THE 1860 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: THE POWER OF A RIGHTEOUS PARTY
On the evening of his nomination, Lincoln spoke to a crowd of celebrating Republicans who had paraded to his home after a rally in the statehouse. He told them “that he did not suppose the honor of such a visit was intended particularly for himself, as a private citizen, but rather to the representative of a great party.” This was more than simple modesty. Lincoln keenly understood that his election in November would depend, even more than the day’s success, on the power of the Republican organization. News of Lincoln’s nomination produced a rash of spontaneous local “ratification meetings” across the North, marked by cannon salutes, bonfires, fireworks, drums, processions, banners, and the pealing of church bells. In Chicago one observer thought “Babel had come again, and the Democratic Jericho shook at the shouts and blowing of trumpets and holding of torches in the left hands of the Republican Gideons.” Promising as these immediate signals seemed, a more sustained effort would be needed to put Lincoln in the White House.45
First, after the frictions of the convention, the party had to be seen to unify behind a candidate not universally approved. One irate New Englander complained: “You fellows at Chicago . . . knew that above everything else these times demanded a statesman, and you have gone and given us a rail splitter.” None of the high-ranking deputation that carried the convention’s decision to Springfield, few of whose members knew Lincoln personally, was so scornful, but as they gathered awkwardly in the Lincolns’ provincial parlor, noting his ungainliness and modesty, some entertained private misgivings about his ability to cope with the ordeal ahead. Yet Lincoln’s intelligence and human qualities made their mark during a brief, informal discussion. As they left, one of them remarked to Carl Schurz: “Well, we might have done a more brilliant thing, but we could hardly have done a better thing.”46
The grief of the defeated aspirants at Chicago stopped short of rancor. Bates, following a visit from Browning, published a letter of unequivocal support for Lincoln (“a sound, safe, national man”), though he declined to take the stump. Cameron publicly endorsed the Republican ticket within days. In Ohio, the McLean brigade pledged their support, and Chase, though he felt deeply betrayed, did not blame Lincoln, in whom he declared complete confidence. Crucial amongst the Sewardites was Thurlow Weed. Davis persuaded the maestro of New York politics to visit Springfield within a week of the convention. Lincoln reported that his visitor “asked nothing of me at all. He merely seemed to desire a chance of looking at me, keeping up a show of talk while he was at it.” After five hours of discussions, Weed departed, deeply impressed by Lincoln’s political sagacity and “intuitive knowledge of human nature.” Meanwhile, Seward himself spoke publicly of his confidence in Lincoln and urged his friends to set aside their disappointment. Lincoln reciprocated by allaying fears that he would freeze out his opponent’s supporters when he distributed presidential patronage. Davis, speaking for Lincoln, assured one of Seward’s chief lieutenants that, as candidate and president, the Illinoisan would use every available talent and “deal fairly with all.”47
Two photographs of the Republican party’s presidential nominee taken very shortly after the Chicago convention in May 1860.
Achieving a broad unity was an essential prerequisite of victory. The Republicans’ second task was to run a more cohesive campaign than that of the loose-knit party of 1856. Unlike the Whigs, who had never entirely shed their suspicion of institutional discipline and professional managers, the Republicans acknowledged the benefits of an effective machine. By 1860 Weed and Seward had done much “to inspire and crystallize” the party’s organization, particularly at state level.48 During the forthcoming campaign the chief burden would fall on these battle-hardened state committees. In five cases—Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and New Jersey—Republicans had won control of their state in the previous year’s elections; in the far West and border South were six states where the party, though organized, had no prospect of victory. But in eleven other states Republicans faced spring or fall campaigns. Lincoln’s fate would depend on the success or failure of a roster of hopeful gubernatorial candidates that included Curtin of Pennsylvania, Yates of Illinois, Lane of Indiana, and the radicals John A. Andrew of Massachusetts and Austin Blair of Michigan. By comparison with these energetic state machines, a congressional committee under Preston King and a national committee, headed by Governor Edwin D. Morgan of New York, proved relatively weak and under-resourced, their task being to help coordinate the operations of an essentially confederated, decentralized party. Morgan would chair the seven-member “sub-national committee” responsible for running the campaign, but he was preoccupied with his own reelection and most of its day-to-day work fell on the shoulders of a keen strategist, George C. Fogg of New Hampshire, with Weed providing a sense of direction.
