennett “to be relieved” of his assignment and the editor reluctantly agreed.55 With Villard’s departure, the Herald’s extraordinary months of day-to-day Lincoln coverage came to an end. Just a few days later, as it happened, Villard missed the most dramatic story of the entire journey. But so, too, for that matter, did the rest of the press contingent, through no fault of their own.

  But first Lincoln labored mightily to make a good impression in the newspaper capital he had virtually taken by storm just a year earlier with his Cooper Union speech. This time, approbation in New York seemed harder to achieve. Even the smallest details of his greeting were hotly disputed by partisan correspondents, with the Times reporting an “immeasurable outpouring of the people,” and the Herald insisting that the unenthusiastic crowds were far sparser than the “impenetrable” masses who had welcomed the Prince of Wales to the city just a few months before.56 It was no wonder that journalists were barred from Mayor Fernando Wood’s subsequent reception in Lincoln’s honor, at least until one correspondent pushed his way inside by arguing, “Reporters aren’t among the nobodies, you know.”57 Political divisions were no less tense. Wood had recently proposed that the city “disrupt the bonds which bind her to a venal corrupt master” and consider an open alliance with the Confederacy, an idea applauded by the New York Daily News, a paper conveniently operated by the mayor’s brother Ben. To the New York Illustrated News, however, Wood’s initiative signaled a policy of “Every man for himself. . . . If we are to have a political scramble, the Mayor of New York will go in for a big share of the spoils.”58

  After joining editors Thurlow Weed and James Watson Webb for a breakfast with anxious New York merchants on February 20, Lincoln confidently faced down Wood at the public levee at City Hall. Replying from across a desk once used by George Washington, the president-elect made it clear: “There is nothing that can ever bring me willingly to consent to the destruction of this Union, under which not only the commercial city of New York, but the whole country has acquired its greatness.” The ship of state would be saved, he vowed, “without throwing the passengers and cargo”—his apt metaphor for the bitterly divided seaport—“overboard.”59

  Following an equally resolute but far more eloquent speech the next day before the New Jersey state legislature at Trenton, a reenergized Lincoln arrived in Philadelphia on February 21 for what promised to be the most stirring event of his entire trip: an emotionally charged flag-raising ceremony on Washington’s Birthday outside the birthplace of American liberty, Independence Hall. Before he could rest up for the predawn ritual, however, Lincoln received distressing news from a visiting railroad detective named Allan Pinkerton: a credible assassination plot awaited him when his train reached the first Southern city on its itinerary, Baltimore. With reluctance, Lincoln agreed to alter his publicly announced travel plans and journey in secret to Washington overnight—bypassing Baltimore entirely, except for an unavoidable late-night, crosstown detour to change railroad lines. The decision may have saved Lincoln’s life, but it nearly killed his reputation.

  That evening, toward the end of a reception in his honor at Harrisburg, the president-elect slipped away to begin his clandestine trip, accompanied only by his longtime friend and bodyguard Ward Hill Lamon, and leaving the entire press corps behind. To avoid recognition along the way, Lincoln substituted a soft plug hat for his signature stovepipe. Correspondents went to bed that night in Harrisburg unaware that their quarry had escaped their scrutiny. Pinkerton agents cut telegraph lines to prevent their communicating the news should they somehow unearth it before Lincoln arrived safely in Washington. The following morning, angry journalists awakened to learn that the object of their attention had vanished.

  Once allowed to do so, the reporters initially reported the developments forthrightly, leaving commentary to their editors—with one major exception. Joseph Howard of the New York Times had not come halfway across the country to be denied his right to observe the journey’s final leg. He exacted his revenge in print. On February 25 the Times published his fictional account that Lincoln had stolen through Baltimore disguised in “a Scotch plaid Cap and very long military cloak so that he was entirely unrecognizable.” Though the story was maliciously and obviously fabricated, Lincoln’s press opponents pounced on it. To the always critical Herald, the new president had “crept into Washington” like a “thief in the night.” When Greeley attempted to excuse the president-elect by insisting, “Mr. Lincoln may live a hundred years without having so good a chance to die,” Bennett shot back: “We have no doubt the Tribune is sincerely sorry at his escape from martyrdom.”60

  In the weeks to come, newspapers North as well as South mocked Lincoln unforgivingly, accusing him of rank cowardice. “We do not believe the Presidency can ever be more degraded by any of his successors than it has been by him,” reported the Baltimore Sun. But the papers had no compunction about supplying its readers with all the details. “The New York Times . . . furnishes the wondering world with ample details of the Lincoln hegira,” the Sun proclaimed. “We are not disposed to deprive our readers of one jot or tittle of the outrageous romance with which the Times entertains its own.”61 “Mr. Lincoln’s night ride to Washington will make hereafter a splendid incident for the theatre,” Bennett commented, “while his Scotch cap will be as famous as the green turban of the Prophet, and his long military cloak be placed with the uniform of Washington in the Patent Office.” The Herald declared that it would be better now “for Old Abe to cut Washington altogether, and return to New York, where he can be inaugurated magnificently under the auspices of Barnum.”62

