All the Powers of Earth

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by Sidney Blumenthal


  Despite the gale: “The Covode Investigation,” 112–13.

  Walker pledged: Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” 63.

  Congressman Laurence M. Keitt: “Letter from Hon. L.M. Keitt,” New York Times, August 17, 1857.

  By the end of July: Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, 407; Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” 66.

  Walker relied upon Buchanan: Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” 68.

  Walker had failed: Robinson, Kansas, 355; Holloway, History of Kansas, 305–6.

  On September 7: Blackmar, Kansas, 856–57; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:173–74.

  Back in Washington: Samuel Boykin, ed., A Memorial Volume of the Hon. Howell Cobb, of Georgia (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1870), 29; Howell Cobb, A Scriptural Examination of the Institution of Slavery in the United States (Georgia: Printed for the Author, 1856), 2, 8, 12.

  The other frequent guests: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 75–76; Nichols, Bleeding Kansas, 91; Mrs. N.G. Deupress, “Some Historic Homes of Mississippi,” Publications of the Mississippi Historical Society 6, ed., Franklin L. Riley (Oxford: Mississippi Historical Society, 1902), 261; Jacob Thompson, “Address, Delivered on Occasion of the Opening of the University of the State of Mississippi: In Behalf of the Board of Trustees, November 6, 1848” (Memphis: Franklin Book and Job Office, 1848), 5; P.L. Rainwater, “Letters to and from Jacob Thompson,” The Journal of Southern History 6, no. 1 (February 1940): 102–4; J.F.H. Claiborne, Mississippi, as a Province, Territory, and State (Jackson, Miss.: Power & Barksdale, 1880), 1:453.

  Throughout September and October: Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, 424.

  Cobb summoned: “The Covode Investigation,” 103, 318, 158–68, 315, 160; Stampp, America in 1857, 269.

  For weeks before the Lecompton convention: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 87–89.

  The difficult part was how to frame: Rhodes, History, 2:279; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 235; “The Covode Investigation,” 170, 168.

  Calhoun paid: “The Covode Investigation,” 110–11.

  Walker was anything but: Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” 82; Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 280.

  Rolling down the Missouri River: “Kansas and Her Constitution,” Washington Union, November 18, 1857.

  Reading the editorial: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:244.

  For months, Buchanan had been trying: Ibid., 1:243–44; John G. Nicolay and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (New York: Century Company, 1890), 2:111–12; Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J.B. Ford, 1868), 356.

  More than confusion: Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 719; Stampp, America in 1857, 221–23; James L. Huston, The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1999), 14; Karl Marx, “The British Revulsion,” New York Tribune, November 30, 1857.

  Buchanan blamed the depression: Huston, The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War, 175; Klein, President James Buchanan, 314–15; “James Buchanan: First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union,” December 8, 1857, The American Presidency Project, eds., Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29498; Stampp, America in 1857, 229–30.

  “The revulsion”: Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 281–82, 275; Foote, Casket of Reminiscences, 116.

  “The President was informed”: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:243.

  John Forney: “The Covode Investigation,” 296; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:246–47.

  Almost every Northern Democratic newspaper: “The Democracy must Submit the Constitution or be Damned,” Chicago Times, November 19, 1857.

  Walker met on November 26: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 96.

  Walker formally resigned: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 2:116–18.

  “So disappears”: “Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton,” The National Era, December 24, 1857.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE UNMAKING OF THE PRESIDENT

  After meeting with the president: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:250; “Douglas and the Administration,” Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1857.

  Douglas was in an aggressive: Anonymous, The Diary of a Public Man: An Intimate View of the National Administration, December 28, 1860 to March 15, 1861 (Chicago: Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1945).

  Douglas’s platform: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 273; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 584.

  Norman B. Judd: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 272–73.

  Lincoln first raised his concern: CW, 2:428.

  Before he set off for Washington: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:252; “From Washington,” Chicago Tribune, December 2, 1857.

  On December 3: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:253; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:538.

  Douglas returned: Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 356.

  He quietly went: Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 327.

  On December 8: “James Buchanan: First Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union.”

  The same day, Douglas rose: CG, 35th Congress, 1st Session, 14–18.

  On the Senate floor: “From Washington,” New York Tribune, December 9, 1857; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 599.

  The nefarious plot: “The Great Conspiracy to Rule or Ruin Mr. Buchanan’s Administration,” New York Herald, December 15, 1857.

  Just as the Buchanan administration: Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 47; Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:446; “Douglas on the Lecompton Fraud,” New York Tribune, December 10, 1857; O.J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886), 119; Potter, The Impending Crisis, 321; Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 305–6; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 632.

  Douglas invited more Republicans: Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 119–20, 124; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 603; White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull, 78–79; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:545.

  As Douglas performed: Holloway, History of Kansas, 476–77.

  At the dawn of the New Year: Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax, 121; “The Administration vs. Douglas,” Chicago Tribune, January 27, 1858.

