by Larry Tagg
* * *
In all the world, there was one editor conspicuously absent from the ranks of the converts to the revised, glorified view of Lincoln. This was Horace Greeley, Lincoln’s most dependable tormenter, the erratic sachem of the Radical press. On the day the President was shot, in fact, Greeley had written a scathing anti-Lincoln rant. The next day, as bells tolled the martyr’s death in every town and hamlet in the North, the Tribune’s managing editor blanched at what he called Greeley’s “brutal, bitter, sarcastic, personal attack” and prudently declined to print it. Greeley burst into his office, roaring, “They tell me you ordered my leader out of this morning’s paper. Is it your paper or mine?” The manager replied, “The paper is yours, Mr. Greeley. The article is in type upstairs and you can use it when you choose, but if you run that editorial there will not be one brick left standing in the Tribune building.”
By Monday, April 17, Greeley had recovered himself enough to write an official requiem, but it remembered Lincoln as a tardy student who was “among the last to perceive … that Slavery had challenged the Union to mortal encounter and that the gage must be taken up as it was thrown down.” Two days later, Greeley still could not bring himself to write a proper eulogy. Beginning defiantly that he was, “Without the least desire to join in the race of heaping extravagant and preposterous laudations on our dead President as the wisest and greatest man who ever lived,” Greeley admitted that “Mr. Lincoln’s reputation will stand higher with posterity than with the mass of his contemporaries,” and that “future generations will … be puzzled by the bitter fierceness of the personal assaults by which his temper was tested.” He closed his admission, however, with a sly cut: “Mr. Lincoln has suffered in the judgment of his immediate contemporaries from the fact that, of all things that he might have been required to do, the conduct of a great war was that for which he was least fitted.” Lincoln was “pretty certain to be right in the end,” Greeley continued, “but in War to be right a little too late is equivalent to being wrong altogether.” Greeley concluded that Lincoln was “not the man of transcendent genius, of rare insight, of resistless force of character.”
Greeley’s conflicted feelings about Abraham Lincoln continued to war in him for the seven remaining years of his life. In Greeley’s 1868 autobiography, he began his chapter on Lincoln with a cruel slur—“There were those who say that Mr. Lincoln was fortunate in his death as in his life”—and then added a curious rebuttal: “I judge otherwise. I hold him most inapt for the leadership of a people involved in desperate, agonizing war; while I deem few men better fitted to guide a nation’s destinies in time of peace.” Since Lincoln was never permitted to guide the nation in time of peace, this was Greeley’s own version of the Democrats’ suspect claim, We opposed him while he lived; we were about to support him when he died. Greeley’s appraisal tottered toward its finish with a frank reproach—“I didn’t favor his re-nomination as President; for I wanted the War driven onward with vehemence, and this was not in his nature.” Finally, his essay praised, not Lincoln, but God’s mysterious ways: “We have had chieftains who would have crushed out the Rebellion in six months, and restored ‘the Union as it was,’” he wrote, “but God gave us the one leader whose control secured not only the downfall the Rebellion, but the eternal overthrow of Human Slavery under the flag of the Great Republic.”
Almost to the end, Greeley could never manage a tribute for Lincoln that did not also include a curse. While he still trailed the smoke of the battles they had fought, he could not see him clearly. The passing of years, however, improved his vision. Shortly before he died in 1872, Greeley penned a summation that went unpublished for nearly two decades. “Looking back through the lifting mists of seven eventful, tragic, trying, glorious years,” wrote Greeley,
I clearly discern that the one providential leader, the indispensable hero of the great drama, faithfully reflecting even in his hesitations and seeming vacillations the sentiment of the masses—fitted by his very defects and shortcomings for the burden laid upon him, the good to be wrought out through him—was Abraham Lincoln.
Sources and Notes
Part One: Lincoln’s Entrance
Chapter 1: Lincoln Comes to Washington
Page 1 “Plums arrived here with Nuts”: Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), p. 291.
2 “What would the nation think”: A. K. McClure, Abraham Lincoln and Men of War-Times (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996), p. 52.
