The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln

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The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln Page 10

by Larry Tagg


  Now, in the wee hours of the morning, with the crucial states of Illinois, Indiana, and Pennsylvania promised, the stop-Seward movement took definite form and gathered momentum behind Lincoln. New Jersey came in next, then Vermont and Virginia. Greeley, his ear to the ground, heard the rumble of falling dominoes, and went out again into the night to add his considerable weight to tumble a couple more. He instructed the Missouri delegates to switch from Bates to Lincoln at his signal, and pleaded with the New Hampshire and Maine delegations to fall in line for the nomination of the Illinois lawyer. With their work well started, the Lincoln men were content to wait for the balloting to see their plans mature.

  The Illinoisans awoke on Friday, balloting day, determined to press every possible advantage for their candidate. An army of Chicago carpenters had wrought the biggest advantage of all: the “Wigwam,” the city-block-sized Republican convention hall, built to order over the previous month. Holding ten thousand people, it was made entirely of pine boards that thrummed sympathetically with the slightest vibration. Murat Halstead called it an acoustic marvel, and wrote, “An ordinary voice can be heard through the whole structure with ease.” With its wooden walls and curved roof resonating like the inside of a gigantic violin, it made ten thousand, shouting and stomping in unison, sound like a nation.

  Lincoln’s friends made sure they would shout and stomp for Lincoln. Jesse Fell and Ward Hill Lamon ordered a large supply of counterfeit tickets printed, kept a staff of young men busy all night forging official-looking signatures on them, and handed them out to husky-voiced Lincoln rooters, who were instructed to show up early. The Sewardites unknowingly assisted the plot by giving a parade Friday morning, led by their magnificently uniformed marching band. By the time they arrived at the Wigwam, their places had been taken by Lincoln men, who had been shoved through the doors until all the seats were occupied and the standing room was jammed. One Chicagoan reputed to be able to shout across the breadth of Lake Michigan was summoned to take a prominent position, and another equally leather-lunged galoot from Ottowa, Illinois, was imported to do the same in another quarter, both with instructions to lead a tempest of cheers whenever Lincoln’s name was mentioned.

  Their intended audience, the delegates on the broad platform, had been carefully seated under the direction of maestro Norman Judd. At one end of the platform he sat the Seward delegations of New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin, far removed from the prize delegations of the battleground states. At the other end, carefully sandwiched between Illinois and Indiana, was the fifty-sixdelegate bonanza of Pennsylvania.

  Seward was nominated first, and there were enough Seward men in the building to send up a tremendous shout. A few minutes later, Judd rose and said, “I desire, on behalf of the delegation from Illinois, to put in nomination, as a candidate for President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois.” The sudden wild roar, according to one witness, “made soft vesper breathings of all that had preceded. No language can describe it. A thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs, a tribe of Comanches, headed by a choice vanguard from pandemonium, might have mingled in the scene unnoticed.”

  When the crowd quieted enough to continue, a Michigan delegate seconded Seward’s nomination. Again, a deafening shout.

  Then, Mr. Delano from Ohio seconded the nomination of Lincoln. Murat Halstead reported:

  The uproar was beyond description. Imagine all the hogs ever slaughtered in Cincinnati giving their death squeals together, a score of big steam whistles going … and you conceive something of the same nature. … The Lincoln boys … took deep breaths all around, and gave a concentrated shriek that was positively awful, accompanied it with stamping that made every plank and pillar in the building quiver.

  Henry S. Lane of Indiana leaped upon a table, and swinging hat and cane, performed like an acrobat. The presumption is he shrieked with the rest, as his mouth was desperately wide open, but no one will ever be able to testify that he has positive knowledge of the fact that he made a particle of noise. His individual voice was lost in the aggregate hurricane.

  The New York, Michigan, and Wisconsin delegations sat together and were, in this tempest, very quiet. Many of their faces whitened as the Lincoln yawp swelled into a wild hosanna of victory.

  Another reporter, from the Daily Chicago Herald, also noticed the delegates blanch in the face of the roaring crowd. “It was perfectly amazing to see the effect of 5,000 voices, yelling in made fury, upon the small band of delegates,” he wrote. “They fairly quailed before the stentorian power of the people and the majesty of physical force.”

