by Larry Tagg
Just as the Republicans were cobbling together a united front, an announcement came of another Union victory. On September 19, General Phil Sheridan met General Early’s small motley command at Winchester and sent it flying back up the Shenandoah in the largest battle of the war in the Valley, a stunning victory that marked a turning point in the struggle for that strategically important region. As the political stars—party unity, military success, and Election Day—came into alignment, the Republican prospects grew bright. Without a failed war to condemn, Democrat stump speakers spread across the North to attack emancipation and black equality. They hammered the loss of civil liberties, arbitrary arrest, usurpation of unconstitutional powers, an inflated economy—and, as always, they abused the vulgar tyrant, Abraham Lincoln. As one New York Republican elector noted, the campaign “soon became one of great acrimony.”
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Democratic editors swung hard at the President. The New York World stooped to a malicious lie. It printed a new version of an already well-worn piece of propaganda that, according to his friend Ward Lamon, grieved Lincoln more than any slur ever published about him. This was the “Antietam song-singing” episode, which appeared in the World on June 20 and again the next day under the headline, “Lincoln Upon the Battlefield”:
Soon after one of the most desperate and sanguinary battles, Mr. Lincoln visited [George McClellan] and the army.—While on his visit the Commanding General with his staff took him over the field in a carriage and explained to him the plan of the battle, and the particular places where the fight was most fierce. At one point [McClellan] said, “here on this side of this road five hundred of our brave fellows were killed, and just on the other side of the road four hundred more were slain, and right on the other side of that wall five hundred rebels were destroyed. We have buried them where they fell.” “I declare,” said the President, “this is getting gloomy. Let us drive away.” After driving a few rods the President said, “This makes a feller feel gloomy.” “Jack,” (speaking to a companion) “can’t you give us something to cheer us up?” “Give us a song, and give us a lively one.” Thereupon Jack [Ward Lamon] struck up, as loud as he could bawl, a comic negro song, which he continued to sing while they were riding off from the battle ground … .
We know that this story is incredible, that it is impossible that a man who could be elected President of the United States could so conduct himself over the fresh made graves of the heroic dead.—When this story was told us we said that it was incredible, impossible, but the story is told on such authority that we know it to be true. We tell the story that the people may have some idea of this man, Abraham Lincoln, who is a candidate for four years more of such rule. If any Republican holds up his hands in horror, and says this story can’t be true, we sympathize with him from the bottom of our soul; the story can’t be true of any man fit for any office of trust, or even for decent society; but the story is every whit true of Abraham Lincoln, incredible and impossible as it may seem.
A doggerel verse was struck up to garnish the tale:
Abe may crack his jolly jokes
O’er bloody fields of stricken battle,
While yet the ebbing life-tide smokes
From men that die like butchered cattle
“Lincoln on the Battlefield” flooded the North in reprints by malignant Democratic journals. Though deeply hurt, Lincoln made no rebuttal to the fable. When Ward Lamon begged him to do so, Lincoln told him, “No, there has already been too much said about this falsehood. Let the thing alone. If I have not established character enough to give the lie to this charge, I can only say that I am mistaken in my own estimate of myself. In politics, every man must skin his own skunk. These fellows are welcome to the hide of this one. Its body has already given forth its unsavory odor.”
As Election Day neared, the World was joined by the rest of the Democratic hireling press, who savaged Lincoln with a ferocity that drew its strength from desperation.
“If the loyal people of the Union do not set the seal of their condemnation upon Abraham Lincoln at the ballot-box, they will become speedily not only the most wretched, but the most despised people in history,” warned the Louisville Journal.
“The most powerful monarchy in Europe would not dare commit the outrages which have been put upon us by the Lincoln administration,” cried the Illinois State Register. “The doom of Lincoln and black republicanism is sealed. Corruption and the bayonet are impotent to save them… . The would be despots at Washington must succumb to their fate. Long live the republic!”
