The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln
Page 61
64 Details and quotes on the night before the nomination vote: Sandburg, The Prairie Years, p. II: 342; and Trietsch, p. 95.
66 “made soft vesper breathings”: Thomas, p. 212.
66 “The uproar was beyond description”: Halstead, p. 165-172.
66 “It was perfectly amazing”: Hayes, p. 62-3.
66 New England first ballot votes: Miller, p. 402.
67 “And the roar”: Halstead, p. 165-172.
67 “It is a damned shame”: George Milton, The Eve of Conflict (NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. 458.
68 “The fact of the Convention”: Halstead, p. 176-7.
68 “The main work of the Chicago Convention”: May 22, 1860, New York Times, Harper, p. 59.
68 “the triumph of politically available mediocrity”: Springfield Republican, ibid. , p. 192.
68 “The nomination … will disappoint the country”: Troy Whig, reprinted in May 21, 1860, New York Tribune, ibid., p. 58.
68 “[C]urses both loud and deep”: Hayes, p. 74.
68 “Mr. Lincoln is a very respectable lawyer”: Reprinted in May 21, 1860, New York Tribune, from Harper, p. 58.
68 “The Republicans of Illinois”: May 24, 1860, Springfield Register, from William Baringer, Lincoln’s Rise to Power (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1937), p. 309.
68 “What has Mr. Lincoln ever done”: June 2, 1860, Belleville Democrat, ibid., p. 310.
68 “That Wm. H. Seward”: May 24, 1860, Cairo City Gazette, ibid.
69 “The conduct of the Republican Party”: New York Herald, reprinted in May 21, 1860, New York Tribune, from Harper, p. 56.
69 “He is not known”: Albany Atlas and Argus, reprinted in May 21, 1860, New York Tribune, ibid., p. 57.
69 “The laboring mountains”: Hayes, p. 77.
69 “A disgraceful burlesque”: ibid., p. 78.
Page 69 “third rate district politician”: Baltimore American, May 19. 1860, from Harper, p. 154.
69 “By what process”: Trenton True American, reprinted in May 21, 1860, New York Tribune, ibid., p. 57.
69 “Why Should Lincoln Be President”: Philadelphia Journal, reprinted in May 24, 1860, New York Tribune, Mitgang, p. 181-2.
70 “The Chicago Republican Convention is over”: Edward Bates, The Diary of Edward Bates, Ed. Howard K. Beale (Washington: U.S. Gov’t. Printing Office, 1933), p. 128.
70 “Mr. Lincoln personally, is unexceptionable.”: ibid., p. 131.
70 “Few men believed”: Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 468
70 “referred deprecatingly to the nominee”: Nourse, p. 464
71 “that the nomination of Lincoln”: Baringer, p. 313.
71 “I had never heard of him”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 1166
71 “a Western ‘screamer’”: ibid.
71 “I remember”: Ida Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (NY: Lincoln History Society, 1902), p. I: 159.
71 “we heard the result”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. xvi.
71 “He is unknown here”: Entry of May 19, 1960, George Templeton Strong, The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Allan Nevins and Milton H. Thomas, eds. (NY: Macmillan, 1952), p. III: 28.
73 “a relentless ruffian”: October 15, 1860, Charleston Mercury, from Robert W. Johannsen, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), p. 104
73 “A horrid looking wretch”: Fite, p. 210.
73 “enough to scare one”: Johannsen, p. 112.
73 “most subtle and dangerous form”: May 26, 1860, Louisville Courier, Dumond, p. 115.
73 “determined hostility”: May 21, 1860, Richmond Enquirer, from Johannsen, p. 104.
73 “revolutionary and destructive theories”: May 19, 1860, New York Herald, ibid.
74 “Who is this huckster in politics?”: Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of Wendell Phillips (NY: Bookman Associates, 1958), p. 413.
Chapter 7: The 1860 Presidential Campaign
75 “Nobody believes”: October 20, 1855, Albany Argus, from Gabot Boritt, ed., Why the Civil War Came (NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 102
78 “the minds of the people”: November 2, 1860, Natchez Daily Free Trader, from Randall, Springfield to Gettysburg, p. I: 192.
79 “the procession moved along”: Entry of September 13, 1860, Strong, p. III: 41.
