Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  A member of the thinking elite, Charles Eliot Norton, reported that “Mr. Lincoln seems to be the popular choice, & I shall be glad if he be the Union Candidate. Indeed it seems to me of great importance that he should remain in office.” When George Perkins Marsh, U.S. minister to Italy, criticized the president for having “the ideas of a poor white, who has been brought up to look to Heaven for a fine plantation well stocked with negroes, as an expression of the highest bliss,” Norton replied with one of the more thoughtful analyses of Lincoln’s statesmanship: “You & I would have had the President long ago secure the abolition of Slavery; he might no doubt have done it; he would have been supported by the better men of all the parties;—but I do not feel sure that he could have done so without awaking such opposition as would have succeeded in making it impossible to carry on the war to a successful termination. By degrees the men who would have most bitterly opposed him have been won over to the support of the policy of freedom. A moral revolution such as is going on with us cannot be hurried without disaster. There is continual danger of reaction; of Charles II; of the Bourbons. Suppose Mr. Lincoln to have taken high anti-slavery ground two years ago,—and we should have been likely to have the old union between the corrupt & ignorant Democratic party & the Slave holders cemented with a cement that no future efforts could break till we were turned into a Slave-dependency. Mr. Lincoln is no doubt very slow in arriving at conclusions. He has no rapid intuitions of truth; but his convictions are the more firm from being attained only with difficulty. Experience has already taught him so much that we may hope it will teach him still more.”187

  Even in Ohio, where Chase assumed that he had widespread support, party leaders rallied behind Lincoln, who was popular with their constituents. Buckeye Congressman James A. Garfield, no fan of the president, observed that people in the West “are Lincoln-crazy.”188 By late March, John Sherman conceded that “public opinion has definitely settled the nomination of Mr. Lincoln” and that it was therefore “useless to contend against it.”189 A Dayton newspaper editor who wished to see Chase in the White House reported that “five out of six people of the West—in Ohio and Indiana especially—where I have been most observant are enthusiastically in favor of the renomination of Mr Lincoln. The movement is not managed; it is spontaneous beyond the possibility of a doubt; it is a great ground swell which will assuredly overwhelm everything in its path.”190

  Other admirers of Chase warned him that he stood no chance of wresting the nomination from Lincoln. James A. Briggs, his main operative in New York, told the treasury secretary that Empire State Republicans would support the incumbent for renomination “in spite of all that might, could, or should be done. He seems to be a Man of Destiny.” (Briggs himself thought Lincoln better qualified for rail-splitter than for president and bemoaned his lack of gentlemanly sensibilities.)191 In February, the Unitarian minister and abolitionist James Freeman Clarke, who professed to admire Chase far more than Lincoln, wrote the treasury secretary that “in common times I should be your ardent supporter, but if I were to vote tomorrow, I should vote for Lincoln” because “we cannot afford to try any experiments.” The president was a known quantity and you are not, Clarke bluntly informed Chase. “This is the feeling which will actuate seven tenths of the people. They believe Lincoln, on the whole, a safe man—they believe him a man of sense & conscience, & one who is consistent with himself.”192 In fact, many Northerners had come to regard Lincoln as “the instrument with which our God intends to destroy Slavery,” as Schuyler Colfax put it.193 The chairman of the American Baptist Home Mission Society told delegates to its annual convention in 1864 that he “believed fully that God had raised up His Excellency for such a time as this.”194

  Meanwhile, Lincoln supporters were girding for the campaign. Francis P. Blair, Sr., and his sons, along with Cameron, schemed to have state legislatures and party conventions preempt Chase and other rivals by endorsing the president for reelection. In the fall of 1863, Cameron called on Lincoln, who said: “I don’t like the idea of having Chase and Wade against me. I’m afraid I can’t be nominated if they continue to oppose me.” The Chief explained that Andrew Jackson wanted to be renominated but had pledged to serve only one term. To get around that problem, Democrats in the Pennsylvania legislature wrote him a letter asserting that as long as the Bank War continued, it would be best for him to remain in the White House to press the fight to victory. Taking the hint, Lincoln asked: “Cameron, could you get me a letter like that?” After assuring the president that he could do so, the Chief rushed to Harrisburg and arranged for the Republican legislators to send Lincoln a letter similar to the one Jackson had received; it went out on January 5.195 “I have kept my promise,” Cameron informed Lincoln.196

  A day later, William E. Chandler, believing that “a corrupt moneyed ring” sought to defeat Lincoln and nominate Chase, persuaded the New Hampshire Republican state convention to follow suit.197 It was the first such convention to be held, and the treasury secretary’s operatives tried to keep it from either endorsing anyone for president or congratulating the administration. When the 29-year-old Chandler, then speaker of the state House of Representatives, heard of this scheme, he introduced a pro-Lincoln resolution and lined up support for it. Amos Tuck was opposed, arguing that it was “better not to grieve another aspirant to the Presidency by having N. Hamp. propose Mr. Lincoln .… Mr Chase thinks a great deal of the support of his native state.”198 (Tuck claimed that he favored Lincoln’s reelection but admired Chase, whom he hoped to see occupy the White House some day.) On January 6, the convention enthusiastically adopted Chandler’s resolution. Later that year, when Chandler described these events to Lincoln, the president said: “if Chase or any of his friends makes a raid upon you for what you have done, call upon me.”199 (In fact, disgruntled Radicals tried to block Chandler’s election as chairman of the New Hampshire Republican State Committee, but they failed badly.)

