On September 1, Seward’s campaign train pulled into Springfield. Lincoln, accompanied by Trumbull, hopped aboard to greet him. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., traveling with Seward, recorded in his diary, “Judge Trumbull I had met before in Washington, and again in St. Louis the previous day; but ‘old Abe’ was a revelation. There he was, tall, shambling, plain and good-natured. He seemed shy to a degree, and very awkward in manner; as if he felt out of place; and had a realizing sense that properly the positions should be reversed. Seward too appeared constrained.” Trumbull introduced Lincoln to Seward. They had met before, speaking together for the Whigs in Boston in 1848. “There was no demonstration; not a pretense of a reception,” wrote Adams, who didn’t quite know what to make of Lincoln. He observed that he had “a mild, dreamy, meditative eye which one would scarcely expect to see in a successful chief magistrate in these days of the republic.” Seward and Lincoln talked for five minutes, Seward gave a short speech to those gathered at the depot, and the train pulled out for Chicago. On October 12, Lincoln wrote him, “It now really looks as if the Government is about to fall into our hands.”
On October 20, Major David Hunter, one of the few antislavery Republican officers in the army, stationed at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, wrote a strange letter to Lincoln, whom he said he had met years ago in Chicago. It was the first warning of an attempt to assassinate him, a story “that a number of young men in Virginia had bound themselves, by oaths the most solemn, to cause your assassination, should you be elected. Now Sir, you may laugh at this story, and really it does appear too absurd to repeat, but I beg you to recollect, that on ‘the institution’ these good people are most certainly demented, and being crazy, they should be taken care of, to prevent their doing harm to themselves or others.” Lincoln replied on October 26 that he had also received a rumor about a coup: “I have another letter, from a writer unknown to me, saying the officers of the army at Fort Kearny have determined, in case of Republican success at the approaching presidential election, to take themselves, and the arms at that point, South, for the purpose of resistance to the government. While I think there are many chances to one that this is a humbug, it occurs to me that any real movement of this sort in the army would leak out and become known to you. In such case, if it would not be unprofessional or dishonorable (of which you are to be judge), I shall be much obliged if you will apprise me of it.”
As his election appeared imminent, Lincoln received a letter from one of the most important supporters of John Bell urging him to tell the public that he, Lincoln, intended to behave more or less like John Bell. George D. Prentice, editor of the Louisville Journal, wrote that Lincoln should release a public letter “setting forth your conservative views . . . and therefore calculated to assure all the good citizens of the South and to take from the disunionists every excuse or pretext for treason.” Prentice was pro-Unionist and proslavery. He had been close to Henry Clay, his biographer, but after the Whigs came apart he became a Know Nothing, publishing vicious anti-Catholic diatribes and provoking an anti-immigrant riot in Louisville in 1855 trying to prevent Germans from voting that left twenty-two people dead. Now Prentice was for order, peace, and civility. Lincoln replied on October 29 that Prentice’s idea was “a very worthy one” in theory, but pointed out that “my conservative views and intentions,” which were “already in print,” were being ignored by Prentice. Instead, Lincoln wrote, “you . . . busy yourself with appeals to all conservative men, to vote for Douglas—to vote any way which can possibly defeat me—thus impressing your readers that you think, I am the very worst man living. If what I have already said has failed to convince you, no repetition of it would convince you.” Lincoln thought Prentice’s suggestion would prove counterproductive. “If I do finally abstain, it will be because of apprehension that it would do harm,” he wrote. “For the good men of the South—and I regard the majority of them as such—I have no objection to repeat seventy and seven times. But I have bad men also to deal with, both North and South—men who are eager for something new upon which to base new misrepresentations—men who would like to frighten me, or, at least, to fix upon me the character of timidity and cowardice. They would seize upon almost any letter I could write, as being an ‘awful coming down.’ I intend keeping my eye upon these gentlemen, and to not unnecessarily put any weapons in their hands.”
Lincoln would not allow himself to be flattered or intimidated into taking a public position that would eclipse the Republican platform, make him seem too eager or anxious about assuming power, and falsely attempt to resemble John Bell. If he were to adopt Prentice’s tactic, he would deprive his candidacy of its purpose, demoralize Republicans, and boost the fusion tickets in the North, the last a desperate ploy to throw the election into the House. Silence was golden.
On November 1, Major Hunter replied to Lincoln. He debunked Lincoln’s story about a coup, but had precise information about the “treasonous” shifting of military resources in preparation for secession under the direction of the sitting secretary of war John Floyd, the former Virginia governor. Hunter recorded “the sending by the government of a large number of arms to Charleston, and the ordering of the Engineer officers to have the Forts in that harbor finished, and put in a complete state of defense. I may also add the sending of two companies from this post—one to Augusta Arsenal, Georgia, the other to Fort Smith, Arkansas. These are small affairs, but they tend to show which way the current is running.” Hunter continued to send Lincoln information after the election and Lincoln continued to encourage him to send more.