79 “I know the country is not Anti-Slavery”: Letter of January 6, 1860, to Margaret Allen, from Jeter Allen Isely, Horace Greeley and the Republican Party, 1863-1861: A Study of the New York Tribune (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), p. 166.
80 “Let Lincoln be President”: Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln: Prologue to the Civil War, 1859-1861 (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1950), p. 290.
Chapter 8: Lincoln’s Election
83 “five to six trillion dollars”: Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware, in a letter written on December 12, 1860, put aggregate slave value at “more than $2 billion dollars…” (Nevin, 1859-1861, p. 331) Robert Toombs of Georgia put the loss of the value of slaves at $4 billion, and asked, “Is that not a cause of war?” (Sandburg, Prairie Years, p. II: 377) Recently, James L. Huston, in Calculating the Value of the Union (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), put slave value in 1860 at $3 billion. Ward Hill Lamon, Lincoln’s friend, put the average value of a slave in 1860 at $600, which would make the aggregate value at $2.4 billion. In trying to give a modern perspective to that number, I have used the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). Although GDP was not computed before 1869, The Reader’s Companion to American History puts the 1860 GDP at $6 billion. In 1869, the GDP was calculated at $6.1 billion. So the GDP for 1860 may be put somewhere around $6 billion dollars, and the value of slaves to be somewhere around $3 billion, or in the neighborhood of half of the 1860 GDP. Since the GDP of 2004 is more than $11 trillion dollars, the value of the slaves can be viewed, in modern terms, as approximately $5-6 trillion dollars.
Page 83 “Secret conspiracy”: October 11, 1860, Charleston Mercury, from Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 1169-70.
84 “If you are tame enough”: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 243.
84 “Submit to have our wives and daughters”: ibid.
84 “I shudder to contemplate it!”: Issue of December 12, 1860, Southern Advocate.
85 “The South will never permit”: Atlanta Southern Confederacy, reprinted in August 7, 1860, New York Times.
85 “Did you think the people of the South”: Greenburg, p. 130-131.
85 “senseless fulminations”: Henry Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of ’61: A Journalist’s Story, ed. Harold and Oswald Villard (NY: Knopf, 1941), p. 28
85 “He showed me”: Henry Clay Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln (Boston: Estes and Lauriat, 1892), p. 432.
86 “Old Abe Lincoln”: Letter of November 8, 1860, Harold Holzer, ed., Dear Mr. Lincoln: Letters to the President (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993), p. 340.
Chapter 9: Lincoln in the Secession Winter
87 “were suspended … across various streets”: Mary Chesnut, The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries, C. Vann Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, eds. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 4.
87 “The tea has been thrown overboard.”: November 8, 1860, Charleston Mercury, from David M. Potter and Don E. Fehrenbacher, The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (NY: Harper Collins, 1976), p. 485.
88 “All this talk”: Lincoln, Works, p. II: 355.
88 “this controversy will soon be settled”: ibid., p. III: 316.
88 “in no probable event”: ibid., p. IV: 95.
89 “does not believe”: November 12, 1860, Chicago Tribune, from Randall, Springfield to Gettysburg, p. I: 247.
89 “[His] low estimate of humanity”: Paul M. Angle, ed., The Lincoln Reader (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1947), p. 299.
89 “I think, from all I can learn”: Stephen B. Oates, With M
alice Toward None (NY: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 198.
90 “Stubborn facts”: Villard, Lincoln on the Eve of ‘61 , p. 23
90 “would do no good”: Letter of October 23, 1860, to William S. Speer, Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 130
90 “the country was in a condition” and “a strange and bewildering chaos”: Adams, The Great Secession Winter, p. 3.
Page 90 “There is only one man”: December 15, 1860, New York Herald
91 “Form Reply to Requests”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 60.
91 “By the lessons of the past”: Letter of June 19, 1860, to Samuel Galloway, ibid., p. IV: 80.
92 “impressing your readers”: Letter of Oct. 29. 1860, to George D. Prentice, ibid., p. IV: 134.
92 “There are no such men”: Angle, p. 289.
92 “bold bad men”: Letter of October 27, 1860, to George T.M. Davis, Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 133.
93 “To expose Mr. Lincoln”: Harper, p. 57.
93 “A house divided”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 491.
94 “If the Cotton States”: November 9, 1860, New York Tribune, from McPherson, The Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 251-2
95: I’m not stopping you!: This analysis is taken from McPherson, who credits David M. Potter’s writing on the subject as an influence on his interpretation of the “go in peace” strategy.