2 “a dog fight now”: Carl Sandburg, The War Years, 4 vols. (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1939), p. I: 4.
3 “as soon as the train stopped”: Baltimore Sun, reprinted in February 27, 1861, New York World, from Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1951), p. 88.
3 “the moment the train arrived”: L.K. Bowen to Howell Cobb, from Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 77.
3 “skulked off himself”: New York Journal of Commerce, reprinted in February 25, 1861, Brooklyn Daily Eagle
3 “Had we any respect for Mr. Lincoln”: February 25, 1861, Baltimore Sun, Harper, p. 89.
4 “a Scotch plaid cap”: February 25, 1861, New York Times, from ibid.
4 “Abe Lincoln tore through Baltimore”: Melvin L. Hayes, Mr. Lincoln Runs for President (NY: Citadel Press, 1960), p. 295.
6 “They went and got a special train”: Reprinted in March 7, 1861, The Crisis, from Harper, p. 91.
6 “[Lincoln] ran”: March 2, 1861, Louisville Courier, from William H. Townsend, Lincoln and the Bluegrass (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1955), p. 268.
7 “Lo, the Conquering Hero Comes!”: February 26, 1861, New Orleans Daily Delta, from Dwight Lowell Dumond, ed., Southern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 469.
7 “What brought him here”: February 26, 1861, Chicago Tribune, from J.G. Randall, Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (NY: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1945), p. I: 293.
7 “Flight of the Imagination”: Hayes, p. 294.
7 “By the advice of weak men”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 84.
8 “Mr. Lincoln’s Flight”: February 25, 1861, Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
8 “How unwisely”: New York World, reprinted in February 25, 1861, Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
8 “Mr. Lincoln may live”: February 25, 1861, New York Tribune, from Harper, p. 90.
8 “What a misfortune”: February 26, 1861, New York Herald, from ibid.
8 “Never idol fell so suddenly”: Ernest B. Furgurson, Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War (NY: Alfred Knopf, 2004), p. 47.
8 “His friends reproached him”: Ward Hill Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln From His Birth to His Inauguration as President (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), p. 526-7.
8 “was convinced”: Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), p. 46-7.
Chapter 2: The Presidency
Page 11 “Life, hitherto”: Edward Dicey, Spectator of America, ed. Herbert Mitgang (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1989), p. 131.
11 “a happy-go-lucky style”: James Russell Lowell, Letters of James Russell Lowell, ed. Charles Eliot Norton, 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1904), p. II: 55.
12 “Did you ever see”: Carl Sandburg, The Prairie Years, 2 vols. (NY: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1926), p. II: 376.
12 “In the nineteenth century”: Theodore Lowi, The Personal President (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 40.
14 Modern White House staff figures: Bradley Patterson, The White House Staff: Inside the West Wing and Beyond (NY: Brookings Institution Press, 2001).
15 “One great blemish”: Charles Dickens, American Notes (NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1868), p. 100-101.
Chapter 3: The Rise of Party Politics
16 An apocryphal story: Harper, p. 62.
16 “an accidental instrument”: Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), p. IV: 193-4.
16 “the unknown man”: James Russell Lowell, “Abraham Lincoln,” Political Essays (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1871), p. 283
20 “General Jackson’s power”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II (NY: D. Appleton and Co., 1904), p. 454-5.
21 “I contributed”: Leonard Lurie, Party Politics: Why We Have Poor Presidents (NY: Scarborough, 1982), p. 69.
21 “That national conventions”: Allan Nevins, Ordeal of the Union: Fruits of Manifest Destiny, 1847-1852 (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947), p.187.
23 “the political activity”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, (NY: The Century Company, 1898), p. 253-4.
23 “It engrosses every conversation”: Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of Americans (NY: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1901), p. 65.
24 “I yet hope”: Dickens, p. 296.
24 “Some new most paltry exhibition”: Page Smith, The Nation Comes of Age: A People’s History of the Ante-Bellum Years (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 256.
24 “How quiet the streets are”: ibid., p. 769-70.
24 “Healthful amusements”: Dickens, p. 294, 296.
25 “The New York publications”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 904.
26 “While the newspaper press”: Dickens, p. 295-6.
26 “the Sewer” etc.: Brayton Harris, Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War (Washington: Brassey’s, 1999), p. 17.
27 “horse-whipped”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 904.
27 “to attend exclusively to the fighting part”: ibid., p. 906.
28 “was impregnable”: ibid., p. 1058.
28 “Nobody knows much of Franklin Pierce” and “a galvanized cypher”: Entry of June 7, 1852, from Brayton Harris, p. 96.
28 “blasts where it is excited”: Kenneth S. Greenburg, Masters and Statesmen: The Political Culture of American Slavery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 126.
28 “The Dignity Departing”: ibid.
Page 29 “no one was safe”: Leonard D. White, The Jacksonians (NY: Macmillan and Co., 1954), p. 26, 15.
29 “deformed, mediocre”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 22.
29 “feeble-minded”: ibid.
Chapter 4: The Spoils System
31 “When they are contending”: M. Ostragorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties (New York, Macmillan, 1908), p. 50.
31 “could not fail to degrade any Administration”: Marcus Cunliffe, The Presidency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), p. 104.
31 “Such a system would corrupt a nation of angels”: Jesse Macy, Our Nation: How it Grew, What It Does, and How It Does It (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1897), p. 137.
32 “The election ceases”: Leonard D. White, p. 325-6.
32 “both have degenerated”: Mark W. Summers, The Plundering Generation: Corruption and the Crisis of the Union 1849-1861 (NY: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 185.
32 “has converted almost the whole body of young men”: Nevins, 1847-1852, p. 178
32 “the treasury doors”: Summers, p. 5.
32 “demoralization is rapidly spreading”: ibid., p. 6.
33 “and the actual sum of money”: ibid., p. 29.
33 “The evil which he began remains”: James Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson (NY: Mason Brothers, 1860), p. II L694.
33 “the public affairs of the United States”: ibid., p. 700.
33 “Corruption is … perhaps more prevalent”: Sandburg, The Prairie Years, p. II: 324-326.
34 “one might despair of the Republic”: Summers, p. 18.
34 “When official corruption”: ibid.
34 “Our foundations are crumbling”: ibid.
34 “The patronage of government”: Greenburg, p. 131.
34 “we shall be betrayed”: ibid., p.132.
34 “We cannot coalesce”: ibid., p.137.
Chapter 5: The Slavery Debate
38 “related to an imaginary Negro”: George H. Haynes, Charles Sumner (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs and Co., 1909), p. 278.
39 “in the insult they conveyed to the South”: George Harmon Knoles, The Crisis of the Union, 1860-1861 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1865), p. 89
39 “to sever himself”: Tocqueville, p. II: 119.
40 “When were the good”: William Lee Miller, Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography (NY: Vintage Book, 2003), p. 447.
40 “One, on God’s side, is a majority”: ibid.
40 “Let me admonish you”: David Donald, Uncoln Reconsidered (NY: Vintage Books, 2001), p. 56.
40 “The citizen of the Southern states”: Tocqueville, p. I: 507.
40 “The people worship themselves”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 263-4
41 “The steadily augmenting power”: Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered, p. 58.
41 “One might enumerate the items”: Henry James, Jr., Hawthorne (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1901), p. 42-3.
42 “I go first for Greenville”: Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered, p. 60.
Page 42 “every person of good moral character”: Stanley Elkins, Slavery (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 30.
43 “no methodical system”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 150.
43 “We are so young a people”: ibid., p. 913-914.
44 “I will be as harsh as truth”: Henry Mayer, All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 112.
45 “a dark cloud” and “Many in the South”: Arnold Whitridge, No Compromise! The Story of the Fanatics Who Paved the Way to the Civil War (NY: Farrar, Straus and Cuday, 1960), p. 29-30.
45 “The Negro slaves”: George Fitzhugh, Cannibals All! or Slaves Without Masters (Richmond: A. Morris, 1857), p. 29.