“We have no honeyed words for such a ruler as Abraham Lincoln who is a perjured traitor, who has betrayed his country and caused the butchery of hundreds of thousands of the people of the United States in order to accomplish either his own selfish purpose, or to put in force a fanatical, impracticable idea,” cried the Newark Evening Journal.
“There is some excuse for those who were deceived in 1860; in view of the past four years, there will be no excuse in November next for a repetition of the most supreme blunder ever committed by any people,” announced the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
Lincoln “has swapped the Goddess of Liberty for the pate and wool of a nigger,” said the Ohio Statesman. “He has swapped a land of peace for a desert of graves… . He has swapped all these as he once swapped jokes in an old saloon in Illinois.”
“May Almighty God forbid that we are to have two terms of the rottenest, most stinking ruinworking small pox ever conceived by friends or mortals,” wrote the Lacrosse (Wisconsin) Democrat, adding that a vote for Lincoln was a vote “for taxes—for Fort Lafayette—for the draft—for usurped power—for suspension of sacred writs—for a nigger millennium—for worthless currency—for a ruined nation—for desolate cities.” They suggested an epitaph for Lincoln: “Beneath this turf the Widow Maker lies/Little in everything, except for size.”
“The Commander-in-Chief Conciliates the Soldiers’ Vote on the Battlefield.” Currier and Ives, October 1864
“The Lincoln Catechism” was reprinted in Democratic screeds across the North. It read in part:
“The Yankee Guy Fawkes”
Question: What is the Constitution?
Answer: A compact with hell—now obsolete.
Question: What is a President?
Answer: A General agent for negroes.
Question: What is the meaning of the word “liberty”?
Answer: Incarceration in a bastile.
Question: What is the meaning of the word “patriot”?
Answer: A man who loves his country less and the negro more.
Question: What is the meaning of the word “law”?
Answer: The will of the President.
Aristocratic British editors vied with the Democrats in piling up adjectives against Lincoln. The London Evening Standard called him a “foul-tongued and ribald punster” who was also the “most despicable tyrant of modern days.” The Leeds Intelligencer abused him as “that concentrated quintescence [sic] of evil, that Nero in the most shrunken and detestable form of idolatry, that flatulent and indecent jester.”
After reading a steady diet of such attacks at home and abroad, an exasperated Harper’s Weekly published a list, noting, “These are the terms applied by the friends of General McClellan to the President:
Filthy Story-Teller, Ignoramus Abe, Despot, Old Scoundrel, Big Secessionist, Perjurer, Liar, Robber, Thief, Swindler, Braggart, Tyrant, Buffoon, Fiend, Usurper, Butcher, Monster, Land-Pirate, A Long, Lean, Lank, Lantern-Jawed, High-Cheek-Boned, Spavined, Rail-Splitting Stallion.
* * *
All the name-calling would avail the Democrats nothing. Lincoln was acutely aware of the stakes of the election for the country’s future, and that he himself embodied the main issues of the campaign. With a sense of purpose sharpened by that understanding, he made himself, by fall, his own campaign manager. Lincoln could not, of course, make public appearances. He still observed the strong taboo against active campaigning by a candidate,
and declined to so much as write a general letter to a political meeting. Instead, he labored mightily behind the scenes. As Fessenden commented in early autumn, “The President is too busy looking after the election to think of any thing else.”
Little escaped Lincoln’s eye, even small details far afield. He managed the speakers’ bureau, taking a hand in getting General “Black Jack” Logan away from his command in Georgia so he could stump in Illinois and Indiana, and planning a tour for Gustave Koerner among the Germans of the Midwest. He interfered when he had to, as when he removed Pennsylvania party boss Simon Cameron and replaced him with A. K. McClure after disappointing returns in an October election. Lincoln used his powers of patronage and the purse, both made mighty by the massive scale of the war, and insisted that each of his thousands of appointees act as loyal party workers. They did countless lowly chores, from hiring halls to hanging signs to mailing out literature to swelling crowds at rallies. Government workers—all the way up to Cabinet members— were expected to contribute ten percent of their pay to the Republican Party war chest. If they hesitated, enough were fired to ensure discipline in the rest. People and companies doing business with the government were expected to contribute as well. This produced a tremendous advantage in campaign funding. In the October Pennsylvania election, for instance, the Republicans spent more than half a million dollars to the Democrats’ $32,475.