95 “Disunion sentiment”: November 13, 1860, New York Times, from David M. Potter, Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), p. 63
95 “a spirit of compromise”: November 14, New York Times, ibid.
95 “If he persists”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 12.
95 “All of the States”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 141-2.
Chapter 10: The Flight Toward Compromise
98 “it is the end of us”: Letter of January 11, 1861, to James T. Hale, Lincoln, Works, p. IV:172.
98 “Let there be no compromise”: Letter of December 10, 1860, to Lyman Trumbull, ibid., p. IV: 149-150.
99 “Entertain no proposition”: Letter of December 11, 1860, to William Kellogg, ibid., p. IV: 150.
99 “immediately filibustering”: Letter of December 13, 1860, to Elihu Washburne, ibid., p. IV: 151.
99 “Should the … Governors”: December 17, 1860, ibid., p. IV: 154.
99 “trouble holding them steady”: Potter, Lincoln and His Party, p. 191.
99 “many of our Republican friends”: ibid.
99 “who confess the error”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 32.
99 “better things will occur”: December 9, 1860, New York Herald, from Potter, Lincoln and His Party, p. 128-9.
101 “very fishy and weak-kneed”: ibid., p. 179.
101 “prepare yourself: ibid., p. 131.
101 “three fourths of the people” etc.: All Crittenden Compromise quotes, ibid., p. 191-200.
102 “25% approval rating”: ibid., p. 113-114. The Herald again published its “less than one-fourth” estimate of Lincoln’s minority on inauguration day—March 4, 1861. The Massachusetts returns are from Potter, Lincoln and His Party, p. 190.
103 “On the territorial question”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 152.
104 “You think slavery is right”: ibid., p. 160.
104 “I have seen Mr. Lincoln”: Thomas, p. 231.
104 “Not only was the old-time zest lacking”: Tarbell, p. I: 406.
Chapter 11: The Journey to Washington
Page 105 “Some thought the cars”: Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 465.
105 “Our adversaries have us”: Letter of January 3, 1861, to William Seward, Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 170.
106 “So we shall have an ‘ovation’”: February 7, 1861, The Crisis, from Harper, p. 77.
106 “Let us believe”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 191.
106 “as a family relation”: ibid., p. IV: 195.
106 “Who would have supposed”: February 21, 1861, New Orleans Daily Crescent, Dumond, p. 466-7.
107 “It is a war proposition”: February 13, 1861, Louisville Courier, ibid.
107 “Whatever may have been”: February 15, 1861, Nashville Patriot, ibid.
107 “should my administration”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 197.
107 “the humblest of all individuals”: ibid., p. IV: 226.
107 “without a name”: ibid., p. IV: 204.
107 “I fear that the great confidence”: ibid., p. IV: 207.
108 “by a mere accident”: ibid., p. IV: 208.
108 “a mere instrument”: ibid., p. IV: 193.
108 “there is nothing going wrong”: ibid., p. IV: 204.
108 “In plain words”: ibid., p. IV: 211.
108 “I think that there is no occasion”: ibid., p. IV: 216.
108 “Have not our forts and vessels been seized”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 47.
108 “At Columbus, Ohio”: February 15, 1861, Saint Louis Daily Missouri Republican, Dumond, p. 460-61.
109 “no capacity to grapple manfully”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 48.
109 “thoroughly matured judgment”: Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 215.
109 “crude, ignorant twaddle”: Villard, Memoirs, p. 152.
109 “absolutely unknown”: Randall, Springfield to Gettysburg, p. I: 292.
110 “Lincoln is a ‘Simple Susan.’”: G.S. Merriam, Life and Times of Samuel Bowles (NY: The Century Co., 1885), p. I: 318.
110 “These speeches thus far”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 48.
110 “His speeches have fallen”: Entry of February 18, 1861, from Nevins, 1859-1861, p. 438.
110 “Abe is becoming more grave”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 61.
110 “The illustrious Honest Old Abe”: Salem Advocate, from Carl Sandburg, The Lincoln Collector (NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), p. 23.
111 “The lack of good taste”: February 21, 1861, Harrisburg Daily Patriot and Union, Perkins, II: p. 1004
“There is that about his speechification”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 48.