  On February 2: “James Buchanan, Message to Congress Transmitting the Constitution of Kansas, February 2, 1858,” The American Presidency Project, eds., Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=68298.

  Just before Buchanan sent: Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 329.

  Congressman Thomas Harris: Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4:218.

  Rough times manifested themselves: “Detailed Account of the Keitt and Grow Fight,” New York Times, February 8, 1858.

  In early February: Spring, Kansas, 230; Stampp, America in 1857, 324; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:289, 293–94.

  Douglas opened his offensive: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 605.

  Jefferson Davis: Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis: Ex-president of the Confederate States of America (New York: Belford, 1890), 1:530.

  In the winter of 1858: Ibid., 574–75, 579.

  Still weak, Davis’s speech: Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government, 541–45.

  On February 15: Lyon Gardiner Tyler, The Letters and Times of the Tylers (Richmond: Whitter & Shepperson, 1885), 2:543.

  On March 3: CG, 35th Congress, 1st Session, 939–45.

  If, as Seward threatened: James Henry Hammond, Selections from the Letters and Speeches of the Hon. James H. Hammond, of South Carolina (New York: John F. Trow, 1866), 311–22.

  Hammond’s rise as governor: Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South, 314–17, 302; Rosellen Brown, “Monster of All He Surveyed,” New York Times, Ja
nuary 29, 1989; Martin Duberman, “ ‘Writhing Bedfellows’ in Antebellum South Carolina,” The Journal of Homosexuality (Fall–Winter, 1980–81).

  Following his early idol: Faust, James Henry Hammond and the Old South, 300; Sinha, The Counter-Revolution of Slavery, 192.

  Douglas’s speech on March 22: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 609.

  The action turned: Ibid., 610.

  Alexander Stephens: C.M. Barnes, James Buchanan (Oswego, N.Y.: No publisher, ca. 1881), 44; Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 561–62.

  Full-scale bribery: “The Covode Investigation,” 138–59, 184–97; Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 179.

  Under the weight of corruption: James A. Rawley, Race and Politics: Bleeding Kansas and the Coming of the Civil War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), 249; Philip G. Auchampaugh, “The Buchanan-Douglas Feud,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 25, nos. 1–2 (April–July 1932), 5–48.

  Before he issued his statement: Rawley, Race and Politics, 249.

  Speaking to the Senate: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:301.

  “I expected that”: Johnston and Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens, 428.

  Buchanan moved: Sheahan, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 420.

  Under Cook: Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 215–17; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 535, 602, 622–24; Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 295; Foote, Casket of Reminiscences, 135; Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4:221; “The Platforms of the Two Conventions,” Illinois State Journal, April 23, 1858.

  Buchanan’s interference: “Democratic Conventions,” Washington Union, May 27, 1858.

  Douglas girded himself: White, The Life of Lyman Trumbull, 89; Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 75.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: A HOUSE DIVIDED

  Lincoln’s law partner: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:544; Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 110–11.

  Lincoln, however, was less certain: Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 321.

  Lincoln nervously wondered: CW, 2:431.

  Through early 1858: Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 320.

  Lincoln wrote out the words: CW, 2:452–53.

  Lincoln filed this fragment: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 114; Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 322.

  Herndon proceeded to see: Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 321–22.

  In New York: Ibid., 322–23; Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 115.

  In Boston: Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 395.

  On his Boston sojourn: Ibid., 323.

  Back in Springfield: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 633–34.

  “We want to be our own masters”: Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4:227; Joseph Fort Newton, Lincoln and Herndon (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1910), 164.

  There were some defections: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:547; Don E. Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness: Lincoln in the 1850’s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), 62.

  Lincoln monitored the situation: CW, 2:443–44, 456.

  Another of Lincoln’s regular informants: CW, 2:457.

  “My judgment”: CW, First Supplement, 29–30.

  Douglas staged a convention: Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 64; CW, 2:444.

  The factional divisions: CW, 2:435–36.

  In May, Lyle Dickey’s: King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 117–19; CW, 2:458–59; Wallace, Life and Letters of General W.H.L. Wallace, 84.

  “It is true”: Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Lincoln History Society, 1903), 2:82; Paul M. Angle, ed., “The Recollections of William Pitt Kellogg,” Abraham Lincoln Quarterly 3, no. 7 (September 1945); CW, 2:318.

  Now Lincoln told Herndon: Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 398.

  Just before the convention: Ibid., 325–26; Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness, 72, 180.

  The Republican convention gathered: “Official Proceedings,” Illinois State Journal, June 17, 1858.

  The next night, before perspiring delegates: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 206.

  “Our cause”: CW, 2:462–69.

  Immediately after concluding: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:584–85.

  But John L. Scripps: “John L. Scripps to Abraham Lincoln, June 22, 1858,” House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/27455.