On November 4, a group of Ohio politicos paid Lincoln a visit, including Robert C. Schenck, a former Whig congressman who had been an early supporter, and Donn Piatt, a journalist and former diplomat who had been close to Chase. They put themselves before Lincoln to influence his appointments, which might include them. Piatt warned Lincoln that the portents of secession were serious, but it was an observation and a warning, not a suggestion that he offer any gesture. “He could not understand that men would get up in their wrath and fight for an idea,” wrote Piatt. “He considered the movement South as a sort of political game of bluff, gotten up by politicians, and meant solely to frighten the North. He believed that when the leaders saw their efforts in that direction were unavailing, the tumult would subside. ‘They won’t give up the offices,’ I remember he said, and added, ‘Were it believed that vacant places could be had at the North Pole, the road there would be lined with dead Virginians.’ ”
The day before the election, on November 5, Lincoln had another caller, a prominent Boston businessman connected to the Southern trade and representing a host of New England commercial interests. “I have called to see,” he said, “if the alarms of many persons in New England engaged in commerce and manufactures cannot by some means be relieved. . . . Our trade has fallen off, our workmen are idle, we get no orders from the South, and with the increasing chances of civil war, bankruptcy and ruin stare us in the face.” He requested a statement from Lincoln of “conservative” intentions “to reassure the men honestly alarmed.” According to John Nicolay and John Hay, Lincoln’s private secretaries, Lincoln “divined at once the mercenary nature of the appeal and it roused him to repel the pressure.” “This is the same old trick by which the South breaks down every Northern victory,” he replied. “Even if I were personally willing to barter away the moral principle involved in this contest, for the commercial gain of a new submission to the South, I would go to Washington without the countenance of the men who supported me and were my friends before the election; I would be as powerless as a block of buckeye wood.” Lincoln did not accept the terms presented to him. “There are many general terms afloat, such as ‘conservatism,’ ‘enforcement of the irrepressible conflict at the point of the bayonet,’ ‘hostility to the South,’ etc., all of which mean nothing without definition. What then could I say to allay their fears, if they will not define what particular act or acts they fear from me or my friends?”
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p; Again, Lincoln explained to his visitor, “”If I shall begin to yield to these threats, if I begin dallying with them, the men who have elected me (if I shall be elected) would give me up before my election, and the South, seeing it, would deliberately kick me out. If my friends should desire me to repeat anything I have before said, I should have no objection to do so. If they required me to say something I had not yet said, I would either do so or get out of the way. If I should be elected, the first duty to the country would be to stand by the men who elected me.”
“The South and the Revolutionary Consequences of Lincoln’s Election” ran the headline on the lead editorial on Election Day, November 6, in the New York Herald. “Active secession proceedings have already been initiated in several of the Southern States in anticipation of the disunion signal of Lincoln’s election. . . . Here, then, are the foreshadowed consequences of Lincoln’s election—the secession of South Carolina and several other States, and the arming of the border slave States to protect the seceding States from federal coercion. Of course, any attempt by arm on the part of the federal government, under such a state of thing, to coerce the seceding States into submission, would be criminally foolish in the highest degree, for it could result only in a calamitous civil war.” Yet another article on the same page reported on “The Secession Movement in the South.” “It is the part of madness to ignore all the positive proof that comes to us showing the magnitude of this secession movement. The evidence is irresistible, and if the North still persists in ridiculing it, it will come upon the country like a thunderclap from a serene sky. Wise and patriotic men will strive to avert the pending storm. It can yet be done by defeating Lincoln.”
Dawn on Election Day was greeted in Springfield by the firing of a cannon, awakening citizens to their duty to file to the courthouse opposite the capitol, the sole polling place in town. Lincoln spent the day in the governor’s office with a view from the window of the voters coming and going, chatting with visitors, until he noticed a thinning of the line across the street, strolled over to vote, tore off the top part of the ballot containing the presidential choice with his name on it to show he had not immodestly voted for himself, and returned to his perch after five minutes. By nightfall, he retreated to the telegraph office with a few friends to watch the ticker. Trumbull burst in at about nine o’clock, arriving on the train from Alton. “We’ve got ’em; we’ve got ’em,” he kept saying as the returns came in. About ten o’clock, a wire arrived from Cameron: “Pennsylvania 70,000 for you. New York safe. Glory enough.” Lincoln felt relaxed enough to have dinner, wandering to Watson’s Saloon, taken over by the ladies for the occasion. His entrance was greeted by their voices in unison, “How do you do, Mr. President?” Just as he was about to eat, a runner rushed in with a telegram showing a diminished Democratic vote in New York City, the last hope for the Democrats to win New York and throw the election into the House of Representatives. The throng burst into song: “We’re the Lincoln boys! We’re the Lincoln boys! Ain’t you glad you joined the Republicans? Joined the Republicans—Joined the Republicans!”
Lincoln walked over to the telegraph office, receiving results throughout the night. Near dawn he said he “guess’d he’d go home now.” He found Mary asleep. He tried to wake her. “Mary! Mary! We are elected!”