  Party conventions in Connecticut, Maryland, Indiana, Minnesota, and Iowa quickly followed New Hampshire’s lead, and legislators in New Jersey, California, Maryland, Michigan, Wisconsin, Kansas, Maine, and Rhode Island emulated their counterparts in Pennsylvania. Some found this tactic unseemly. Senator Fessenden expressed “disgust” with the attempts of administration operatives “to control and direct public opinion.”200 He condemned Chase as well as Lincoln for paying too much attention to the presidential race while neglecting the public’s business. “The fact that men in their condition, who ought to be thinking only of their country, can be indulging their personal ambition, excites my bitter contempt for both of them,” he told his cousin.201 Chase’s supporters deplored what they considered the premature launching of the presidential campaign and unsuccessfully called for the postponement of the Republican convention from June to August. Others thought Lincoln “is trotted out too soon. All other aspirants will combine against him.”202

  But the principal aspirant, Chase, ignoring the advice of some key advisors, withdrew soon after Republicans in the Ohio Legislature on February 26 overwhelmingly resolved that “the People of Ohio and her Soldiers in the field demand the renomination of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States.”203 According to David Davis, the Pomeroy circular made the legislators “so indignant at Columbus that they determined to express their preference for Lincoln at once.” Davis rightly predicted that “Ohio speaking must … put a quietus upon Mr. Chase.”204 The treasury secretary, who had repeated his 1860 mistake of failing to secure his home state, hoped that his letter declining to run would intensify public pressure on him to run, but it did not. Ironically, he had told John Hay in January that it “is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery failing after enormous exertions and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose.”205 Thus he succinctly described his own unsuccessful effort to supplant Lincoln.

  Some thought Chase’s withdrawal insincere. A
ttorney General Bates scoffed that the “forced declention of Mr. Chase is really, not worth much. It only proves that the present prospects of Mr. Lincoln are too good to be openly resisted.” Bates speculated that Chase partisans would act behind the scenes to encourage several men to challenge Lincoln, then offer their champion as a compromise candidate.206 David Davis also called Chase’s withdrawal “a mere sham, & very ungracefully done. The plan is to get up a great opposition to Lincoln through Fremont & others & represent when the convention meets, the necessity of united effort, & that any body can unite &c, except Lincoln, & then present Chase again. … Look at the meanness in not saying one word about Mr. Lincoln.”207 (In fact, as one Radical admitted, his confreres did plan “to make use of the many candidates—Chase, Fremont, Butler, Andrew &c, to weaken the Lincoln forces. At the convention it is thought that these different men can unite their friends on one man against Lincoln, and so defeat his nomination.”)208 Davis marveled both at Chase’s effrontery and the president’s magnanimity: “How Chase can reconcile it with propriety to sustain the attitude to Lincoln that he does, I don[’]t know. And it must be grievous for Lincoln to bear, but he is ‘obstinately pacific.’ My nature would not tolerate the thing for a moment.”209

  A Big Fish: Chase’s Resignation

  Relations between Lincoln and Chase rapidly deteriorated over the following weeks. Throughout the winter and early spring, Frank Blair in several congressional speeches denounced the treasury secretary and other Radicals. The two most blistering philippics, delivered on February 27 and April 23, charged with some justification that Chase was improperly using patronage and trade regulations to help him win the Republican presidential nomination. Furiously Blair assailed corruption in the cotton dealings of Chase’s son-in-law, William Sprague, and the treasury secretary’s questionable financial relationship with Jay Cooke. “[A] more profligate administration of the Treasury Department never existed under any Government,” he declared, adding that “the whole Mississippi valley is rank and fetid with the fraud and corruptions practiced there” by Chase’s agents, who accepted bribes for trading permits. Such permits to sell cotton “are brought to St. Louis and other western cities by politicians and favorites from distant parts of the country, and sold on ’change to the highest bidder, whether he be a secessionist or not, and that too, at a time when the best Union men in these cities are refused permits.” Similarly corrupt, Blair thundered, were monopolies of trading privileges awarded to Chase’s friends and partisans. “It is the most corrupting and demoralizing system that ever was invented, and has become a public scandal.”210

  Chase and the Radicals, livid with anger, believed that the president had encouraged Blair to launch these attacks. Lincoln, irritated and embarrassed by the April 23 barnburner, summoned Blair to the White House. When the congressman volunteered to resign from the army, Lincoln said “we must not back down” and handed him his commission. That reappointment, without congressional approval, rankled many lawmakers.

  The president recalled that within hours of Blair’s April speech, he had learned of it and “knew that another beehive was kicked over.” His initial impulse was to withdraw the order restoring Blair to the army, but he thought better of it. When Blair had informed him that he wished to give a speech on the trade regulations in the Mississippi Valley, Lincoln replied: “If you will do the subject justice, showing fairly the workings of the regulations, and will collect and present all the information on the subject, you will doubtless render a service to the country and do yourself much credit; but if you intend to make it the occasion of pursuing a personal warfare, you had better remain silent.”211

  Convinced that Lincoln had set Blair on him, Chase angrily threatened to resign. Ohio Republican Congressmen Rufus P. Spalding and Albert G. Riddle managed to calm him down; they then called at the White House to solicit the president’s denial that he had instigated the attack. Lincoln received them civilly but coolly. After they stated that Chase’s resignation would be politically disastrous to the party and expressed an earnest wish for the president’s reelection, he warmed up, saying: “God knows I desire union and harmony as much as any man can.” To underscore the point, he read them his February 29 letter to Chase regarding the Pomeroy circular. As for the Blairs, he pointed out that they were “strong, tenacious men, having some peculiarities, among them the energy with which their feuds are carried on.” He added that they “labored for ten years to build up an anti-slavery party in Missouri, and in an action of ejectment to recover that party in the State, they could prove title in any common law court. Frank has in some way permitted himself to be put in a false position. He is in danger of being kicked out of the house built by himself and by a set of men rather new to it.” He had summoned Blair to Washington because “he was most anxious that the country should have the benefit of every Union man elected to the House,” including generals like Schenck and Garfield. He explained that “the arrangement had been made without much reference to its legal consequences.” En route to the capital, Blair in St. Louis had delivered an anti-Chase speech which Lincoln deplored. At the close of this hour-long interview, the president insisted that he could not see “how the public service could be advanced by his [Chase’s] retirement.”212 Riddle and Spalding reported this conversation to Chase, who agreed not to resign. But the episode further intensified his alienation from Lincoln. To other friends of Chase, the president insisted that he meant nothing by reappointing Blair and that he disapproved of his speech.

  Radicals were furious at both Blair and the president. When Charles Sumner called at the White House to complain about the Blair family, Lincoln defended Frank, saying that Sumner’s faction had begun warring on Blair in 1861 during his quarrel with Frémont. The Radicals, Lincoln added, kept up their attacks on Blair long after investigations revealed Frémont to be in the wrong. “Now, Mr. S[umner],” the president concluded, “the B[lairs] are brave people & never whine—but are ready always to fight their enemies and very generally whip them.”213 Radicals denounced the president for allowing Blair to serve both in the army and the Congress. Blair’s commission as a major general had been due to expire on New Year’s Day, but Lincoln did not accept it. The president faced a dilemma, for the Constitution forbade anyone to hold two positions in the government (like general and congressman) simultaneously. After Blair’s vitriolic April speech, Radicals insisted that the president submit all relevant documents about Blair’s special appointment. When the material provided by the White House showed that Lincoln pledged to restore Blair to the army after the organization of Congress, Radicals demanded that the president be impeached. Though that drastic step was not taken, the senate did adopt a resolution condemning Lincoln for violating the Constitution.

  The steadily mounting tension between the president and his treasury secretary reached a crescendo in June when Chase, to protest a patronage decision, submitted his resignation for the fourth time. The secretary had demanded exclusive control over the distribution of offices within his department, arguing that fitness alone, not political influence, should be the determining criterion. He failed to acknowledge that in order to placate Congress, the wishes of senators and Representatives regarding government appointments had to be respected.

  In March 1863, Chase had arbitrarily replaced the chief federal officeholders in San Francisco without consulting either the California delegation or Lincoln. Upon hearing a rumor about that decision, the president summoned Noah Brooks and testily asked if it were true. When Brooks confirmed the story, Lincoln angrily demanded to know why he had not told him earlier and voiced astonishment at the failure of anyone to inform him about such an important step. He was indignant at Chase for treating the California congressmen so cavalierly. Those Representatives shared Lincoln’s view and, after failing to change Chase’s mind, left Washington for New York upon the adjournment of Congress. The president instructed Brooks to wire them asking their return for a consultation. Brooks complied, and the tw
o congressmen who could be reached met with Lincoln. He “expressed his regret at the hasty and somewhat arbitrary action” of the treasury secretary and asked them to submit a slate of candidates for the posts in question. Chase, Lincoln said later, was “exceedingly hurt” by this interference with what he considered his prerogatives.214

  Chase was further hurt when Lincoln directed the removal of one of the secretary’s champions, Victor Smith, collector of customs at Port Angelos in the Washington Territory. Smith was a visionary whom the journalist Murat Halstead called “a queer man,” as “cranky as possible, imprudently partisan and zealous, always ready for a controversy,” and “one of the fiercest of the devoted admirers of Chase.”215 The White House received complaints of Smith’s corruption and ineptitude, most notably from Lincoln’s old friend, Anson G. Henry. It was alleged that Smith had transferred the customhouse to Angelos in order to enhance the value of his property there, had used public funds to secure a personal loan, had cooked his books, and had generally run his office inefficiently. Relying on his long-standing friendship with Chase, Smith boasted that he was “so linked into the fibers of the National Government that he could not be removed.” Once a special treasury agent confirmed the truth of the charges, Lincoln resolved to fire Smith, even though he was a favorite of Chase.216