With the size of the army approaching a million men—fully one quarter of the number expected to cast ballots in the election—politicians on both sides knew the soldier vote would be decisive. Sherman and Grant would not endorse their Commander-in-Chief, but Lincoln’s decision to go ahead with the draft on September 5 was a huge boost to his popularity in the army, while the Democrats’ peace platform hurt them badly among the soldiers. Regiments’ straw polls showed an overwhelming preference for Lincoln. He did not take the soldier vote for granted, however. Wagonloads of Republican campaign literature—a million pieces—were dumped into army mailbags.
With such a large part of the population in uniform for the first time in a national election, fights broke out in state legislatures over proposed amendments to their constitutions that would allow soldiers to vote from the field. When states controlled by Democrats—Indiana, Illinois, and New Jersey—would not pass such an amendment, Lincoln prevailed on Generals Sherman and Rosecrans in the West to furlough soldiers from these states to go home to vote, especially in districts where races were close. In the East, too, Lincoln ordered Generals Sheridan and Meade to send home five thousand men each to vote and show themselves at the polls in Pennsylvania, which was still in doubt. Assistant Secretary of War Charles Dana marveled, “All the power and influence of the War Department, then something enormous from the vast expenditure and extensive relations of the war, was employed to secure the re-election of Mr. Lincoln.” The interest taken in the political struggle, both in the White House and the War Department, he wrote, “was almost painful.”
The October state elections were uncomfortably close, and as late as October 13, only one month before the national election, Lincoln did a tally of the numbers that showed himself barely ahead, with 117 electoral votes to McClellan’s 114.
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Then, with only three weeks left until the November 8 election day, Lincoln received his third gift in the election season from the fighting front. On October 19 in the Shenandoah Valley Sheridan crushed Early’s army in the seesaw Battle of Cedar Creek, where “Little Phil” galloped twenty miles from Winchester to personally direct a turn of the tide in late afternoon. A poet penned an ode called “Sheridan’s Ride” that was immediately added to the gospel of Lincoln’s campaign, and in the two weeks before election day, it was read to thrilled gatherings across the country.
As the election approached, Lincoln became nervous about rumors of terrorism at the polls. Stanton had been warned that more than five thousand armed Confederates were roaming Illinois, intending to vote there and prevent thousands of loyal citizens from voting. From New York City, too, the War Secretary heard reports that rebel agents intended to start a riot and jam the polls with enemies. Stanton sent General Butler there with an entire regiment to keep the peace.
On Election Day, an anxious Lincoln watched the rain from a White House window, alone. When Noah Brooks arrived at noon, Lincoln fretted, “I am just enough of a politician to know that there was not much doubt about the results of the Baltimore convention, but about this thing I am very far from being certain.” As the afternoon wore on, the waiting became unbearable—it was “one of the most solemn days of his life,” according to his secretaries—and Brooks wrote that Lincoln “found it difficult to put his mind on any of the routine work of his office, and entreated me to stay with him.” As Lincoln waited for results from the polls, he grew melancholy. Nicolay and Hay reported that he “seemed to have a keen and surprised regret that he should be an object in so many quarters of so bitter and vindictive an opposition.” Hay heard Lincoln muse sadly, “It is a little singular that I, who am not a vindictive man, should have always been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness… . The contests in which I have been prominent have been marked with great rancor.”