Organizationally, the party lacked many of the advantages of its opponents, for the Democrats controlled the postmasterships and other federal offices that commonly energized partisan effort. However, the Republicans’ hopes of victory helped motivate many office-seeking activists, while their comparatively modest treasury did little to cramp a campaign that benefited from public enthusiasm and extemporized events. Just as important, the Democrats suffered an institutional nightmare, as the June conventions of a split party sent Douglas into presidential combat against his former allies in the “southern” democracy. In his own heartlands, Douglas kept control of the party machinery, leaving the administration Democrats, led by John C. Breckinridge, with the task of constructing new local agencies. In the South the problem was reversed, and Douglas’s men found themselves sucked into a legal and administrative quagmire.
Lincoln followed custom for the duration of the campaign, by avoiding any suggestion of direct personal involvement. He made no speeches, gave no public interviews, issued no letters or statements of public policy. Attending an open-air meeting in the capitol grounds at Springfield, he declined to sit on the platform, and when called on to speak he simply shook his head. Whether the memory of Clay’s self-defeating verbosity in 1844 influenced him is not clear. His discretion was certainly what the Republican managers wanted, and they squeaked their disquiet at the slightest public hint of an initiative. When, in his formal acceptance of the nomination, Lincoln simply declared his approval of the Chicago platform, which he would take care “not to violate, or disregard . . . in any part,” Indiana’s Richard Thompson promptly urged: “For God’s sake don’t write another letter for the papers.”49
In practice, of course, Lincoln was far more deeply engaged than he appeared. An instinctive electoral strategist, as well as a salient campaigner in every presidential contest since 1840, he had no intention of placing his future exclusively in the hands of others. He handed over his legal cases to Herndon, took on a secretary, and established an open-door office in the statehouse. There he did more than exchange conversational pleasantries with a stream of old acquaintances, portrait painters, photographers, and other visitors. He digested campaign reports from journalists and political correspondents. He read newspapers. He dispatched hundreds of private letters, some written for him, some sent in his own hand, all urging confidentiality; only occasionally did he lapse into damaging indiscretion, as when he flippantly suggested that visiting Kentucky would invite a lynching. He signaled party unity by greeting Seward at the Springfield railroad station when the New Yorker paused en route to Chicago. His chief concern throughout was party management: smoothing out factionalism and ensuring that the Republicans’ machine was as efficient and well targeted as possible. Thus, determined to win in Springfield itself and in Sangamon County, where Douglas held majorities in 1858, Lincoln personally went to examine the battle plan. When he learned that campaigners “would probably wait until a few days before the election before any systematic effort would be made in the city,” he became “very energetic in his actions and Language” and more or less imposed his own plan for luring doubtful voters.50
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br /> THE CANDIDATE WAITS AT HOME
Lincoln (in white, on the right of the doorway of his house) towers over his supporters. Convention dictated that the presidential nominee stay mute during the campaign, but on this particular day, in August 1860, when thousands of jubilant Illinois Republicans paraded in Springfield, sitting quietly at home took on a new meaning.
Sangamon was important because of its significance as a redoubt of old-line Whigs whose wider influence throughout the lower North would shape the election as a whole. Lincoln’s sources consistently told him that Bell and the Constitutional Union party, not Douglas, were the real enemy. Working vicariously through his “flying squadron” of Davis, Swett, Judd, and other personal friends, and using his secretary, John Nicolay, to deliver his letters and so avoid the scrutiny of Democratic postmasters, Lincoln made concerted efforts to discourage these conservatives from setting up a separate Bell ticket or, failing that, to keep them weak.51 Davis was especially energetic in this regard, not least in Indiana, where a Republican success in October would mean—in Lincoln’s words—that “failure is scarcely possible” in November.52 Davis met Caleb Smith and other Indiana leaders, and extracted money from the national committee to bring in a galaxy of speakers.
There is no better instance of Lincoln’s discreet, behind-the-scenes involvement in campaign organization than his intervention in the equally crucial October state of Pennsylvania. There the chronic factional feuding between the Curtin-McClure forces and Cameron’s men threatened to disable the campaign. Cameron’s allies tried to supplant McClure’s state committee with their own auxiliary, but were outwitted. Both camps peppered Lincoln with letters, which included charges of financial mismanagement. Lincoln was determined not to take sides, but to get both groups to “look to the present and the future only.” He sent Davis and Swett to investigate, on the pretext of conducting a general review of progress. Over the course of two days McClure let them scrutinize every aspect of his operations. Much impressed by the efficiency of the party’s machine, which had set up two thousand local committees statewide, they confessed to the misplaced doubts that had led them to come. McClure learned the lesson that Lincoln “took nothing for granted,” and the two men’s subsequent correspondence aired campaign issues in a spirit of mutual confidence and esteem.53
“I do what I can in my position, for organization,” Lincoln remarked to U.S. senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, “but it does not amount to so much as it should.” He knew, naturally, that victory would depend not on his own efforts, but on a regiment of energetic Republican committees developing an irresistible appeal on the back of the usual sequence of ratification meetings. Lincoln feared that the party might neglect the “irksome labor” of organization-building, but his concern was largely ill-founded. The spontaneous local responses in May gave way over the summer to county and then statewide meetings to ratify the electoral ticket, with tens of thousands swarming to these and their attendant processions, parades, brass bands, and barbecues. During September and October almost daily rallies in some locality or another brought business to a halt and the campaign to its climax. Behind all this activity stood a burgeoning network of Republican clubs, extending into previously uncolonized areas of the lower North and border South. The strongest raised funds not just for themselves but for needier Republicans in the most pivotal contests. All supported semimilitary marching companies of enthusiasts known as “Wide Awakes,” uniquely clad in oilcloth capes and caps, to protect them from the dripping kerosene of their torches. Lincoln had encountered their prototype earlier in the year, in Hartford, Connecticut, where they had originated during the gubernatorial election. By November they would become a ubiquitous feature of the Republican campaign and would add far more than mere decoration and color: they brought a real sense of power, momentum, and even invincibility to the party’s activities. Rattled Democrats founded their own companies—which in Brooklyn took the name of “the Chloroformers,” designed to “put the Wide Awakes to sleep.”54
Republican organizers whetted the public appetite with a feast of political oratory. In halls, squares, river landing places, and the replica “wigwams” that sprouted in many of the larger cities, a stream of Republican orators took their message to the people. Speakers found themselves pressed into service at impromptu meetings beyond their planned itineraries. They included the biggest names in the party, directed by the national or state committees to the areas where their particular appeal could do most good. Seward’s radicalism made him a prize attraction in the farther Northwest and New England. Tom Corwin, Frank Blair, Caleb Smith, and other conservatives worked Indiana. Chase addressed free-soil Democrats in Michigan. Henry Wilson’s attributes as a former shoemaker’s apprentice and ex–Know-Nothing made him a natural choice for audiences of workingmen or nativists. Schurz spoke to German-Americans, Vermont’s U.S. congressman Justin S. Morrill to protectionists.
Republican authors and editors enriched this diet with a glut of printed material. In a nation boasting more newspaper titles than any other country in the world, hundreds were Republican sheets: the party had over 120 in Ohio alone. Many offered low subscription rates for the campaign’s duration. Tracts and speeches, which had poured from the Republican Association of Washington and various regional presses since the previous presidential contest, saturated the country. Campaigners matched propaganda to the audience. “I believe the most effective Document for all the region North of Rock River will be [the radical] Lovejoy’s last speech—then for the whole state prepare a Document composed of choice selections from Lincoln’s,” one Illinois activist told Richard Yates, adding mischievously: “I think [Mississippi senator] Jeff Davis’ last speeches would be good to distribute down in Egypt—vs. Douglas Democracy.”55 As this implied, Lincoln’s speeches of 1858 and 1859 were extensively circulated as campaign texts, and the candidate himself prepared his Cooper Union speech for publication, which the Young Men’s Republican Union issued in an annotated edition.