  A few weeks later, Norman Judd: Wilson, Davis, and Wilson, eds., Herndon’s Informants, 267.

  Swett recalled: Ibid., 163.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: THE HIGHER OBJECT

  The Little Giant: Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 296; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:543.

  As soon as he left: “The Douglas Demonstration,” Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1858.

  In early July: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 213.

  Douglas’s paper: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:466–67.

  Lincoln looked to the crowd: CW, 2:495–501; Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 79–83.

  “Disgusting”: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:471–72; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:626.

  Douglas began a triumphant procession: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 305; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:613.

  Lincoln took the same train: Sheahan, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 417.

  The Chicago Times compared: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:619, 623.

  The Republican State Committee: Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 91, 73.

  The day of the State Committee meeting: CW, 2:522; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:629.

  Not once did Trumbull bother: Speech of Hon. Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, at a Mass Meeting in Chicago, August 7, 1858 (Washington, D.C.: Buell & Blanchard Printers, 1858), 5, 12–13; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 675; Mark M. Krug, “Lyman Trumbull and the Real Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 57, no. 4 (Winter 1964).

  Lincoln invoked the names: CW, 2:483.

  It is possible that Lincoln was familiar: The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Volume 29 (London: T.C. Hansard, 1817), 278.

  At about the same time that Lincoln wrote: CW, 2:476–82.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: THE MORAL LIGHTS

  No one had more faith: Newton, Lincoln and Herndon, 186.

  Douglas’s agreement: Edwin Erle Sparks, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, Lincoln Series (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1908), 1:24.

  His attention to political detail: Koerner, Memoirs, 2:68; CW, 2:416.

  Suffering the defection: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:402; Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln, 112.

  Stuart’s law partner: Koerner, Memoirs, 2:62; “Reception of Mr. Douglas by the Democracy of All the Central Countries,” Illinois State Journal, July 19, 1858; Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 541.

  Rumor reached Lincoln: CW, 2:483–84.

  Crittenden replied: David Zarefsky, Lincoln, Douglas and Slavery: In the Crucible of Public Debate (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 162.

  Two days after misleading Lincoln: Mrs. Chapman Coleman, ed., The Life of John J. Crittenden (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1873), 2:162–66.

  Lincoln’s paper: “A Letter from Judge Dickey,” Illinois State Journal, August 10, 1858.

  Since Lincoln’s Chicago speech: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 332.

  In Bloomington: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:473–77; “Douglas at Havana,” Chicago Tribune, August 20, 1858; CW, 2:545.

  In fact Douglas never had: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 324.

  Before the debates: “Letter from Illinois,” Richmond Enquirer, August 10, 1858.

  From his placid summer: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 328.

  Douglas had choreographed: Ibid., 336–39; Sparks, The Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, 124–26, 133.

  Partisans on each side: New York Tribune, August 26, 1858; Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press (New
York, Simon & Schuster, 2014), 178–81.

  Lincoln in private: Jesse W. Weik, The Real Lincoln (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922), 231–32.

  Post-debate Republican newspapers: Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 143–44.

  The Douglas team: Sheahan, The Life of Stephen A. Douglas, 432.

  On the night before the next debate: Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 144–45.

  Douglas quoted again: John Stauffer, Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (New York: Twelve Books, 2008), 158–59.

  Douglass was a foil: Matthew Norman, “The Other Lincoln-Douglas Debate: The Race Issue in a Comparative Context,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 31, no. 1 (Winter 2010): 1–21.

  The long-term effects: “The Senator from Mississippi Attacks the Senator from Illinois,” Illinois State Journal, November 29, 1858.

  “It is impossible”: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, 2:164.

  The “Freeport Doctrine”: “Judge Douglas Repudiates the Dred Scott Decision,” Washington Union, September 4, 1858.

  Jonesboro: Cole, The Centennial History of Illinois, 178.

  After the Jonesboro debate: Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4:261.

  Under the headline: “Negro Equality,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1858.

  The fourth debate: Charles H. Coleman, Abraham Lincoln and Coles County (New Brunswick, Ill.: Scarecrow Press, 1955), 165–66.

  Both candidates entered: Ibid., 172–76.

  Just as the debate was about to begin: Ibid., 180.

  Richard Mentor Johnson: Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger, “The Vice-President Who Sold His Mistress At Auction,” in One-Night Stands with American History: Odd, Amusing, and Little-Known Incidents (New York: HarperCollins, 2003), 71–72.

  “Republicans saw it”: Isaac N. Arnold, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: Jansen, McClurg, 1885), 1:148–49.

  Lincoln’s pandering: Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 204; Lew Wallace, An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1906), 1:253–56.

  It was three weeks: “Poor Little Dug!,” Chicago Tribune, September 28, 1858.

  The debates turned north: Hermann R. Muelder, “Galesburg: Hot-Bed of Abolitionism,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 35, no. 3 (September 1942): 216–35; Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, 217–18.

 

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