  And now, staring straight into the reddened, contorted faces of the frenzied multitude only a few feet away and with their ears still ringing, the delegates on the platform were asked to vote. From the outset, they demonstrated their reluctance to spit into such a wind. Starting with the New England states— Seward’s base—it was clear that Seward had less strength than everyone had thought. The clerk first called the state of Maine. “Maine casts ten votes for Senator Seward, six votes for Lincoln of Illinois!” (A huge cheer from the convention crowd.) Then, “New Hampshire casts Seward one vote, Chase one vote, Frémont one vote, Lincoln seven votes!” (Another deafening cheer.) Then Vermont: “Ten votes for favorite son Jacob Collamer!” (Cheers again— ten more votes Seward would not get.)

  With 233 needed to nominate, the first ballot yielded 173½ for Seward and 102 for Lincoln, with Cameron, Bates, and Chase receiving little more than the “native son” votes from their home states. “The division of the first vote caused a fall in Seward stock,” reported Halstead.

  Then, on the second ballot, the Pennsylvania bomb exploded. Forty-eight of its votes switched from Cameron to Lincoln, and, wrote Halstead, “the fate of the day was now determined.” When the secretary announced the result of the second ballot, it was Seward 184½, Lincoln 181, with other votes scattered.

  With the wind now so clearly blowing for Lincoln, the fatal defection from Seward on the third ballot began early in the New England states, and continued throughout. When the secretary reported the third vote, Lincoln stood at 231½—one vote and a half short of nomination. There was a pause of ten seconds, then a stuttering delegate from Ohio rose and cried, “I rise, M-M-Mr. Chairman, t-t-to announce the change of four v-votes of Ohio from Mr. Chase to Mr. Lincoln.” According to Halstead, “there was a noise in the Wigwam like the rush of a great wind in the van of a storm—and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity.”

  In a moment, the news was relayed to the twenty thousand crowding outside:

  And the roar, like the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep that was heard, gave a new impulse to the enthusiasm inside. Then the thunder of the salute rose above the din, and the shouting was repeated with such tremendous fury that some discharges of the cannon were absolutely not heard by those on the stage. Puffs of smoke, drifting by the open doors, and the smell of gunpowder, told what was going on.

  * * *

  Many, however, were disgusted by the frontier rowdiness of the hometown crowd, the stratagems of the managers, the din of the orchestrated cheers, and the boom of the cannon. “It is a damned shame,” Republican stalwart Tom Corwin told a friend, “that no statesman can get nominated and elected, but they must nominate some man who can hardly read or write.” Halstead, the sober Cincinnati reporter, shared Corwin’s distaste. He thought Seward deserved the Republican nomination, and he pronounced a harsh judgment on what he had just seen:

  The fact of the Convention was the defeat of Seward rather than the nomination of Lincoln. It was the triumph of a presumption of availability over pre-eminence in intellect and unrivaled fame—a success of the ruder qualities of manhood and the more homely attributes of popularity over the arts of a consummate politician and the splendor of accomplished statesmanship.

  When the startling news of Lincoln’s ascension sped across the country, disappointed editors of a number o
f Republican newspapers echoed Corwin’s and Halstead’s verdict. The New York Times observed, “The main work of the Chicago Convention was the defeat of Gov. Seward; that was the only specific and distinct object toward which its conscious efforts were directed. The nomination which it finally made was purely an accident. …” The influential Springfield (Mass.) Republican called the result “the triumph of politically available mediocrity over the superior talents of the other candidates.” The Troy (N.Y.) Whig predicted that “The nomination … will disappoint the country.” The St. Paul Pioneer reported, “[C]urses both loud and deep were hurled at the Convention, for cowardly rejecting the great apostle of Republicanism, for a man whose political record consists in his defeat by Douglas for U.S. Senator.” The New York Evening Express lamented, “Mr. Lincoln is a very respectable lawyer in Illinois, but with not the twentieth part of the education or talent that Mr. Seward has.”