  When the daily press exhausted its arsenal of critical words, illustrated weeklies like Vanity Fair and Harper’s filled the void with humiliating pictures, portraying Lincoln in an array of ridiculous disguises, including beribboned tams and plaid kilts.63 Surely the Scottish-born James Gordon Bennett must have taken special delight in—or umbrage over—the rash of images showing the despised “Black Republican” escaping danger by passing himself off as, of all things, a Scotsman. Newly hired New York Times editorial writer John Swinton (himself a native Scot) joked that Bennett “could dance the Highland fling, play the bagpipes, toss the caber, wield the claymore for his clan, sport an eagle’s feather in his bonnet, climb the cloud-capped crags, or demean himself like Robbie Burns—all with equal facility. For these things, and others yet, he may be said to have done for a long time in the Herald.”64

  • • •

  During the days leading up to his inauguration, Lincoln hoped to seclude himself at one of Washington’s private homes, far from office seekers and influence peddlers. Fortuitously—in view of the Baltimore uproar—editor Thurlow Weed had learned of this plan when the inaugural procession stopped in Albany, and strongly objected, insisting that the president-elect was now “public property” and ought to register with his family at a public hotel where he could be seen by all, confident and unafraid. “The truth is, I suppose I am now public property,” Lincoln echoed, “and a public inn is the place where people can have access to me.”65 The Lincoln party ended up at the most conspicuous Washington hotel of all, Willard’s, just down the street from the White House, a far cry from the cramped boardinghouse on Capitol Hill where the Lincoln family had lived in a single room twelve years earlier—and one far more likely to attract newspapermen to its thronged and smoke-filled lobby.

  Moreover, as Lincoln soon learned, the Peace Convention was at the time conducting its deliberations in a former church next door, only recently annexed by Willard’s. This time, however, Lincoln would not commit the same social blunder he had made in paying court at Greeley’s hotel in Springfield. He would not call on the delegates; he would wait for the delegates to call on him. They did so on the evening of February 23, filing into his hotel suite around 9 P.M. for handshakes and conversation—a good deal of it less than friendly. Lincoln answered patiently when several Southerners accused him of being
the aggressor in the secession crisis. The tense conversation inevitably turned to newspapers. “Your press is incendiary,” thundered James Seddon, the convention’s Southern manager. “It advocates servile insurrection, and advises our slaves to cut their masters’ throats. You do not suppress your newspapers. You encourage their violence.”

  “I beg your pardon, Mr. Seddon,” Lincoln calmly interrupted. “I intend no offence, but I will not suffer such a statement to pass unchallenged, because it is not true. No Northern newspaper, not the most ultra, has advocated a slave insurrection or advised the slaves to cut their masters’ throats. A gentleman of your intelligence should not make such assertions. We do maintain the freedom of the press—we deem it necessary to a free government. Are we peculiar in that respect? Is not the same doctrine held in the South?”66 No one could have predicted it at the time, but if Lincoln truly believed in absolute freedom of the press in February, he would come to think quite differently by July.

  Although most of Lincoln’s many subsequent visitors at Willard’s were politicians and military men, few were surprised when prominent journalists followed, including Ben Perley Poore, who had known the president-elect during his congressional days. After “a cordial greeting” and “some pleasant reminiscences,” Lincoln showed Poore the working copy of his inaugural address, exacting a promise that Poore would not allow its contents to “get into print.” The veteran editor never went back on his word, but remembered well—and for the benefit of his readers—that Lincoln’s copy of the address had been “put in type by his friend, the local printer” in Springfield—meaning Bailhache and Baker—and now boasted the president-elect’s own inserts for emphasis, each designated with a handwritten “typographical fist.” Another press notable made his way to Lincoln’s suite as well. “Horace Greeley stopped at Willard’s (of course) . . . and attracted much notice,” the New York Illustrated News informed its readers shortly before the inaugural. “His good natured, generous face, his unassuming manners, and especially his well known great coat, and broad-brimmed hat, made him a man of conspicuousness and mark. Besides which he was the editor of the Tribune, a fact enough in itself to emblazon any one for all time, and render him immortal for all eternity.” The friendly paper reported Greeley “wandering about the public rooms, and along the lobbies and corridors of the great hotel, mostly busy with his own thoughts, and, not to speak it ill-naturedly, doing a little internal speculation upon his prospects of official employment.”67