Lincoln won with less than forty percent of the vote. In the Electoral College, he carried the entire Northeast (except the southern part of New Jersey below the Mason-Dixon line that went to Douglas), the Northwest states, and narrowly won California and Oregon. Breckinridge swept the Deep South, Maryland, and Delaware. Bell held the border states of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Douglas barely carried a sharply divided Missouri, but came in second nationally in the popular vote. The Douglas and Bell total in the South in favor of the Union exceeded that for Breckinridge. Lincoln’s total in the North exceeded that for Douglas, Bell, and Breckinridge combined. He received not a single vote in ten Southern states; the Republican Party was kept off the ballot. The Democrats kept control of the Senate and clawed back the House, though Republicans and anti-Lecompton Democrats constituted a majority.
For the first time in a presidential election the invincibility of the South on the issue of slavery was broken. A president pledged against its expansion would soon be at the helm of the executive branch, invested with the power of federal patronage, the ability to appoint federal judges and justices of the Supreme Court, and command of the armed forces.
The day after the election, the Stars and Stripes over federal buildings was lowered across South Carolina and State Rights flags, a red star on a white background, and Palmetto State flags were hoisted in their place.
On December 20 the delegates of the secession convention assembled in the South Carolina Institute Hall, thereafter known as Secession Hall, where months earlier the Democratic Party was broken apart. Each man solemnly walked up to the stage to sign the document: “To dissolve the Union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled ‘The Constitution of the United States of America.’ ” The ultimate cause stated was “the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is not to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
The Charleston Mercury published an extra edition: “The Union Is Dissolved!”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During the past few years I have been immersed in the events and personalities of the period in which Abraham Lincoln emerged as a national leader. But like other Americans I could not avoid having at least one eye wide awake to the whirlwind that bears more than a passing resemblance to the gathering storm that led to Lincoln’s election. If the house divided, the manipulations of demagogues, the appeals to anti-immigrant nativism and racism, a dysfunctional presidency, and the breakup of the old parties seem familiar, it is because they were Lincoln’s central subjects. New facts and facets remain to be unearthed on Lincoln, held up to the light and that illuminate both past and present crises.
I appreciated the opportunity that Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland extended to me to speak at the Capitol in January 2019 with the incoming Democratic members of the 114th Congress about Lincoln, who appeared not as an unapproachable marble figure but a politician like them who had walked the same grounds and confronted what seemed similarly perplexing problems.
Nearly all of those to whom I am indebted for helping me produce this volume make recurrent appearances in these acknowledgments for their well-deserved credit in the two earlier Lincoln ones. First and foremost is Alice Mayhew, editor nonpareil. Beyond her extraordinary acumen and deep knowledge, she also has the power to see through a manuscript with X-ray vision, locate the fracture lines and prescribe the remedy that makes it all come together. Assisting her operations has been the estimable Stuart Roberts, now elevated to editor in his own right, and his worthy successor, Amar Deol, whose feats of juggling have ended miraculously with all the elements in the right place. Once again, Fred Chase has performed the delicate task of copy editing with the most precise attention and bringing to bear his own literary gift. I am grateful to Jonathan Karp, president of Simon & Schuster, for his commitment to the scope of this project. To Robert Barnett, a man you always want on your side.
Andrew Edwards, now on the history faculty at the University of Oxford, has repeated his incredible deed of organizing my notes and bibliography with the same aplomb he showed with the previous volumes.
I should note that I wrote this work, like the previous ones, without research assistants and continue to be responsible alone for any errors.
Sean Wilentz, professor of history at Princeton University, and I have carried on a decades-long conversation on American history, not to mention baseball and m
usic. He has been my coconspirator extending beyond the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Like him, I believe, as he testified before the House Judiciary Committee in 1998: “History will track you down.”
The community of scholars of Lincoln, the Civil War, and the Constitution have been generous with their time and discernment, and in directing me to new sources of information. I am grateful to Terry Alford, of Northern Virginia Community College; Michael Burlingame, of the University of Illinois at Springfield; Joan Cashin, of Ohio State University; Allen Guelzo, of Gettysburg College; Harold Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College; Ian Hunt, of the Lincoln Presidential Library at Springfield; and Jeffrey Rosen, president of the National Constitution Center.
Throughout these years of concentration occasionally interrupted by days of distraction I have been sustained by the friendship of, among others, David Brock, James Carville, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, Joe Conason, Bill and Renilde Drozdiak, Thomas and Mary Edsall, Edward Jay Epstein, Jim and Deb Fallows, Jeffrey Frank, Tom Geoghegan, Ben Gerson, Todd Gitlin, Danny Goldberg, Karen Greenberg, Rick Hertzberg, Stephen Holmes, Scott Horton, John Judis, Dan Morgan and Elaine Shannon, Mark Medish, James Mann, Jane Mayer, Richard Parker, Walter and Ann Pincus, Peter Pringle and Eleanor Randolph, Richard Rosen, Hillel Schwartz, Cody Shearer, Derek Shearer, Craig Unger, Nick Wapshott, Ralph Whitehead, and Jonathan Winer.
To Joseph C. Wilson IV, friend and patriot, who has dedicated his life to our country.
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