  The Democratic papers, of course, were even less gracious. This was true even close to home. The hometown Springfield Register sneered, “The Republicans of Illinois, who, in urging the nomination of Mr. Lincoln as a candidate for the Presidency … intended only a little harmless pleasantry, now find that they were perpetrating a joke upon their party, that in its effect, is not likely to be proven ‘all a joke.’” Another mid-state Illinois newspaper wondered, “What has Mr. Lincoln ever done for his country that he should ask the people of the United States to make him President? … In fact, his nomination, if it had not been done by the forms of a numerous and powerful party, would be considered a farce. … His nomination is an outrage on an intelligent people.” A paper from downstate Illinois concurred: “ThatWm. H. Seward, the very father of Republicanism, and the great representative man of the party, should be thrust aside for such a man as Abe Lincoln, of Springfield, the people were not prepared to believe. … We regard Lincoln as a man of decidedly ordinary parts, and this no doubt is the opinion of his party.”

  If Illinoisans—people familiar with Lincoln—were calling his nomination a joke, a farce, and an outrage, it followed that others more distant were even more contemptuous. The most widely read of them all, the New York Herald, said, “The conduct of the Republican Party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of small intellect, growing smaller. They pass over Seward, Chase, and Bates, who are statesmen and able men, and they take up a fourth-rate lecturer, who cannot speak good grammar.” The same tone was taken by the Albany Atlas and Argus: “He … is not known except as a slang-whanging stump speaker … of which all parties are ashamed.” And the Boston Courier: “The laboring mountains have truly produced a most ridiculous mouse!” The Washington Constitution called the nomination “A disgraceful burlesque.” The Baltimore American dismissed Lincoln as a “third rate district politician.” The Trenton New American affected disbelief: “By what process this selection was made it is hard to understand.” As did the Boston Post: “The Chicago sectional Convention—a thorough geographical body—has crowned its work by nominating a mere local politician.” The most encyclopedic disparagement of Lincoln, however, sprang from the presses of The Philadelphia Evening Journal under the headline “Why Should Lincoln Be President”:

  It is very evident that the “Republican” newspapers are hard put to it for something to say in favor of Mr. Lincoln. His record as a statesman is a blank. He has done nothing whatever in any executive, judicial, or legislative capacity, that should entitle him to public respect. There is not in all the history of his life any exhibition of intellectual ability and attainments fitting him for the high and responsible post in the Government for which he has been nominated. When in Congress, from 1847 to 1849, he was not only not distinguished by any display of parliamentary talent, or by any special service, but those who sat in the same Congress find it difficult to remember that any such person as Abraham Lincoln occupied a seat on the floor. His contest in 1858 with Mr. Douglas for the election as United States Senator from Illinois is the beginning of his fame, and … he exceeded even Seward in the extravagance of his views respecting the Slavery question, while his coarse language, his illiterate style, and his vulgar and vituperative personalities in debate, contrast very strongly the elegant and classical oratory of the eminent Senator from New-York. But the party organs think Lincoln is a capital man for a political canvass, because, forsooth, he was once a flat-boatman and a rail-splitter. … It does not by any means follow that because an individual who, beginning life as a flat-boatman and wood-chopper, raises himself to the position of a respectable County Court lawyer and a ready stump speaker, is therefore qualified to be President of the United States. … [I]t will not do to say that he is qualified to be and deserves to be President, because, as a boy, he split logs and steered a “broadhorn” on the Mississippi. … But we shall doubtless be asked to adopt it as a safe and judicious rule for the election of men to the highest posts in the Government. But will the people be cheated by such clap-trap? We think not.

  In their lack of regard for the nominee, the defeated Republican candidates, to a man, agreed with the Democratic press. Edward Bates wrote in his diary entry for May 19, “The Chicago Republican Convention is over. That party, will henceforth, subside into weakness and then break into pieces. …” His praise for the nominee was faint almost to the vanishing point: he could bring himself only to write, “Mr. Lincoln personally is unexceptionable.” William Seward, likewise, wrote a letter to Thurlow Weed fearing for the party’s future. Nor did anyone else consider that Lincoln was a great man. Lincoln’s friend, Ward Hill Lamon, later summed up the popular view of Lincoln in 1860:

  Few men believed that Mr. Lincoln possessed a single qualification for his great office. His friends had indicated what they considered his chief merit, when they insisted that he was a very common, ordinary man, just like the rest of “the people”—“Old Abe,” a railsplitter and a story-teller. They said he was good and honest and well-meaning; but they took care not to pretend that he was great. He was thoroughly convinced that there was too much truth in this view of his character. He felt deeply and keenly his lack of experience in the conduct of public affairs. … His most intimate friends feared that he possessed no administrative ability; and in this opinion he seems to have shared himself, at least in his calmer and more melancholy moments.