111 “His speeches on his tour”: Donald E. Reynolds, ed., Editors Make War (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1970), p. 187.
111 “a beastly figure” and “No American of any section”: ibid.
111 “fiddle-faddle”: Harold Holzer, “The Legacy of Lincoln’s Impromptu Oratory,” James McPherson, ed., ‘We Cannot Escape History”: Uncoln and the Last Best Hope of Earth (Urbana and Chicago, University of Illinois Press, 1995)
111 “If any one can read the speeches”: February 21, 1861, New Orleans Daily Crescent, Dumond, p. 465.
112 “His silly speeches”: February 26, 1861, New Orleans Daily Delta, ibid., p. 469-70.
112 “Mr. Lincoln”: February 15, 1861, Albany Atlas and Argus, from Randall, Springfield to Gettysburg, p. I: 292.
Chapter 12: Lincoln and the Merchants
Page 113 “While he thus satisfied the public curiosity”: Villard, Memoirs, p. 93, 151-2.
113 “Old Abe Lincoln was here”: Townsend, p. 66.
113 “Awfully ugly”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 49.
114 “He is distressingly homely”: Maury Klein, Days of Defiance: Sumter, Secession, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, Alfred Knopf, 1997), p. 265.
“the masses of people did not turn out”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 58.
114 “crowd which cheered”: Sandburg, The Lincoln Collector, p. 241.
114 “possessed no personal popularity”: Walter Lowenfels, Walt Whitman’s Civil War (Da Capo Press, 1989) p. 269-270.
115 “a prolongation of the South”: Potter, Lincoln and His Party, p. 117.
115 “The mercantile world is in a ferment”: ibid., p. 127.
115 “I am not insensible”: Letter of November 10, 1860, to Truman Smith, in Lincoln, Works, p. IV: 138.
116 “It annoyed me”: John G. Nicolay, and John Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History (NY: The Century Co., 1890), p. III: 281.
116 “it is easy to perceive”: Smith, The Nation Comes of Age, p. 148-9.<
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116 “the upper world of millionaire merchants”: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South (NY: Harper & Brothers, 1863), p. 16.
116 “Oh, indeed, is that so?”: Anonymous, The Diary of a Public Man (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1946), p. 49.
Conversation with William L. Dodge: Angle, p. 325
117 “sorely afflicted”: Sandburg, The War Years, p. I: 59.
117 “I think we ought to send some flowers”: Anonymous, p. 51-2.
118 “if you don’t Resign”: Holzer, Dear Mr. Lincoln, p. 341.
Part Two: Lincoln’s First Eighteen Months
Chapter 13: Lincoln’s First Impression
121 “A person who met Mr. Lincoln”: Russell, p. 22.
122 “the majority of the people”: ibid., p. 14.
122 “I was astonished”: ibid., p. 15.
122 “Deformed Sir”: Sandburg, The Prairie Years, p. II: 381-2.
“Mr. Lincoln was the homeliest man”: Angle, p. 298.
122 “To say that he is ugly is nothing”: Dicey, p. 91.
122 “homeliest and the awkwardest”: Garrison, p. 51.
122 “as far as all external conditions”: Villard, Memoirs, p. 92-3.
122 “his phiz is truly awful”: J.G. Randall, Mr. Lincoln, ed. Richard Current (NY: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1957), p. 27.
122 “Slouchy, ungraceful”: Letter of November 15, 1860, Thomas Webster to John Sherman, from Oates, p. 181.
122 “I was somewhat startled by his appearance”: Harold Holzer, ed., Lincoln As I Knew Him (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1999), p. 54.
123 “He is lank and hard-featured”: Strong, p. III: 188.
123 “I doubt whether I wholly concealed my disappointment”: McClure, p. 48.
123 “coconut shaped and somewhat too small”: Dicey, p. 91.
Page 123 “long, sallow, and cadaverous”: Lamon, The Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 469.
123 “His complexion was very dark”: ibid.
123 “nose and ears”: Dicey, p. 91.
123 “flapping and wide-projecting” and “a prominent organ”: Russell, p. 45.
123 “thatch of wild republican hair”: ibid., p. 44.
123 “had apparently been acquainted with neither brush”: Holzer, Lincoln As I Knew Him, p. 167.
123 “dark, almost black”: Randall, Mr. Lincoln, p. 30.