No antebellum presidential contest was complete without its campaign biographies: within weeks of his nomination the party had made available four separate accounts of Lincoln’s life, and eighteen appeared in all. The most dependable was John Locke Scripps’s thirty-two-page version, based on a personal interview. Both men’s scrupulousness and conscientiousness, when combined with Lincoln’s modesty, made the exercise as enjoyable as pulling teeth. Scripps found his interviewee “painfully impressed with the extreme poverty of his early surroundings—the utter absence of all romantic and heroic elements.” Lincoln told him: “It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life. It can all be condensed into a single sentence, and that sentence you will find in Gray’s Elegy: ‘The short and simple annals of the poor.’ That’s my life, and that’s all you or any one else can make of it.”56 Even so, the party machine found it more than adequate. After its simultaneous publication in Scripps’s Chicago Press and Tribune and Greeley’s New York Tribune, the biography appeared as a cheap pamphlet that sold over a million copies before election day.57
LINCOLN AND HAMLIN CAMPAIGN BANNER, 1860
The oval portraits of the candidates, set in rustic frames, are linked by a Lincolnian fence rail bearing the slogan “Free Speech, Free Homes, Free Territory,” a variant on the party’s familiar motto “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.” The banner offers the promise of national well-being based on industrial and agricultural enterprise, by implication when the government is freed from the dead hand of slavery and the slave power. Lincoln’s portrait is a reproduction of a photograph taken most probably in 1858.
Republican organization gave structure and focus to the Republican campaign, but its impressive energy had its source elsewhere, in a cluster of potent ideas. In essence, Republicans plaited three strands of popular thought into the core policy of the Chicago platform, the nonextension of slavery. In declaring its hostility to an aggressive slave power, the party wore the mantle of conservative c
onstitutionalists, defending the threatened ideals and intentions of the republic’s Founders. At the same time, by seeking to quarantine slavery, Republicans posed as the champions of economic enterprise, the dignity of work, and democratic capitalism. Finally, and perhaps most potent of all, the policy gave the party its purchase on the constituency of antislavery Protestants, for whom containment provided a plausible means of eventually extirpating a moral wrong. The record of Lincoln’s words and experience provided Republican campaigners with rich material for each of these themes.
First, the “slave power.” The Chicago platform’s policy on slavery was essentially radical. Denouncing popular sovereignty, it asserted the federal government’s constitutional duty to enforce what the due process clause demanded: a legal ban on slavery in the territories. The more inflammatory language of the 1856 platform was excised but, following Giddings’s intervention, delegates agreed to set out in full the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence. Radicals like Schurz left Chicago proud of their achievement. Yet, at the same time, the platform gave Republicans the chance to campaign as conservatives and traditionalists who cherished the values and policies of the Founding Fathers. Their declared intent was not innovation but restoration: they offered a “primitivist” return to the nation’s republican roots, prising the levers of power from the hands of sectional “slaveocrats” bent on expanding slavery westward, reopening the Atlantic slave trade, and founding a new empire in the Caribbean. In deference to southerners’ constitutional rights, the platform implicitly disowned John Brown’s raid: the party would “maintain inviolate” the rights of each state “to order and control its own domestic institutions.” But, they insisted, banning the spread of slavery was no less respectful of the republic’s ancient landmarks. The real radicals were those demanding federal slave codes and the sanctification of slavery. Republicans’ rhetorical strategy was to show, in the words of Governor Morgan and the national committee, that they alone had the backbone to resist the “persistently insolent and aggressive” demands of a pernicious slave power.58
Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power Page 17