  Party leaders speaking publicly in Iowa after the convention, according to one listener, “referred deprecatingly to the nominee, apologizing for having a ‘rail splitter’ for the Party’s standard bearer—a man without the culture or experience and trained ability of [Seward].” Heading home from Chicago, Michigan convention delegates plastered their train with Lincoln portraits, but the crowds gathered at the railway stations sent up louder cheers for Austin Blair, Michigan’s Republican candidate for Governor, than for Lincoln. One aboard that train would later remember “that the nomination of Lincoln … created at first, over a large portion of the North, more anxiety than enthusiasm.”

  Northerners were anxious about voting for a candidate they didn’t know. The press couldn’t get his name right—the “Wigwam Edition” biography of the new nominee was titled The Life, Speeches, and Services of Abram Lincoln. Only two members of the nominating committee that went to Lincoln’s house after the convention had ever seen him before. Easterners, especially, were baffled. “I had never heard of him before,” wrote prominent Philadelphian Sidney George Fisher. Fisher’s friend William Meredith was also dismayed by Lincoln’s nomination, as were many refined Easterners. In Meredith’s view, said Fisher, Lincoln was “a Western ‘screamer,’ represents Western coarseness & violence. The papers say he was fond of horse racing, foot racing, etc. … Such is democracy. These very qualities, connecting him in sympathy with the masses, favor his success. Education, refinement, the birth & breeding of a gentleman would be against him.” “I remember,” wrote another Philadelphia Republican, “that when I first read the news on a bulletin board as I came down street in Philadelphia I experienced a moment of intense physical pain, it wa
s as though some one had dealt me a heavy blow over the head, then my strength failed me. I believed our cause was doomed.” In the intellectual capital of the nation, Ralph Waldo Emerson of Boston wrote, “we heard the result coldly and sadly. It seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so grave a trust in such anxious times.”

  “He is unknown here,” echoed a dubious New Yorker, George Templeton Strong. “The Tribune and other papers commend him to popular favor as having had but six months’ schooling in his whole life; and because he cut a great many rails, and worked on a flatboat in his early youth; all of which is somehow presumptive evidence of his statesmanship. The watchword of the campaign is already indicated. It is to be ‘Honest Abe.’ … But that monosyllable does not seem to me likely to prove a word of power.” Strong had no enthusiasm for Lincoln’s got-up rustic image. “I am tired of this shameless clap-trap,” he wrote. “The log-cabin hard-cider craze of 1840 seemed spontaneous. This hurrah about rails and rail-splitters seems a deliberate attempt to manufacture the same kind of furor by appealing to the shallowest prejudices of the lowest class.”

  “A ‘Rail’ Old Western Gentleman”

  * * *

  “Honest Abe’s” anonymity was even more complete in the South. There, the only knowledge of Lincoln came by way of the scurrilous screeds of secessionist newspaper editors. The Southern press universally called Lincoln’s hated party the “Black Republican” party, to brand it with the mark of abolitionism and to distance it from the beloved Jefferson’s earlier “Democratic-Republicans.” Southern scribes lost all control in savaging the new candidate. Many descended to comments so primitive, so venomous, they were little more than name-calling. He was “a baboon,” “a chimpanzee,” “a rough, half-horse half-alligator character;” he was descended from “an African gorilla.” Abe Lincoln became “that ape Lincoln.” He was “a third-rate country lawyer”; he lived in “low Hoosier style”; he told “coarse and clumsy jokes.” Secessionist firebrand Robert Barnwell Rhett of the radical Charleston Mercury called him a “relentless, dogged, free-soil border ruffian, … a vulgar mobocrat and a Southern hater … . an illiterate partisan.” Day after day Rhett hammered away on the same tune: “A horrid looking wretch he is, sooty and scoundrelly in aspect, a cross between the nutmeg dealer, the horse swapper, and the night man, a creature ‘fit evidently for petty treason, small stratagems and all sorts of spoils.’ He is a lank-sided Yankee of the uncomeliest visage, and of the dirtiest complexion. Faugh! after him what decent white man would be President?” The cross-town Charleston Courier chimed in: Lincoln’s portrait, it said, was “enough to scare one out of a night’s rest.”

 

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