45 “No fact is plainer”: Albert Taylor Bledsoe, “Essay on Liberty and Slavery,” 1856, Henry S. Commager, ed., American Destiny, Vol. 6: A House Dividing (NY: Grolier Publishing, 1976), p. 57.
45 “Instructed thus”: William J. Grayson, “The Hireling and the Slave,” The Hireling and the Slave, Chicora, and Other Poems (Charleston: McCarter & Co., 1856), p. 34.
45 “criminal agitators”: This was the phrase used by future president James K. Polk. Russel B. Nye, Fettered Freedom: Civil Liberties and the Slavery Controversy, 1830-1860 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1963), p. 23-24.
46 “Freedom of speech”: September 28, 1837, The Western Presbyterian Herald, ibid., p. 181.
46 “truth and sound philosophy”: Macy, p. 292.
46 State “slavery speech” laws: Nye, p. 174-5.
46 “no more a mob”: ibid., p. 177.
47 “The free labor of the states”: November 10, 1847, New York Evening Post, from James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 55.
48 “secure to the South”: November 10, 1846, Milledgeville Federal Union, ibid., p. 52.
48 “You could not look upon the table”: James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1995), p. 141.
48 “pretends to an insulting superiority”: Greenburg, p. 132.
48 “I would rather my state”: ibid., p. 86.
48 “not half so humiliating”: ibid., p. 87.
48 “It is clear”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 68.
49 “Southerners must refuse”: Greenburg, p. 132.
49 “naked submission or secession”: ibid., p. 140.
49 “We are either slaves”: ibid., p. 141.
49 “Modern free society is wrong,” “Free society is impracticable,” “the whole hireling class are slaves,” “make the laboring man the slave of one man,” and “The South now maintains”: Nye, p. 304-309.
50 “In Southern states”: ibid. , p. 289.
Chapter 6: Lincoln’s Nomination
&
nbsp; 52 “a considerable notion”: Benjamin Thomas, Abraham Lincoln: A Biography (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), p. 178
52 “if the [New York] Tribune continues”: Lincoln, Works, II: 430.
52 “Twenty-two years ago”: ibid., p. II: 383.
53 “Lincoln must do something”: Sandburg, The Prairie Years, p. II: 137.
53 “Though I now sink out of view”: Lincoln, Works, p. III: 339.
54 “Without Douglas Lincoln would be nothing”: September 20, 1859, Cincinnati Enquirer, Herbert Mitgang, ed., Abraham Lincoln: A Press Portrait (Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 1989), p. 141-142.
54 “I must, in candor, say”: Lincoln, Works, p. III: 377.
Page 54 “For my single self”: ibid., p. III: 491.
55 “Let us have faith”: ibid., p. III: 550
55 “It is not probable”: February 27, 1860, New York Tribune, from Randall, Springfield to Gettysburg, p. I: 135-6.
56 “If you don’t nominate Seward”: Charles C. Nourse, “A Delegate’s Memories of the Chicago Convention of 1860,” Annals of Iowa, Vol. 12, 3rd Series (Des Moines: Historical Department of Iowa, 1921), p. 463
59 “I am not in a position”: Lincoln, Works, p. III: 517
60 “Abraham Lincoln. The Rail Candidate”: David Donald, Lincoln (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 245.
62 “My name is new”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 34.
62 “I am for the man”: James S. Pike, First Blows of the Civil War (NY: American News Company, 1879), p. 484.
62 “The Bates movement”: Murat Halstead, Three Against Lincoln: Murat Halstead Reports the Caucuses of 1860, ed. William Hesseltine (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1960), p. 165-172.
63 Train votes: Webb Garrison, The Lincoln No One Knows (Nashville: Rutledge Hill Press, 1993), p. 69.
63 First-day motion vote: Emerson David Fite, The Presidential Campaign of 1860 (NY: MacMillan, 1911), p. 127.
63 “intense enthusiasm”: Halstead, p. 165-172.
63 “My conclusion”: James Trietsch, The Printer and the Prince (NY: Exposition Press, 1955), p. 93.