That evening at seven o’clock, Lincoln splashed over to the War Office with Hay and Brooks to get the returns with Seward, Stanton, and Charles Dana. While they drummed their fingers in the hush of expectancy for the click of the telegraph key, Lincoln brought a booklet out of his breast pocket and broke the suspense by reading out loud funny stories by Petroleum V. Nasby. Stanton, incensed at Lincoln’s antics at such a moment, motioned Dana into the next room, and, Dana said, “I shall never forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed to him to be mere nonsense. The idea that when the safety of the republic was thus at issue … the man most deeply concerned … could turn aside to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests was, to his mind, repugnant, even damnable.”
The wires worked badly that evening on account of the storm, but the telegraph finally started to chatter. By midnight Lincoln’s victory was secure. He declined to make merry at the assurance of a second term, however, and instead, according to Hay, “went awkwardly and hospitably to work shoveling out the fried oysters.” At two o’clock in the morning he opened the War Office door to leave, and was met by a group of cheering serenaders, singing “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” accompanied by a brass band. He treated them to an impromptu speech, gave thanks to the Almighty, then waded back to the White House and went to sleep.
Ward Lamon sat all night on a blanket outside the reelected President’s door, surrounded by his pistols and bowie knives.
Chapter 32
The War at the End of the War
“Now we see the dregs of his backwardness.”
Lincoln won the electoral vote overwhelmingly, 212 to 21, but he did not beat McClellan nearly so sweepingly in the popular vote—“The size of his majority did not come up to the expectation of Lincoln’s friends,” conceded Carl Schurz. After four years in the presidency, even in the spread-eagle patriotism of a civil war, Lincoln had only barely improved his popular showing in the North, from the 54% who voted for the unknown Railsplitter in 1860, when he had run against three opponents, to the 55% who voted for the Great Emancipator in 1864. In nine states—Maine, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont—his percentage of the vote actually went down. The forty-five percent who voted for McClellan still considered Lincoln and the war a failure, and they lived mainly in cities, where they had proximity to the press. Lincoln lost in all the big cities, including a trouncing of 78,746 to 36,673 in New York. In the key states of New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, with their eighty electoral votes, only half a percentage point separated Lincoln and McClellan. A shift of 38,111 votes in a few selected states, less than one percent of the total, would have elected McClellan.
Lincoln had been fortunate in the fact that the army had been
only just successful enough to elect him. If it had been more successful, any of a number of ambitious generals could have unseated him. If it had been less successful— failing, for instance, the last-minute victories of September and October— McClellan would have triumphed.
He had been fortunate, too, in the miserable campaign run by the opposition. “I am here by the blunders of the Democrats,” Lincoln admitted to Hugh McCulloch early the next year. They had hamstrung themselves with foolish cries for peace in their platform, and supplied ammunition to the Republicans with their treasonous secret societies in the Northwest.
After Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in September, a New York Republican had predicted, “No man ever was elected to an important office who will get so many unwilling and indifferent votes as L. The cause takes the man along.” Now, plenty of Republicans were skeptical of Lincoln’s contribution to the victory. According to Ohio Congressman Lewis D. Campbell, “Nothing but the undying attachment of our people to the Union has saved us from terrible disaster. Mr. Lincoln’s popularity had nothing to do with it.” Count Gurowski sniffed, “Mr. Lincoln … is re-consecrated only as the incidental standard-bearer of the people’s sacred creed. Nothing more.” Henry Winter Davis insisted that people had voted for Lincoln only “to keep out worse people—keeping their hands on the pit of the stomach the while!” He called Lincoln’s reelection “the subordination of disgust to the necessities of a crisis.” George Julian proclaimed in the House that the people had voted “not that Abraham Lincoln can save the country, but that they can save it, with him as their servant.” Of the seven presidential elections he had participated in, Julian said, “I remember none in which the element of personal enthusiasm had a smaller share.” Bostonian Lydia Maria Child expressed the grudging tribute felt by many Radical Republicans:
